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Which black is black?


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#1 leastamongmen

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Posted 03 March 2021 - 12:04 PM

In a new quest, black one is black based on the fill for the cave entrances in the classic tileset. If I'm trying to keep compatibility with a Z1 palette, is it also necessary to keep black one as black? Normally I remove the fill in Z1 caves to show link walking down anyways, and I can't think of another main palette conflict with any other tiles, as nearly nothing has a black fill. Asking for a friend (in case this post is stupid or racist or something).
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#2 Lüt

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Posted 03 March 2021 - 12:43 PM

Well, you can use whichever one you want for black, but I'd suggest using a consistent swatch number for every tile in your tileset. Generally that's #7 or #8 for me.

 

The thing to note about the very first swatch in any CSet is that it's actually the transparent swatch, so although you can make it any color and it'll show as that color on layer 0, if you put a tile using it on any other layer, that color will disappear and reveal what's below. Apparently cave entrances become layered when Link uses them, which is why he disappears under the solid black, because those tiles use one of the black swatches that come after the main colors.

 

Honestly I'm not entirely sure what's your starting point here, but that should be what you need to know. Swatch #0 is always transparent, not an actual black, so if somebody wants an actual black, they have to use one of the other swatches. To find one that shouldn't cause conflict in any scenario, go to Quest -> Graphics -> Palettes -> Main and pick a black from one of the columns that has no other colors in any of the CSets from 0-13. The rest would be dependent on level palettes, but if it's standard NES palettes, they won't have any more colors than what you already see in the main palettes.


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#3 leastamongmen

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Posted 03 March 2021 - 01:28 PM

I've gotten into something that's becoming much bigger than I thought, and needed to know if changing any of the "unused" blacks in a Z1 set affected anything that I wasn't aware of, and if there were any Z1 tiles that would be affected. Can we screenshot here? I can't seem to get an image into a post or comment.

Anyways, I think things will be perfectly fine based on what you've said, and there shouldn't be any big trouble. I'm redrawing a bunch of stuff from scratch to study tiling technique and patterns, and I'll end up with a boat load of 8 color resources (in a 16 color tileset) that are drop and go Z1, as long as black is black.

Edited by leastamongmen, 03 March 2021 - 01:55 PM.


#4 Lüt

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Posted 03 March 2021 - 01:53 PM

Changing the unused blacks shouldn't affect anything, as long as they're truly unused - and that should be swatches #7 through F.

 

However, note that swatch D in CSet 8 has a blue - this is for the inside of the opened treasure chests.

 

But ZC uses indexed coloring, so if you want to be absolutely certain, what you can do is take the black you want to use and replace it with a unique color (say bright red or magenta) in any particular CSet, then scroll through the tile pages in that CSet and see if your unique color pops up in any of the tiles. It shouldn't in the main tiles, but the default quest is loaded with miscellaneous alternate tiles that I never use, so I can't speak to those. Anyway, if you see that color, then you know that swatch is actually "used" in a tile - but if you're not using that tile, then it really doesn't matter. And if you are, then either try another swatch, or recolor the tile.


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#5 leastamongmen

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Posted 03 March 2021 - 02:07 PM

https://drive.google...ew?usp=drivesdk

Just a quick throw together to illustrate. In my attempt to level up my custom tiling technique, I was redrawing zelda tiles in 16 color and 8 color.
I realized I was incidentally creating an 8 color / 16 color LOZ/BGC/TTP crossover tileset, which is super awesome if the resources are easy to use and grab. But I'm pretty green, so I'm looking for working standards for good compatibility.


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