Alferd Unpacker & Palettes

[cultistofvertigo]

Okay, so this isn't strictly a mugen question, but since it's such a ubiquitous tool for mugening, I'm sure someone around here ought to know what's up with it.

 

So apparently since ver. 10 (from 2013), Alferd has had the ability to preserve the palettes of indexed images on export, hence why I've updated to the newest version when I discovered, to my horror, that it wasn't already doing this. You open up the options menu and there's a little checkbox for it. Wow, how convenient.

 

Except that it doesn't work. Like, at all. The somewhat plain and straightforward nature of the program means there's not really anything I can do about this, everything is there in plain black and white and there's not much futzing around I can do, so all I could think of was reloading the image after changing the options, but that didn't work either. I can't tell what I'm doing wrong here because there's not much to DO, you know what I mean? Either I need to enter a secret code or this functionality doesn't actually work, I clicked the little checkbox, what else is there?

[Ryon]

it works. but your image needs to be 256 color BEFORE hand and PNG format.

 

BMP format images DO NOT guarantee you have a palette.

 

the only problem I have with Alfred Unpacker is that it sorta randomizes the order of the sprites when it cuts em out.

which to me is hella freaking annoying cause now i have to reorganize and find sprites.

[cultistofvertigo]

it works. but your image needs to be 256 color BEFORE hand and PNG format.

 

BMP format images DO NOT guarantee you have a palette.

 

the only problem I have with Alfred Unpacker is that it sorta randomizes the order of the sprites when it cuts em out.

which to me is hella freaking annoying cause now i have to reorganize and find sprites.

 

But they are, though. Obviously, because I'm "preserving" the existing palettes of indexed images, not generating them. Over and over again I convert an image to indexed mode in GIMP, then run them through Alferd and watch as the palette magically disappears!

 

You know, a way you might get around that randomizing thing is just selecting a series of sprites at a time and extracting them piecemeal rather than the whole sheet at once. Or even make different folders for each animation, if you want to get really fancy.

[Ryon]

i'd rather rip it picture by picture the old fashion way if thats the case. i would hate to go line by line.

 

now as for palette, you should download the program !draw3, and open the image in that program if that program can read it, then you know for sure its a proper indexed image.

 

cause you may save it as a indexed image, but how can you REALLY check if its indexed when you close it from gimp?

[cultistofvertigo]

i'd rather rip it picture by picture the old fashion way if thats the case. i would hate to go line by line.

 

now as for palette, you should download the program !draw3, and open the image in that program if that program can read it, then you know for sure its a proper indexed image.

 

cause you may save it as a indexed image, but how can you REALLY check if its indexed when you close it from gimp?

 

...by opening it back up? Here, I'll show you:

That little window on the side there, the colormap thing? That's the palette. This is what happens when you convert an image to be indexed, and then reopen it. The palette is still there. I've used gimp for a hell of a lot of things, including editing paletted sprites, and not once has it "lied" to me, so I'm not really sure what you mean. By contrast, this is what happens when I open up a sprite that was cut up in Alferd from this very image:

 

aaaaaaaaand it's gone. Fighter Factory verifies both accounts: any indexed image created with gimp will still have its palette if you add it to an sff file. But trying to add the palette of this sprite just got me a pop up telling me this isn't an indexed image. These aren't shadow governments or conspiracy theories here, they're just computer programs, they don't have a secret agenda or anything.

 

I can't find anything on this "!draw3" program, though. Is there another name it goes by I should be searching for? I think the exclamation point is throwing the search off, but looking for "draw3" didn't return it either, so I'm not sure what's going on there.