Palette w/background trouble

[Biohazard UOI]

Okay, I've got a problem:

I'm creating a tileset, and I want to include a textured background. I've already drawn the image in the set.

When I tried it out as a "regular" background, it worked fine, but when I tried it out as a textured background, all the colors in it went berzerk and it went racing to the left. I checked that auto-scrolling was zero and that my palette supported the background.

Any advice?

[Newspaz]

The colours might be messed up, because your textured background's colours probably are very much alike the colours elsewhere in the set.

JCS messes up the files to make them as small as possible. Which means that Jazz probably is now using colours outside the texture palette for the textured background. (I hope I'm being clear, you can't explain a lot with my knowledge of English :P)

Try making a textured background with colours quite different from then rest of the set.

[Violet CLM]

Also make sure the textured background colors are within (this isn't the only working range, but it is the best) 176-209.

[Tik]

Also keep in mind that you need to have all 32 colors you want for the textured background included in the tileset, and not just the places given by Unknown Rabbit in the palette. A lot of people do this by having each color from 176-209 have a row in one tile of its own (take a look at some of Disguise's tilesets for an example)

[Biohazard UOI]

Do I have to use all 32 colors?

I'm a little confused what you said there, Newspaz. You want me to have the colors in my background to be much different than those in the rest of the tileset?

Actually, what I need is a better palette editor. Right now I'm making the set in Paint and doing the palette in GIMP. I don't have PSP, but is there a good, light utility that just edits palettes or something? For now, I'll continue with what I have.

[Tik]

Originally posted by Biohazard UOI
Actually, what I need is a better palette editor. Right now I'm making the set in Paint and doing the palette in GIMP. I don't have PSP, but is there a good, light utility that just edits palettes or something? For now, I'll continue with what I have. Palette Suite by Jazz2's own ToxicBunny is the palette editor of choice, and works extremely well and has all sorts of nice effects.

With the 32 colors, the background itself doesn't need all 32 colors, but all 32 colors used for the background must be somewhere in the tileset. Like I said, the one line for each of the 32 colors in a single tile works very well.

[Disguise]

There are three reasonsd it could go wrong, and all three have been mentioned already. I'll just post to confirm all this ;)

1. Your textured background looks too much like other colours in the palette. If this happens the textured background will use colour from other palette entries (which will mess up stuff). They dont have to be TOO much different, just unique. For example, if you only used blue throughout the entire set then add a small amount of red or green into your textured background, the difference is barely visible but keeps the colours unique.

2. Use palette entries 176-209 for the textured background (the reason the above point goes wrong is because the colours aren't in these palette entries)

3. Make sute you have all 32 colours of your textured background in your tileset image. JCS will only compile colours that are inside your tileset image, dont matter if they are in your palette or not, if you didn't place them inside the image itself JCS will replace it with other standard Jazz2 colours.

Need a palette editor? Nothing is better than Palette Suite, trust me on this one. Here's the link to it, have fun :D
http://www.geocities.com/alister_j_t/PalSuite/Index.htm

Also, here's an image I made to try and explain all the different parts about making a textured background, good luck!
http://users.surfanytime.co.uk/disguise/texturehelp.gif

[Newspaz]

Hah, he learned reason one from me ;-).

[Biohazard UOI]

Hey, you're right. I <i>like</i> it. (Hey Mikey! He likes it!)

The problem is that now there's some hitch between Paint and Palette Suite 2. I've got the palette saved and exported to my tileset. I can see that the palette has actually changed. Unfortunately, when I paste my background (which happens to be in shades of green) from a 24-bit bitmap into my tileset, it degrades to only <i>5 colors</i> instead of 32.

I haven't compiled it yet -this is just in Paint, still. For some reason it isn't catching the gradient that I put in the palette.

[Biohazard UOI]

Anybody out there? Do you guys know why Paint isn't adopting my palette right?

*"tileset maker in distress" signal*
*bwooop bwooop bwooooooooop*

[Radium]

Because paint sucks =P.

Get something better and use it to add the pallette.

[Hare]

Any sugestions for an alternative? (I'm using paint, too, and it just... sucks.

[Newspaz]

Paint Shop Pro (free trial: http://www.jasc.com/ )

[Biohazard UOI]

Yes, I got the palette to work, finally!

Now, about my other problem:
When I load my tileset into my level, the background is auto-scrolling, even though both X and Y values for auto-scrolling are 0. It stops moving when I put it at about AutoX=-5, AutoY=4.

But this must not be the root of the problem, because I just saw my foreground layers jump off the visible area when the level begins.

Have you guys seen this before? What can be done?

[Violet CLM]

If Layer 8 is textured and Speed 0, it ends up taking another layer's (usually 5) speeds.

[Biohazard UOI]

Whoa, that's really weird. My layer 5 was moving, so I turned that off and it works fine :) .

:D Thanks, guys! It's all good now!!!!! YAHOOOOOOOOO!!!!!! :D

*We now return to your regularly scheduled tileset-making*