[I am Har har har]

In In The Nocturne, DD used full screen images that were supported by his custom palette. I have a gif convertor that works well, but I want to make a battle 'background' that works with my palette. Any suggestions?
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I do what I like. Do you have a problem with that?

[MadQB]

Well, assuming you are using QB45 and mode 13h with 256 colors, I have a method that works pretty well.

If you grab an old version of Paint Shop pro (I'm sure you can do it with another program though) and look at a palette file. They have a pretty simple format. So what I did was write a qb program that would load up my custom qb palette and save it in PSP's palette format. Then you can just load up your image in psp and load up your palette (do closest match for color conversion or whatever they have there) and it will convert your image to your colors according to their rgb values. save it in bmp, gif, or pcx depending on what you know how to load in qb and you're done. when you load your image in qb, it's palette will be changed and you're ready to go!

Hope that helps. If you want I can find my program and upload it?
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yep...

[ThousandKnives]

I'm not quite sure what the issue is here- but in my game I assemble the palette as I load the graphics. Every time an image is loaded, I scan it to see what colors are used in the image. I check each color to see if it has already been added to the palette, or append it to the palette if it can't be found. Then I update the image surface to reflect the position of the color in the assembled palette.

When loading enemies and some other graphics, I force the game to append all of the colors and save the starting and ending palette entry for the enemy. That way, I can do palette effects on individual enemies.

Making sure I don't run out of colors is a matter of managing how many enemies are in a battle and how many colors are used in backgrounds and enemies. With map graphics its a similiar issue.

This way, I don't have to worry about keeping the palettes the same in all of my source files, and altering colors isnt so bothersome. I can also have a great variety of colors in my graphics because I don't have a "one palette fits all" approach.

EDIT:
I also have a "reserved" section of the palette from entries 240-254 (255 is transparency). These colors are always the same- for menu graphics, etc. When loading graphics that use that palette I simply specify that the image should be interpreted through the reserved section of the palette. If any non-reserved graphic has a color in it identical to a reserved color, the reserved color is NOT used because reserved colors are exempt from palette effects. A new entry will be added to the non-reserved section, even though it is essentially a repeated color.

[I am Har har har]

Well, excuse my advertising, but play DarkDread's In The Nocturne. It has one or two images in the beginning that are GIFs or something, and they share the same palette as the actual game. He found a way to transform them to RPG.PAL, and put them in his game. Also, the background in the battle scene is off of R.P, and it is sort of what I want. I can switch palettes to display images through "Gif2Bsv", but I want to create a background that uses the same pal as the sprites and text and such, so I don't have to redo the battle sprites. Thanks for your help.
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I do what I like. Do you have a problem with that?

[DrunkenCoder]

Dump the pallete into a format readable by your favourite graphics program import the images and make it convert the palette or easier just draw them using that pallete to start with.
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If there's life after death there is no death, if there's no death we never live. | ENTP

[Sirocco]

FB and Cry Havoc use a single palette for the entire game. Frenetic (and Plus) don't count because they load half of a new palette for each stage.

Using Autodesk Animator you can make any 8bpp gif conform to an existing palette, which is nice when I have a pic that I need to convert to a specific palette. (N.B. you'll need the Pro version if you want to work with anything over 320x200). When I start a new project the first thing I do is select an appropriate palette and determine how many colors I'll need to reserve for things like the GUI text and palette rotation (which I seldom use these days). I also make sure there are light/dark gradients so any lighting and shadowing effects look decent.

I know most people don't work with AA because it's so antiquated (and... ah... hard to find!), but it has the most flexible palette editing and organization functions I've ever seen -- and I've used just about every piece of graphic editing software out there from Macs to Amiga to PCs.

.

[Mandrake]

heh, i think what he's saying is that he's using some program that load's and saves in QB's bload and bsave, and uses it's own pal format. Probably PP256, unless times have changed in the last 5 (shit, I'm old) years since I used to do QB.

Just get a copy of PSP, and then get a QB lib that supports loading some file format *other* than bsave and bload (i think DQB does)....and do it that way ( i think DQB can load a pal from a .pcx file....so you might want to have a dummy .pcx file that does nothing but contain the pallete)

Or you might want to write a simple .pal (PSP format) pallete loading routine.

Damn. It's been so long since I've said things like pp256 and DQB. It feels weird.
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"Well, last time I flicked on a lighter, I'm pretty sure I didn't create a black hole."-
Xmark

http://pauljessup.com

[I am Har har har]

To tell the truth, I only use QB 1.1. I get 4.5 to do my compiling, but I had 1.1 first, and it provides all of my programming needs.
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I do what I like. Do you have a problem with that?

[BadMrBox]

[Mandrake]

good...but not enough to return to it, heh. It's nostalgic, yes, but so is writing DOS C code in RHIDE for allegro....sigh.

But meh, past is past.

obv QB1.1 is NOT doing everything you need, if it is not helping you acheive that full-screen effect using the game's pallete, eh? Just byte the bullet and dload a lib. It's not as painful as it sounds.
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"Well, last time I flicked on a lighter, I'm pretty sure I didn't create a black hole."-
Xmark

http://pauljessup.com

[DeveloperX_Mobile]