Check PLAYPAL for duplicates

[Krull]

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Edited September 2, 2023 by Krull

[Gez]

Well, as it turns out, there is a way!

You can import your palette in that and then sort by R, then G, then B (or whatever order you want) and it'll put your duplicates next to each other.

 

 

Standard issue disclaimer about deduplicating colors: the ZDoom port assumes that there will be at least one color that's duplicated and use it to get a transparent color index.

[Aurelius]

The post by Urthar in this thread outlines hard duplicates, and also gives suggestions for other not so necessary color entries that could be replaced. Interestingly the duplicates of a single color are used seemingly randomly in different sprites / textures / menu graphics, and none of them are by default completely unused.

 

Also, the post by Ribbiks in this thread has some good pointers regarding hardcoded automap color slots in the palette.

[Krull]

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Edited September 2, 2023 by Krull

[Gez]

IIRC it's specifically 8-bit software mode in ZDoom derivatives. 32-bit mode (truecolor) has a full alpha channel for translucency and doesn't need to sacrifice one palette index since after all it doesn't use the palette anyway. But paletted mode does because, in order to use flats on walls and other image formats such as PNG, it can't make use of Doom's native patch format (which handles transparency by skipping over transparent pixels) and so use the crutch of a transparent pixel index. My general recommendation is to just put pure black (#000000) in both palette index 0 and 255. The rest can be unique colors.

[Krull]

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Edited September 2, 2023 by Krull

[Gez]

2 hours ago, Krull said:

What about Boom-derivative ports?

They shouldn't be concerned by the need for one duplicate color. Unless they made the same move as ZDoom to have  a unified texture manager, perhaps. Only Eternity fits this case and I don't know how it's handled internally in that port.

 

2 hours ago, Krull said:

Does it have to be entry #255?

No.

 

2 hours ago, Krull said:

Does this mean every image must be converted to use the same palette entry for transparency?

Every image already uses the same palette, by definition, as for the transparent color, ZDoom does take care of this part automatically.