Fpgedit Woes

[ruckage]

Hi again. I'm buisily working on my first game but have run into some rather strange issues where FPGedit is concerned.
I've decided to use an 8bit colour depth for my game so I create a new 8bit FPG in FPGedit. It then asks for a palette file which I provide using the actual bitmap I intend to add to the FPG. So far so good, the palette is identical to how I designed it. The problem starts now, I used a grey colour for index 0 as my understanding was in 8 bit mode index 0 is the transparent colour - regardless of actual colour values. I import my image which has black outlines for the sprites and it appears that instead of just loading the image it appears to be remapping the image in someway. Here's a picture that shows the problem.

Is this a known issue with FPGedit if so is there a workaround. I could understand FPGedit converting the colours if the image being imported had a different palette but can't understand why it would do it when the palettes are identical, certainly wasn't the the way good old DIV used to do it :huh: .
Any guidance is greatly appreciated.

 

[Racemaniac]

Hi again. I'm buisily working on my first game but have run into some rather strange issues where FPGedit is concerned.
I've decided to use an 8bit colour depth for my game so I create a new 8bit FPG in FPGedit. It then asks for a palette file which I provide using the actual bitmap I intend to add to the FPG. So far so good, the palette is identical to how I designed it. The problem starts now, I used a grey colour for index 0 as my understanding was in 8 bit mode index 0 is the transparent colour - regardless of actual colour values. I import my image which has black outlines for the sprites and it appears that instead of just loading the image it appears to be remapping the image in someway. Here's a picture that shows the problem.

Is this a known issue with FPGedit if so is there a workaround. I could understand FPGedit converting the colours if the image being imported had a different palette but can't understand why it would do it when the palettes are identical, certainly wasn't the the way good old DIV used to do it :huh: .
Any guidance is greatly appreciated.

i think it expects black to be the first (and transparant).
why not just make your backgroudn black, and your lines the color closest to black. you won't see a difference, and the problem will probably be solved

 

[ruckage]

Thanks for the reply, I'll give it a try. It's just not usually the way that a program would deal wit 8bit graphics. I tend to go for gray as a background usually as it's better to work on if you have sprites with dark outlines. It's not a problem though as I can change the colour of index 0 at the last minute. The main thing I was concerned with was whether it would remap any other colours as I plan on using colour cycling and if the the program remapped any of those it would mess it up.

 

[ruckage]

I've done some tests and can now confirm that FPGedit does indeed remap any 2 colors that it finds to be identical to 1 single colour in the palette - really annoying as it means if you have a range of colours designed for cycling but one of them happens to be the same rgb value as a colour you are using that you use else where in the index it just remaps it.

In my test I made 3 gradients, of 32 colours. Each colour was a different index ranging from 160 to 255 but they all shared rgb values. Now what should happen is you should be able to cycle each of these colour ranges independently but once FPgedit has finished with the image it remapped all of the colours to the last 20 in the index so this was no longer possible. The only solution I can think of to this is to create my garphics as I want them but then change the palette of my image to one that has a unique colour to every index point. I'll then have to load in my original palette manually into Fenix. Bit of a faff but should work. I'll let you know how it goes.


Edit:

After further tests I'm of the opinion that FPGedit is badly suited for 8bit graphics. It will even remap colour values that are similar making the images a complete mess. The only thing I can think that is happening is that it converts 8bit images to a higher bit depth before re-converting them back to 8bit. My only other option is to use FPG.exe but I have no idea how to use this - can anyone help me out?

 

[Quiest]

Did you try creating it as a 16 bit fpg first, adding all the sprites, and then converting the fpg to 8 bit?

 

[ruckage]

Did you try creating it as a 16 bit fpg first, adding all the sprites, and then converting the fpg to 8 bit?

Thanks for the reply but that doesn't work as I need certain colours grouped together for colour cycling and other palette manipulations and FPGedit just remaps as it sees best. I'm making my FPG using DIV 2 now so no problems. I have a few more projects planned and they will be using 16bit graphics so I can use fpgedit for those as it is very easy to work with.

 

[Quiest]

I see.

Do you use any IM?