Why didn't the Keen games utilize their palette better?

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Paramultart
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Why didn't the Keen games utilize their palette better?

Post by Paramultart »

Often in 16 color games, you'll see "dark gray" being used to substitute a darker shade than the darker shades of the primary colors.

The problem is, this doesn't really look like "shading", because the dark gray color is too similar in lightness as the darker shades of colors.

What I want to know is, why didn't the utilize the 16 palette better by making "dark gray" slightly DARKER than all the darker shades of the main colors.

It's a little hard to explain this, but take a look at this picture of a Vorticon:
Image
The gray looks like crap. It doesn't shade the red effectively, because it's too similar (if not the same) in lightness.

Does anyone else feel the same way?
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StupidBunny
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Post by StupidBunny »

I've actually noticed the same thing, although it never really occurred to me that they should have simply made it darker in the palette. I tend to run into this problem while modding, when I want to use dark gray as an even darker color than the dark blue or red or whatever and find that it looks ugly when I try that.
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tulip
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Post by tulip »

I think that's because they used the standard ega palette.
Image You crack me up little buddy!
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Grimson
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Post by Grimson »

And I'm sure they did not use black on the shirt/trousers to make it stand from the black lined edges and the black belt.
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Post by Dr. Kylstein »

I think the dark gray is a bit darker on real hardware, maybe due to CRTs or because DOSBox is only approximating the actual colors. That said, the original trilogy isn't exactly a masterpiece of the visual arts.
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Post by Paramultart »

Agreed. Keen 1-3 art is great for nostalgia, but is objectively terrible.
The Galaxy series seems to be pretty smooth and flawless in every way. (Keen 5 felt like a strange mod to me, though... Maybe that's because it's the only Keen game I didn't grow up with)
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lemm
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Post by lemm »

well it was made in a month in their spare time using "borrowed" computers...
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guynietoren
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Post by guynietoren »

That's why I dither black with the dark shade of each color because it looks better. Dark gray almost looks lighter than dark red.

Image
Dithered red and black on the left. Looks much better than the gray on the right.
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Post by VikingBoyBilly »

I think the art style in keen ended up being much more resourceful than if they had 16777216 colors to choose from.
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Post by guynietoren »

Image

I dithered the red in the picture. Kinda reminds me of Space Quest 3.
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Post by Paramultart »

See, that does look better... Although the dark gray seems to look perfect as a darker shade of teal. (or cyan or whatever)
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Post by c64cosmin »

@guynietoren You have used another shade of red which is not being found on the standard 16 color palette. This how it would properly look.
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Post by guynietoren »

KosmynC64 wrote:@guynietoren You have used another shade of red which is not being found on the standard 16 color palette. This how it would properly look.
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Ah yeah... I was getting lazy and just used the color from the MSPaint default colors instead of the red from the image. Wish I could modify what the default ones are.
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Post by Paramultart »

Are there any good pixel editing programs that have convenient "auto-dither" features? I find myself having to boot up Windows 3.1 in order to use a proper airbrush, and it's fill tool allows you to fill in areas that are 25% 50% or 75% dithered.

So yeah... something like that.
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guynietoren
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Post by guynietoren »

Paramultart wrote:Are there any good pixel editing programs that have convenient "auto-dither" features? I find myself having to boot up Windows 3.1 in order to use a proper airbrush, and it's fill tool allows you to fill in areas that are 25% 50% or 75% dithered.

So yeah... something like that.
lol... yeah was about to suggest Win3.1.

I'm afraid if I find a copy I'll need a dos emulator to run windows 3.1 to run paint.

I remember playing with the dither tool on that. It had 3 color bars on the left to slide to the desired color value and it showed the color in the box on the right.

The old one is called pbrush.exe instead of mspaint.exe
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