posted 01-13- 03:49 AM CT (US)        

Yesterday, I had an idea, strange as always: "What if I tried to change Dink Palette, as said in Wyndo's FAQ"?

So.. I read I just must change Splash.bmp palette.

And so I decided to desaturate Splash.bmp, so that all pictures will be in grey scales, as in a '30 movies.
I didn't converted to grey scales directly because it change the palette entirely. Desaturate (in PhotoShop) just change every palette index to the related grey scale, without placing them in order as 'convert to grey scales'.

There, here's exactly what appened:
I launched Dink, as I saw for about ¼ second the normal coloured slash, then a flash with bad colours (as you can see if you work in Windows with 256 colours mode and change application), then the grey scaled splash with some flashes of bad colours sometimes, then normal splash and then the Dink usual screen... with normal colours!

I started the game anyway, and the background was quite changed, but Dink was in normal colours (NOT grey-scaled).

Seeing that, I decided to make tests.
This first part is the result of some of my tests.

But there's more:

I saw that Dink wasn't using only one palette, so I decided to replace the first sprite loaded: S01.bmp in tiles directory.
Using this file, even unmodified, in your DMOD tiles directory make dinkedit crash (?).
Well, anyway, even with loading another pictures of mine before S01.bmp, Dink (the player) palette was still normal.

I decided to add a picture with red and blue in DinkEdit. I applied Dink Palette, and then change the palette: red in blue, and blue in red.
I launched Dink: the colours for that sprite were also reversed, but not for the other sprite as Dink. I mean it was like in my bmp editor, also with all blue turn in red and red in blue.
So Dink read every palette it finds.

I also tried to reverse some other colours, and then I saw that if you make the white (transparent) index in red for example (editing the bmp's palette, not the drawing), then the red is displayed, not made transparent. But Dink don't search in fact the white color to make it transparent. The black and the white colours can't change index, so my grey-scaled background I told you above were deteriorate: quite grey-scaled, but some black pixels weren't at their place, so it looks crappy anyway.
I didn't tried, but I think dink make a colour transparent only if it's in first palette index AND white.

Why all this?
Well to say that Wyndo's FAQ may be wrong at this question (Wyndo???), and to know if someone ( §omeone or any people I mean ;) ) can help me to change all sprites in grey scales as I wanted to do first (far, in the... top of this message!)

posted 01-14- 11:12 AM CT (US)            

When I was working on StarDink, I used James Perley's desert tiles. So far so good. However, I noticed that Dink's pants changed color to brown when he went on a screen with the desert tiles. I learned that James didn't convert the pallete to normal, he just changed the color of the greens. I didn't want Dink's pants to be brown, so I converted the pallete of the desert tiles in StarDink to normal. So perhaps the pallete is dependant on the tiles AND splash. Anyway, if you want to download the desert tiles and experiment:

posted 01-14- 01:23 PM CT (US)            

If I understood the things I've read about the palette, all you have to do in order to use your own graphics with their color scheme is change the splash.bmp. I think that the reverse - i.e. trying to change the colors of existung graphics in dink - you have to adjust the colors of the palette in the tiles and maybe the graphics too to match your new splash.

Hope this helps

posted 01-15- 06:10 AM CT (US)            

In fact I just wanted to change the global palette so that EVERY sprites will have a gray-scaled palette, even Dink, even blackgrounds, and so on.
So I don't want to apply my palette to my sprites, because I would like to use graphics from dink\dink dir, and not to redifine them all ;)

I'll try to experiment all this.

posted 01-16- 03:12 AM CT (US)            

In fact the real main palette is Tile-01.bmp'one.
You just change Splash to avoid flashes due to palette adaptation when loading.
If you just change Tile-01 palette in grey-scales, all graphics turn in grey-scale!

To see all graphics also in this palette with DinkEdit, you need to change ESplash.bmp palette (the title screen with "Über editor").

Here it is!