Question about CIV III palette

Steph

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Can someone tell me how the civIII palette is supposed to work exactly?
- What are the indexes of the civ specific colors?
- What are the indexes for smoke?
- What are the indexes for shadow?
- What are the indexes for transparent color?
- What are the indexes for the other colors, etc.

The goal is to check that in SBB some of the guesses I've made are correct, and also to try to automate the palette conversion for converting cossacks units
 
Wait, I think I can.

Just gonna take a look at my pallette first :)

EDIT:

Ok, I'm looking at it now. (This is in PhotoShop, I think it is in reverse in Flicster and PaintshopPro)

A row is 16 colors and there are 16 rows in the Pallette.

The first Color on the first row is the Background color, usually Magenta (255, 0, 255)

All colors on the first and 2nd row (except the first on the first row) are Shadows and smoke (I guess about the smoke).

The last 4 rows are Civ Colors (Although there often are a mixture of colors among these that are not used in the civ colors, which I find strange...).
 
1 through 64 are the civ specific colors
225 through 240 are the smoke
going from almost transparent (225) to almost solid smoke (240)
241 through 256 are the shadow, with 241 the darkest shadow and 256 being the fully transparent pink
Maybe someone else can clarify if you have more questions.
 
I don't know if this helps, but here is a screenshot of the Civ3 Hoplite palette as seen when using PaintShop Pro7.

The palette on the left is the default 'pink' one created by FLICster, while the one on the right is the nice grey Alpha.pal, which shows how the figure (and especially the shadows) will appear in the game.
 

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This is the pallette of my Warthog unit

pallette.gif


According to Krytens image I should be able to use more Colors as the civ colors on his pallette seem to be less then on mine...

Although if I check in flicster, all the Bluish colors in the Last four (the First four in flicster) change when I change the colors in Flicster... but not all of them... the other colors mixed among them don't change...

Why is this so?


EDIT: and how do change the Alpha pallette of the unit?
 
To Grey Fox,

As you probably already know, when you use FLICster 'export', it creates two new files as well as a storyboard; a .pal file and an Alpha.pal file.

In Paintshop Pro, you do this to change the storyboard from one palette to the other.....
 

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Can't load those, as they are not Microsoft Palettes... (with PhotoShop) But if the Flic only use one palette, what is the point?
 
Well.....Civ3 requires the 'pink' default.pal in order to work correctly. But we humans work differently, and so FLICster also creates an Alpha.pal so that we can see what the figure looks like in the game.
'pink' is for the computer.
'grey' is for us.

It would be much simpler if FLICster didn't bother with the 'pink', and just automatically showed us the 'grey' all the time.
But as Moeniir said in the FLICster read.me text file, the Alpha.pal is only an approximation of how it would look in the game (mind you, it is a very, very good approximation).
So the 'pink' storyboard has the 'true' colours.

Unfortunately, something gets lost if you try and copy-'n-paste anything with bright green (or sometimes bright red) shadows.
They end up bright green or red in the FLICster 'clock-face', and in the game.

So I always change to the nice grey Alpha.pal storyboard, as this keeps the shadows correct (and it's also easier on the eyes! :lol: ).
 

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Does this also apply if you use the dropper tool to pick the green color and then start painting with it to create additional shadow?

I've been doing that with my new Galleass, and in Flicster, all of the shadows I painted by hand are black in Flicster when I choose Alpha Blend.

Is this the way it'll appear in-game?

Must I use the Alpha palette to paint new shadows?

Thanks,

Colonel


EDIT: When I apply the alpha palette to my unit in PSP, the pink background turns blue and the green shadow remains green. Am I loading the alpha palette wrong?
 
Yes, yes, and yes. :)

The golden rule with shadows (and forgive me everyone if you have seen this before) is this.....

"ALWAYS change to the nice grey alpha.pal palette if you are drawing, copying or pasting shadow. Otherwise, they will appear bright red or green in the FLICster 'clock-face', and in the game".
ADDITIONAL: you MUST make sure that the 'maintain indexes' option in the 'Load Palette' window is selected.....
 

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:p :p A little raspberry for you. ;)


By the way, why does FLICster do this? Does anyone know why this happens? How annoying and strange!


Cheers,

Colonel

Thanks, by the way.
 
To the last question, I think all the art and the art system for the game wasn't designed for novice computer artist, like me anyway.

Does anyone else use Analyzer to convert their images, or does everyone have some comercial graphics editor (PSP, Photoshop, Jasc Animation Shop, etc...)?
 
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