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