AuthorTopic: Feature 05 - Generic 16 color palette  (Read 201080 times)

Offline Helm

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Re: Generic 16 color palette

Reply #30 on: June 20, 2007, 12:55:19 pm
If you look at the tree you have in the mario mockup it's pretty clear I am not the only one running in problems with not enough greens. It's not so much the darker green that is too dark - though a version before that was better too - it's that there's no highlight color before it leads to yellow. I could, I guess, deal with green and yellow highlight but if you consider 22% of all game art is forest green (Epistemological fact  :blind:) you're not achieving what you set out to do with good colors for game environments.

EDIT: another thing: don't worry about colors for fullscreen demoscene stuff because we will all dither and get the tones we need. If it can be done with the c64 palette, it can be done with your palette and probably better. It's the prime colors for game art sprites and tiles where dithering everything just might not work and will create unpleasant texture you should be optimising about.

Offline Conzeit

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Re: Generic 16 color palette

Reply #31 on: June 20, 2007, 02:02:59 pm
well, what I did most certainly goes against what Arne wants with the dark cyan, hell I even went and removed the entire gray ramp :p. I've never used one...it's probably because of how all art I've done is game art...and I never DID get into Helm's whole c64 craze.

all I really thought of was making long ramps of any color, and...well I've always thought dark shades were the best place to reduce saturation a little and have all the ramps blend...so I did C.c

and so, Conceit continued to talk as if anyone cared
« Last Edit: February 28, 2008, 11:54:23 pm by ptoing »

Offline Helm

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Re: Generic 16 color palette

Reply #32 on: June 20, 2007, 02:18:05 pm
Quote
and I never DID get into Helm's whole c64 craze.

I resent that blah blah I never intended any craze, I just found a really good palette and worked on it blah blah not my fault people make bandwagons out of anything blah blah


I actually very rarely use pure grays too, but I can see the point of having them in an all-inclusive palette since they act like magic colors, linking different hues.

Offline ptoing

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Re: Generic 16 color palette

Reply #33 on: June 20, 2007, 02:20:54 pm
Also do not blame Helm alone, I have my part in it as well, more like a joint effort. But indeed, not our fault :P

And agree on the greys, as soon as you tint a gray it loses some of it's neutral linking capabilities as it will have a bias towards some colour more than another.

Might as well post this again. Look at the ramps with the grays, you could not do that as effective with tinted grays.
« Last Edit: February 28, 2008, 11:54:52 pm by ptoing »
There are no ugly colours, only ugly combinations of colours.

Offline Arne

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Re: Generic 16 color palette

Reply #34 on: June 20, 2007, 02:46:41 pm
I do agree about the green, it needs to be more nature-ish. it's an important color, since it's grass color. I think grass is more common than trees.

I could hue shift it to yellow, that would bring the value up, and link it more with the warmer brights I have... but I'm afraid that'll destroy the color identity of the green.

Really lousy forest test:

« Last Edit: February 28, 2008, 11:55:28 pm by ptoing »

Offline Lee N

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Re: Generic 16 color palette

Reply #35 on: June 20, 2007, 07:23:33 pm
Green is not only an important colour because it's used alot, but also because humans see green better than any other colour, and will be able to tell banding alot easier - even with a high colour count. A 16bit distribution of RGB565 is not uncommon simply because green is so much more important than the other two components.

Feel free to put me in the "more greens" camp :P

Offline Helm

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Re: Generic 16 color palette

Reply #36 on: June 20, 2007, 08:07:26 pm
actually, how about this?


« Last Edit: February 28, 2008, 11:55:42 pm by ptoing »

Offline LoTekK

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Re: Generic 16 color palette

Reply #37 on: June 20, 2007, 09:02:30 pm
After playing around a bit with the palettes, I'm beginning to understand Prom's hard-on for that dark cyan. Helm, yours seems to be a good deal higher key than Prom's, and the dark low-sat purple feels rather warm for a universal shadow, especially against black. Also, your greens do an odd shift from warm light, cool mid, but slightly warmer dark, which feels a bit jarring, imho. I'm playing with a slightly modified version of Prom's, with a very slightly lighter and warmer mid-green, and a less-saturated yellow, and so far it's working out nicely for a darkish forest scene unabashedly similar to Prom's example. The only color in all the palettes so far that I'm not too sure about is that garish orange.
« Last Edit: June 20, 2007, 09:04:07 pm by LoTekK »

Offline Helm

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Re: Generic 16 color palette

Reply #38 on: June 20, 2007, 09:23:28 pm
if another dark color is needed after my dark purple (though I don't think so), I'd prefer to unify one yellow and the brightest flesh shade (towards the flesh shade mostly) rather than lose one of the greens. dark forests could be done with the mark 13 palette anyway. It's the not so dark forests that are troublesome.
« Last Edit: June 20, 2007, 09:25:41 pm by Helm »

Offline LoTekK

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Re: Generic 16 color palette

Reply #39 on: June 20, 2007, 09:35:32 pm
I'd probably tend to agree with you about the unification of the light yellow and flesh. I did actually forget to mention in my previous post that the higher-key palette you provided might be a better "universal" one than prom's, in that it would likely cater better to not-so-dark environments.