Re: [pygame] Surface palette

[Pete Shinners <pete@shinners.org>]

Lee Harr wrote:
> What makes a Surface have a palette?
>
> I was thinking that using set_palette might be an interesting way of
> changing the color of a sprite (instead of creating multiple images)
any 8bit image has a palette. the best way to get an 8bit 
image is to load one from disk. if you have a predefined 
palette you want to apply to any image, you can get SDL to 
do it with the 'convert' command.

my24bitsurface.convert(surfacewithpalette)

i highly recommend using this technique, it is very easy to 
create alternate sprites. i use this quite a bit in 
solarwolf. for example, all the different colored boxes load 
the graphics like this...

    for i in range(15):
        img = gfx.load_raw('box%02d.gif'%i)
        boximages.append(img.convert())
        pal = img.get_palette()
        newpal = [(g,g,b) for (r,g,b) in pal]
        img.set_palette(newpal)
        yboximages.append(img.convert())
        newpal = [(g,b,b) for (r,g,b) in pal]
        img.set_palette(newpal)
        rboximages.append(img.convert())

the images on disk are green, but you can sort of see as 
solarwolf progressed different colored boxes appeared. this 
also creates a yellow and red set of animated boxes.

of course, this is only swapping color channels to create 
the different images, you could also easily multiply, shift, 
or do just about anything you want to the palette.