COLORMAP editing

Post by **Caligari87** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 11:11 am

I need to know how to edit the colormap to make different color schemes. Is there any way to import it to an image editor? Yes, I searched the Wiki, nothing. I need this for ZHalloween.wad

Cyb · Post by **Cyb** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 11:16 am

you mean the color changes made when you get hit/pickup an item etc? those can't be changed in zdoom any more since the method zdoom uses now is quicker than the old colormap way at the expense of old colormap changes no longer working

Post by **Caligari87** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 1:16 pm

No, I mean change the colors throughout the whole game, like a night-vision scope. I'm going to make an "old movie" colormap, in black-and-white, with scripted film grain.

EDIT: In .63a, not .90 or whatever. I'm not changing until the "real" version comes out!

Nmn · Post by **Nmn** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 1:37 pm

XWE can make You a new pallette-make a playpal lump and You can edit Your pallette. DeepSea (even Sharewarez) is IMO the best for colormaps, as both XWE and Inkworks output buggy colormaps.
If there's one thing You want good-You have to do it Yourself.

Killo Zapit · Post by **Killo Zapit** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 2:26 pm

I use Paint Shop Pro to edit my colormaps. just export as raw with no header and the right size (256x31 I think). Need to strip the palette too, but you can do that by doing a maintain index to a grayscale palette.

skadoomer · Post by **skadoomer** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 5:58 pm

just make sure you watch what colors your modifing, as seen in this thread.

Grubber · Post by **Grubber** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 6:55 am

If you want black & white (even for single sector), try Sector_SetColor (tag, 255, 255, 255, 255)

Post by **Caligari87** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 11:09 am

Thanks, Killo! I was using bmps...

I'm guessing that I just take a printscreen of the colormap, paste it into Photoshop, modify the colors, apply the Doom palette, and save it as a raw with no header? Right?

P.S. I nead this today before 12:43 MST, if possible.

Risen · Post by **Risen** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 11:17 am

If you want a global effect, the best way is to desaturate and load in a modified PLAYPAL. If you want to only apply the effect to specific sectors then look into the SetColor solution.

Post by **Caligari87** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 12:10 pm

Yes, but how do I get the PLAYPAL or COLORMAP into an editor to desaturate it? I've really been asking this all along, but I guess I need to be more clear. Okay, I know to save it as a raw with no header, but how do I open the lump?

Or, someone just give me a step-by-step procedure. I use Adobe Photoshop 3.0

and XWE or Wintex.

Macil · Post by **Macil** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 6:25 pm

Check Enjay's website. It has a cool black+white palette replacement already ready to use.

Killo Zapit · Post by **Killo Zapit** » Fri Oct 22, 2004 10:19 pm

Okay. Here is exactly what I do to make colormaps. And by "colormaps" I mean fade tables. I actually have no idea how to edit the PLAYPAL lump. You will have to use Inkworks or something for that.

Anyway, basically you create a 256x34 (not 31, I was wrong) bitmap. You need to make a horizontal strip with every palette color. An easy way to do it is to do a gradient fill form black on the left and white on the right in grayscale mode then load whatever palette your using with maintain indexes.

Now that you have this strip it's easy to understand. The top is fully light, the lower fully dark. Now you can edit the image anyway you want. Grayscale it, whatever. Just make sure it fades to some color or something form top to bottom.

When your done, make sure it is in the palette you want to use, then load a previously saved grayscale palette with maintain indexes (to strip the palette data), then save as a 0 header size raw. I usually save a non-striped layered or whatever version too so I won't have to go though the process of loading the raw colormap when I want to edit it.

Since all the doom games in essence just blend the palette to black or some other color, loading then isn't really necessarily since you can just recreate them easily with the gradient fill and layers. If you really want to, to load a colormap, you can load it as a 256x34 single channel 0 header size raw file.

And if you don't understand that, well, it's technical. But basically, what it comes down to is, the computer can't tell the difference between a COLORMAP lump and a palette based image striped of it's header and palette. And thats because, there IS no difference!

Also, neat trick is you can still use Hexens fadetable mapinfo command to load different colormaps for different maps. If only there was an ACS command to set a custom fadetable per sector.

Post by **Caligari87** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 2:06 pm

Actually, I found out an easier way.

1. Use XWE. Save the default PLAYPAL lump as a RAW
2. Open PSP. Load the RAW and specify a three-channel RBG with an image size of 31x104 (or 32x104?). This loads the PLAYPAL.
3. Alter the PLAYPAL however you want.
4. "File > Save" the image. It should already be in the correct format if it's the same file.
5. Load the PLAYPAL into your WAD.
6. Copy in the default COLORMAP. XWE uses the PLAYPAL in your wad, so select the COLORMAP and "Colormap > Rebuild" with all the defaults.
7. Open the WAD in ZDoom. Tada!!

(at least, this is how I remember doing it

)

Killo Zapit · Post by **Killo Zapit** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 4:57 pm

Well sure... if you want a boring "fade to black" colormap. Since you said your doing a grayscale thing this shouldn't matter but, I always found it annoying how much the default color map handled things. It remaps colors entirely different hues sometimes. Manually building a colormap does much to prevent this. Though honestly it still doesn't look that right all the time. Weakness of 256 colors I guess. Thanks for the Playpal info. I think only the first 256 colors matter to zdoom anymore though.

Post by **Enjay** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 5:13 pm

Agent ME wrote:Check Enjay's website. It has a cool black+white palette replacement already ready to use.

That's this site http://members.lycos.co.uk/Enjay001/ not the one you get to by clicking my WWW button below this post. The palette file is a little over 3/4 of the way down the page.