Feature 05 - Generic 16 color palette

[Lee N]

We need more people to explain this.

Well, no one can ever say that people on pixelation aren't helpful.. need an explanation? here are five! 

[LoTekK]

Ah ha! I understand the concept of a key color that will be used as the transparent color, having used this in different contexts, both 2D and 3D, but I had always been under the impression that if sharing a palette among different assets, the key color/palette position would also be shared. Thanks for clearing that up.

[ptoing]

Also you do not even need to use a colour for the transparency, meaning you can use all 16 colours on a sprite.
You could just make 1bit maskimages which correspond to what is transparent and what not in a game.
Afaik they did stuff like this a lot on older systems without hardwaresprites

[LoTekK]

Ah, right, I completely forgot about alpha masking. Doh.

[Arne]

Utopia, which I ripped gfx from just the other day, used a mask of some sort (5bp+a mask). Here's a screen, using the RetroSpec Ripper:



(I made a duplicate palette (index 32-63) so I could see the stuff correctly in 6bp mode, but in the end I had to write my own ripper cuz I needed to rip using some header variables for image heights)


As for my 16 color palette project, I'm just treating it as an optimization problem. I will use it for my handtop which I will travel back in time to launch. It has my 16 color palette, 4bp per sprite + 1bp opacity mask, or something like that. Not necessarily a speccy but I made the mockup today so it'll have to suffice as an illustration.

[LoTekK]

That handtop mockup is awesome. I'd hit it!

Thanks for that breakdown diagram, btw, as well as that entire page of sprites. Should serve as some nice reference.

[Lee N]

I will use it for my handtop which I will travel back in time to launch.

Is that before or after you have travelled to the future to launch your time machine? Wait.. time travel is confusing.    

Seriously though, sweet handtop.

[Arne]

Is that before or after you have travelled to the future to launch your time machine? Wait.. time travel is confusing.   

I did it before after before before after before... I think.


My palette was a bit dark and gray, so I took the bull by the horns and curved the mid and brights up a ton.
new v16 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------old  v15

[Helm]

The near-white gray is so near-white, might as well make it white. Why not?

[LoTekK]

Hmm, Jonlan... Laser Squad?
I think the higher key seems to be working (which also nixes my earlier comment about Helm's palette), at least after looking at the images on a DS screen, which has a fairly narrow viewing angle beyond which the colors get a bit washed out.