Image Palettes

[Rolina]

Okay, so after finding out about the 16 color palette in the icons, I'm curious as to the OTHER palette restrictions.

For example, what about for Face Portraits, Overworld Sprites, and Battle Sprites?

[Atrius (He/Him)]

Face portraits each have their own 16 color palettes (one of which is always transparent, but not used so far)

Overworld, and Battle sprites all use the same 224 color palette.



You may notice that the first 16 colors of this palette are the exact same as the 16 color palette for icons, this is no coincidence.  The GBA has room in memory for a 256 color background palette, and a 256 color sprite palette.  The remaining 32 colors in the sprite palette are reserved as room for loading up to two face portraits.

The background palette consists of 224 colors that are customized for each area in the game, and 32 for menu/HUD graphics.  In battle it uses 128 for the background, 64 for attack graphical effects, and 64 for the menu/HUD (Each of the normal colors has a brighter version so it can highlight the panel for the character whose turn it is.)

[Rolina]

What are all the possible colors for the Face Portraits?

[Atrius (He/Him)]

Any color you want, their palettes are saved individually with them.  The GBA only uses 5 bits for each RGB color channel though, so their values can only be multiples of 8.

[Rolina]

I'm guessing it's a standard 256 color palette, or was my calculator not lying to me when it said 32768 (32^3)?

[Atrius (He/Him)]

Your calculator is correct.  You're limited to 16 colors per portrait, but there are 32768 possibilities for each of those colors.

[Rolina]

...Yeaaah... I'm not gonna ask you for a palette sample then.  It'd take up half the page. :x

[Atrius (He/Him)]

Any color is good so long as the individual RGB values are divisible by 8.

0, 8, 16, 24, 32, 40, 48, 56, 64, 72, 80, 88, 96, 104, 112, 120, 128, 136, 144, 152, 160, 168, 176, 184, 192, 200, 208, 216, 224, 232, 240, 248.

[Rolina]

True, though it's always helpful to have a sample palette.

[Salanewt]

I think I already know the answer, but I want to ask anyway. Are there any limits to status ailment effects in battle? I would guess that the palette has to be from Golden Sun's main palette, but I was just wondering if the colours that are usable are limited (since I noticed that none of the status ailments have many colours on them)?

Have a nice day.

[Atrius (He/Him)]

Anything in the sprite viewer's list, including status ailment effects, can use any, and all of the colors in the 224 color palette.

[Salanewt]

Okay, thanks Atrius. Time to get creative with some of them...

Have a nice day.

Oh yes, this includes Overworld sprites? Neat!

Edit: I found this neat program, which aids in finding GBA compatible colours (program is called GBA Color Picker).