Palette changes still work in 16 bit mode?!

Hollister Man · Fri 07/05/2004 18:03:36

This is the strangest thing I have seen in a while. I have a very cool splash screen that fades from its usual 256 color palette, gradually turning everything green, then fading out (all using sequential setpalrgb calls)

Now when I switched the game from palette based to 16 bit, so I could test out the fire plugin, that screen still worked!

I *assume* that this is because the background is still rendered in 256 colors? If so, this should be mentioned in the manual that palette effects still function properly in 16 bit color as long as the BG is 256.

Scorpiorus · Fri 07/05/2004 18:48:02

Yeah, since you only changed the graphics mode without reimporting the background it remains to be 8bit and thus uses the palette. I'm not sure how it's reliable for AGS to have 256-colored images in HiColor game though. But that's a good point.

Ben · Fri 07/05/2004 19:54:44

Hmm.. It's funny- I wrote a tutorial on palette effects in 16-bit color a while back, but when Chris released version 2.6, it didn't work for me anymore, so I thought my tutorial was useless

. Are you using an old version?

Hollister Man · Fri 07/05/2004 20:04:27

Nope, its a beta from a few versions back (beta 2 I think). Maybe he fixed it? I honestly never imagined it would work at all!

On another note, does anyone know how well lighting regions work in 256 color? My group was discussing making an "animated lighting" room with a roaring fire in the center. Sounds like time to make that part into a 16 bit mini-game!

(now that the fire plugin is here)

Pumaman · Fri 07/05/2004 21:07:05

Palette effects will work in a hi-color game if you have a 256-colour background, but this is incidental rather than an official feature. Therefore, it's not supported and might stop working at any time.

Hollister Man · Fri 07/05/2004 21:17:08

Well, with any luck we won't *need* it, but it was interesting anyway. Us folks who like it should keep track and save a copy of the last version it works in.

Ben · Sun 09/05/2004 00:42:02

Quote from: Hollister Man on Fri 07/05/2004 20:04:27
On another note, does anyone know how well lighting regions work in 256 color?Ã,Â

Lighting can look good in 8-bit games if you have the right colors in your palette. Just experiment with it..

Gilbert · Mon 10/05/2004 03:30:21

Well actually I had known about it for quite a long time, but don't use it as it didn't mean to work and won't always work correctly, for example if there's a portion of the bg that's undergoing palette animations and a character is in front of it, it's quite possible that the character will be surrounded by an ugly rectangle, etc.