Exult Studios Portraits Colours

[Soule]

I am trying to add my own faces to faces.vga. Adding them is not difficult since it is a matter of importing the frames.

But somehow the colours of the portraits are not right. The colours changes whenever you initiate a new conversation. What options must I save the PNG portraits so they won't suffer from such an effect?

I use photoshop and I have tried importing the palette and yet it still doesn't work..why?

[Soule]

I was wondering...which palette should I use so that the colours will appear right.

Maybe there is no response because you guys don't understand what I am trying to express?

[drcode]

No response because I only just saw your post:-)

The palette you have to use is the game's #0. Perhaps you can get it by first exporting one of the existing portraits as a .png, and then import that into your graphics program.

I'm pretty sure you can also export the palette from ES (by browsing the 'palletes.flx' file. The format will be textual, in a form that the Gimp can import.

[Soule]

Thanks for answering Jeff!

Apparently I folllowed the instructions and it only works for some portraits, but not all.

I attach some pictures so you will understand my situation better.
http://www.angelfire.com/rpg2/wotp/1.png
http://www.angelfire.com/rpg2/wotp/2.png

The portrait is different each time it is reloaded.

What can I do to make exult render the portraits correctly?

[flip]

get a good paint program(Paint Shop Pro should do it) and use it to convert the colours to exults pallet for you.

[wjp]

Avoid using the last 16 or-so colours in the palette; they're used for palette cycling animations. That might be what's causing this.

[ericw]

Thats a pretty nice looking portrait, otherwise!
One suggestion would be to try to change the skin tone to less yelowish, but I know it's a pain when working with palleted graphics. I've had my own fun trying to make quake textures, and I know its a huge pain.

[Soule]

Thanks for your encouragement guys!

How do I avoid using the last 16 colours? I think that's probably the reason.

Basically I just load the picture as a jpg and recolour them using the U7 palette, before importing them into Studio.

How do I tell Gimp or Photoshop not to use the last 16 colours or how can i manually recolour the portrait?

[Gradilla Dragon]

First off, NEVER use jpg. Convert to png or some other lossless format that saves the actual pixel data.

The jpg format does not save pixel data, but functions and cosin transformations that resemble the original image. The end result is an image that looks like the original at first, but if you look closely you notice it's not the same.

[Soule]

Willem,

You got it... it was the last 16 colours that were causing the disfigurement.. the portraits look good now.

[Soule]

Sorry another problem.... how do I delete the last 16 colours away? So they won't be used in the portrait conversion?

[wjp]

You could change those palette entries to bright purple or some other colour you won't be using.

[Soule]

Now that I got all the portraits in, I wonder the next step is in creating the game?
Is it more appropriate to do the conversation usecode? Or to actually build houses?

Haha

[Gradilla Dragon]

Whichever you enjoy best.