[pavigna]

Hello! I'm Tom, and i'm working on a TC with tons of new cool stuff. I'm an artist, and so i've been making a lot of brand new textures, sprites and such. thing is, most of them look off because i use a modern color palette and not duke's 256 colors. is there a way to implement a more full palette so that my textures don't look off in game? Thanks

[Jimmy]

Regardless of the palette you choose you would still be limited to 256 colours. You could use hi-tile instead, which has no palette, but would be incompatible with classic mode.

If you decide to press on with a palette, I would highly recommend using Image Analyzer to convert images to palettes. It is the best program for that. Better than Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, or even Deluxe Paint.

[Borion]

To expand on Jimmy correct suggestion Tom, please read up on dithering:
https://en.wikipedia...ther#Examples_2

This is process that - in short - tries to keep perception of Your textures/sprites closer to what they look like before palette reduction. That app that Jimmy mentioned seem to handle this kind of stuff well (based on documentation).

In case you use mainly Photoshop, it is better to convert palettes via 'Save for web..' panel than with RGB/CMYK/Indexed panel. That way you get precise control over stuff like quantization, dithering noise(!) and others. So export first via 'Save for web' as gif applying external DN3D palette, reopen and export as indexed PNG. Hope it makes sence.

[11bush]

You could also do a tile from texture to have full color and high detail, but it takes up a lot of space.

[pavigna]

11bush, on 01 December 2020 - 05:29 PM, said:

You could also do a tile from texture to have full color and high detail, but it takes up a lot of space.

I went for this option. I had made lots of tilefromtextures but i completely forgot i could do the same for weapons. now all of my new guns look great. Thanks for the help guys. Also, thank you Jimmy for pointing me towards that program. it will come in handy.

[The Watchtower]

Does Duke3D use magenta/purple colours? Or light blue/cyan? Those are pretty basic in RGB.

[Aleks]

The Watchtower, on 02 December 2020 - 01:12 AM, said:

Does Duke3D use magenta/purple colours? Or light blue/cyan? Those are pretty basic in RGB.

There's a couple of purple/magenta colours (also that transparent pink), but in the original tileset, I think the only texture that uses them is purple lava. There's a bunch of light blue tones, but nothing that is close to cyan at all. Personally, I think that this palette is something not to really mess with after 25 years, as most people are really deeply rooted into it and it's something that greatly contributed to Duke's success and originality (i.e. vibe and composition of these colours used in levels/original tiles).

[The Watchtower]

Aleks, on 02 December 2020 - 03:49 AM, said:

There's a couple of purple/magenta colours (also that transparent pink), but in the original tileset, I think the only texture that uses them is purple lava. There's a bunch of light blue tones, but nothing that is close to cyan at all. Personally, I think that this palette is something not to really mess with after 25 years, as most people are really deeply rooted into it and it's something that greatly contributed to Duke's success and originality (i.e. vibe and composition of these colours used in levels/original tiles).

I agree, we even talked a lot about the funky colours of the Birth tileset, how different it was to the classic ones, despite using the classic palette. Some Doom mods like Eviternity or Ancient Aliens changed the palette and honestly they felt like a different game with it and classic enemies looked totally out of place in those environments. Yet, it's still weird how Duke's palette is mssing RGB apex colours, they would have made sense in Lunar Apocalypse at least in some crazy abstract areas.