TOOL: Palette editor

[MrColossal]

Hello,

I just want to suggest something that would probably only benefit me because I'm the only one who cares about these things, or perhaps because the current tools are awkward it prevents people from trying, either way!

I would love to be able to edit palettes in AGS more than I can now. I would absolutely love to be able to drag and drop colours into new slots and swap the colours or copy and paste colours.

I spent a very very long time trying different programs downloaded off the internet to get very minor palette effects working. Dpaint, Grafx2, Palsuite, photoshop, paint, PSP, they all seem to work just a little bit different than AGS does and some of them don't work at all. Even when I select "save as psp .pal" which AGS uses, there are differences in files when opened in a text editor.

I eventually found a way of working in AGS that let me make palettes but it was so awkward and time consuming that making one palette ate up so much time I couldn't imagine making a night time palette of the same colours.

Anyway, enough complaining.

colour shifting, colour swaping, multiple colour selecting and then various brightness contrast hue saturation adjusters... Those would make my day...

And just to preempt this: Gilbert, no. I have tried many programs and you think photoshop sucks that's fine, but I don't want to have to use an old dos program from the 80's that barely works on this computer [and sometimes barely works].

Thank you!

[RickJ]

I've had good luck using Graphics Gale to manipulate palettes, in case you haven't tried this one.  There is a free version at the above link.   It's a contemporary program as well and let's you drag and drop single or multiple colors from one palette to another.   I don't know it does all the things you are wishing for but it met my needs.   If you have tried it already sorry for wasting your time but perhaps some others will find the above useful.   

[Pumaman]

I completely understand where you're coming from on this, but I'm not sure I can justify the work considering the number of people who would actually use it -- the vast majority of games are being made in hi-colour.

There must be a utility out there somewhere that can do decent palette manipulation and save in a usable file format -- if anyone knows of any good ones, do say so.

[Dorcan]

Hum, I started working on a palette editor program to help me handle the AGS palette, before I had to work for my exams. I totally forgot that this little project was on hold and your post reminded me about it. I certainly will restart working on it soon or later. In any case I'll just post a screenshot to give an idea about the way my program works.

There it is :


(yup, it is clearly inspired by photoshop, with layers blending and all)

[Gregjazz]

I use the palettes in AGS, too! You're not alone, Eric.

One of the first things I noticed in AGS is that the RGB values only go up to 63, while graphics programs go up to 255 or something like that. It's a different scale. So whenever I do palettes I end up hand-making them in AGS, using a calculator to divide the values. What I end up is very close to the intended palette, but this method is time-consuming.

[Ben]

I have awoken from my year-long coma to let everyone know that I use palettes.
Usually I export the original AGS palette (the first 17 locked colors), and then open the PCX file in whatever program (photoshop or PSP work fine), then add the colors I want, and import it back into AGS. It automatically converts them from the 256-value format to the 64 values.

[Gilbert]

One of the first things I noticed in AGS is that the RGB values only go up to 63, while graphics programs go up to 255 or something like that. It's a different scale.

It's because for standard VGA/MCGA 256 colour modes, you indeed only have 6bit for each component, so it's the true scale (at least better than the 0-100 foolish scale in DP, which was actually hacked to 0-63, so the values jump sometimes), whereas if you choose a colour in 24bit truecolour, you have 8bit for each colour component.

[Gregjazz]

Ah, okay, that's along the lines of what I thought. Is there any way of setting something up in The Gimp that will be compatible with the 6-bit in AGS?

[MrColossal]

Wow, 2 people who haven't posted in a while emerge to speak of palettes! Dorcan and Ben.

I asked Ghormak to make an AGS palette ordering program (which he made in like an hour). And now that I see at least 2 other people use palettes [hey ben! hey geoff!] I guess I'll just post it:

Download Ghormak's Palette Editor here (Thanks Neole!)

You load a .pal file from AGS into it and then on the left most palette you can click a colour and then another colour in the same palette and it swaps them, I find this extremely useful for setting up colours for palette cycling, I had a system before hand that took forever and now thanks to ghormak HOORAY! 5 minutes.

The other feature is if you click on a colour in the left and then click on a spot on the empty palette it copies the colour over. Again useful for ordering colours which photoshop doesn't allow for easily. I'd use it for putting all my skin tones together and then all my blues and greens and such for easy colour picking after creating my master palette.

So enjoy! I do! And I'm so glad to see other people mucking about with palettes, when I got my first day to night transistion working [with much help from Darkstalkey] I was so excited I just watched it over and over and over again for way too long... The simplest things that people have been doing in games for so long and are now no longer needed for todays games just makes me so happy.

Dorcan:  Interesting program especially if you can get it to make a palette from an image in the exact order the colours in the image appear, I look forward to its release. Maybe it'll be better than Ghormak's program and it'll make him cry, HERE'S HOPING!

Edit:

Also to add... I find importing a palette in as a background and then unlocking all the colours in the palette works well to get my colours to import when not using a full 256 colour palette, Time Out only has about 20 locked colours and if I import a palette that doesn't have the locked 16 in their correct spot AGS doesn't bump the new colours ahead of the locked colours and tries to write over them, there by I have 16 colours discarded and the rest appear at the end of the locked 16... if that makes any sense...

If I import a background and then unlock the colours all the colours appear at the bottom of the palette list and nothing is discarded, I have a tutorial about it that may explain that better... but anyway, Hey Ben!

[fanton]

i forgot to reply. NICE PROGRAM!!!! Saved me from a lot of heavy work. my palette looks cool now.


thanks Ghormak, MrColossal, & all

[Ben]

I just tried Ghormak's program, and it'll definitely make things a lot easier. I make my palettes up as I go, almost as an afterthought, so everything is just sort of jumbled together in no particular order. And Dorcan's program looks like it can do especially cool things. I hope we get to see it soon.  I think it's great how everyone makes their own AGS-related stuff that's dedicated to doing one thing really well. High fives for everyone!