Okay, I'm sick of this.

[J.J. Maxx]

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]

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]

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.

PrinceMSC

[J.J. Maxx]

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. 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]

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:

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]

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]

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:

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]

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]

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]

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?