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Jay, Who is that handsome new designer from Illinois, who has fascinated many ZT1 fans with his funny quips and perky responses?     Just kidding.

Real question: Is there an instruction anywhere that shows how to actually make my own .pal file for ZT1 UCA's?

Regards,
JohnRN1

The final step in making a new ".pal" file is loading a ".png" file in Zoot or APE, which will then make a ".pal" file from the colors in the ".png" file. The ".png" file would be a graphic image of some sort that is created in a graphics program. Using Devona's approach for creating a new set of colors, one would use the graphics program to change each color shade one by one in an existing graphics image that was extracted from an ingame animal. Using Dr. Rick's approach for creating a new set of colors, one would use the graphics program to create a rectangle filled with color shades ranging from the lightest color shade in one corner to the darkest color shade in the opposite corner. But there currently are no guides describing step by step how to do either of these approaches in a graphics program.

Thanks Jay,

Several designer's of ZT1 animals have made new animals and recolored new animals for their new uca's and I was wondering if any of these designer's had put up an instruction on actually making their own pal files or even instructions on changing the size of ingame animals.

I hope that you found the information I sent you helpful JohnRN1

Quote from: johnrn1Several designer's of ZT1 animals have made new animals and recolored new animals for their new uca's and I was wondering if any of these designer's had put up an instruction on actually making their own pal files or even instructions on changing the size of ingame animals.

Previously, designers assumed other designers knew how to use graphics programs. So they concentrated on guides that were specific to ZT, such as using APE or Zoot, or how to move ".pal" files, or how to adjust configuration files created by APE, or how to delete unnecessary files created by APE. But a number of us are novices when it comes to graphics programs and realize it would be useful to have guides concerning using graphics programs for ZT work. As you saw, dr rick is trying to help in that direction. What will make those types of guides difficult to create, however, is that different people use different graphics programs and any such guide will be specific to a single graphics program.

hum - good point that Jay.  I suppose I am in a somewhat unusual position in that I use Ulead photoexpress to do most things.  However I use photoshop at work and also Gimp to do some manipulations, so actually, I could write about how to do things in all three!  Trouble is I use whichever program does best whatever it is that I want to do!!

Same here Rick. I use a very old Paint Shop Pro....No5, I think. I also use Gimp. Occassionally I even use Paint. It all depends on what I am going. Gimp does have a good tutorial that can be found here.

WoW!!  I am on a plane to Graphics school with a stopover at NASA to give them some pointers on their next mission.

Yes, Dr.R. Your files were very helpful. Also, Fern mentioned about using pal files from objects/scenery. I never thought of that.  I didn't know that making a pal file with a graphics program would be so complicated. 

I think I will stick to the simple things in life, and go back to watching "Psych" on TV.

lol!!  I think that I may have made it look more complicated than it actually is!   That's why I need to revisit the tutorial before it gets published.

I like complicated

I suggested you make some scenery to go with your animals. But I do believe genki used some scenery pal files in getting the colours for some of her peacocks.

  I should have said, it gave me an idea of trying out pal files. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the one that I realy wanted. 

To a certain extent it really is trial and error and you can get some surprising results. I tend to treat it as a fun game to see what interesting things happen. Which reminds me there is one set I want to try on an animal and keep forgetting.

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Re: Ask ZT1 design questions here
« Reply #2 on: August 11, 2010, 10:48:13 PM

The final step in making a new ".pal" file is loading a ".png" file in Zoot or APE, which will then make a ".pal" file from the colors in the ".png" file

This, I don't quite understand. I have been using zoot to show me what a new animal looks like after inserting the new .pal file in the animals file (replacing the original .pal file). But, how does zoot create a pal file from a png. Or APE for that matter.? 

Zoot and APE just look to see what colors are in the ".png" image and save those colors in a ".pal" file.

Here is a simple example. Suppose we have a ".png" image that contains 1 row of 3 pixels: white-black-white. These colors are represented by numbers. White is represented by 16581375 and black is represented by 0. So the ".png" image actually is 3 numbers: 16581375 0 16581375. Zoot and APE see that the numbers 16581375 and 0 are used in the ".png" image and they will save those numbers in the ".pal" file. These numbers in the ".pal" file and in the ".png" file are in computer form rather than human form. So you cannot look at them with a text editor such as WordPad and expect to see the numbers in that format. Humans normally use base 10 for numbers. Base 10 uses digits 0 through 9. Computers use base 2 for numbers. So they only use digits 0 and 1 or, more precisely, "off" and "on". So computers see the base 10 number 16581375 as 111111111111111111111111. Because of how long that is, programmers use base 16, called hexadecimal, which uses digits 0 through 9 and letters A through F. So that number in base 16 is FFFFFF. This becomes especially useful for colors. The reason is that the first 2 letters represent how much red is in the color, the middle 2 letters represent how much green is in the color, and the last 2 letters represent how much blue is in the color. If you look up "List of Colors" at Wikipedia, it will show these hexadecimal numbers for the different colors, and it shows Black is 000000 and White is FFFFFF. Hex editors, such as XVI32, allow seeing these hexacimal numbers inside such files. The start of a ".pal" file is always the same; it starts with: 00 01 00 00. Although I do not know for sure, I believe a ".pal" file has darker colors before lighter colors. So, for example, the next part of the ".pal" file would be for black. The ".pal" file puts the parts of a color in the opposite order than what Wikipedia shows. So the ".pal" shows how much blue first, then how much green, and then how much red. In any case, the next part of the ".pal" file for color black would be: 00 00 00. The ".pal" file always puts FF after each color. After that FF, the ".pal" file would contain the parts for white: FF FF FF, followed by another FF. The size of a ".pal" file is always 1028. So the rest of the ".pal" file can be filled with anything. Therefore, putting it all together, a hex editor would show something like the following for the ".pal" file of our example:
00 01 00 00 00 00 00 FF FF FF FF FF 00 00 00 FF 00 00 00 FF 00 00 00 FF ...

Jay you just made a "simple"  example into a confusing example. From your original quote "the final step..." you make it sound like zoot or APE makes a pal file. This is only true, if you are inserting new graphics into ape or zoot.
Obviously, you made it sound like I put any old png into ape or zoot, and poof! out pops a pal file.