During normal gameplay, palette line 0 holds Sonic's palette, which is used by both player characters, title cards, small animals, and several other common objects such as monitors, springs, spikes and star posts.
Meanwhile, palette line 1 holds the enemy palette, which as the name implies, is used primarily by enemies as well as other stage-specific objects. However, the three shades of yellow (two near the middle, and a third on the far right) are also used by a few common elements, such as rings, yellow springs, and the HUD.
When playing as Knuckles, Sonic's palette is replaced with Knuckles' palette, which is identical except Sonic's shades of blue are replaced by Knuckles' reds.
But now we have a conundrum. Sonic and Knuckles each have their own palette, so in order to display both characters at the same time, both palettes must be loaded at the same time. The solution: load Knuckles' palette over the enemy palette, and avoid placing objects that were using it near the cutscene site.
You might be able to spot a flaw in that plan.
The HUD uses the enemy palette, and the HUD always on screen. So a concession is made: one of Knuckles' colors is sacrificed to make room for the HUD's yellow color, and for better or worse, they chose the green used by his socks.
Of course, because they gave cutscene Knuckles his own palette, they also forgot to update it when they tweaked the main Knuckles' palette to make him less pink, so now we have this yellow-socked, pink doppelganger running around, setting up traps. Makes him even more of a dick, really.
Huh. I always assumed that cutscene Knuckles' pink tone and yellow socks were caused by using the colors of a separate palette. So he actually uses a palette created for him, they just forgot to change his colors to match the updated palette.
ReplyDeleteHow did Sonic 3 Complete solve the socks/HUD issue?
S3C rearranges the palette so a different color is thrown under the bus, namely the brightest shade of orange, I think. As a result, it needs to carry around a copy of Knuckles' cutscene sprites with those two colors swapped, which is kind of overkill.
DeleteOh, I never realized that Knuckles' sprite actually used three shades of orange. Anyway, thanks for clearing that up.
DeleteThe cut scene knuckles is my favorite
ReplyDeleteI've always wondered why the sprite changed from sonic 3 , to Sonic and knuckles.
ReplyDeleteFigured it was something they just changed in development - Now I know.
this sheds alot of light on the knuckles different pallets thing, the more you know i guess
ReplyDeletejames.adesina
ReplyDelete