RE: [Algorithms] 256 colour palette

[Jason B. <jba...@ig...>]

> I don't need to convert a 24-bit image to 256 colours using 
> quantisation.  I
> need to have a consistent single palette which doesn't 
> restrict me too much
> to the colours I can have in my textures.

This is the same thing isn't it - imagine all your 24bit art as one image;
find the best fit palette for that.

In the past I worked on a game that need to support 8,16 and 24bit;
all the art was designed at 24bit and then I batch calculated a fixed
8bit palette at the end and pre-converted 8bit versions of all the art.

Actually, I had an 8bit palette per game level.

This works well where you start with 24bit art;
but if your final game is 8bit only then, as you say, it might be better
to specify a fixed palette to prevent the artists getting carried away.

If you do need to calc a palette I can recommend a useful freeware DOS
graphic utility
called Display that will do the palette calculation for a number of
high-colour images. Has user selectable methods too - median, neural, oct
etc.

regards,
Jason Barstow