Random color palette musings

Earlier this year I decided to starting working on Aridia again. The first new release had a couple minor changes and for the next I'm working on improving the color palette editing.

In the current version only about 20 color palettes are supported but that will be closer to 90-100 in the next. The colors for all the maps, towns, dungeons, castles, portraits, cut-scenes, will be editable. A couple sprites and the battles will the only things remaining.

A little background - the Sega Genesis displays 4 layers on the screen at a time. Each of those layers is composed of 16 colors for a total of 64 possible colors on screen. In Phantasy Star III the developers created ~415 color palettes (although I'm starting to doubt that all are used).

Here are a few totally random notes about how the color palettes are used in Phantasy Star III and what questions they raise:

-Maia's dress color will always match the main character (something that was already found due to the escapipe bug in Nial's quest)

-Most of the cutscenes only use 2 out of 4 available palettes

-Dark Force's hands use a different palette than his body

-The Orakian and Layan castles use different palettes which is a nice detail they thought of

-Even though LaShute and Skyhaven look the same they use different palette entries meaning they could be different colors, maybe that was planned at one point?

-The most interesting one to me: Landen, Elysium, Aquatica, Terminus all share the same palettes but Draconia uses a completely different entry that happens to contain the same colors. So same question as the last, did they plan to make Draconia have a different climate than the other green domes?

-Wren and Mieu's portraits are crammed into the same palette so they're limited to 8 colors each. Every other character portrait has their own distinct palette including separate ones for the 2nd and 3rd generation Layas.

-If you want to change the color of the shop dialogs you have to do it in about 10 places because each shop loads a different palette for the dialog (even though they're all the same colors).

I'm surprised that many palettes were created. There might be a good number that aren't used, but even so that's still a lot of palettes. Just another sign of the original intended scope of the game, I guess.

It's interesting to know that Draconia and LaShute might have had unique layouts planned at one point. I could see Draconia maybe being in an autumn season while the other domes are in their spring or summer.

What I've figured out in the past day is that each enemy appears to have a separate palette entry. If that's the case (and it is for the first 5 I've found) that accounts for 182 entries right there. That brings the unused count down to a much lower number.

Another interesting thing I found in the past day - enemies are only 11 colors max. The first 5 colors of each enemy palette are reserved for the battle scene background and menu. This is how they managed to have four different enemy palettes on the screen at once, it's a pretty novel trick they figured out.

I'm really hoping the enemy palettes are in the same order as enemy statistics or else it's going to take forever to match them all up.

Hmm. I know your site's missing a few of the monster pictures (Imp, Sheik, Gryphon, Jumpliz, Skeleton and Spectre for the biomonsters, Guardbot, Disker, Twistbot, Swivlbot and Rotabot for the mechanicals). If the palette data corresponds to the monster data, maybe we can finally see what they look like! =)

(I was wondering, as I haven't looked at your site that much, Hughes, but does every monster have a stat entry?)

Snorb wrote:

Hmm. I know your site's missing a few of the monster pictures (Imp, Sheik, Gryphon, Jumpliz, Skeleton and Spectre for the biomonsters, Guardbot, Disker, Twistbot, Swivlbot and Rotabot for the mechanicals). If the palette data corresponds to the monster data, maybe we can finally see what they look like! =)

The thing is - I've know for a while how to get all those enemies to appear, it's not a complicated change to make. I just have never gotten around to doing it

Snorb wrote:

(I was wondering, as I haven't looked at your site that much, Hughes, but does every monster have a stat entry?)

Yes, each monster has a unique set of statistics. Even the ones that don't appear in the game like the "Kara boss".

Looks like I'll have to redownload Aridia, back up my PSIII rom, and see what I can do with it. =p

Alright so good news - I picked 18 enemies at random and sure enough the enemy palettes are in the same order. That means the next release of Aridia will be able to edit just about every palette in the game.

Here's a quick example - Lyle as a redhead:

Wow, I'm impressed by the PSIII team's creativity there. I never imagined that each enemy would have a unique palette. That's a great way to get around color restrictions. It would be neat to see what this allows us to do with changing the game's story line. Editing the palette would be almost like creating new foes to fight entirely.

I've managed to get this thing working today. I haven't been able to get much done with it so far, but I added two Rulakirs to a single Chirper. They killed me before I could attack

Very interesting, this palette thing about PS III !