Skip to content

Making a Samus Palette

Mike A. Trethewey edited this page Nov 24, 2022 · 2 revisions

When making a new sprite, you will need to consider your palette—the colors used by the game to display your sprite.

Table of Contents

Overview

Samus has 3 armor palettes of 15 colors each: one for each suit.

Each palette has 15 sprite colors. When Samus obtains a suit upgrade, the game looks for the appropriate new palette and loads it into VRAM. As such, every color corresponds to exactly 1 other color in each mail palette. For example, the yellow at index 9 will always become the orange at index 9 when Samus wears the Varia Suit; and it will become the purple when she wears the Gravity Suit. This applies to all 15 colors.

Below the suit colors is the Death Animation palette.

Below the death colors is the Crystal Flash palette. SpriteSomething applies bugfixes to Samus to allow for more colors in this animation.

Below the CF colors is the File Select palette to render Samus's head next to each save file, as well as the missile cursor and the border around the text "SAMUS DATA".

The bottom row of the palette block has the color of the visor during usage of the X-Ray Scope and also the colors for the ship.

Default Color Descriptions

When making a sprite, you have the ability to customize the different palettes that are used to render the player sprite. In most cases, it does not matter the order in which you place colors into your palette, with the main exceptions being: Colors P3/V3/G3: These are classically used to color the visor. When the player walks through a door, most of the player sprite goes dark except for this color, and during the door transition this color will temporarily be replaced by color P3 (for this reason you may want to set P3/V3/G3 to be the same color). When the player is using the x-ray scope or is in a dark room, these colors will be replaced with an effect that rapidly cycles between colors X0, X1, and X2. Colors S0/S1/S2: These colors must be the ship's body, the ship's window, and the ship's underlighting, respectively. Shading is applied programmatically. Colors C0-C5: These colors are used for the bubble during crystal flash, and the colors rapidly exchange places to create the pulsating effect of the bubble. In repeated fashion, colors C9-CD become CA-CE, and CE becomes C9. CAUTION: Be very careful with this palette not to create strong flashing effects that may negatively affect certain viewers.

Code Segment
X X-Ray/Darkness
P Power Suit
V Varia Suit
G Gravity Suit
F File Select screen
S Ship
D Death
C Crystal Flash
Color Label What it controls
X0 X-Ray (Dark) Darkest frame of Visor while using X-Ray Scope and in darkened rooms
X1 X-Ray (Normal) Midlevel frame of Visor while using X-Ray Scope and in darkened rooms
X2 X-Ray (Bright) Brightest frame of Visor while using X-Ray Scope and in darkened rooms
[P|V|G] 0 Suit Lining (Dark) Darkest parts of her suit that aren't metal and are in between the seams, her midsection is primarily this material
[P|V|G] 1 Body (Bright) Brightest shine of the main segments of her armor
[P|V|G] 2 Outline Used for shading and borders
[P|V|G] 3 Visor Normal color of her visor. Also used for sparks in Screw Attack and when loading into the game.
[P|V|G] 4 Metal (Dark) Darkest portion of arm cannon & bottom shoulder bands
[P|V|G] 5 Glint/Sparkle/Shine Shiniest parts of the body and the sparkle on morph ball
[P|V|G] 6 Metal (Brightest) Brightest portion of arm cannon & bottom shoulder bands
[P|V|G] 7 Metal (Bright) Midlevel portion of arm cannon & bottom shoulder bands
[P|V|G] 8 Head (Brightest) Brightest portion of her helmet
[P|V|G] 9 Body (Normal) Midlevel of the main segments of her armor
[P|V|G] A Body (Dark) Darkest of the main segments of her armor
[P|V|G] B Suit Lining (Normal) Lightest parts of her suit that aren't metal and are in between the seams, her midsection is primarily this material
[P|V|G] C Metal (Darkest) Darkest portion of arm cannon & bottom shoulder bands
[P|V|G] D Head (Bright) Brightest portion of her helmet
[P|V|G] E Head (Normal) Normal portion of her helmet
F0 Visor (Bright) Brightest portion of her visor
F1 Visor (Normal) Midlevel portion of her visor
F2 Visor (Dark) Darkest portion of her visor
F3 Grey (Bright) Bright grey bits on Samus' helmet & missiles & long segments of border frames
F4 Grey (Normal) Midlevel grey bits on Samus' helmet & missiles & main border of border frames
F5 Grey (Dark) Dark grey bits on Samus' helmet & missiles & corners of border frames
F6 Grey (Shadows) Shadowy bits of the grey bits on Samus' helmet & missiles & border frames
F7 Illumination White-lit missile light exterior & some bits on her helmet (helmet pixels may be a bug?)
F8 Visor (Dark) Darkest portion of her visor
F9 Helmet (Brightest) Brightest portion of her helmet
FA Helmet (Bright) Bright portion of her helmet & red-lit missile light interior
FB Helmet (Normal) Midlevel portion of her helmet & red-lit missile light exterior
FC Helmet (Dark) Dark portion of her helmet & red-unlit missile light interior
FD Helmet (Darkest) Darkest portion of her helmet & red-unlit missile light exterior & dark bits of her visor
FE Grey (Brightest) Brightest grey bits on Samus' helmet & missiles & inner corner of border frames
FF Outline Outliney bits of her visor casing and such
S0 Ship Body This color will be used as the base color for the body of her ship. Shading will be programmatically applied.
S1 Ship Window This color will be used as the base color for the window of her ship. Shading will be programmatically applied.
S2 Ship Thrusters This color will be used as the base color for the thrusters of her ship. Shading will be programmatically applied.
D0 Hair (Lightest)
D1 Hair (Light)
D2 Hair (Dark)
D3 Hair (Darkest)
D4 White Unused in the classic sprite
D5 Skin (Lightest) Primarily found on her shoulders and legs
D6 Skin (Light) Primarily found on her chest and legs
D7 Skin (Dark) Primarily found in her abdominal area and limbs far from the camera
D8 Skin (Darker) Primarily found as outlines on the near limbs
D9 Skin (Darkest) Primarily found as outlines on the far limbs
DA Light Grey Unused in the classic sprite
DB Less-Light Grey Unused in the classic sprite
DC Bikini (Light)
DD Bikini (Normal)
DE Bikini (Dark)
C9 Outer Flash
CA Second Ring
CB Third Ring
CC Fourth Ring
CD Fifth Ring
CE Center

5:5:5

The color palettes in Super Metroid allot 15 bits to each color, or 5 bits for each of red, green, and blue. This is in contrast to the 24-bit true color that most image editors default to. While HEX color coordinates can range from 0 to 255, the SNES 5:5:5 colors range from 0 to 31. This is equivalent to rounding each number down to the nearest multiple of 8. For example, if you had the color rgb(153,80,68) in your palette, it will be changed to rgb(152,80,64) at some point in the process. These numbers always round down.

Exporting

Tools have no way to tell how you want your sprite palette to work, so they must be provided with instructions on what to do. This can either be from a palette file created in another application, or from the image itself.