Typical 8-bit BMP palette for SCUMM-like adventure games

kaveirious · Post by **kaveirious** » Sun Jul 29, 2007 5:42 pm

Hi friends

i was if there is some de facto standard regarding the 256-color palette used in SCUMM games (or even non-SCUMM games). Does the mode 13h mandate for specific colors. In this case, does someone have a reference to the color values from the palette (their entries in the palette, established and RGB values of cource for reference).

Thank you in advance

kaveirious

fingolfin · Post by **fingolfin** » Sun Jul 29, 2007 5:55 pm

No, there isn't.

kaveirious · Post by **kaveirious** » Sun Jul 29, 2007 6:06 pm

OK

So what is the palette of your preference. Maybe some palette derived from LucasArts SCUMM games.

Post by **eriktorbjorn** » Sun Jul 29, 2007 7:29 pm

kaveirious wrote: So what is the palette of your preference. Maybe some palette derived from LucasArts SCUMM games.

Isn't that a rather impossible question to answer? I mean, each room can have its own palette, and it may be changing it periodically to create animations or simulate changes in the lighting.

PsYcO · Post by **PsYcO** » Sun Jul 29, 2007 8:12 pm

logo?

kaveirious · Post by **kaveirious** » Mon Jul 30, 2007 12:43 am

Hi friends

i have coded a quick little program (ANSI C) for converting any 256-color palette extractable from mtpaint to my own "reference" palette. The results (to my senses in all but one case out of about 10, differences are minimal). I have used 320x200@256 screenshots from various games (both in-game shots and from animations).

I just want to use a single palette for something i am currently in the early stages of designing. It is a rather constrained environment (an non-PC environment) so there is no chance of having as many palettes as i would like.

kaveirious

fingolfin · Post by **fingolfin** » Thu Aug 02, 2007 2:19 pm

Of course you can fix a reasonable single 256 color palette, and then convert all and any 256 color palette image to use that. Assuming you also add in a good dithering algorithm, the results should be reasonable, in most cases -- but there will always be cases where the results are bad to worthless.

Games made for 256 color mode almost always used custom palettes for each room/scene/level, sometimes even multiple, assuming a certain sophistication level of the game. Thing is, 256 colors simply are very, very limited. Imagine in one scene you need to draw a desert scene, with lots of yellow, brown, red, and want nice color blends; and the next screen is a forest with lots of shades of green and maybe some dark brown mixed in... And the third scene is an ocean with blue and white. You just don't want to use a single palette for that!