Awesome examples of color cycling

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DrJones
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Posts: 1100
Joined: Mon Sep 24, 2007 10:02 pm

Awesome examples of color cycling

#1 Post by DrJones » Thu Aug 26, 2010 11:24 pm

AGS includes an option to work with a VGA palette of 256 colors instead of using the power of 16 and 32 bits color modes. Why would one choose VGA over the other modes? The main reason back then was that it was faster and the filesize was smaller, giving really fast loading times in slow machines (in this aspect, games have gotten much worse over time, I have to say).

However, a minor advantage of having a palette is that you can change its colors on the fly, allowing the use of "color-coded monsters" in action games, changing clothes on the hero, but also real-time animated ambient effects on otherwise still images.

A master in the art of palette swapping was Mark J. Ferrari, one of the background artists that worked for LucasArts in the golden age of adventure games. I think it's a good idea to give a tribute to this awesome artist by linking to an article about his amazing techniques, and also to a HTML-5 rendered gallery of his best works. Some of those tricks could be useful again in the new iPod and Phone market.

May this serve of inspiration to all of you. Enjoy! :D

Canvas Cycle Gallery

Flauschepelz
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Posts: 31
Joined: Thu Aug 30, 2001 10:05 am
Location: Germany

Re: Awesome examples of color cycling

#2 Post by Flauschepelz » Tue Aug 31, 2010 8:17 pm

I wish these images were from an adventure game, because I'd definitely play it.

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