Also, can be used for worldbuilding: using palette-swapped monsters can hint at connections between otherwise disparate locations. This is especially important when a given area is intended to be fast-paced or lead up to a climax, and the designers don't want the player stopping constantly to study 'new' enemies. Palette swapping may be a shortcut, but it does allow designers to create enemies that keep pace with the player's progress while still hinting that the enemies will follow a familiar pattern. Individual characters may also have a choice of several different colors or costumes (or both).Ĭaution: Tropes Are Tools. Such characters are also known as 'clones'. Some fans of fighting games use the term to refer to characters that use the same animations and move sets, even if the characters look very different. Sometimes even bosses are simply re-textured and are huge versions of weaker monsters. Palette Swap to the rescue! By changing the size and textures used on the same model, the designers can make many types of monsters from only a few basic meshes.

Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games ( MMORPGs) are often set in a very large world that must be populated by monsters.

The Head Swap is another tried-and-true technique for making more out of less. While the concept is a little different, these are often called Palette Swaps anyway as they're still easier for developers to make than a full-fledged alternate costume or character.

The most famous group of these are probably the Slimes, topped by the powerful Metal Slime, of Dragon Quest fame.Ī more elaborate variation found in 3D games is the Texture Swap, where the textures on the character's uniform are changed, but the actual model used remains the same. Palette Swapping was used to create a large variety of different enemies, often using different colors for various power levels. In the 8- and 16-bit era RPGs, it was pervasive: because of console limitations, disk and screen space were serious concerns. In fighting games, this is commonly used to differentiate players using the same character, but it is also employed to create 'new' characters. This is seen in some platformers, but it most often appears in Role Playing Games and Fighting Games. One cost-effective method for increasing the variety of game characters is to reuse the same sprite, but using a different color palette. In 2D game development, the creation of sprites is labor-intensive.

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