image editors / graphics programs

[yrizoud]

Man! That EvilPixie program sounded like exactly what I am looking for from your description, and the penguin made me really hopeful, but it's another Windows only program

Evilpixie is originally developed on Linux, you can see the instructions to compile it here: https://github.com/bcampbell/evilpixie

Anything good for Linux?

Both ASEPRITE and Grafx2 are available as binaries on a few distributions
https://www.aseprite.org/older-versions/
https://code.google.com/p/grafx2/wiki/Downloads#Binary_packages

mtPaint should be another possible choice, it looks less intimidating than GIMP. The downloads page indicates how to find ready-made Linux builds.
--

I think Adobe Photoshop can be added to the "Bad" list, because I can see absolutely no way to select a specific color number to draw, when there are duplicates - and the UFO games' palettes have a few duplicates.

[Acid]

Any one know of a good .spk viewer/editor preferably not command line based and thats compatible with Windows ?

[jStuffer]

OP: https://openxcom.org/forum/index.php?topic=2676.msg28507#msg28507

I'm pretty sure that it won't work unless your final image contains every color in the palette (or at least the first and the last color), else the palette will be truncated. and sometimes shifted.

I assume it might work if you keep a full-palette image as an invisible layer, which forces the GIMP to keep all colors in the palette... but I don't know what happens in the export function. if this actually works, it would be really cool, because I love the GIMP.

Sorry for the delay... I just tested that with GIMP 2.8.10 on some HANDOBs - the palette was correctly saved with all the original colors in their positions even though there were only 43 colors in all layers (original layer deleted).
The background color of the new graphics must match that of the palette's original (at index 0) - since some sprites use different background colors.

Edit: Okay, that didn't answer your question.
Another test: saving blank image (all filled with color id 0): still saves the palette right.
Saving an image filled with some middle color from the pallete also saves the palette right. Export options: all unchecked.

[RSSwizard]

Using Photoshop for Palettes when there are Duplicates...

Find the colors on the palette that are duplicates. Along with any colors that you do not wish to be using (like that last set of 16 colors for Ufopedia graphics?).

Replace those colors with Hot Pink or Pure Cyan, or some other color that doesnt occur naturally in Xcom and is unlikely that you yourself are going to want to use. Pure White and Black may get confused in the graphics program but these other colors wont be. Perhaps even eradicating most of the colors in the palette so that your images are forced to comply with specific color ranges.

And if you see those pixels pop up in the image you can just manually recolor them to something else.

Save that Palette as something you will work with regularly but not use as a final product.
You should have a collection of these palettes, probably for different purposes.

You can take 24 bit images and Convert to 8 Bit using this palette as the Custom Palette setting. Best to do this with an entire series of images if you have them so that way the "custom palette" setting doesn't need to be changed inbetween.


* After you have loaded this palette, its determined where those color indexes will stay put.
NOW you can load the AUTHENTIC Xcom Palette you want to use.
But I think that might also be optional ... because the color indexes are already set in the image, and the GAME is not going to care what palette is in the image only the color indexes (?correct).
So when the game loads the image it will display it correctly.
 
* As for whether Photoshop saves any extra palette information beyond the 256 colors set... I cant tell you the truth about that. But I think the best chances to shoot for that are to save it as .GIF files because those have 256 color palette standarization.



I used to do this alot to Re-Color images for other sprite games like Doom 2 Sourceports.
Using Photoshop to Hue/Color shift parts or whole sections of sprites . . . like make a critter that had red skin instead of brown or make some dude's armor turn gold.
Then I convert back down to 8 Bit and use one of these masking palettes to convert it back to the Doom palette colors but also dodge certain colors I don't want it to use.

Then I just load the actual Doom Palette on top of that and the color indexes stay put because its already an 8 bit image so it does not need to remap them.

(the key there was that the Green Spread of colors was used for Palette Remapping and if you wanted a Sprite to be re-mappable it had to be on that green spread. So naturally I created a Palette that was Pure Pink except for the Green Spread and the single Transparent Color near the end of the palette. This forced the program to funnel all of the Color Indexes into the Green Spread of colors near the center of the palette)


Paint Shop Pro was a little more efficient with this because you could force images to remap with a new palette if you wanted it to, without having to UpSample it to 24 bit first then Downsample it to 8 bit.

But as we all know Photoshop was designed to take up the Maximum Amount of Time to complete any project, I guess so that graphic artists can get the most money for their hourly rates.

[The Reaver of Darkness]

I got ASEPRITE v0.9.5 and it looks great, very easy to use! Only problem I have is that its list of file types doesn't seen to include ANY of the image file types in X-Com. Any idea how I can edit these file types?:
.pck
.tab
.spk
.scr
and any other types of image file it uses

[RSSwizard]

Reaver you have to use a utility for xcom to extract the images. You can define custom images in the .rul files for the mod, you dont have to repack the images back into those archaic file types.

[The Reaver of Darkness]

Alright, thanks. Any idea where I can get such a utility?

[new_civilian]

Try strategycore's file section, they have most of those.

[Falko]

.. or upload the pck/tab/spk/scr/bdy/dat files here https://falkooxc2.pythonanywhere.com/spriteconvert

[Arthanor]

Using Falko's tools, it is incredibly easy to do OpenXCom graphics now (on the technical side, you still need to know how to draw!). I use a Linux equivalent of MSPaint (KolourPaint), of all programs, and it works wonders. I like the simplicity of the interface.

Just take the palette into the picture, only use the colours from the palette, then run it through Falko's palette fixer. Simple recolors are even easier since he has a (quite customizable) tool for that as well. It took me ages to try doing graphics because of the palette and format requirements but with those tools, it only took ~30 minutes to get going.

[volutar]

I don't know why Falko chosen #ffa0ff (255,160,255) as "transparent", it's always been #ff00ff (255,0,255) - pure purple color (warboy given that palette long long time ago).
I couldn't find these act files, thus created my own, all palettes of xcom1/xcom2. Including background palettes (actual colors are in the range of ingame background colors - 224..239).
All "special" battlescape colors like colorgroup15 for xcom1 and color255 for tftd are properly replaced, transparent color0 = #ff00ff(255,0,255)

[Vesparco]

Hi,

New here on the tools sections ^^. I am developing a mod for the vanilla version of the game in order to expand the missile arsenal of the game.

The idea was mainly to learn about openxcom modding and YAML and the process has been successful so far (I am still impressed with the ease given by the ruleset and the very much appreciated tools from falko).

For the images though I am using Paint.Net, which is a freeware photoshop with neat interface and controls (I am quite fond of it XD). The bad side of it is that the colour depth tweaking is quite painful (I tried in converting the image to gif (256 colours) in order to reduce it but the game stills shows weird colours in the process (the tweak is for the ufopedia).

Could anyone give me some insights on the colour palette used in the game? I think that would help me to fix the issue (and maybe you can add another tool to the list).

[Bloax]

I think Adobe Photoshop can be added to the "Bad" list, because I can see absolutely no way to select a specific color number to draw, when there are duplicates - and the UFO games' palettes have a few duplicates.

Photoshop is a terrible choice if what you're looking for is doing things pixel-by-pixel with colors grabbed from a palette index.

It is really great for brushing things out in in black and white and coloring things with gradient maps that are based off palette ranges.
And since getting those up and running takes quite a while I've already done the job of making a bunch of gradients based off just that.
Although these are only the inventory/ufopedia palettes, and since I'm extremely new I don't know if there are others.

The final step is then saving the image (usually in .gif) through File > Save for web and selecting a custom color table that is the appropriate color palette for the image.
After that you can finally open up and pencil the new .gif into perfection with no worries of messing up the palette.

gee i know too much about this program

[Dioxine]

Could anyone give me some insights on the colour palette used in the game? I think that would help me to fix the issue (and maybe you can add another tool to the list).

See Volutar's post above, he uploaded all the palettes used by XCom in Photoshop format.

Falko's tools are also very useful: https://falkooxc.pythonanywhere.com/palconvert.

I kinda disagree that Photoshop is bad for pixel-by-pixel, might be suboptimal but I've never used anything else

Also: be sure you disable any dithering when converting from RGB to indexed palette format.

[Vesparco]

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately Paint.net doesn't read palettes from photoshop (uses txt format) and I tried Falco's plugin but I am using external images (and I belive I need to filter them first through a palette to make it work).

Interesting enough that's what I've been trying to do in the meantime and I believe I am close enough.

I've been searching on the internet and found the following link:

https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=PALETTES.DAT

I managed to rebuild some of the palettes on Paint.NET from the pictures by using the following plugin:

https://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/15318-palette-from-image-tool-20091111/

Then, going further and digging like crazy within the plugin repository I found this nice pack that has the "selective palette" filter which in theory is able to grade all the colours of a picture to a given reference palette.

https://forums.getpaint.net/index.php?/topic/8043-curtis-plugin-pack-update-for-354/

While the process seems to work properly the results give some error. I am applying the "research palette" for a ufopedia entry within the category 7. I believe the issue is that I am using the wrong palette (as the wiki page suggests that ufopedia uses one or more of them) or I should disable some of the colors within the palette.

I would like to keep trying this approach as if done It could convert quite fast any picture to the format required of the ufopedia :/

I attach a picture in case someone sees something I am missing