army palettes..... some questions

i am trying to convert some normal units to army units. this requires that i change the palette of the unit(s). i know i am supposed to make the four rows after the civcolor rows blank.

according to kinboat:


here is his tutorial that he whipped up for me. (thnx a billion kinboat!) But i have some questions that need answering:

1) can someone, anyone diagram a palette for me? here is a palette that i am having trouble with and here is a bmp of it:

It is Kinboat's Modern Legion's palette. I would REALLY REALLY like to convert this unit.


2) Which rows are for civ-color? Are they the first four rows?

3) Which rows are for shadows/smoke?

4) Which rows are for army units? Are they the fifth-eigth rows?

5) How do i edit a palette's colors without screwing the unit up? Whenever i edit the Modern Legion's palette and reapply it, FLICster hates it and crashes.


All help is much appreciated!

2) First Four
3) Last Two
5) You have to export it as a storyboard and then go into Photoshop or whatever program of your choosing and apply the pallete then save it then reimport it back into FLICster.

Thats all I know of the top of my head.

yeah, you have to make a new palette, and then apply this to the pcx.

mrtn said:

yeah, you have to make a new palette, and then apply this to the pcx.

Click to expand...

i know that. what i need is someone to diagram the palette for me.

I have pity. Apply this palette:

haha thnx! but now i need like 100 more palettes for diff units! i dont want to burden anyone with that (or wait that long) can u tell me what u did and how?

out of 50370 members of Civfanatics.....


IS THERE NO ONE WHO KNOWS ANYTHING ABOUT PALETTES?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?

ARE YOU ALL CRUEL AND HEARTLESS?! (all but Aluminium, of course)

Yeah, I'd like that info too.
Thanks for the link for Kinboat's tut. Hopefully I'll find something usefull from it.

I'd love to help you, I know just about everything there is to know about the civ III palettee.... except rows 2-4... those are somewhat of a mystery.


Anyways.....

Civ 3 palette

1-64 for civ colors

64-128 for armies, if unit is army unit

129 - 224 for unit static colors

225-256 for alpha blending.


http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=2524067&postcount=238

see above link for the true nature of the 225-256 rows.

Also, little program, quite useful, called pedit

so basically, there are 160 colors for messing around with, if the unit is not an army. If it is, your number is a mere 96.

Here is how I make the best palette you can get from civ III:

1) take a cell from the PCX storyboard of the original unit into a hue/saturation/lightness editor, as it is called in Paint Shop Pro, and change the magentas to a color closer to the unit, sort of your base color... the color through which the most detail will be portrayed. Do the same to the blues.

2) copy and paste it, make it 16 million colors

3) reduce it to 96 colors, (this can be done as decrease color depth to X colors in PSP) (I have not really built any army units yet, so I usually choose 160)

4) Get a screenshot of the palette, so you can then save the image of the palette as a .bmp to your desktop. (this actually requires opening PSP twice, because it refuses to take a screenshot of itself)

5) save image of the palette on the left here to your desktop as a .bmp: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=2524067&postcount=238

6) Open Pedit, and creat a new palette. Open .bmp of above palette, and carefully input colors 1-64, and 225 - 256... (the civ colors and the alphas)

7) Open the other image, of the 96 color palette you saved to your desktop, and enter those colors into 129 - 224

8) for the army colors, 64-128.... 0,255,0 green is usually a pretty good one.

9) Now, your beautiful palette is complete.

10) Open a new file in FLICster, with matching cell dimensions to the file you are trying change... (cells are the individual frames of the animation), and the same frame count.

11) Take the blank PCX storyboard from the new "armyfied" unit, and load your new beautiful pallete.... maintaining indexes... of course.

12) Take the PCX storyboard of the original unit, and paste it into the "armified" PCX storybaord, with a color matching method, not matching indexes. A good 2d editor will adjust automatically.

13) save and preview your new armified unit in FLICster.

14) Export to a new flic.

Now I know you are thinking I am nuts, and leading you on a wild goose chase. But all of these steps have reason... every single one. You can try to cut corners... but I don't want to see any more giant text asking questions about why your units have purple fields around them, or why some of the blues are not turning to the civ color. Everything you would possibly need to do has been laid out in 14 steps right here.

BTW, for extra credit, once you finish step 13... you can actually go in and begin to modify the 64 army colors as well..... export the army unit in civ III to see.... they use for colors to create the four white bars of the flag that fill up as your army fills up with units.

ur "tutorial" said:

1) take a cell from the PCX storyboard of the original unit

Click to expand...

you mean use FLICster to export a flc as individual cell pcx files?

ur "tutorial" said:

1) ... change the magentas to a color closer to the unit, sort of your base color... the color through which the most detail will be portrayed. Do the same to the blues.

Click to expand...

you mean pick a random part of the unit and use that color to replace all the magenta/blue colors in the palette?

ur "tutorial" said:

2) copy and paste it

Click to expand...

what do you mean? i know how to make it 16 million colors but what do you mean by "copy and paste it"

ur "tutorial" said:

5) save the palette on the left here to your desktop

Click to expand...

how? save the bmp he posted? i cant download the palette.

ur "tutorial" said:

6) ... Open .bmp of above palette

Click to expand...

Aluminum's palette right?


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i think i understand all the other parts of ur tutorial but i cant start because of those things i dont understand. please hurry in replying! thanks!

the100thballoon said:

you mean use FLICster to export a flc as individual cell pcx files?

Click to expand...

No, just use FLICster to export the flic to a storyboard. Then use your 2d program to "copy" out a cell, and recolor it.

you mean pick a random part of the unit and use that color to replace all the magenta/blue colors in the palette?

Click to expand...

No, there are functions in 2d editors to change all similar colors to another color.... in Paint SHop Pro it is called "hue/saturation/lightness"
This function does not just do a color replacer, it replaces a band of colors.

While working on my railship, which is gray, I had to change all sahdes of blue to different shades of gray for optimal color depth in the 256 color palette. This was doen easily in one step with the hue/saturation/lightness function.

There is also a similar function in PSP called "colormap".

what do you mean? i know how to make it 16 million colors but what do you mean by "copy and paste it"

Click to expand...

make it a new selction, a new image, if you have not already.

how? save the bmp he posted? i cant download the palette.

Click to expand...

Yes, the BMP posted

Aluminum's palette right?

Click to expand...

yes


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i think i understand all the other parts of ur tutorial but i cant start because of those things i dont understand. please hurry in replying! thanks![/QUOTE]

thnx Neo! as soon as i get home (tomorow night) i will try ur tutorial

Nice Tutorial Neomega...concerning the screenshot for step #4, with the Palette open and active (accomplished by editing the palette for the open Unit), you can press ALT+ Print Screen then Press Ctrl+V or use the Edit Button\Paste\Paste as New Image and get just the Palette Screenshot in PSP for saving as a .bmp, .gif or .jpg. (bmp or .gif is best).

Thanks Vuldacon... I actually knew that once.... but I quit using PSP for about 6 months, when I tried to pick up the Gimp. Thanks for refreshing my memory!

edit: added after reading other post........


actually, the PRINT Screen button works fine for PSP's 7 and 9... no need for the ALT.

I have not used PSP 7 or 9. I am using PSP 8 but my point was that a Screenshot of a Palette can be taken during the same cession of PSP.
Will PSP 7 and 9 allow an isolated Screenshot of the palette without using the ALT key?
These are just General computer Defaults
ALT+ Print Screen = Active Window
Print Screen = Entire Screen So I use the ALT+ Print Screen keys to provide a Screenshot of just the Palette rather than including the PSP Background.
There are so many system programs concerning computers and what we add to them these days, not to mention the differences among them and the Upgrades, it is Amazing any of us can remember the general operations procedures, let alone all of the combined Program Details.

AHH.. I didn't know that either.

Neomega said:

AHH.. I didn't know that either.

Click to expand...

me either. thnx!