[v1.0] 32pal - Doom but with only 32 colors

[MFG38]

A palette experiment that actually turned out decent enough (if I do say so myself) to share. 32pal turns Doom's graphics into 32-color art, greatly reducing the color range but also bringing its own sense of artistry into the game. Enemy sprites start displaying colors they normally wouldn't have in low lighting. Darker areas fade into a shade of green, then red, then black. Light glows look like they run at 12fps.

 

Feel free to use this for your own projects! I can imagine this working well for a horror wad.

 

SCREENSHOTS

Spoiler

 

 

^{All screenshots taken in Chocolate Doom.}

 

DOWNLOADS

Direct: 32pal.zip

/idgames: https://www.doomworld.com/idgames/graphics/32pal

MFG38's Fun Hub: https://mfg38.github.io/files/doom_wads/32pal.zip

Edited October 9, 2023 by MFG38
v1.0 release

[Darkcrafter07]

I would like to have it in the original game for some powerup, berserk #2. 

[taufan99]

Don't play Doom95 without this! :P

[zokum]

Did you make a custom color range or did you use 5bit colors as well?

[MFG38]

29 minutes ago, zokum said:

Did you make a custom color range or did you use 5bit colors as well?

 

The color range isn't entirely custom. I basically used Paint.net's color quantization tool to reduce the colors in the standard Doom palette from 256 to 32, then edited the colormap by hand to tweak the fades.

[TasAcri]

Is this an automatic color downgrade? Or is there art direction behind the selected colors? It looks like there's very low contrast, like the images are washed out. Or the gamma is too high, in the second image darkness is a very light grey. I assume you can still have decent contrasts even with a low color depth?

Edited September 8, 2023 by TasAcri

[MFG38]

Released v0.2 with some colormap tweaks, mainly getting rid of any ugly single-pixel fades between other, more prominent colors. See OP for the download.

 

1 minute ago, TasAcri said:

Is this an automatic color downgrade? Or is there art direction behind the selected colors? It looks like there's very low contrast, like the images are washed out. I assume you can still have decent contrasts even with a low color depth?

 

It's more or less automatic. Like I said above, I quantized the standard palette down to 32 colors and worked with what Paint.net gave me. The low contrast is very much a result of which colors the algorithm ended up picking, but I personally think it looks cool. It would be interesting to see what could be done with handpicked colors, though - I can imagine you could make it look drastically different (and arguably more awesome) with the right color choices.

[ReaperAA]

Ya know, after seeing this, I am tempted in making a 32 color palette myself. With more handpicked colors that is.

No guarantee though

[zokum]

If you handpick, I suggest you make a few of each hue in vibrant colors, and a large mount of grey scale, with everything dark and very bright being grey scale only. You could probably make the non-grey colors a bit more washed out to make the imagery less garish. A bit like how the greens in the game aren't all-green.

[MFG38]

Can't think of any more ways this could be tweaked, so I went ahead and released the latest version as the final one. Download links and screenshots in the OP have been updated, /idgames submission is pending.