That's why I was thinking of parameters.
The player loads a game showing the default water tiles and then selects a parameter if there is a need to see one of the depth views, perhaps to find a shallow tile to be raised to a land tile as cheaply as possible.
Time for some technical stuff:The whole reason I suggest going 32bpp is exactly the reason you mention: the 8bpp palette is too restrictive to get a good result here Your first attempt was ok, but then obviously there's the problem of redistribution, which takes that option away. As I write this I'm playing around with trying to make a "stock-alike" water sprite from scratch which blends in decently with the original shore sprites, but the palette animation cycles are a real pain to line up with their 'randomness', so we'll see if I can get a good enough result. If that works then more options may be on the table
I'd still lean towards going 32bpp and using the darkening effect even if this works, but that's just my preference.
OpenTTD\src\tables\palettes.h sets/reserves the colours by rgb and then sets the animation sequence:
Code: Select all
Extracted from src\tables\palette.h
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/** Actual palette animation tables */
static const ExtraPaletteValues _extra_palette_values = {
/* dark blue water */
{ M( 32, 68, 112), M( 36, 72, 116), M( 40, 76, 120), M( 44, 80, 124),
M( 48, 84, 128) },
/* glittery water */
{ M(216, 244, 252), M(172, 208, 224), M(132, 172, 196), M(100, 132, 168),
M( 72, 100, 144), M( 72, 100, 144), M( 72, 100, 144), M( 72, 100, 144),
M( 72, 100, 144), M( 72, 100, 144), M( 72, 100, 144), M( 72, 100, 144),
M(100, 132, 168), M(132, 172, 196), M(172, 208, 224) },
It would require a patch to mess with them.