Team Color Shifting - Revision history

Elvish Hunter: Fixed links and image URLs to use HTTPS

2022-06-12T19:16:29Z

Fixed links and image URLs to use HTTPS

Soliton: note MAGENTA_IS_THE_TEAM_COLOR deprecation

2020-07-30T16:05:15Z

note MAGENTA_IS_THE_TEAM_COLOR deprecation

Artisticdude: /* design errata for nerds/game-designers */ Corrected capitalization in the section title

2012-01-10T14:49:38Z

‎design errata for nerds/game-designers: Corrected capitalization in the section title

Paŭlo: /* Introduction */ removed box background, added palette link

2010-10-08T22:41:53Z

‎Introduction: removed box background, added palette link

Paŭlo: resulting palette as a sidebox, slight reformatting, link to macro reference

2010-10-08T22:29:27Z

resulting palette as a sidebox, slight reformatting, link to macro reference

Paŭlo: team colorswatch

2010-10-07T11:49:57Z

team colorswatch

Solsword: Link to the new TeamColoring wiki page

2009-09-17T04:27:48Z

Link to the new TeamColoring wiki page

Solsword: /* See Also */

2009-09-17T04:24:29Z

‎See Also

Jetryl: More readability

2009-05-06T09:38:44Z

Jetryl: Major Edits

2009-05-06T09:33:06Z

Major Edits

@@ Line 5: / Line 5: @@
 == Introduction ==
-Wesnoth's sprites are only drawn in one color, but in an actual game, all of our unit's clothing will change color to the color of whatever team they're on.  We call this "team color" shifting.  Any team color shifting system needs a way of indicating which areas of the graphic are to be changed in color.  Ours solves this by selecting a certain, specific range of colors, and shifting the pixels whenever they are that source color in the unit image.  In our system, this can be done with any set of colors that you choose, on a per-unit basis.  However, we've got a shortcut for one set of colors, magenta.  We picked a color that because it would stick out like a sore thumb; it's not an 'earthtone', and isn't commonly seen in nature. <div style="float:right; width:260px; padding:1ex; margin:1ex; border: thin dotted; font-size:80%;">http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/download/file.php?id=46095&type=.png
+Wesnoth's sprites are only drawn in one color, but in an actual game, all of our unit's clothing will change color to the color of whatever team they're on.  We call this "team color" shifting.  Any team color shifting system needs a way of indicating which areas of the graphic are to be changed in color.  Ours solves this by selecting a certain, specific range of colors, and shifting the pixels whenever they are that source color in the unit image.  In our system, this can be done with any set of colors that you choose, on a per-unit basis.  However, we've got a shortcut for one set of colors, magenta.  We picked a color that because it would stick out like a sore thumb; it's not an 'earthtone', and isn't commonly seen in nature. <div style="float:right; width:260px; padding:1ex; margin:1ex; border: thin dotted; font-size:80%;">https://www.wesnoth.org/forum/download/file.php?id=46095&type=.png
-For the first nine teams, this will look like this after teamcoloring. (The last line is the original magenta image.) [http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=31836&start=0]
+For the first nine teams, this will look like this after teamcoloring. (The last line is the original magenta image.) [https://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=31836&start=0]
 </div>
 It's not just any magenta; it has to be from the following, very specific set:
-http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/team-color/colorswatch.png
+https://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/team-color/colorswatch.png
-<div style="font-size:70%">If you're using GIMP, here is a palette with the team color values: [http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/download/file.php?id=44892]<br/>
+<div style="font-size:70%">If you're using GIMP, here is a palette with the team color values: [https://www.wesnoth.org/forum/download/file.php?id=44892]<br/>
 Put this file as "wesnoth-tc.gpl" in your ~/.gimp-2.6/palettes/.</div>
@@ Line 38: / Line 38: @@
 This is a screenshot of what a unit would look like if it were drawn directly, without the special pixels:
-http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/team-color/tcpatch_off.png
+https://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/team-color/tcpatch_off.png
 This is a screenshot of the team-colored pixels in a separate photoshop layer:
-http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/team-color/tcpatch_alone.png
+https://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/team-color/tcpatch_alone.png
 And this is what the combined image looks like, which will get mixed-down into a single PNG file:
-http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/team-color/tcpatch_on.png
+https://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/team-color/tcpatch_on.png
@@ Line 54: / Line 54: @@
 == WML How To ==
-(not needed anymore since 1.13.6) We've defined a WML macro to specify a set of magenta colors, as seen in the previous palette.  To use this, you simply sample the color with your graphics program's eyedropper tool, and then draw with it.  The macro is used just like the flag_rgb business - you simply insert the following in your unit .cfg file (for reference, the macro itself is defined in [http://www.wesnoth.org/macro-reference.xhtml#MAGENTA_IS_THE_TEAM_COLOR image-utils.cfg]):
+(not needed anymore since 1.13.6) We've defined a WML macro to specify a set of magenta colors, as seen in the previous palette.  To use this, you simply sample the color with your graphics program's eyedropper tool, and then draw with it.  The macro is used just like the flag_rgb business - you simply insert the following in your unit .cfg file (for reference, the macro itself is defined in [https://www.wesnoth.org/macro-reference.xhtml#MAGENTA_IS_THE_TEAM_COLOR image-utils.cfg]):
    {MAGENTA_IS_THE_TEAM_COLOR}

@@ Line 17: / Line 17: @@
-Also, it won't show up on a unit unless they have this line in their unitname.cfg file:
+Also, it won't show up on a unit unless they have this line in their unitname.cfg file (not needed anymore since 1.13.6):
    {MAGENTA_IS_THE_TEAM_COLOR}
@@ Line 54: / Line 54: @@
 == WML How To ==
-We've defined a WML macro to specify a set of magenta colors, as seen in the previous palette.  To use this, you simply sample the color with your graphics program's eyedropper tool, and then draw with it.  The macro is used just like the flag_rgb business - you simply insert the following in your unit .cfg file (for reference, the macro itself is defined in [http://www.wesnoth.org/macro-reference.xhtml#MAGENTA_IS_THE_TEAM_COLOR image-utils.cfg]):
+(not needed anymore since 1.13.6) We've defined a WML macro to specify a set of magenta colors, as seen in the previous palette.  To use this, you simply sample the color with your graphics program's eyedropper tool, and then draw with it.  The macro is used just like the flag_rgb business - you simply insert the following in your unit .cfg file (for reference, the macro itself is defined in [http://www.wesnoth.org/macro-reference.xhtml#MAGENTA_IS_THE_TEAM_COLOR image-utils.cfg]):
    {MAGENTA_IS_THE_TEAM_COLOR}

@@ Line 62: / Line 62: @@
-== design errata for nerds/game-designers ==
+== Design Errata for Nerds/Game-Designers ==
 E.g. "Why we did it the way we did."  There are a number of other ways to do this, but this was what we settled on.  A different option might have been to use special grayscale image maps to indicate what to change, they would have basically doubled the number of images used by the game.  Alternately, we could have done some bizarre wizardry with graphics files, and included something like an alpha-channel to indicate which pixels to change; we decided against this because that would break the huge advantage of using a very standard format like PNG, which is that everyone can easily grab a program to edit it.  Design nitpickers will notice one minor disadvantage in how we did it.  The colors which get shifted away are inaccessible for direct use; but because they're such a small set of colors, and because they were chosen to be "unusual" colors (rather than common ones like earthtones), it's unlikely that not being able to use these specific RGB values would ever be a problem.
 == See Also ==

@@ Line 5: / Line 5: @@
 == Introduction ==
-Wesnoth's sprites are only drawn in one color, but in an actual game, all of our unit's clothing will change color to the color of whatever team they're on.  We call this "team color" shifting.  Any team color shifting system needs a way of indicating which areas of the graphic are to be changed in color.  Ours solves this by selecting a certain, specific range of colors, and shifting the pixels whenever they are that source color in the unit image.  In our system, this can be done with any set of colors that you choose, on a per-unit basis.  However, we've got a shortcut for one set of colors, magenta.  We picked a color that because it would stick out like a sore thumb; it's not an 'earthtone', and isn't commonly seen in nature.
+Wesnoth's sprites are only drawn in one color, but in an actual game, all of our unit's clothing will change color to the color of whatever team they're on.  We call this "team color" shifting.  Any team color shifting system needs a way of indicating which areas of the graphic are to be changed in color.  Ours solves this by selecting a certain, specific range of colors, and shifting the pixels whenever they are that source color in the unit image.  In our system, this can be done with any set of colors that you choose, on a per-unit basis.  However, we've got a shortcut for one set of colors, magenta.  We picked a color that because it would stick out like a sore thumb; it's not an 'earthtone', and isn't commonly seen in nature. <div style="float:right; width:260px; padding:1ex; margin:1ex; border: thin dotted; font-size:80%;">http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/download/file.php?id=46095&type=.png
 http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/team-color/colorswatch.png
 Also, it won't show up on a unit unless they have this line in their unitname.cfg file:
@@ Line 17: / Line 22: @@
 You'll need to have some costume element on the unit which can be designated as the team-colored piece of their outfit; It's best to design units around having this.   The easiest way to designate this, is to define a new layer in a capable program (photoshop, gimp, etc), overlaid on the rest of the image, in which you draw with our special values of magenta.
 == Time-Saving Tips ==

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-by Richard Kettering (Jetryl)
+originally by Richard Kettering (Jetryl)
 :Note: if you're interested in actually changing the color of a sprite that has already had this technique applied to it (i.e. automatically changing the magenta in a sprite to blue or red), see the [[TeamColoring]] page instead.
 Wesnoth's sprites are only drawn in one color, but in an actual game, all of our unit's clothing will change color to the color of whatever team they're on.  We call this "team color" shifting.  Any team color shifting system needs a way of indicating which areas of the graphic are to be changed in color.  Ours solves this by selecting a certain, specific range of colors, and shifting the pixels whenever they are that source color in the unit image.  In our system, this can be done with any set of colors that you choose, on a per-unit basis.  However, we've got a shortcut for one set of colors, magenta.  We picked a color that because it would stick out like a sore thumb; it's not an 'earthtone', and isn't commonly seen in nature.
-It's not just any magenta; it has to be from the following, very specific set:
+<div style="float:right; width:260px; padding:1ex; margin:1ex; border: thin dotted; font-size:80%; background-color: lightgray; ">http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/download/file.php?id=46095&type=.png
 http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/team-color/colorswatch.png
 Also, it won't show up on a unit unless they have this line in their unitname.cfg file:
    {MAGENTA_IS_THE_TEAM_COLOR}
@@ Line 20: / Line 19: @@
-'''Time-Saving Tips:'''
+== Time-Saving Tips ==
 If units are drawn with a small color set, as used in traditional sprite art, you can use a properly-set paint-bucket tool to replace all instances of a given color.  You'll want to set it to be non-contiguous, non-antialiased and to have a tolerance of 0 (presumably, you also want it to fill based on "all layers" - these settings are based on Photoshop, and the Gimp is likely similar).
@@ Line 31: / Line 30: @@
-'''Screenshots:'''
+== Screenshots ==
 This is a screenshot of what a unit would look like if it were drawn directly, without the special pixels:
@@ Line 49: / Line 48: @@
-'''WML How To: '''
+== WML How To ==
-We've defined a WML macro to specify a set of magenta colors, as seen in the previous palette.  To use this, you simply sample the color with your graphics program's eyedropper tool, and then draw with it.  The macro is used just like the flag_rgb business - you simply insert the following in your unit .cfg file (for reference, the macro itself is defined in utils.cfg):
+We've defined a WML macro to specify a set of magenta colors, as seen in the previous palette.  To use this, you simply sample the color with your graphics program's eyedropper tool, and then draw with it.  The macro is used just like the flag_rgb business - you simply insert the following in your unit .cfg file (for reference, the macro itself is defined in [http://www.wesnoth.org/macro-reference.xhtml#MAGENTA_IS_THE_TEAM_COLOR image-utils.cfg]):
    {MAGENTA_IS_THE_TEAM_COLOR}
@@ Line 59: / Line 58: @@
-''' design errata for nerds/game-designers: '''
+== design errata for nerds/game-designers ==
 E.g. "Why we did it the way we did."  There are a number of other ways to do this, but this was what we settled on.  A different option might have been to use special grayscale image maps to indicate what to change, they would have basically doubled the number of images used by the game.  Alternately, we could have done some bizarre wizardry with graphics files, and included something like an alpha-channel to indicate which pixels to change; we decided against this because that would break the huge advantage of using a very standard format like PNG, which is that everyone can easily grab a program to edit it.  Design nitpickers will notice one minor disadvantage in how we did it.  The colors which get shifted away are inaccessible for direct use; but because they're such a small set of colors, and because they were chosen to be "unusual" colors (rather than common ones like earthtones), it's unlikely that not being able to use these specific RGB values would ever be a problem.

← Older revision		Revision as of 11:49, 7 October 2010
Line 10:		Line 10:
	Also, it won't show up on a unit unless they have this line in their unitname.cfg file:		Also, it won't show up on a unit unless they have this line in their unitname.cfg file:
	{MAGENTA_IS_THE_TEAM_COLOR}		{MAGENTA_IS_THE_TEAM_COLOR}
		+
		+	For the first nine teams, this will look like this after teamcolorizing (The last line is the original magenta image) [http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=31836&start=0]:
		+
		+	http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/download/file.php?id=46095&type=.png
		+

← Older revision		Revision as of 04:27, 17 September 2009
Line 1:		Line 1:
	by Richard Kettering (Jetryl)		by Richard Kettering (Jetryl)

		+	:Note: if you're interested in actually changing the color of a sprite that has already had this technique applied to it (i.e. automatically changing the magenta in a sprite to blue or red), see the [[TeamColoring]] page instead.

	Wesnoth's sprites are only drawn in one color, but in an actual game, all of our unit's clothing will change color to the color of whatever team they're on. We call this "team color" shifting. Any team color shifting system needs a way of indicating which areas of the graphic are to be changed in color. Ours solves this by selecting a certain, specific range of colors, and shifting the pixels whenever they are that source color in the unit image. In our system, this can be done with any set of colors that you choose, on a per-unit basis. However, we've got a shortcut for one set of colors, magenta. We picked a color that because it would stick out like a sore thumb; it's not an 'earthtone', and isn't commonly seen in nature.		Wesnoth's sprites are only drawn in one color, but in an actual game, all of our unit's clothing will change color to the color of whatever team they're on. We call this "team color" shifting. Any team color shifting system needs a way of indicating which areas of the graphic are to be changed in color. Ours solves this by selecting a certain, specific range of colors, and shifting the pixels whenever they are that source color in the unit image. In our system, this can be done with any set of colors that you choose, on a per-unit basis. However, we've got a shortcut for one set of colors, magenta. We picked a color that because it would stick out like a sore thumb; it's not an 'earthtone', and isn't commonly seen in nature.

@@ Line 60: / Line 60: @@
 * [[Create]]
 * [[Art Tutorials]]
 [[Category: Art Tutorials]]

@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
 by Richard Kettering (Jetryl)
-===How to make units which conform to the system that lets us shift team colors.===
+==Making Team-Colored Sprites:==
-Any team color shifting system needs a way of indicating which areas of the graphic are to be changed in color.  Ours solves this by selecting a certain range of colors, and shifting the pixels whenever they are that source color in the unit image.  In our system, this can be done with any set of colors that you choose, on a per-unit basis.  There are other ways that this could have been done, but this one was chosen for several reasons.  For one thing, if we had used special grayscale image maps to indicate what to change, they would have basically doubled the number of images used by the game.  The notable disadvantages of our system are that the colors which get shifted away are inaccessible for use, which is a minor issue, and that we only have a binary choice of a pixel getting shifted, which is a somewhat more major limitation, albeit one which is worth working around.
+Wesnoth's sprites are only drawn in one color, but in an actual game, all of our unit's clothing will change color to the color of whatever team they're on.  We call this "team color" shifting.  Any team color shifting system needs a way of indicating which areas of the graphic are to be changed in color.  Ours solves this by selecting a certain, specific range of colors, and shifting the pixels whenever they are that source color in the unit image.  In our system, this can be done with any set of colors that you choose, on a per-unit basis.  However, we've got a shortcut for one set of colors, magenta.  We picked a color that because it would stick out like a sore thumb; it's not an 'earthtone', and isn't commonly seen in nature.
-These colors are defined in the unit .cfg file.  They are defined as follows, for an example in which we shift the colors black and white:
+It's not just any magenta; it has to be from the following, very specific set:
-  flag_rgb=0,0,0,255,255,255
+http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/team-color/colorswatch.png
-The game will shift the color set to one of the team colors; in doing so it will completely overrun the saturation of the original color (E- not sure about that).  It will change the hue to that of the team, and shift the luminosity as well.  The coloration you give is set in terms of relative luminosity - the entire patch may be bright or dark depending on which team the unit is on.
+Also, it won't show up on a unit unless they have this line in their unitname.cfg file:
+  {MAGENTA_IS_THE_TEAM_COLOR}
-==WorkFlow:==
+You'll need to have some costume element on the unit which can be designated as the team-colored piece of their outfit; It's best to design units around having this.   The easiest way to designate this, is to define a new layer in a capable program (photoshop, gimp, etc), overlaid on the rest of the image, in which you draw with our special values of magenta.
@@ Line 31: / Line 18: @@
 If units are drawn with a small color set, as used in traditional sprite art, you can use a properly-set paint-bucket tool to replace all instances of a given color.  You'll want to set it to be non-contiguous, non-antialiased and to have a tolerance of 0 (presumably, you also want it to fill based on "all layers" - these settings are based on Photoshop, and the Gimp is likely similar).
-If someone used a "non-traditional" spriting technique (such as jetryl or wayfarer, using a paintbrush instead of a pencil tool), you're not out of luck at all.  Simply take the same paint-bucket tool with the same settings, and crank the tolerance up to about 20-30.  The paint-bucket will then affect all of those similar, subtle gradations in shade which were achieved with the paintbrush tool, replacing them all with a single color.  Use this with progressively lighter shades, and you'll fill in 90% of the target area, after which it is trivial to fill the holes left behind with a pencil tool.
+If you're working on a sprite which isn't strictly pixel art (e.g. which doesn't have a tiny set of unique RGB values), you're not out of luck at all.  Simply take the same paint-bucket tool with the same settings, and crank the tolerance up to about 20-30.  The paint-bucket will then affect all of those similar, subtle gradations in shade which were achieved with the paintbrush tool, replacing them all with a single color.  Use this with progressively lighter shades, and you'll fill in 90% of the target area, after which it is trivial to fill the holes left behind with a pencil tool.
 Also, if you'd like a sane representation of what the final colors will look like, you can shift this separate team-color layer in your graphics application by using a '''temporary''' hue/saturation filter on that layer (I use +40 to the hue on the magenta colors to give a red hue similar but '''not''' identical to the one which the game uses).
-Finally, to keep things intuitive, if you are using the magenta swatch, which you should, it is often easiest to simply sample the colors from a unit to which this has already been applied.
+It is often easiest to simply sample the colors from a unit to which already has team colors on it.
 ==Screenshots==
-This is a screenshot of what a unit looks like with his team color layer turned off - this is the graphic before the edit, essentially:
+This is a screenshot of what a unit would look like if it were drawn directly, without the special pixels:
 http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/team-color/tcpatch_off.png
-This is a screenshot of the team color layer itself.  Note that it is only what is changed:
+This is a screenshot of the team-colored pixels in a separate photoshop layer:
 http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/team-color/tcpatch_alone.png
@@ Line 50: / Line 37: @@
 http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki-images/tutorial/team-color/tcpatch_on.png