Simplifying Palettes

[Lonemind]

For the past, oh, whatever time (a really long time :p ) I've been ripping tiles from video games and have finally come to the conclusion, "Crap, now I need to reorginize the palettes." I'm thinking it'd be better to distill as many as possible into as few palettes as I can so that people won't be daunted by the sheer size of them. Does anyone have any suggestions? After you've ripped tiles what do you do in regards to bringing everything together and reducing it all?

[ShadowTiger]

I just rip one thing at a time. :shrug: If something is too colorful, it gets its own cset.

[Lonemind]

Sew, then what happens if you want a bunch of tiles that are all too colorful on one screen? To my calculations you can only have four different csets on a screen at any one time. Well, four that can be changed. 2,3,4 and 9. Though I'm loathe to use 9 since enemies use that set.

[CJC]

If tiles are too colorful, I take a screenshot of them in Zquest, bring them out to corel draw, and then...

Here's where it gets complicated. First, I convert the bitmap to adaptive color (8 bit) and then I convert it to custom colors, so that all the colors of the picture are in the palette. Next, I reduce the colors to basics (If there are 12 dark blues, they become one dark blue) until the pallette is down to 16 colors or less. Then I usually just give it it's own palette. Usually if there's something that colorful in a screen, it doesn't have anything else that colorful in there with it. (I do big things with this method, like boats and buildings.)

[Lonemind]

Hmmm... very interesting, CJC. Don't you lose a lot of detail that way?? Like if you have dark blue curtains that use twelve shades of dark blue, doesn't it become just a big blob of one dark blue? Sounds like that'd end up looking like the Classic Tileset. I use an old version of zSNES that can produce .PCX images. From those I'm able to get what looks like a well orginized palette that goes with the tiles I rip. It's possibly even the original palette that the programmers of the video game used. I dunno. :shrug:

[CJC]

well, if there is a lot of variety with a color, I'll have multiples of that color. Like 3 blues and 3 browns and 2 reds and so on. And since Corel draw changes the drawing to the nearest colors on the new palette, the image ends up looking virtually the same as it was before.

[redmage777]

To my knowledge Cset 9 is used by The Level color keese (You still have the Red and Blue Keese) , and customised stuff like Items(Not very good for that either BTW). What other enemys use Cset 9 anyway?

I currently use CSet9 for the "Ground" tiles thus preventing Incompatble Terrain (That which uses two differain Cset) You just have to use Cset 9 according to what you are doing...

[Lonemind]

If you take a look at www.zeldaclassic.com (http://www.zeldaclassic.com) you'll find an Enemy Index in the navigation list on the left. It gives you some info about the enemies such as which CSet they use, if they have projectiles and some notes about certain ones. From what I can see, flashing Bubbles use CSet 9 in their flashes, Gels use them as well as Keesees, Black Moblins, flashing Rope II's, Zols, and Zoras. I downloaded that page for reference in case it somehow disappears. :D