PAL files for ending screens

[Ardent]

I've been running some tests with the endgame slideshow for MR. I noticed that in the original game, every ending screen had its own .pal file. When the file is missing, the colours are awfully distorted and the image is totally unviewable.

So, to other mods' creators - do you have any idea how to export .pal files for Fallout 2 from e.g. Photoshop? How did you solve the problem in your own mods?

Big thanks in advance for any insight on this matter.

 

[killap]

Did you ever end up figuring this out? I just had to do the same thing for an endgame image.

My process was:

1. Create nice bmp file.
2. Use bmp2frm to create a frm (other converters would always mess up the colors for me)
3. Using Paint Shop Pro, convert nice bmp file to a 256 color version of it.
4. From Paint Shop Pro, I would create a .pal file. This can only be done if the image is 256 colors or less.

At this point I have a nice frm and what I hope is a good .pal file. However, my .pal file did NOT come out correctly and the colors of the picture were all messed up during the slideshow.

I then just took color.pal (found in the root directory of master.dat) and renamed it to the slideshow pic I had. This time it looked just fine in the slideshow. Perhaps I was lucky here or maybe this is all it takes.

I'm probably doing something wrong with .pal file generation though, since mine was nearly 30kb smaller than color.pal.

 

[Ardent]

Thanks for the info, Killap! I haven't touched the subject since, other matters got in the way.
If I were to guess - it sounds plausible that it's enough to rename the color.pal file - in fact, all MR ending screens are painted with the Fallout palette in mind and look good when put in indexed color in PS.
We also had no such problems with our ending screens for the 2011 demo, so it really stumped me when I saw all the awful discoloration.

Again, thank you and I'll repost when I have some results.