nagyd/pr

Princed Resources is a tool to export and import graphics and other data from and to DAT files of Prince of Persia 1 and 2.

pr's Issues

PoP2: incorrect palette handling

This is a known issue. The details are here: http://forum.princed.org/viewtopic.php?f=70&t=4062

I wanted to export backgrounds from caverns and final, and the images came with garbled palette. I managed to fix this manually, so now I'm sharing my findings.
(I used PR-1.3.1-prerelease2)

My MO was as follows:

1. find a palette file responsible for garbling (I think you just have to look for files which are too large compared to the average, or maybe this is always pals03500.pal file)
2. Split this file into several smaller files, according to my best judgement. The files contain smaller set of colors.
3. Reload the incorrect pictures, trying different palette files until the colors are correct. (I used GIMP for this: import new palette, then set colormap).

Information about palette files:

CAVERNS/pals03500.pal
Consists of 320 colors (larger than 256)
The first 160 colors are related to the shap03501-shap04059 (they export correctly).
The last 160 colors are about the bridge scenery: shap04225 - shap04235.

FINAL/pals03500.pal
Consists of 576 colors (larger than 256)
First 192 colors = shap03501-shap04027 (tower)
Next 96 = shap04050-shap04105 (chessboard and spider)
Next 96 - unused (and empty)
Next 192 - shap04125-shap04189 (crystal room and Escher rooms)

Observations:

• Palette resources for these images contain multiple concatenated palettes. The end of palette is padded with "124 124 124" (the gray #7c7c7c), sometimes the palettes begin or end with "0 0 0" (not always; but two "0 0 0" lines in a row seem to be a strong indicator of a concatenation point).
• How to find out which images are related to this palette part? Look for gaps in numeration and transitions between screens. The relative order is preserved: if shap04059 comes before shap04225, then the palette for shap04059 will come before shap04225 in the palette file.