Game Dev Secrets: Palette Swaps! #indiegamedev #gamedev

The game that I'm developing as an indie game dev is called Isadora's Edge! A 2D Pixel Art platformer game, that I'm developing in the Godot Game Engine! If you're new to Godot or have any questions about Godot or game dev in general, feel free to ask me! #indiegame #gamedesign #godot #godotengine #gaming #gamedevelopment #pixelart #gameengine

[burakcatal]

Birdman looks like a real gentleman and a chill guy at the same time.

[EtronX]

You could also determine enemy difficulty via the color palette depending on what game you go for

[MrQuantumInc]

The palette swap is extremely easy once you know what you are doing, which is why you see it in lots of games.

[Fluffyshot]

What really impresses me is the fact that you gave such a complicated design to a common enemy and not a major character, and i am afraid of how well made the major characters might look like.

[RobinRhombus]

As a bonus, when importing a sprite you could strip away all colour data leaving it pure black and white then apply the original colours in the game itself which reduces the file size of each individual texture.

Admittedly not exactly an issue with most indie games but if you have a lot of highly detailed assets or are working with a very limited engine it may be something to keep in mind.

[TailsClock]

As an old school game dev who loves palettes, it's so wild to hear the modern way to do it is with shaders.

[Azubits]

This is absolutely the best way to do this nowadays, but as someone who used to worry about sprite palettes back in the 16-bit days, it's fun that nowadays shaders have become so cheap they can be used just for recolouring.

[Saccillia]

Rich bird loved his suit so much, he ordered it in every color for his friends ❤

[Domarius]

That's the brute force way to do it. You can actually program the shader optimally so it has no "checks". But it requires pre-processing your images files into an indexed format.

[xaion]

You can also use Aseprite's Indexed canvas's where you can modify the sprites just with swapping pallets.

[AlatroyX]

Hey you stole my suit!
No I didnt! Its red!
Oh you're right, we chillin now

[jadefae]

“Give shaders a try” is such a funny suggestion to me. Like it’s a good one, I agree. But it sounds almost like saying “If you’re a mathematician try giving multiplication a try.”

[manager]

So that's why my computer roars like a helicopter for even a simpliest pixel art games. It computes color changes for every pixel of every sprite 60 times per second.

[GameUnionTV]

This is brilliant! I usually swap colors of the whole image, but changing one enemy is a nice idea.

[luuketaylor]

I'm not even working in games or dev related stuff, but I absolutely love how you distill information like this so quickly and clearly. You must be a godsend to actual indie devs!

[Swinkly_]

Okay, this is way simpler than I thought it was. Could definitely see myself using this!

[flomalodev]

Awesome! This method just has one flaw - you have to change all instances of a color. So for example if the character has a green coat and green glasses, with this swap both of these greens would be changed to the new color (assuming they are in fact the same shade of green)

That's why I use greyscale sprites where different shades of grey can map to the same color, giving you even more fine-grained control :)

[hadesthegod]

These are some of the best tutorial shorts I’ve ever seen. Very VERY useful!! I know a lot of these things as concepts or buzzwords, but you are making me truly understand them!

[MiroYT]

Holy shit this is crazy thank you for sharing

[crimsonguitarist]

If you have to make a lot of color palettes for your game (like a fighting game), you can set up a false color map as the base sprite colors you use. You would use debug colors in your base sprite that you would not use in your game's palette, then you would use a shader to apply the correct palette at runtime.
The benefit of this is that you can add in extra details in the false color palette that some palettes can use and some won't use, so you can say give a character long sleeves or short sleeves depending on what colors you have on your false color palette's arms as an example. You see this used to great effect in Skullgirls.