M_COLORS lumps are wrong

SLADE3 has a very nifty feature which allows you to choose which palette to use to display a paletted image with external palette (in other words, a patch/sprite or flat).

One of the available palettes is a strict grayscale palette going from full-black to full-white (in RGB terms, index X is {X,X,X}). If you use that palette for looking at the eternity.wad:M_COLORS lumps (both Doom and Heretic versions), you'll notice the anomalies.

Here's a fixed M_COLORS lump.

Gez said:

SLADE3 has a very nifty feature which allows you to choose which palette to use to display a paletted image with external palette (in other words, a patch/sprite or flat).

One of the available palettes is a strict grayscale palette going from full-black to full-white (in RGB terms, index X is {X,X,X}). If you use that palette for looking at the eternity.wad:M_COLORS lumps (both Doom and Heretic versions), you'll notice the anomalies.

Here's a fixed M_COLORS lump.

Heretic is known, it's just a copy of the DOOM version. As for the DOOM version, it's BOOM team's fault that it's the way it is. For one thing, some paint programs don't distinguish between palette indices properly if those indices contain the exact same color value. I know this was certainly the case for PSP 3.11 - simply loading and saving an image in that program would cause all pixels to snap to the first palette index containing their color, even if you didn't change a damn thing.

I believe it also happened in some DOS paint progs.

Quasar said:

Heretic is known, it's just a copy of the DOOM version. As for the DOOM version, it's BOOM team's fault that it's the way it is.

But now that you've got a fixed version handy, it'll be your fault if it stays the way it is. :p

Quasar said:

I believe it also happened in some DOS paint progs.

Oh, it still happens with many softs. Even with the Gimp. Which again is why this greyscale palette from SLADE3 was handy as it features 256 unique colors, with no redundancy. :)

So, is there any interest in using the fixed lump or not?

Yes, I'm just waiting for my graphics dude to get back from vacation. He can put them in and make sure they're working :)