PalMod is a tool used to modify video game palettes, primarily for Capcom games. It was created back in ~2007 with the primary purpose of editing colors for MvC2 and 3S. It is how you get a Mango Sentinel. It was created primarily by knarxed/suupabuu with help from magnetro, eidrian, and Preppy. Development work generally stopped in 2008 with version 1.22. I started working on PalMod again recently, which is why I’m now making this thread. At this point I am making fairly regular releases as I work through various issues and features.
Release history as of 2/18/2020 follows. Further updates/changes will be noted by posts in this thread.
*** PalMod v1.25 ****
XMvSF/ST: Fixed a crash exporting sprites to PNG/BMP/etc.
XMvSF: Updated palette editing: friendly names and additional sprites are used where known or available.
3S for DC: Fixed saving changes back to the palette files.
*** PalMod v1.24 ****
MvC1: We now show sprites we had from the MvC2 work where appropriate: most characters and effects have sprites now.
MvC1: Add editing for Ken, Akuma, and MechaGief. Added Megaman’s extra palettes. So so many.
MvC1: Add editing for every assist palette that I’m aware. Thanks to IceManual for helping gather those offsets.
Fix editing X-Ism palettes for SFA3.
MvC1: Add support for extensible extra palettes. The stock mvce.txt included adds in support for a few of the assist characters. That should help you get started. I may flesh that out further as I have time. The format should be fairly logical. For characters with larger ranges you might want to do 0x00020 through 0x00060, perhaps, instead of just the 32 (0x20) palettes I demonstrate here.
Various code cleanup and we remember window position. Hopefully that’s not annoying.
*** PalMod v1.23 ****
2020/02/10:
** MvC1: Fixed editing for Gambit, Morrigan, and Shadow Lady thanks to help from IceManual.
** String updates: make sure we display full version information everywhere.
** Get Roll’s supplemental palettes as functional as Megaman’s are.
2020/02/09 :
** Fixed Gief’s boots/clothes supplemental palette generation. Gief’s supplemental body frames (palettes 0x17-0x19 and 0x29-2B, indexes 1-7) are TINTs and have not been touched yet.
** Reverted to the Dec 2008 image.dat as that has better coverage of Extra sprites.
** Fixed Ice-Man’s supplemental palette generation.
** Fixed Chun-Li’s supplemental palette generation.
2020/02/08 initial:
** Fixed alpha being reset when switching between 32bit/8bit display
** Fixed a crash on palette selection
** Add some warning/error messages
** Various UI tweaks
** Update defaults
MvC2: If “Process Supplement Palettes” is on, we now automatically tint the extra sprites for Cyclops (0x5a for LP), Zangief (0x17-0x19 for LP), and Cammy (0x9-0x11 for LP). The tint factors are tweakable, so let me know if it should be adjusted further.
MvC2: Added support within “Process Supplement Palettes” to handle MechaGief (0x11 to 0x29-2b for LP) and Lilith (Morrigan’s Extra 1 to 0x4b-4c for LP). Improved PSP handling for Rogue’s taunt and win pose sprite, Morrigan’s taunt sprite, and Spider-man’s Spider Signal.
PhotoShop compat: Use 772b ACT files instead of 768b ACT files, as 772 works better with PhotoShop.
Now that the supplement palettes option makes more sense it should be much easier to fix or add further modifications as necessary.
MvC2: Fix support for dual palette handling, as in Tron Bonne and CapCom’s Extra 02 and 03. This is the correct fix for the original “Hover” crash that plagued everybody in the 1.22 hack builds that went around.
MvC2: When you update the LP palette for characters in Spiral’s Metamorphosis Dance super, those are now also copied over to the appropriate Extra palettes for Spiral.
MvC2 “Process Supplement Palettes”: Fixed Sent’s Extra 01 copy, handle all Spiral’s Dance frames, and fixed Wolvie/Bonevie’s berserker barrage trail effect.
This is everything I’m aware of that needed fixing for supplement palettes: please hit me up if I missed anything. At this point I plan on stopping work on MvC2-only editing as I go work on other things: please let me know if I missed anything.
1.29: MvC2: Fixed a longstanding overflow issue affecting the massive number of palettes for Spiral and Megaman. Spiral’s A2 palettes and Megaman’s HK, A1, and A2 palettes were overflowing our counter, resulting in colors being applied to the wrong indexes. Easy to fix once somebody pointed it out: as always, please let me know when you see weirdness and I’ll look into it.
I’m currently working on PalMod having an option to check and fix your mix to take care of stuff like flashing Storms or that kind of thing without people having to do much work other than reburning the CDI. As part of that work, I noticed that editing Shuma Gorath is doing terrible things, so fixed that up and that version is live now. The symptom would be that you would edit Shuma Gorath and Spiderman’s colors would change. This looks to have always been bugged since 2008: PalMod was just using the wrong step count. Fixed that and also added handling for his dash stance, so Shuma editing should be great now.
Version 1.30: MvC2: New autopatching! The new “Check My Edits” button does a simple validation pass over your palettes, ensuring that your Storm doesn’t flash. This “Check My Edits” option is meant for previously created mixes and should help you fix those in seconds.
Jojos: Integrate editing. Make sure to use the new Jojos mode when you choose Load File. If you need further Extras past this the filenames are jojos50e.txt and jojos51e.txt respectively. This integration is still new, so feedback as always is welcome.
That was a large set of data to integrate. But I wanted an excuse to put off the other big palmod project soooo finally got Jojos mode done. woot.
This is particularly useful for games or palettes that don’t have previews otherwise available. I may try to cobble together a library that ships with PalMod containing useful not otherwise available RAW files. We’ll see: this is new.
General: Add 16 color per line view. This should be useful for editing stages.
General: Allow up to 256 color palettes. You can view those fully in 16 color per line mode: in normal 8 color per line mode we’ll show them across two pages. Currently only used for MSH portraits.
General: Fix support for Photoshop ACT “772 byte” file write/reads.
General: significantly improve internal Extras handling. We now support up to 10,000 extras per file. That’s mostly ridiculous unless you’re spelunking a ROM, but hey you can do it.
Jojo’s: New preview sprites from string! Adds Khan, Avdol, and Petshop.
MvC2: Use Eidrian’s Palette Guide description strings for all moves. Should make things easier.
COTA: Expose the palettes for character select icons, portraits, and Colossus shine/super portraits.
MvC2 arcade (NAOMI) ROM support. Note that for right now you need to use the Eidrian Palette Guide for MvC2 Arcade to handle Extra palettes or you will get things like flashing Storm.
Improve MSH, Jojos, and SFA3 sprite coverage.
I’m partially through getting the Extra palettes auto-handling working for MVC2-Arcade, so if you’re lazy and wait it’ll probably all be handled automagically soon.
Significant improvements to the supplemental processing logic used for MVC2-Dreamcast and now MVC2-Arcade as well. Please upgrade if you’re using earlier versions.
PalMod 1.51:
“Team View” for MVC2-Arcade: you can see all of MSP at once and that kind of thing.
PalMod 1.52:
Improved PalMod startup: it now uses 2MB less memory on startup (down to 5.7MB from 8MB)
