Palette Colorrange not fully used?

Lin Kuei Ominae · Seth **Joined**: 16 Aug 2006 **Location**: Germany

While i tried to create a new palette, i noticed that the OS_Palette_Editor stores only multiples of 4 for the color values.

I then checked the original unittem.pal and noticed there, that all the colors indeed only go from hex 00 to 3F (3F hex = 63 dec; 63*4=252; 252 = max possible color value in OS_Palette_Editor).
Does anyone know, why the palettes use only a quarter of the possible color values: 00-3F instead of 00-FF ?

For what are the other colors used? Are these for special map lighting purposes? Could this explain why some mods (like DTA) have big problems with blocky lighting even when using an extremely low LightIntensity of 0.001 on the lightposts?

\EDIT
I've created a unittem.pal which is using every possible color value from 00-FF
Attached is a screenshot that shows how this palette looks ingame for
left: VXLs
right: SHPs

btw, haven't i read somewhere that changing the voxel color palette is impossible because it is said to be hardcoded? Seems like it is possible, even if the colors are somehow messed up and strange arranged.

unittem.png

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unittem.zip

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the modified color palette if you want to test it yourself

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Aro · Alcohol Fueled **Joined**: 10 Sep 2006

Quote:

btw, haven't i read somewhere that changing the voxel color palette is impossible because it is said to be hardcoded? Seems like it is possible, even if the colors are somehow messed up and strange arranged.

I tried creating a custom voxel palette for Evolution, I replaced the yellow-like colors with a rusty metal color gradient, the results were that the voxel ignored the new colors and just used loaded the default colors from the palette. I tried editting the original mix files as well as placing them in a new mix file, but the result was always the same. The SHP Structures did acknowledge the new colors however.

Reaperrr · Posted: Wed Sep 29, 2010 2:57 pm Post subject:

Aro wrote:

Quote:

btw, haven't i read somewhere that changing the voxel color palette is impossible because it is said to be hardcoded? Seems like it is possible, even if the colors are somehow messed up and strange arranged.

I tried creating a custom voxel palette for Evolution, I replaced the yellow-like colors with a rusty metal color gradient, the results were that the voxel ignored the new colors and just used loaded the default colors from the palette. I tried editting the original mix files as well as placing them in a new mix file, but the result was always the same. The SHP Structures did acknowledge the new colors however.

ROTD uses custom unit palettes, and it works.

The problem is that facing-related shading is done in somewhat strange ways, it seems they simply use a different color from the palette, depending on several factors (original color, normal, facing...) and THAT's the part that seems to be hardcoded (or stored in the as-of-yet undecoded voxel.vpl inside local.mix).
So when your voxel is let's say color 1, then -assuming it has 'perfect' normals- it will use color 4 for the side facing SW, color 17 for NW, color 243 for E and so on (numbers are made up, but I think you get the point).

Unfortunately, as LKO's screenshot shows, the pattern is somewhat illogical; for some of the greyscale colors, they use a very dark GDI brown for certain facings.
I noticed that when I made all GDI colors brighter, which resulted in my grey Nod units suddenly featuring brown pixels at certain angles/facings. So if you only change the original colors but not the colors used for certain facings, it looks as if there was no change.

ApolloTD · Commander **Joined**: 19 Nov 2003

Well, I had gamemate try hack voxels.vpl in past to enable the unused indexes to use normals with rather odd lighting results...

sadly not have pics anymore i think...

as for palette colors rgb thing, seems to be some westwood thing and olaf has seemingly duplicated it same way... Banshee kinda confirmed its westwood pal/shp format limit.