I want to make a 256 color tileset, but I don't understand pallettes. I used disguise's tileset resource, but while it seems quite helpful for other things, I don't understand palleting.

*breath intake*

HALP!

Palettes are simply a set of 256 colors which can be used in the picture. You don't have to use all 256 as unique colors. If you so choose, you could only use two separate colors, and the other 254 would just be duplicates.

JJ2 uses the colors from the palette when rendering the sprites. Normally, the first two colors in the palette will be transparent. The next 14 are not used. Then there are 8 different shades of green, 8 shades of red, 8 of blue, etc, etc, up to the 96th color. However, if you were to replace the 8 which are normally green with yellow, Jazz would appear yellow, not green. Therefore, you should usually use the standard Jazz palette for the first 96 colors, else levels made your tileset will have really ugly sprites. The later colors can be made into whatever you want. There's room for textured backgrounds and such, although you can worry about those later.

If you just want to prevent this ugliness in sprites, I suggest TilesetPal. This is designed specifically with JJ2 tilesets in mind, and is the fastest, easiest way to give the palette the correct number of colors and to get sprites to look good. It also comes with the standard Jazz Palette, which is very useful.

If you want to do some more complex stuff with palettes, PalSuite is a great program. It will allow you to edit palettes and apply them to the image file you will build your tileset from.

Tilesetpal is definitely a great choice, since the way it optimizes palletes means you can draw something with more than 256 colours and it will still look good after you run it through that program. Not AS good, but still better than what you'd normally get. Still, its best to limit the amount of colours you use. Note that because the sprite pallete is part of the tileset pallete, you really only get 174 unique colours to work with, and if you use a textured BG then you have even less space.

Thanks! This has been really helpful. I have started the motions of creating an air-ship themed tileset. I have experience making cartoony, yet detailed pseudo sprites, and this is starting to look good.

I am lacking a bit of eyecandy and tile variance, but I have multiple types of hurt things, like flame jets and helicopter blades, but I have a good amount of tile shapes.

It's ms-painty, but with a little shading. I also have relativly good masking.

Originally Posted by Varkarrus

It's ms-painty, but with a little shading. I also have relativly good masking.

Those sorts of tilesets often have more appeal than the kind that look like they were run through a ton of photoshop filters. It really depends on the art style, and of course quality. For example, this tileset has a sort of look which I think really suits JJ2 well. It's also Gus's best tileset so far: if you look at his older ones, they tend to use a lot of "texture" effects which often look out of place. Actually, it's probably the best tileset I've seen since Gothic Cathedral, which is from 2008. That one also has a similar style.

For the issue of eyecandy, a good idea would be to design the tileset in a way that allows for some versatility and creativity on the part of the level maker. That way the person making the level can create much of the eyecandy for themselves... often the best tilesets work this way. For example, cooba's Waste Treatment Facility doesn't have a huge amount of stuff besides basic blocks/pipes, but it's possible to make a very good looking level with it just because the tiles it offers can be used in a ton of different ways. BlurredD's tilesets are also an example of this.

Even though I haven't seen anything of your tileset, good luck with it. You've picked a unique theme and seem to have good ideas (and a focus on gameplay elements) so there's decent potential already.

This is a preview of what I have so far. I geuss maybe I should arrange it better. (It's a .bmp, but I converted the preview to .png for file size.)



Also, the tiles at the top row are kinda broken due to a black line crossing the top. Ah well. I'll replace it later, as I have all those tiles elsewhere.

Does anyone know how or where to get the TSF easter palette?

Originally Posted by mortalspaz

Does anyone know how or where to get the TSF easter palette?

Take a screenshot in 8 bit mode and take the palette from the pcx file.

Or even easier, use this program.

I solved that... eventualy.
But now my question is: Can i make other versions in PSP? Like night or winter or even evening?


Thanks

Yes. PSP has an Edit Palette menu button (Shift+P), although you'd be better off using PalSuite because it has more options.

Originally Posted by Varkarrus

This is a preview of what I have so far. I geuss maybe I should arrange it better. (It's a .bmp, but I converted the preview to .png for file size.)



Also, the tiles at the top row are kinda broken due to a black line crossing the top. Ah well. I'll replace it later, as I have all those tiles elsewhere.

That looks nice