Palette editing with sprites...

I'm working on an enemy I'm going to use in Underworld. It is a dark gray baron, with red fire stuff on the hands, and acts like the one from STRAIN. I'm also making red fireballs for it. To change the colors, I just modify the palette, and then I copy and paste it back onto a copy of the same sprite, but using the correct doom palette. So, I should be able to save the edited palette and load it with each sprite and repeat the method right? Its not working for me. When I load one of the sprites, and then load the new palette for it, it seems like it tries to "blend" the colors, but change the palette at the same time. So, for example, I have the green fireball and I load the palette that changes the greens to reds. The palette loads fine and the colors are replaced, but the picture uses almost grayscale colors, but with a little of a green tint, since when it "blends", there is more green in total or something like that. So what can I do? It will take weeks if I have to seperately edit each palette over and over again.

Note: I've tried using PSP and Wally, since both have a load palette option, and they have the same results...

Lazer said:

To change the colors, I just modify the palette, and then I copy and paste it back onto a copy of the same sprite, but using the correct doom palette.

Not sure what you are doing here, but you must stick with the DOOM palette at all times if you want to be sure the colors "stick". IOW, you can't modify the palette in any way - which is what it sounds like you are doing.

Sometimes I switch to 32bit color to use certain tools, but then I switch back to 256 when I'm done and re-establish the DOOM palette to make sure nothing got kked up.

I guess I wasn't that clear...
I'm trying to make a different colored baron enemy. The easiest way to do this is just to edit the palette and change the colors you want changed to colors that already exist. Then, you can copy and paste the image, onto a previous image, and since the colors exist, it won't mess up and it will have the changed colors, and be back on the original palette. For one sprite it is easy, but I want to redo all the frames of it, and I would rather just load the modified palette so the colors change and then copy that changed one back onto original. (like I just said) My problem is that when I load the modified palette, instead of changing the colors, it does change them, but not to the way it would have if I manually changed them. It seems like it tries to "blend" the colors. And when I look at the palette, everything is fine.

Nevermind, got it. I was using the wrong style of loading the palette.

Ok - what it's doing is "color matching". So if you modify a color RGB (at some index value) that means that "color" no longer exists. So when you import that palette into a "stock" Doom palette image, it tries to "color match" again. IOW, it doesn't just do a simple palette swap like you want.

There is a way around it, but it would mean making all your images the "old" way, importing them into a PWAD, then store your new PALETTE lump in the PWAD and now all your sprites automatically have the modification you are looking for.

Then export them as BMPs (which will have your modified palette) and then you can take those BMPs and apply the stock DOOM palette and now all the colors will match.

Think I did explained it correctly - easy to get confused:) Anyway, DeePsea can easily the above and use the new palette. Don't know about Wintex or XWE.

What I was doing was changing the palette of a sprite, but not adding in new colors when I changed it, I just rearranged the old. This let me make it say things like all the greens turn into reds. The I would save the palette and load it on the next sprite and so on. I wouldn't save the palette edited sprite though, I would copy and paste it back onto an existing one. I was doing everything correct, the only problem was that when I selected "load palette", there was three types of loading, and I didn't realize that until after I read the help file of PSP. So I just chose a different option and it worked fine.

Ok - I assumed you saw the 3 choices there in PSP. If you are doing a whole bunch of sprites, what I explained is a bit faster though.

Use the multi-select open feature in PSP - select all the files at ONCE. This means PSP load all the exported images at one time then just go through and load the DOOM pal on them one by one, saving and closing each as you go through them.

The above saves quite a bit of time by not having to open them 1 at a time and also makes it easier to track the ones you have done.

I suspect you won't want to go for this seeing as how it is pretty expensive - but you could do worse than try Image Robot.

I have an old copy I registered ages ago after trying it at work. It is made by Jasc - the PSP people and what it does is allow you to automate any of the functions that can be found in PSP and apply it to a large number of files at once. So I can set up Image robot to load a palette that converts all the greens to red using "maintain indexes", and then load up an original doom palette with "nearest color matching". With a few simple clicks can process an entire set of sprites and automatically convert all the greens in them to red (or whatever) in a few seconds.

IIRC the shareware version is quite limited, allowing only the conversion of 5 or so files at a time and not handling all the file formats. The full version handles all the formats that PSP does, and can process thousands of files in one sitting.

Thanks, but as I posted quite a few messages ago, I've already figured it out. The problem I was having was that I didn't notice the three choices, but now that I know they are there, I've got it working.