Background color depth

[GoodGuy]

Hi, guys.
Can I make a background color depth less than in game? I saved PNG and BMP with color depth = 8, but imported background in AGS showed 16. So it should be?
What is the preferred format for the background?

[Crimson Wizard]

As far as I know room backgrounds must always be same color depth as your game. Sprites can be different color depth, but that may cause problems sometimes.
Also, AGS always stores all graphics as BMP inside the game. Even if you import PNG, it will become BMP in game.
If you are worried about memory, you may enable sprite compression in the General Settings.

Another thing that I should mention: unless there is a very serious reason, do not set your game to 16-bit color depth. Modern systems has less support for 16-bit display modes, and often you cannot run them in fullscreen mode, only in window.

[GoodGuy]

Thanks, I will rebuild game with 32-bit color depth.

[Snarky]

Note that if you're using Photoshop to save the backgrounds, the color depth indicated there is PER CHANNEL: since there are four channels (red, green, blue and alpha/transparency), 8 bpp = 32-bit color depth. To make an "8-bit image" (in AGS terms) in Photoshop, you have to select "indexed color" mode and set it to 256 colors.