changing the palettte of pcx-files?

[Morten Blaabjerg]

I have been foolling around with the pcx-files for a couple of days now, but one thing keeps nagging me. I can't figure out how to change the palette properly, which is quite a problem, if one wants to get rid of the greenish/yellowish pastellish palettes of most of the files.

It seems SO difficult to get a straight blue range or straight red range, that its unbearable when your graphics keeps turning pastel when inserted into the pcx-files

HOW do you do it?

Any of you guys know how to get around that problem?

 

[ressu]

Or have you made any of these color "mods" available in the www? Rhyes`s deep blue see looks awesome in the pics..

 

[Morten Blaabjerg]

OK, I've found a way to change the palette... sort of. Seems adjusting the contrast/luminance/hue etc. in Paintshop Pro does the trick, since Civ3 doesn't seem to be palette specific in a strict sense. But I can't seem to adjust any individual colour, which bugs the hell out of me, since PSP is supposed to be able to do this.

I'd like to see Rhyes efforts with the pcx-files too, if/when he does make a "deep blue sea" mod. I believe his screenshots are made prior to the release of the game, and not from the pcx-files yet.

It is quite difficult matter to get the oceans fit together as snuglessly as in the original game, by simply adjusting the palette. One probably has to do some real modding/drawing to accomplish this. And there are quite a few ocean files. Snoopy from poly made a blue-sea mod, but his seas aren't as dark as Rhyes, and the "shallow water" looks a little disturbing to the eye. But its the best effort yet.

 

[Maleficence]

Well, I'm not entirely sure what problem you're encountering but this is what I've done when modifying any file for civ3. This has been using Adobe's Photoshop 5.2/6.1.


First you do any changes you want to the file.

Next you'll want to convert the graphic's mode to 8-bit indexed color. Now as far as Photoshop goes, you're given various choices in regards to how this palette is made. I usually choose adaptive or custom as that will cause the smallest degradation in the PCX color scheme.

Now comes an additional step. I then go back to the file I modified and I look at where the pink and light green colors were in the palette. Then I go back to my modified file.

Once in my modified file, I revert back to RGB, then go back to the PCX file, this time I choose custom palette and I insert the pink and green colors in their respective spots then I save it.

I usually follow this process because this way Photoshop creates the correct palette for me in the first indexed color conversion, and when I re-do the conversion no colors will be replaced in the picture.

Anyways, following this method I've never had a file give me an incorrect color display in game. Otherwise I usually got lil pink dots and other discolorations in game.

 

[Mercenary]

I also use Photoshop and use the exact same method you stated above. It took me hours to figure it out (wish I had read the post). Anyway it is the best method that I have found.

Here is another hint:

after you graphics are compleat, use the eye dropper to get the exact pink/green of the backgrounds. Then use the magic wand tool. set continuous off and a range of like 25+/-. Use the magic wand to select all of the pink or green then use the fill command and it will fill all of the selected area with the exact background color. I do this to catch any pixels that might have got a bit off during editing since some of the drawing tools splash over to adjacent pixels. This just cleans it up a bit so there aren't a few pink/green pixels on your civ maps.

My $.02

Mercenary