How to make a working palette for pcx using the Gimp

This tutorial is for the Gimp, and i will try to make it as short as possible, while hopefully presenting the optimal way to make a palette for civ3 pcx files.

If the ussual technical instructions on how to produce a civ3 working pcx sound greek to you, then this tutorial has a reason for existing.

There are in total 8 steps, which if followed correctly will allow you to save your image with the least differences between the original and the final (assuming that the original of course had more than 256 colours).

Each following post will include a step.

 

Step 1

Probably the most important step. I will assume that you have opened the Gimp and loaded your image in it, so i can refrain for more refferences to Gimp here and suggest that you go to YouTube and load your favourite music to be listening to while you work.

 

Step 2

Gimp uses its own language, which can seem hard at first. All those unknown symbols and notions. However in reality it is not all that bad.
So now you should go to the second category, and there to the "select all" option, then copy. This step is crucial so as to keep the original form of the image, which will be altered when it is reduced to 256 colours.

 

Step 3

Since you have now a copy of the image as it still is, you can now go to the fifth category, there choose the third option, and in the sub-menu which open choose 'indexed' (sorry for any problems that the language caused, but for some reason 'indexed' appears in english).

 

----------Step 4

A new menu opens. You should keep the option '256 colours' and click on the bottom left circle, so as to move on. This will convert the image to 256 colours.

 

-----------Step 5

Now you should go to the eight category, and click on 'colourmap'.

 

-----------Step 6

This opens up the palette. It already has 256 colours, but you have to manually change the last two.
First the one before last (it is very important to first alter this, and not the last one, otherwise everything will go wrong and the Persian army will march at Plataia).

You alter its qualities from whatever it was, to 00ff00.

 

Step 7

With the persian invasion crushed, you now can be epmployed as a mercenery hoplite in Alexander's army (ie you can move on to altering the last colour to ff00ff)

 

Step 8

Now everything is set for you to press ctrl+v, or alternatively go to the second category and choose the analogous option. This will bring back your old image, with its colours being automatically adjusted to your current palette.
Therefore you can save your file in pcx format.

 

That is it!
Congratulations. You are now part of the brotherhood of the cyclopai, the secret order of civ3 pcx makers. Your brothers welcome you!

 

Good work! Although my version of GIMP is in English.

 

OOO OOOO, I'm a cyclops!!!

 

Brilliant.

One thing that might be helpful to note is what happens if you change a simple image with fewer than 256 colours into an indexed image. In this case you end up with a smaller colourmap than before - but if you save as a pcx file then the colourmap will be expanded to 256 colours. If you want to then you can then open the file again and change the last two colours to 00ff00 and ff00ff.

Good, simple to follow tutorial Varwnos.

 

This would have been sooooo helpful about 4-5 months ago. I had to learn to do this without any tutorials. I tried my hand at making wonder/tech/whatever splashes for El J's AoI. He has yet to implement them, but I'm more interested to see if they work at all

But it is indeed helpful for those starting on pcx making.

 

i did all the instructions, however my source pcx file had less then 256 colors so is saved it first as pcx then opened it again and it already had 256 colors.

however, the green 00ff00 and magenta ff00ff colors is present in the other boxes in the color map, so i changed the last two into green and magenta. the 2 colors was still visible inside civilization because it was also in other boxes other than the last two.

how do i solve the prob? =(

 

I guess that you now have the magenta and green colours not just once, but twice in the pallatte. In this case you have a problem - technically the game uses the INDEX in positions 255 and 256 as transparent, not just the specific Colours. The magenta and green that you have in your image are not indexed to 255 and 256, they are indexed to elsewhere, and therefore show up in game.

To fix it:
Open the colourmap, choose the magenta colour that is not in one of the last two positions. Change the colour to another colour that is not currently in your image (eg. if your icon is all in shades of red then change it to a blue). Then use the select by colours tool to select all the regions that you've just changed in the image. In the colourmap again, choose the magenta colour in position 255 (or 256). Then select Edit -> Fill with foreground colour. This should leave the image looking like before but with the magenta colour only present in one place in the colourmap. Now repeat the procedure for the green colour and you should be OK. The two new colours you have on the colourmap are not important - you can just leave them as they are when you've finished.

One possible thing to be wary of - When selecting by colour here you will want to set the 'Threshold' to zero to avoid colour bleed problems.

Hope that all makes sense to ya. If not it's probably because I've tried to add to a tutorial whilst slightly drunk. Good luck.

 

Yes, as Keroro said the program only cares about what the two last colours are, and sees them as transparent. If you have magenta and green (or any other colour you wanted as transparent, i just use these two) in other positions apart from the two last colours it will not display the transparency since it will treat them as non-transparent.

Also remember to always have magenta and green (or the colours you want as transparent) already in your image before you transform it to a 256 one, so that you can then keep all the colours it has, merely changing the position of those two (placing them in the last two spots, and altering their original spots with the non transparent colours originally found in those two last ones)

 

Just a bit of opinion...if you index to 254, and manually Add the last 2 colors, it keeps a truer palette...also if you index and the colormap has less than 254, you can just fill in all the rest with Magenta (ff00ff)...

 

I paste a box with magenta and green in the pic, and it produces them in the 256 colormap, so it is the same effect i think. Then you can change their positions.

 

O I C...same outcome, different methods...