Universal Color Palette(??)

WJohnston · Post by **WJohnston** » Tue Aug 02, 2016 6:41 am #200348

So I spent like 12 hours doing this:

UPDATED OCT/9/2016

It's a color palette for ss13. 135 available colors, unless I miscounted. Small dots are duplicate colors found elsewhere on the ramp if two colors were too similar.

Post your own if you were actually insane enough to ever compile one of these things and do hours and hours of research on color theory, graphical hardware limitations, and game sprite palettes.

I'm talking about you, ausops.

Oh also you're free to use this but I'm sure I'll end up making another one of these things at some point probably tomorrow anyway, maybe I'll actually keep this one this time.

Nienhaus · Post by **Nienhaus** » Tue Aug 02, 2016 11:27 am #200379

http://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=16247

Incoming · Post by **Incoming** » Tue Aug 02, 2016 2:25 pm #200402

Without some sort of script that automatically converts sprites on merge I can't see a limited palette ever being practical to enforce.

Scott · Post by **Scott** » Wed Aug 03, 2016 10:48 pm #200651

That could be easily done, I think.

Bawhoppennn · Post by **Bawhoppennn** » Thu Aug 04, 2016 1:31 am #200667

like I said pointless restrictions that will make the game more cohesive and like a traditional game (bad)

WJohnston · Post by **WJohnston** » Thu Aug 04, 2016 2:23 am #200680

>game being more cohesive and looking more like those glorious traditional sprite-based games is bad

what are you on right now

i want some of that

give it

WJohnston · Post by **WJohnston** » Thu Aug 04, 2016 3:10 am #200685

Went and updated the color palette now:

Leftmost ramp now strives towards green rather than red. This means more blues and less purples, because I had too many purples and not enough blues.
Adds a proper yellow ramp that is just pure lum variation, no hue shifting there.
Tweaks a few colors.

WJohnston · Post by **WJohnston** » Sun Aug 07, 2016 1:45 am #201253

Further updated the palette, got rid of one of the hot-pink lookalikes and brought back the purple so there's more contrast available!

IkeTG · Post by **IkeTG** » Sun Aug 07, 2016 1:52 am #201254

Bawhoppennn wrote:like I said pointless restrictions that will make the game more cohesive and like a traditional game (bad)

Take this with a grain of salt because I'm not the most experienced, nor skilled when it comes to artwork, but there's a little old saying that restriction breeds creativity. Through limiting yourself, you will explore workarounds and find more efficient methods that ultimately make you a better artist. This is why you'll see a lot of really great artists who use limited palettes.

paprika · Post by **paprika** » Mon Aug 08, 2016 12:32 am #201433

Bawhoppen is a fucking literal newfag who hasn't had to deal with seeing the game slowly descend into a fucking mess after people started adding the worst quality shit on top of supernorn's generally cohesive style

Granted when supernorn did the big resprite before the goon leak it was pretty amateur work, but it's been disgusting seeing shit go downhill so fast, and I even helped make this problem worse BECAUSE THERE WAS NO PALETTE TO WORK OFF OF TO GUIDE NEW SPRITERS LIKE MYSELF TO MAKING THINGS LOOK LESS EYESORE

That said I think if we ran an automated script to force a lot of the current stuff into a consistent (limited) palette, and then tried it for a few rounds, people would immediately be a lot happier with how things look

Consistency is soothing to look at, which is why lifeweb is so visually appealing despite being a vomit mess of russian edgy sprites, because it's all done by one guy and under a dark ass filter

Not saying we should look like lifeweb but if we forced an aesthetic, no matter what it was, the game would be fun for everyone and it would be more future proof to degredation

This is part of the reason I'd like 64x64, because respriting things to have more detail + a consistent palette is something nobody would ever want to do but now we have a reason to do it and less restrictions in terms of resolution

IkeTG · Post by **IkeTG** » Mon Aug 08, 2016 2:05 am #201458

paprika wrote:Consistency is soothing to look at, which is why lifeweb is so visually appealing despite being a vomit mess of russian edgy sprites, because it's all done by one guy and under a dark ass filter

Not saying we should look like lifeweb but if we forced an aesthetic, no matter what it was, the game would be fun for everyone and it would be more future proof to degredation

I agree wholeheartedly. Sticking to a consistent style would be the best option; I can foresee it being a challenge to get everyone on board with a stricter art direction, but ultimately the more consistent the aesthetic of game is, the more appealing the game will be.

Bawhoppennn · Post by **Bawhoppennn** » Wed Aug 10, 2016 2:41 am #201946

>pap calling me a newfag

>i am older player than pap

topmeme

paprika · Post by **paprika** » Wed Aug 10, 2016 4:11 am #201954

hmmm

420weedscopes · Thu Aug 11, 2016 11:57 am

since wj didn't actually specify this when i asked him for a week straight if he needed help
this is apparently for 64x sprites and not our current 32x

wj if you reply to this with 'wew' again i swear to fucking god

Post by **NikNakFlak** » Thu Aug 11, 2016 9:04 pm #202459

paprika wrote:

hmmm

checkmate atheist

Post by **oranges** » Fri Aug 12, 2016 1:28 am #202557

paprika · Post by **paprika** » Fri Aug 12, 2016 2:34 am #202589

Did bawhoppen change his name or is that someone else

Bawhoppennn · Post by **Bawhoppennn** » Fri Aug 12, 2016 3:05 pm #202752

That is my old account before I permaban evaded

Bawhoppennn · Post by **Bawhoppennn** » Fri Aug 12, 2016 3:07 pm #202754

edit:

TechnoAlchemist · Fri Aug 12, 2016 5:12 pm

Wjohnston do you have the hex values for these palettes handy

danno · Post by **danno** » Sat Aug 13, 2016 5:55 pm #203136

this is a genius idea
good shit wjohn

420weedscopes · Thu Aug 18, 2016 12:14 pm

TechnoAlchemist wrote:Wjohnston do you have the hex values for these palettes handy

the eyedropper tool is your best friend

WJohnston · Post by **WJohnston** » Tue Aug 23, 2016 9:33 pm #205806

Went ahead and did some more tweaking. Made some colors less of a super huge gap between the darkest and the one above that, tweaked the pink ramp to be redder and so on. I think I'm quite happy with how this looks now, but maybe I'll go back to this at some point at redo friggin' everything this thing is hard.

WJohnston · Post by **WJohnston** » Sun Oct 09, 2016 10:31 pm #217178

Updated the color palette yet again. Made the yellow ramp have a bit of red near the start, as it came off as nearly green to me in the darker colors. Also expanded yellow ramp, giving it a more gradual progression, and adding a grey variant. Tweaked a few of the darker colors in the red, blue, and grey-green ramps to allow for better smoothing throughout the ramp. Should result in overall less contrast burn with sprites, I'll review existing sprites with these.

Dagdammit · Post by **Dagdammit** » Sun Oct 30, 2016 11:18 am #222423

Ooooh handy, I've been fucking with sprites alot lately and this should definitely help.

paprika · Post by **paprika** » Sun Oct 30, 2016 7:08 pm #222489

It'd really fuckin help if you guys showed some more resprites using these palettes

Dagdammit · Post by **Dagdammit** » Wed Nov 09, 2016 2:05 am #224763

WJohnston, I've been using your stuff to do some recolors. Do you have all the department colors, i.e. those used on doors and signs? How about shades of red used in sec headsets, uniforms, etc.?

danno · Post by **danno** » Thu Dec 08, 2016 7:04 am #233389

any news on how this is panning out? a universal palette sounds like a very good idea on paper but paprika is right, there should be some examples

imblyings · Post by **imblyings** » Thu Dec 08, 2016 2:00 pm #233483

I think I've figured out some part of why I find it hard to use this palette- keeping in mind that there are a lot of different ways to go about palettes.

All the colours have separate ramps, for what seems like a saturated and non-saturated version. Going off instinct, the saturated ramps are too saturated at the dark end and personally, I have a hard time swapping between saturated and non-saturated ramps for colouring. Some of the pixeljoint articles talk about neutralizers- dark very un-saturated colours that are meant afaik to draw together a piece, and they have a point. The black to white ramp also has no hues whatsoever, while SS13 uses a lot of absolute non-hue greys. I use a ramp with some hues added and stuck to it (through laziness) but it seems to give more of a common, maybe more comfortable traditional RPG look. There's also little in the way of flesh/cream tones.

Looking at my own very messy and not even finished palette, I haven't really differentiated the colours into saturated and non-saturated colours, preferring instead to deal with saturation in the ramp itself. Exceptions are of course brown, cream, and skin tones. Having the majority of my colours at the same level of saturation make things easier for me. I've also used a wider range of values- probably way too many and it'll have to be consolidated into a smaller ramp one day- but when I did try using your palette my habits eventually forced me to mix and blend some to reduce the value jumps. This might just be a reflection upon my lack of training. Less values and values that don't blend into each other are a good thing.

Spoiler:

WJohnston · Post by **WJohnston** » Thu Dec 08, 2016 8:01 pm #233565

I'm very much trying to learn how to actually do palettes properly, and you're right, it's quite lacking in skin tones (though since we'll be just cheating with greyscale and throwing in our own values, it won't matter much). I wanted there to be a wide range of color available for everything, as well as greyer versions. While it's more realistic to have darker things also be grayer, it's rarely done that way with sprites, which opt for high saturation when very dark (at least from what I've seen).

I'd like to work out exactly what we want out of a color palette from this game, whether it should be drab or colorful or somewhere in between, as well as what colors we should REALLY focus on (grays and reds and blues are pretty common).

danno · Post by **danno** » Thu Dec 08, 2016 10:21 pm #233631

Christ, looking at this shit is a harsh reminder of how shit I am
Palettes are such a ridiculous science

In regards to what we want out of a palette, I am personally a big fan of ausop's more drab colors. I think his palette has way too much in it, though. All of those greenish browns to the left of the orange ramp seem completely redundant to me, along with a lot of the blues.

imblyings · Post by **imblyings** » Fri Dec 09, 2016 3:14 am #233728

i had a closer look at the palettes on pj. Neutralizers seem key to reducing the amount of colours needed by re-using darker colours and harmonize the colours used by bringing the ramps together- but I don't doubt you've seen palettes with more saturation, as far as I understand and with the right hue shifts, saturated darker colours make for very rich and vibrant styles. Maybe a rich and vibrant palette fits SS13 better- I know mine has a specific purpose in mind and needs to be less saturated for it.

Danno we're all shit compared to what you get outside of ss13 belieeeeeve me

WJohnston · Post by **WJohnston** » Fri Dec 09, 2016 3:35 am #233737

can confirm we are trash spriters, source: am still trash spriter

except ausops

keep it up man

imblyings · Post by **imblyings** » Fri Dec 09, 2016 4:17 am #233748

the people on pj wreck me and that's not including the old masters, moonrune people who did the spritework for snes rpgs.

danno · Post by **danno** » Fri Dec 09, 2016 5:47 am #233756

the people on pj don't even reply to my shit at all

Dagdammit · Post by **Dagdammit** » Fri Dec 09, 2016 6:29 am #233759

I too am poking at palettes going "what the fuck"

So far the only way I get good ones is through long series of trial and error.

danno · Post by **danno** » Thu Jan 26, 2017 4:46 am #247822

Alright
after like 2 weeks of theory crafting and research
after fucking around in gimp for all that time

this morning I deleted all the work I did and I made this palette from scratch today
and by "from scratch" I mean I took the sec uniform colors and goon's bush colors and stole some of wjohn's colors
and then interpolated it all with random shit
but I think it looks nice

I present to you Spaceman v1

the idea is to eliminate all of the meaningless gradient shit and promote making sprites with higher contrast and visual consistency

I haven't actually applied it to a single thing in game yet so it might just be shit
gonna do that tomorrow

Nienhaus · Post by **Nienhaus** » Thu Jan 26, 2017 10:22 pm #248059

"higher contrast and visual consistency" All my yes.

danno · Post by **danno** » Thu Jan 26, 2017 10:27 pm #248060

Gonna start testing it on like random items and stuff
If you guys want to do that or use it and make whatever you want, and give your thoughts on it that would be incredibly helpful

danno · Post by **danno** » Fri Jan 27, 2017 1:24 am #248141

some random shit

current sprites on bottom, redone sprites on top

>not using goon toolboxes

I think I need to add a ramp of things specifically for greyscaling but so far no glaring issues

Fri Jan 27, 2017 2:16 am

laser gun and plant look dope, but the greens and blues look very pale compared to the other colors (expect the edges of the potted plant)

Sweaterkittens · Fri Jan 27, 2017 2:58 am

I really love it man. If I wasn't already knee-deep in using WJ's palette I'd be all over that. The higher contrast is incredibly pleasing to look at. Visual consistency is something that would be just nicer in general.

My dream of a resprited and visually consistent and coherent SS13 may yet live.

imblyings · Post by **imblyings** » Fri Jan 27, 2017 2:59 am #248185

heaps better than mine

apart from the grey ramp I'll use this for a bit

Sweaterkittens · Fri Jan 27, 2017 3:05 am

Ausops you've never posted your palette anywhere, would you be willing to share it at some point? While a high-contrast, vibrant palette seems to fit the aesthetic of SS13, the aesthetic of your BSA/PA sprites is fucking incredible. I'd love to be able to use that palette if I wanted to sprite something in that same sort of theme (such as a Syndiborg)

imblyings · Post by **imblyings** » Fri Jan 27, 2017 4:43 am #248245

>thinks i have a palette

I can tell you the BSA/PA is only ok because of the linework, size and my autism to detail. Colour wise it's not actually that good.

Sweaterkittens · Fri Jan 27, 2017 5:03 am

>someone posts a palette

imblyings wrote:heaps better than mine

WELL I JUST ASSUMED YOU HAD ONE

danno · Post by **danno** » Fri Jan 27, 2017 5:19 am #248256

PKPenguin321 wrote:laser gun and plant look dope, but the greens and blues look very pale compared to the other colors (expect the edges of the potted plant)

I'm inclined to agree with you and I'm going to see if I can mess around with that

Sweaterkittens wrote:I really love it man. If I wasn't already knee-deep in using WJ's palette I'd be all over that. The higher contrast is incredibly pleasing to look at. Visual consistency is something that would be just nicer in general.

My dream of a resprited and visually consistent and coherent SS13 may yet live.

I'm going to make that dream happen if it kills me

I feel like either more grays need to be added to the gray ramp or something needs to happen to it but I'm not quite sure what yet

Nienhaus · Post by **Nienhaus** » Fri Jan 27, 2017 2:09 pm #248347

I really like how that bush came out.

Nienhaus · Post by **Nienhaus** » Fri Jan 27, 2017 2:48 pm #248357

I tried it with a bunch of my sprites. I didn't edit any of them, I wanted to see how they would turn out. Some of them would need to be edited but the majority looks good.

danno · Post by **danno** » Fri Jan 27, 2017 6:07 pm #248408

thanks this helps a lot