Little reminder

[register]

Can someone remind me what to do with a civ colour in unit palette? I followed Blue Monkey palette tutorial in gimp and this is very good for pcx or for default animation but this method is not good enough for units, one thing is missing there, as per images.

also here:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/blitz-and-civilopedia-issue.665055/


/edit/ Just found this tutorial Messing with unit palettes/civ color | CivFanatics Forums made by Vuldacon. Everything is clear except a method of adding/changing all colors in the middle section.

How can I do it in Gimp?

Also is there still a way to resize flc animation? I have one flc to resize but the old tools like CivFlicster doesn't work under Win10.

 

[Blue Monkey]

Civ Colors - you can do it in GIMP. You would do the palette editing just on that section.You may need to change the colors one by one rather than in a batch. I know that there were old threads with alternative civ-color sets posted. Too many years ago for me to remember specific names.

I can't answer the flic question. Vuldacon & Delta_Strife (amongst others) are still making units. They would know about what tools to work with.

 

[register]

I just tried moving civ colors manually but it is very ineffective way of doing it and results are still not satisfactory, also is quite slow.

I don't want to bother Vuldacon & Delta_Strife on priv, so guys if you read this post, please write here if I can do it in Gimp or can I do it in Photoshop or Corel PhotoPaint 2019.

 

[register]

I had a try with gimp and photoshop as below, the only thing I can't find is how to sort all colours manually, I have there only auto sorting and it doesn't help much. I tried to block out mid colours as per Vuldacon did but result is poor. Any one know waht to do with it?

 

[Blue Monkey]

... the only thing I can't find is how to sort all colours manually, ...?

In my tutorial on working with PCX in GIMP I discuss how to manually rearrange colors in the colormap. It's in the section titled: To get the Green & Magenta in the proper slots. You're asking about moving other colors - the technique is the same. As I say there: "You can safely drag and drop any other colors you want as well."

 

[register]

Yes you did and I moved the colors but did not have good results. Moving the magenta and green to the bottom of the list is only good for static images, for units you have to move all slots, I used on it Hue sorting to make it faster and the result was very good but only on transparency and shadows but not on civ and unit colors.

I can't do every slot one by one manually because if I'll do let's say 30 new units and have to do six, even similar but not exactly the same, palettes for one unit then whole process will take weeks and weeks to finish it.

Someone years ago recorded a method how to do it, it was very blurry video...

 

[Blue Monkey]

If you don't want to move colors manually, then I'm not sure what you mean by sorting colors manually.

 

[register]

I mean I can't do every flc's palette manually, moving 256 colors by picking each and dropping somewhere else. Besides this method gives unpredictable results.

 

[Blue Monkey]

I get what you don't want to do. You've stated that you don't want to autosort and you don't want to do them manually (which means one by one). It's still not clear how you want to do this ideally. Without knowing that it's pretty difficult to help you find a solution.

 

[register]

sorry for the confusion. I want to use auto sorting but Gimp is very limited here and can't take 100 colors at once if I want to and change them to black for instance.

 

[Blue Monkey]

Yeah, GIMP does not have all the functionality of Photoshop. OTOH there's a lot of things that can be done but are not obvious. There's a large online community & many people have written extensions. So maybe you can find what you need that way.

 

[register]

I can't find anything for a gimp. Do you remember the tutorial from Vuldacon this one from link as above where he shown whole process of doing it, with optimized octree?
I have installed Paint Shop Pro 9 now, so I could use his method.

edit/ Just found the optimized octree thing, I can use it when I am decreasing colors to 256 but then when palette is indexed I stuck with the same thing like in Gimp, palette order and not many options to deal with.

 

[Blue Monkey]

I know the tutorial. I have never worked with units or unit palettes. Vuldacon is still around and making stuff. Hopefully he will see this thread soon.

 

[Blue Monkey]

And - just a suggestion - titling the thread "Little Reminder" doesn't let people know anything at all about what your question is. A thread title such as "Need help with unit palettes" will catch the notice of the best helpers a lot sooner.

 

[register]

You are right, the tread actually means something completely different. I'll be more detailed next time.

 

[register]

I know the tutorial. I have never worked with units or unit palettes. Vuldacon is still around and making stuff. Hopefully he will see this thread soon.

Do you have link to it? I can't find it, just those two images as above but that's not enough. I want to see how to move those colors in a palette. I bet he was not picking them one by one.

 

[Kyriakos]

@register, I can help. While my own tutorial - like Vuldacon's - has the images taken out (https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/how-to-make-a-working-palette-for-pcx-using-the-gimp.215916/), I can tell you that in order to make a working palette you do the following (with gimp) :

1. load your image
2. select the setting in img1 (my Gimp is in greek, but you can see the position of all options in the pics provided)

img1:

3. Choose 256 colour (if it is the default, just leave it as it was) (img2)

Img2:

4. Choose the following options: (the one to the left opens the window to the right, where you choose the second) (img3)

img3:

5. This opens up the colour palette. Now you should move the two colors meant for transparency (ie the ones which won't show in the game), to the two final positions. (img4) This is so because the Civ3 program reads the two last colours on a 256 palette as transparent.
You can choose any two colors to be transparent. Usually it is magenta and some kind of green, cause those aren't usable in a civ3 graphic anyway. It doesn't matter what they are, as long as they aren't in your actual graphic (they only surround it), it will work. Make sure you have already placed these colors in your graphic before generating the palette, so you can choose then in this final step for moving to the two final positions!

img4:

 

[register]

Hi Kyriakos, thank you for that. Unfortunately this is the same tutorial as Blue Monkey did for pcx creation not for flc, it won't work with storyboards, I tried this many times.

 

[Delta_Strife]

I use this method espoused in this tutorial you might find it useful. https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...der-10-minutes-new-method-and-program.372374/

 

[register]

Will go through it, thank you.