Author Topic: PALETTE experimenting  (Read 15708 times)

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: PALETTE experimenting
« Reply #15 on: August 29, 2017, 02:16:59 pm »
I agree something can probably be done to make the reds a bit more diverse, at least. I also like the teal, but it might require some tweaking of game graphics, and this is not something trivial.
And why are the grays purplish? Is this an intended choice, or a side effect?

Offline RSSwizard

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Re: PALETTE experimenting
« Reply #16 on: August 29, 2017, 08:53:48 pm »
This palette simply rocks. The one color I am not fully happy with is the turqoise... Keep tweaking man! This is really awesome work, kudos to you!

You mean the turquoise looks a little more VAPORwave :P
I get what you're saying about the turquoise, and I think you're right.
The 2nd range of blue in the middle will be tweaked to go to a teal fade, while the final blue range will be returned back to the kinda dark blue fade it had before.

Im thinking of moving the saturated red a little farther down on the range (maybe two indexes) so the upper 4-5 colors that things such as the health bar use will still look okay. For any objects that matter it will still do the job. I dont think an LED intensity red is exactly necessary as long as there's at least an 80% brightness saturated red, because thats what blood requires.

I changed the first green (range 4?) to be a little more desaturated at the top and become more teal to fade out. Fun tip if you select either the pale green, or the bright yellow ranges for Night Vision the effect is just amazing... fires look overwhelming while the rest of the terrain looks a little more darker than usual (ie, like it might show up on actual nightvision).

After I mess with this stuff im going to start experimenting with the other palettes. I want to get those massive plain blue oceans under control.


And why are the grays purplish? Is this an intended choice, or a side effect?

When I was changing hex values I noticed offhand that one or two of the darker gray colors were in fact some version of purple (this deviates from the displayed palette I provided for some reason). I left it as it was and actually I loved the result. It produces a scintillating kind of transition to black, its not altogether unrealistic either. Its the result of a typo, it needs to be tweaked though because the lighter (of those 2 colors?) is abit too light and I need to dim it down by half a shade if its going to remain a desaturated purple.

Picture is how I have been doing the modifications. I have a hex editor open on the photoshop palette I have saved, and I have the palettes.dat open. I have to manually divide all of the values from the photoshop palette by 4, ive done it so much that its starting to become rote. I originally used Universal Game Editor back in the 90s so im familiar with it, it displays all the values in digits and it saves addresses for easy reference/editing.

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: PALETTE experimenting
« Reply #17 on: August 29, 2017, 08:56:17 pm »
Great, thanks for the answer.

Could you perhaps attach the new .dat file? I can't wait to see it. :)

Offline RSSwizard

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Re: PALETTE experimenting
« Reply #18 on: August 29, 2017, 10:43:36 pm »
Could you perhaps attach the new .dat file? I can't wait to see it. :)
Its in the .zip

Did some more tweaking. This time I also got into the basescape palette and altered the red colors to duplicate the battlescape version. Also made the darker grays a little darker.

The list of tweaks since yesterday's version and they're looking quite prima:
* Gray - Identified dark lavender color and smoothed it out, a couple other dark grays got turned lavender but they conform better and its not as noticeable (again, it just makes the darker gray objects appear a tiny bit "dirty" and grunge).
* Red - Recopied verbatim the first 3 colors from vanilla, moved the start of the saturated values lower, smoothed out the transition from red to dark fuscha.
* Plasma Green - I desaturated this color range a tiny bit because it'll look less artificial and since most of the grass tiles in the game use these colors (rather than the "mint" green) it'll be nicer for the scenery. Slightly noticeable on the cactus in the screenshot and/or the aye phone. So green in general is slightly desaturated now compared to vanilla, but I dont think this will be a bad thing.
* Blue (range#9) - The brighter blue became brighter, the darker end became more teal. Noticeable on the "sharp guy" business uniform.
* Blue (range#14) - Pretty much returned it to the way it was before, still tweaked though.

Offline Dioxine

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Re: PALETTE experimenting
« Reply #19 on: August 30, 2017, 11:18:57 am »
Two issues with this update: the grass is no longer vibrant green, and it looks like a cheap carpet instead. Same with the crops in the field, their hue is more like leather than proper gold.

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: PALETTE experimenting
« Reply #20 on: August 30, 2017, 11:45:34 am »
Two issues with this update: the grass is no longer vibrant green, and it looks like a cheap carpet instead. Same with the crops in the field, their hue is more like leather than proper gold.

Yes, I was about to say exactly the same thing. Farm looks weird, like a permanent alien twilight or something. ;) These colours are nice, but not suitable for nature.

Offline RSSwizard

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Re: PALETTE experimenting
« Reply #21 on: August 30, 2017, 04:46:01 pm »
Two issues with this update: the grass is no longer vibrant green

These colours are nice, but not suitable for nature.

Actually both of these are deliberate and I find them pleasant. I have always been bugged by the unnatural candy green color of the grass and the non-straw golden color of the straw. Take a look at lawns and dead grass in real life and you'll find that colors in nature are often alot less "vibrant"... grass is often darker and the parts of it which are brighter are less saturated than typically imagined. Dead grass and straw are a pale tan rather than golden. This is similar to how people imagine trees to be brown colored but in reality they're pretty much gray until you peel bark off of them.

I figured everyone knew this.

These kinds of graphics and art direction (with UFO) are precisely why I dislike the original game and loved TFTD alot better (I also played TFTD first, and only got UFO several years later).

Ive been waiting years to change that and since I did it this way I don't have to mess with altering the (entire) tileset to suit.

TL;DR - you can modify the palette back to the original greens/yellows if you like, its a smack in the face to ask me to do it.

Offline Dioxine

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Re: PALETTE experimenting
« Reply #22 on: August 30, 2017, 05:14:51 pm »
I look through the window to see my garden in full daylight.
Yep it is still vibrant green not old carpet green.
Myth busted, RSS Wizard : )

Offline RSSwizard

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Re: PALETTE experimenting
« Reply #23 on: August 30, 2017, 09:19:54 pm »
Yep it is still vibrant green not old carpet green.

Ill put the plasma green range back to where it was, but only for you guys. It takes a little less than an hour.

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: PALETTE experimenting
« Reply #24 on: August 30, 2017, 10:57:49 pm »
Ill put the plasma green range back to where it was, but only for you guys. It takes a little less than an hour.

That would be nice, thanks.

It's not that I dislike the new green, because I do... It's just that it doesn't convey the proper feel, natural or not.

Offline RSSwizard

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Re: PALETTE experimenting
« Reply #25 on: August 30, 2017, 11:45:24 pm »
Reset the green saturation, Fixed the straw colors (I think), fixed a little bit of other things.

Edit: it does some bad things to the defender/guardian/stormy armor scheme, its just something I noticed.
« Last Edit: August 31, 2017, 12:00:34 am by RSSwizard »

Offline Dioxine

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Re: PALETTE experimenting
« Reply #26 on: August 31, 2017, 05:02:16 am »
It does weird things to these armors because they were poorly drawn, with no regard to palette whatsoever. As for the matte grass/wheat, the issue was lack of vibrant colors in full daylight. It should be more matte indeed in half-dark like you say, but it's hard to pull off such a thing I guess...

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: PALETTE experimenting
« Reply #27 on: September 03, 2017, 08:32:09 pm »
RSS Wizard, I have added your palette to X-com Files.

Many thanks for your effort.

Online Meridian

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Re: PALETTE experimenting
« Reply #28 on: September 03, 2017, 09:00:04 pm »
RSS Wizard, I have added your palette to X-com Files.

Is the new one REALLY so much better?

Think of all the problems you will have sharing resources with other modders... especially the ones that are converted from 24-bit images (i.e. not handdrawn and shaded properly)... you'll be in modder hell before you can say ooops...

And if I create a slightly different one, will you take mine instead of RSSWizard's? What do you expect to gain by all this?

Offline Solarius Scorch

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Re: PALETTE experimenting
« Reply #29 on: September 03, 2017, 09:08:56 pm »
Is the new one REALLY so much better?

Think of all the problems you will have sharing resources with other modders... especially the ones that are converted from 24-bit images (i.e. not handdrawn and shaded properly)... you'll be in modder hell before you can say ooops...

And if I create a slightly different one, will you take mine instead of RSSWizard's? What do you expect to gain by all this?

It's a bit experimental, but the prospects are tempting.

The only real difference (apart from juicier reds) is that blues are more diverse. There are three types of blues in vanilla, so I prefer to have one turned into teal. This doesn't make much of a difference and shouldn't collide with any new graphics. (New Piratez palette is a much more serious change.) And if it doesm, it's easy to revert.

And if a better palette is made... Of course, better is the bane of good. ;)