(Palette) Suggestion, and question?

[Scavenger]

I'm not expecting (nor am I even hoping) these to be intergrated into AGS at any time, but, I thought they might be useful to some of us. Though, I appreciate some matters are more urgent than others. Plus the fact that nobody wants to hear me whine on and on... about 8bit functions

1) Sprite - Pallette slot allocations (ala The Dig, FOTAQ)
I was thinking, why not have certain sprites take up certain sprite slots? I tried doing it by changing every other colours apart from the ones I wanted to use to Room Dependant, and imported the sprites. But, unfortunately, the 16 locked colours got in the way, and when I tried my TintPalletteSlots function, it just messed up the charactor. Also, if a sprite is imported and the slots allowed for it are too far down the table, it is stuck using the 16 locked colours. And thats the end of that suggestion.

2) (I know I keep bugging people about this, but...) Pseudo-Transparency in 256col
Basically, its just darkening certain parts of the screen, making it look like its transucent. Only black can be translucent, or white. Examples: Discworld, Albion (This did a great job of adding translucencies, even if it WAS 8bit ), The Dig (Inv System)

Finally, a question. Why does 640x400x256 (hires paletted) run really slowly on my comp, while 320x200x16bit doesn't, even though they have the same system requirements? I think somebodies been misleading us again o_O

But anyway, if these things are intergrated, I shall be forver in your debt, Pumaman! But, if not, C'est la vie, it happens! You have better things to do, I'm sure

[Gilbert]

1. That's what Exact Palette Import for sprite is for. Just manage carefully the palette used in the original pictures for import and import them with this option on.

2. This had been discussed, it is not impossible but may slow down things to find appropiate palette entries to substitute (I would play with the palette entries myself) and won't work good if you're constantly changing the palette colours in game.

3. I think that probably depends on the graphic card drivers, most modern cards are probably more optimized and accelerated in 16/24/32 bit modes running DirectX.

[Pumaman]

2) is possible to do, but it would mean disabling all dynamic palette effects such as palette cycling. It would also increase the load time of rooms, since a mapping table would need to be re-generated for the new palette.

3) the speed should be similar for a completely empty room. However, 640x400 games will tend to involve larger objects, characters, and so forth, which will cause a slowdown more quickly than a 320x200x16 game - so yes, the system requirements should probably be slightly different.