Custom color palette on software Quake

[vinnyvicious]

I've been trying to create a custom color palette for software Quake based on my textures, but after creating a palette on Photoshop and converting to the Quake format, none of the textures work correctly.

Is there a special step that i might be missing? Or custom palettes do not work, even by switching the Q1 palette?

[talisa]

safe yourself the effort and use a quake client which supports replacement textures.
then you dont have to go through the palette bs but can just use any textures you want and they'll work just fine

[vinnyvicious]

I'm working on a software-based engine.

[Spike]

if you change the palette, you need to change the colourmap too.
I think adquedit or qme or something can do that for you, when given the new palette.
beware that the engine has certain expectations about certain palette ranges, specifically the player top/bottom colours.

[H1CC]

Quake's palette generally uses the last 2 rows of colors as 'fullbrights' in which case any individual pixels using those colors will be unlit and appear as those colors at any light level.
Quake's Palette uses 'row 1' from indices 16 to 32 for 'shirt colors' and 'row 6' from indices 96 to 112 for 'pants colors'.
In Quake's standard palette the 'shirt row' is that dim brown you see... though there is a confusing row of similar colors ranging from brown to green...
In Quake's standard palette the 'pants row' is that 'gold' row of colors that ranges from red-orange at darker colors to yellow-orange at light colors... not to be confused with the all-yellow colors next to the range of all-blue colors...


Even though of that in the palette indices, color ranges can be 'swapped out' for other color ranges in effect ('pants and shirt colors' are the most common case), rows 8 to 14 (indices 128 to 224) are in reverse order...
There are actually many 'duplicate colors' in Quake's palette... so even though DOSQuake is in a 256-color res. it still only yields around 240-some unique colors at once.


There is only one 'duplicate color' between a non-fullbright palette index and a fullbright palette index.
This is one of the 'red' colors...
It's found in the 'blood red' row and the earlier part of the 'asssorted bright colors' in the last row (as seen on the Quake player model's gun).
One could theoretically use this for dramatic effect in a skin/texture, say, a 'fullbright' image in pixels surrounded by pixels of 'non-fullbright' matching in color but not in index... so that the image only appears in the dark.


I've had issue with the duplicate colors in Quake's palette as well as three other issues in Quake's palette.
01. That some hues are almost completely unavailable to reach in Quake's palette, namely brighter shades of green, pink, and neon cyan (halfway between green and blue)
02. That dithering images that don't quite fit with quake's palette WITHOUT using fullbright colors is a hassle.
There are hoops to go through that can do it however.
One method I use is to use a special 'edit' of Quake's palette with all the 'fullbright' colors from index 224 to index 256 'blacked out' by being replaced with solid black '0, 0, 0'...
Quake's palette has a color that matches '0, 0, 0' in its very first index (index 0) so under most circumstances none of the 'fullbright' colors that are 'blacked out' will be used...
Convert to this 'altered palette' via a 'nearest color' method or a 'dithered colors' method (different methods have results that look better on different sorts of textures/skins).
Then convert via a 'maintain indexes' method to the standard Quake palette...
If your image editor supports 'batch process' and 'script recording' then you can convert many textures this way at once via script and batch...
It's better to 'test' your 'script recording' on just a few different textures at once to be sure you recorded the script and set the batch options correctly before going ahead with full conversion operations.
Always always always keep your 'batch operations' in a separate folder from your actual materials! When you are done converting you can just take the result files needed and remove the rest. Saving filespace can be dealt with after operations... not necessarily just during them.
03. That Quake's colors are so heavily... well... dark that you can't really get lighter colors in just plain brightness when you really need them or even want them for design purposes.
Almost everything in Quake should have 'lighting' applied so why not allow brighter colors?
Things like teeth, snow, gunpowdery gibs sparkling over the top of water NEED these lighter colors without resorting to using fullbrights because they SHOULD be lit... lighting applies to these things as well as anythin' else in Quake... yet we have to work past them because we just don't have the colors for 'em.


I've actually worked on a Q-palette thinger to suit Quake's palette better to my tastes...
I'll post about this in the relevant art/design section(s) but for now just 'lettin you know I've worked this out.