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View Full Version : Okay, I'm sick of this.



J.J. Maxx
05-15-2002, 01:46 AM
As you all know I am making a 100% custom tileset. I started with an existing tileset (R2) and I am building over top of that. But here's the thing, I HATE THE R2 PALETTE! I

ts so limiting and irritating! ARG! :cry:

I heard people talk about making their own palettes but I have already made tons of tiles with the R2 palette and secondly, how would I create a palette if I don't know what I need?

Can someone please offer me a solution or help me with this problem. I am willing to recolor all my tiles if need be.

Thanks.

JJ "Downtrodden" Maxx

Sirklawd
05-15-2002, 02:00 AM
yo, im sorta in yoru same boat. im using the r2 set as the basis for my new tiles too..and boo urns to that pallette. basically, i just messed around with the csets and and color picker. i tried to keep the organization of the csets the same so i didnt have to recolor all the tiles.

one of the first things i did was completely get rid of that damn all blue cset....

PrinceMSC
05-15-2002, 02:47 AM
For basic overworld stuff you need to think of colors that will be used in your overworld. Here is an example of a good overworld palette.
X. black
1.white
2. gray
3. Dark gray
4. yellow
5. darker yellowblack
6. light brown
7. brown
8. dark brown
9. light green
10. green
11. dark green
12. light blue
13. blue
14. dark blue
15. black

The colors that are not in this line up are red, orange, and purple. What you will need to do is think of what colors you would like to substitute in another palette. Take the three blues for example. You will most likely use those colors for water, roofs, and sides of houses. Red could take its place. Instead of water make a lava type of water. The red will fit right up with on the roof and sides of house parts. Orange would be good in place of the green. When switching to this color it would give your grass and trees a fall affect. Purple could also be another replacement for blue making a twilight effect.

I hope this some what helps.

:king: PrinceMSC:king:

J.J. Maxx
05-15-2002, 03:18 AM
Well I searched high and low and I think I'm going to use the soft dull colors of Orion's LTTP palette. I've tweaked it a bit so my tiles fit into it but mostly I think I like it. :thumbsup: I will post screenshots in my update thread tomorrow to show the transition.

I guess I was just sick of my world being so bright and shiny. Life isn't bright and shiny ;)

Cloral
05-15-2002, 03:59 AM
Remember too that you may very well want more than 1 version of a color series. For instance, the following screenshot from Golden Seal has 3 different series of browns:
http://cloral.homestead.com/files/gs.jpg
one of them is for the cliffs and dirt (yeah, I'm fully aware that there is no dirt in the snapshot), one is for the treetrunks, and one is for the sides of the house. Having them use different looking browns makes for more visual interest. So just because you have a series of blues doesn't mean that you might not want another one for something else.

JayeM
05-15-2002, 05:35 AM
I build palettes pretty much the same way Prince does. Another thing to keep in mind is that csets 0, 1, and 5 can also be used in dungeons, so they should probably be a gloomier version of the overworld like you would use in graveyards and such. How do ya'll build dungeon palettes? I keep the grays and in place of the browns and greens put in about 4 shades of the main dungeon color and 2 of an accent color. Since csets 2, 3, and 4 are the main dungeon csets, there can be 3 different accent colors.

J.J. Maxx
05-15-2002, 01:58 PM
Originally posted by Cloral
Remember too that you may very well want more than 1 version of a color series. For instance, the following screenshot from Golden Seal has 3 different series of browns:
http://cloral.homestead.com/files/gs.jpg
one of them is for the cliffs and dirt (yeah, I'm fully aware that there is no dirt in the snapshot), one is for the treetrunks, and one is for the sides of the house. Having them use different looking browns makes for more visual interest. So just because you have a series of blues doesn't mean that you might not want another one for something else.

How did you fit alll those browns, blues and greens all on one cset? Or is that screen layered?

C-Dawg
05-15-2002, 02:39 PM
They arn't in one Cset, JJ, thats the whole point. Remember you can specify four or so Csets per level pallette independantly? You can have Cset 0 be your water and water's edge colors (Browns and blues) one be your normal ground and hill colors (Browns and greens) another your flowers and trees... you get the idea.

But hes right. Use one set of browns for trees and another for mountains. It looks much nicer.

-C

Cloral
05-15-2002, 04:32 PM
In that picture, all the grass and hill and water colors are on cset 2. All the house and tree colors are on cset 4. The unused cset 3 is for dead grass and sand and desert rock (like the entrance to the desert palace in LttP).

Layering wouldn't help because all layers are taken to use the same palette as the base layer (this is simply due to the 256 color limitation of ZC). You just have to be creative with the space you've got. I took all the special monuments you might find in the overworld (Castle, Pyramid, Sanctuary) and put their colors on csets 0, 1, and 5. Most of my items now use cset 11. I got the idea for doing this by looking at Orion's palette, but I didn't do it quite the same as him. For instance, he put the death mountain palette in with the main overworld palette. Since it is an entirely seperate part of the overworld though, I put it on its own palette. This gave me more room for things such as the various series of browns whereas Orion's set only has 1 or 2 series of overworld browns.

So before you put your palettes together, you need to think carefully about what you want to do with your palettes, and plan them out before you start putting them together. This is really quite difficult, so it's good to do it well the first time so you don't have to go back and do it again (like I did).

J.J. Maxx
05-15-2002, 05:23 PM
Yeah but say you have your brown colors for the trees, you will also need the green for the trees and the green for grass which is in the same tile, right? Same thing with the house tiles. For the house tiles you also need the green grass colors, right?

Cloral
05-15-2002, 08:15 PM
There's only 1 green grass color (there's also the darker grass color but you don't need it for the other csets).

C-Dawg
05-15-2002, 08:25 PM
Its probably a good idea to try and limit the number of palletes you design with for a screen to as few as possible- this way you have more freedom to use the shared Csets for common things like dungeon water or lava.

-C

Cloral
05-15-2002, 11:25 PM
It is good to try to see how many differnt things a single series of colors can work for too - for instance, I was worried about the fact that the only versions of the trees I had was green on green grass. I was about to change the houses to use the same browns as the trees so that I could fit in a few more colors to enable me to put trees on different kinds of landscapes. But then I was playing around earlier and found that the house browns worked well for making dead trees. And one of the shades of brown in the tree trunk series is very close to the dirt brown (its off by 4 total) so I can now put trees on dirt. As for palm trees on sand (which will be important for the islands), I'm just going to have to do that via layering I suppose. That'll just mean that I won't be able to have any burnable palm trees there. Oh well.

So I guess my advice is to try experimenting with what colors you have and see what they can do. I guess you juat have to play around with paletting until you get a good feel for how it works.

Dark Dude
05-15-2002, 11:36 PM
heho! JJ! I'm using the new1st pallette for my 1stDX tileset, but I think I'm going to start them over from scratch, it may be awhile, BUT OH FUCKING WELL!

JayeM
05-16-2002, 01:17 AM
Another way to get more mileage out of csets is layers. Anything you're not going to be putting a flag on, like tree trunks and house tiles, can be put into layer 1 or 2 with transparent pixels where the dirt/grass will show through.

Dark Dude
05-16-2002, 04:28 PM
I'm gonna do that in my 1stDX tileset revamp.

K-Teclis
05-18-2002, 08:19 AM
Or you use more than one level palette on for the overworld...
but joining then would be hard in that way...