7962 replies to this topic

[Mibbitable]

The only way to the mainland is through this peak, though I have heard from the Animal Villagers that dragons are known to roam the skys above it.

[Anthus]

I posted these in the Expo thread for NoeL's Linked Seasons set, but I thought I'd drop them here too. I made a bunch of different palettes in GG, and these are the ones I think are the best.

 

 

Late Winter Sunset

 

 

Brisk Day in the Mountains

 

 

Uncomfortably Chilly.

 

 

It's Too Hot!

 

 

In the Middle of the Night...

 

 

Morning Haze

[Naru]

1 is too green, 4 too orange, 2 is great, 3 could need some sparkes, glitter or whatever to underline the chilly atmosphere, 5 will be cool if Link and enemies are also dark to fit in, 6 could need some indicators for the haze like mist.

[Anthus]

5 will be cool if Link and enemies are also dark to fit in,

 

That is something I'd really like to do for a dark/ night time area. It would really look nice, I think. If Link Tile Modifiers let you change Link's c-set, you could theoretically make Link use a dark color scheme with a dummy item that changes his tiles, but I dunno how you would go about it for enemies besides making palette swapped duplicates of the ones appearing in this area. Hmm, this just might be doable.

[Naru]

I actually would rather set up another Link-Sprite that uses c-set 2-4 and/or 9. That gives you more possebilities with other palettes. Of course through tile modifiers and not for his normal sprite. Not sure what to do about the Armos though.

Also, no idea of they work here but the DoR-Sparkles that mudjavayne (I would need to look up the name for correctly writing it ) in his ice dungeon (power of geduina) come to mind. They were beautiful.

[Sheik]

These are good starts for the most part. However, I'd say they could all use some fixing. Importantly, creating a new palette is not merely a matter of moving the RGB values left and right - for the best palettes you have to handpick every individual color to make sure there is some dynamics going on in the palette. The way they are the colors feel kind of stale and mushed together into the same-same.

[Avaro]

The palettes are great, I just think the night one is too dark, and the golden one doesn't fit volcano as much as it fits a land where everything is made of gold.

[Anthus]

I think the second one is the best, and it was also the first one I made. The 3rd, and last ones are gpood too imo.

Truth be told, I did mostly just slide some RGB values around, but some have other tweaks too. I just wanted to get a feel for how these could look.

Any tips on picking colors that look nice together? I agree about some of them looking mushed together, but picking colors one at a time isn't very effective for me, and I feel like it's more luck if it looks good than my own choices.

[Sheik]

I usually work by choosing a "highlight", a "middle ground" and a "shadow" color for each "row" of colors. Let's say i want to make the greens. I choose a yellowish green for the highlight, a 'strong' green for the middle ground and a dark purple for the shadow. Now I pick the gradients between the highlight and the middle ground and the middle ground and the shadow. Fin.



Using iDraw3.

[Anthus]

Huh, iDraw looks pretty neat (if not a bit old). I read about it on the RPGMaker board, and might try it out. The color selection hot-key sounds helpful, but that can probably be set up in GG as well.

[trudatman]

I have no idea how y'all learn to make stuff compatible. I never figured out how import and export work. this is all beyond me and I get irrationally angry that I don't simply learn stuff. ...but can't you just work on your palettes and c-sets in Zquest? I see no advantage to adding more steps. I guess when it is all easy, the tiny bonuses are simple to snag.

[Anthus]

I have no idea how y'all learn to make stuff compatible. I never figured out how import and export work. this is all beyond me and I get irrationally angry that I don't simply learn stuff. ...but can't you just work on your palettes and c-sets in Zquest? I see no advantage to adding more steps. I guess when it is all easy, the tiny bonuses are simple to snag.

I think it's just personal preference. For example, I'd rather edit tiles directly in ZC, especially for animations, but I find the palette editor to be a mess, and like using an external one. Everyone has their ways though, and might be opposite of me.

[NoeL]

I have no idea how y'all learn to make stuff compatible. I never figured out how import and export work. this is all beyond me and I get irrationally angry that I don't simply learn stuff. ...but can't you just work on your palettes and c-sets in Zquest? I see no advantage to adding more steps. I guess when it is all easy, the tiny bonuses are simple to snag.

Like Anthus said, the palette editor in ZQuest is a mess. It's usable, but hardly ideal. Add to that the fact you can't see your tiles while you're editing the palette so have no idea whether what you're doing looks any good and it becomes time-consuming guesswork. It's also incredibly difficult to draw anything bigger than a single tile in ZQuest (back in the early days before I found Graphics Gale I would have to draw an outline in MS paint, import that, then detail tile-by-tile in ZQuest). Those advantages are significantly more than a "tiny bonus" IMO.
 
If you want to learn how to "make stuff compatible" as you say, I made a few posts explaining how to use Graphics Gale with ZC.
 

I usually work by choosing a "highlight", a "middle ground" and a "shadow" color for each "row" of colors. Let's say i want to make the greens. I choose a yellowish green for the highlight, a 'strong' green for the middle ground and a dark purple for the shadow. Now I pick the gradients between the highlight and the middle ground and the middle ground and the shadow. Fin.

This also works really well and is a good way to quickly build palettes (in GG: left click the "first" colour, right click the "last" colour, hit the drop-down menu at the bottom left of the palette and select "make gradation"). This method does have a few shortcomings though, and since it's relevant to ZC I'll talk about them: with a limited 16-colour palette you need to be efficient with your colour choices and will probably lack the space to make a decent ramp in this manner (it needs at least a third of the palette). Even when making a single grade between two colours you might not want the colour directly between the two (it might need to be skewed more toward the highlight or shadow, depending on the tiles) - although this is easily fixed with a bit of tweaking after the fact. Lastly, linearly graded colour ramps can often look pretty dull. It can be good (where appropriate) to throw in complementary tones to dampen a monochromatic ramp, removing some of the primary hue (this is called "neutralising"). For example, compare:

and

 

In the first shot the mountains are graded linearly, and the result is a kind of dull, yellowy-green rock. The second shot has the exact same highlight/midtone/shadows, but the grades between them are red-shifted, giving the rock a more neutral tone without resorting to "greying" the palette. This makes them pop a bit better and gives them some life.

[Geoffrey]

Just thought I'd pop in to say that I'm getting serious SNES JRPG vibes from those shots.

 

I've really appreciated the in-depth posts you've made about GG. Though I've been using it for years, I had no idea that it had so many palette-editing options.

[Mibbitable]

Not only looking for some feedback, but also I need help finding good dungeon tiles. Sorta RPG style. Know where I can find some?