Browse GamesGame JamsUpload GameDeveloper LogsCommunity
Indie game storeFree gamesFun gamesHorror games
Game developmentAssetsComics
SalesBundles
Jobs
Tags
zweifuss2 years ago (1 edit)

Wow thanks for the reply, wasn't expecting one TBH! Thank you for all the leads, I think I may be able to use some of them to my exact needs. And I'd like to thank you and other Indy developers out there that keep the pixel sprite dream alive, I hope it never dies out! I fell in love with it back in the 90s when playing platformers on SNES and PC and I will always look back fondly at those games, but at the same time it's amazing to see new games being made with pixel-based sprites. 

So far I've tried the re-pixel app which is neat, and Grafx2 to varying degrees of success, but I'd still like to see it in your program if you can make it work!

The real issue I have with the programs you mentioned, is that they are designed to do automatic colour matching, so they will find the closest colours in the loaded palette instead of swapping the indexed colours of the original with the new one. re-pixel app will do index swapping, but only with the palettes preloaded into the GUI, not the one you load. I think I may have to set up an account on that forum to explain to the other developers what I'm looking for. Auto-colour matching is great for when you want a tighter palette for your sprite, or want to change the mood in a certain scene, but for me I just want to see sprites with different pre-defined palettes at a quick glance.

Thanks again

Reply
with the love studios2 years ago

> I'd like to thank you and other Indy developers out there that keep the pixel sprite dream alive, I hope it never dies out!

Your welcome and I couldn't agree more!  :)


> it's amazing to see new games being made with pixel-based sprites.

Completely agree!  What's equally exciting for me to see as a creator is that there's such a strong audience out there for pixel art creations!   It's great to see that gamers are still willing to accept and play pixel art games in this day of unbelievable 3D graphics tech.  :)


> I'd still like to see it in your program if you can make it work!

Ask and ye shall receive!   :)

https://withthelove.itch.io/pixelpalettetool/devlog/272101/pixel-palette-tool-v1...

Let me know if that does the trick for you.  I don't work a ton with indexed images myself so I might need you to loan me an image or two for testing if it doesn't work the way you're expecting.  

Reply
zweifuss2 years ago

Wow nice work! This does *exactly* what I wanted it to do! Thank you so much. Here is what I've discovered so far:

  • There is the odd crash sometimes. I can upload the files that crash it if you'd like. It might have something to do with if I make one of the colours have a transparency flag.
  • It doesn't seem to load the PNGs I have with the correct palette order. I still have to re-arrange the order. I sometimes use old programs like PaintshopPro to save the PNG files, and in that program they are most certainly in the right order. So It'd be cool to have an 'arrange palette by hue' button or something if the index doesn't get loaded right
  • When saving the PNG file, the colours don't seem to be indexed correctly either (saved with PixelPaletteTool, opened in GIMP)
  • When an image does load with the correct index, there are weird artifacts in the mapped image.. like it shows a random colour strip under the image, I don't know what's up. 

Other than that, it is really on its way there! Holy Cow I did not expect a developer to be so quick on the draw to add a request.. so here's another LOL

What if... 

  1. I load a 16-colour indexed image, grayscale from black (0 0 0) to white (255 255 255). The palette is arranged correctly in a nice gradient.
  2. I load a palette with 256 colours.
  3. I shift-click on the 1:1 icon - great, it replaces the grayscale with my palette (the first 16 colours). 
  4. Now here is where the new feature comes in: "SHIFT BY INDEX COUNT" or something to that effect. The program will now grab the next 16 colours in the strip and replace the index with those colours. So if my original PNG has 64 colours, if I'd load up a 256 colour palette it would shift by 64 so I could try out 4 different patterns, etc.

It's not *quite* colour-cycling per se, it's something a bit different.

Anyway, *so happy* again you're doing this, I feel it's already at a place where I can play around with it and see what it can do. 

Long story short - I used to run this Street Fighter III - Third Strike animation appreciating site, and I played around a lot with palettes, swapping them in my animated GIFs and everything, but then family happened and I couldn't dedicate time anymore to it. This whole thing is getting me excited again for these sprites, and I'm really looking forward to see what you can do.

Thanks again!

Reply
with the love studios2 years ago


> There is the odd crash sometimes. I can upload the files that crash it if you'd like.

Oh no!   Sorry to hear this!   Yes, if you could post the file(s) that would be a big help!

> It might have something to do with if I make one of the colours have a transparency flag.

One thing to note is that program only deals in binary transparency (on/off).   Specifically, it maps ignores any color with an alpha value less than 255, and maps any pixel with an alpha value less than 255 to the color (0,0,0,0) (RGBA).   This is a deliberate design choice on my part to keep things simple and because the use-case for the program is simple pixel art with binary transparency.   All the same, the program shouldn't crash if you load an image with other alpha values so I'll definitely look into it.


> It doesn't seem to load the PNGs I have with the correct palette order...When saving the PNG file, the colours don't seem to be indexed correctly either

Oh dear, sorry to hear this.  I was worried about something like this because I only tested it with a few images from GIMP.  If you could post an image that doesn't load in the correct order along with a pic of what the correct order should be that would be awesome!

> When an image does load with the correct index, there are weird artifacts in the mapped image.. like it shows a random colour strip under the image, I don't know what's up.

Can you also send an image file that has this issue?



> SHIFT BY INDEX COUNT

If I understand you correctly, what you are asking for is for the mapper to create multiple maps for you by progressing through the palette.

So...

Map 1 maps Image Colours 1-16 to Palette Colours 1-6

Map 2 maps Image Colours 1-16 to Palette Colours 17-32

Map 3 maps Image Colours 1-16 to Palette Colours 33-48

etc. etc.

Is that right?

you'd press the button once and it would spin out all these maps for you.

Reply
zweifuss2 years ago (2 edits)

EDIT: Upon further inspection it seems the garbled images with the small pixels beneath them seem to be if the dimensions of the picture are too small. If I use an image file with wider dimensions the problem goes away. Looks like the program crashes if the palette saved is only 16 colours, when it's 256 colours it's fine. That's my observations so far...

Original reply below:

Ok I'd like to help get to the bottom of this for you so I'm here to help.

Here is a file that crashed it.

Here is a file that should have the colours in the correct order but doesn't. This one I set the first index value to be a transparency.

Now here is the same image if I don't set the transparency. This one loads the colours in the right order, but it has a funny colour strip below the mapped image (the right panel), and when I try to apply a map it gives funny garbled colours:

So I was actually able to get the program to work properly with the images one time, what I did was I loaded the original spritesheet and decreased the colour count to 256 instead of 16... Then I got it to work. Here is the file that actually works as intended. 

So if I load this palette strip:  I get this result:

Lastly, for your shift by index count, that is exactly what I want, you explained it the perfect way. "

Map 1 maps Image Colours 1-16 to Palette Colours 1-16

Map 2 maps Image Colours 1-16 to Palette Colours 17-32

Map 3 maps Image Colours 1-16 to Palette Colours 33-48

etc. etc."

Awesome!

Well thanks for reading my long-winded post, hopefully it helps you out!

Reply
AboutFAQBlogContact us
Copyright © 2024 itch corp · Directory · Terms · Privacy · Cookies