Palette Swaps

[Marscaleb]

So I had read some things before that lead me to understand that vanilla Doom did not have the capability to perform palette swaps on the sprites, and that's why the Hell Knight has its own set of sprites.

But as I was looking through the wad, I noticed that there is only one set of player sprites, the green player. But then how does it handle multiplayer? Because the second player is grey (and called Indigo) and the third player is... red I think.

But the point is, I don't see separate sets of sprites for the players like I do with the Hell Knight. So, what is it? Can normal Doom support palette swaps? If so, why doesn't the Hell knight use them?

And I'm also curious about how to create palette swaps and apply them to various creatures. But to that end I suppose it depends on specific source ports. Unless palette swap data gets stored ina regular file in a wad, but I do not recall seeing one, or rather, a way to edit such data within Slade.

[scifista42]

Vanilla Doom has a really limited palette swap capability. It's just 2 thing flags - DEHACKED calls them "Color 1" and "Color 2" - that can be given to thing types via DEHACKED, and that are also set appropriately to different players in multiplayer. Setting the "Color 1" flag will transfer the green palette range (palette indexes 112-127) to a grey palette range (indexes 96-111). Setting the "Color 2" flag will transfer the green palette range to a brown palette range (indexes 64-79). And setting both "Color 1" and "Color 2" flags will transfer the green palette range to a desaturated red palette range (indexes 32-47). And that's all - the abovementioned ranges of palette index numbers are fixed and cannot be customized.

[Linguica]

Marscaleb said:

Can normal Doom support palette swaps?

Yes.

Marscaleb said:

If so, why doesn't the Hell knight use them?

Because the game only supports very specific palette swaps that were specifically coded for the Doomguy's sprite in multiplayer. They probably could have coded in a palette swap for the baron sprite but it was just easier to include a new recolored sprite instead.

[Marscaleb]

Hmmm, I guess it wouldn't matter much since if I were to use a palette swap I would need to use the one set up with the source port I use, buuuut... Would I be correct to assume one could flip those flags on any "thing" and swap colors in that limited capacity? So like I could turn a green torch... Into a RED torch!

...Actually making a red exploding barrel might be kinda cool.

Also, I just want to comment on how impressed I am at how alive this board is.

[scifista42]

Marscaleb said:

Would I be correct to assume one could flip those flags on any "thing" and swap colors in that limited capacity?

In DEHACKED, yes, but by doing so, you'd modify the entire thing type (all instances of the thing type in your whole wad), and mind you that DEHACKED doesn't allow to add new thing types, only replace existing ones, so you'd have to plan out which of the existing thing types to "sacrifice" for the new ones you wanted to add.

Also, don't be afraid of including custom sprites (recolors of existing ones or whatever else) into your wad.

[Gez]

Doom 64 features actual palette swaps to differentiate between barons and knights, zombies and sergeants, or demons and spectres, or imps and nightmare imps.

I say actual palette swaps because the game actually uses different palettes. Each actor type has its own palette, and for these monster pairs they use the exact same sprites, just with different palettes.

The palette swap in PC Doom doesn't change the palette, it merely remaps a color range to another.

[purist]

In Visions of Hell, I used the palette swap flag to create alternate versions of the demon and cacodemon. I replaced the original sprite with a green one and then used the flag to create alternate versions with different attributes. You can use this to add additional monsters in vanilla.

[Marscaleb]

scifista42 said:

Also, don't be afraid of including custom sprites (recolors of existing ones or whatever else) into your wad.

Honestly I was thinking more along the lines of using an advanced palette swap (color re-mapping) for character customization, but this thread was just about a simple question. I'm a long ways off from actually needing to do any palette swaps; I was just curious.