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[LyricalReverie]

Hi. Finding palettes that are close to what the NES palette supposed looks like (if I understood it right, the palette colors vary depending on hardware, right?) is easy, but I have not been able to find a good Game Boy Color palette. Anyone knows where I can find it? Thank you in advance.

[ProgramGamer]

The GBC doesn't have a proper palette in the same way that the NES did. What it does have instead is the ability to define your own palettes with RGB codes. So you could, for example, set each color of a palette to a different color using RGB values. Though, the colors weren't as detailed as on a computer due to the GBC only having 15 bit (5 bits for each component) colors compared to a PC's 24 bit (8 bits for each component) color space.

Source

Basically, you could have any of these colors, but only four of them at a time in a sprite or tile.

[LyricalReverie]

The GBC doesn't have a proper palette in the same way that the NES did. What it does have instead is the ability to define your own palettes with RGB codes. So you could, for example, set each color of a palette to a different color using RGB values. Though, the colors weren't as detailed as on a computer due to the GBC only having 15 bit (5 bits for each component) colors compared to a PC's 24 bit (8 bits for each component) color space.

Source

Basically, you could have any of these colors, but only four of them at a time in a sprite or tile.

Thank you for the detailed response. So that means I did find the answer to my question before, I just failed to understand it (but I get it now).

Thanks again.

[ProgramGamer]

You're welcome!   

[Staleevolution]

This might work.  I’ve tried this with other images, never Gameboy though.  If you are using GIMP
(or probably any other art program) then save some images of gameboy screen shots.  Open them up using GIMP
and then select the dropper tool and click on a piece of the image.  That color should now appear in the box or your palette
and I believe you can save it.  Repeat until you get the other shades as well.

[LyricalReverie]

Apologies for the bump, but I wanted to make sure I am on the right track. From what I understood, the Game Boy Color doesn't have a set palette, so the developers could make their own with RGB codes.

My little two questions are: 1. Does the custom made palette has a limit for the number of colors? Or the limitation, if any, is up to the developer? And 2. Is it possible to determine what colors were used for a specific game, say Pokémon Gold/Silver (pictured below)? Or in case I wanted my project to have a similar color scheme to a particular Game Boy title, I would have to figure out the colors used by myself?

Thank you.

https://i.imgur.com/2MzO0ft.png

[ProgramGamer]

Ok, so the GBC can have 8 palettes of 4 colors at any given time for backgrounds, and each individual tile can chose any of these 8 palettes to use. There are also 8 palettes for sprites, but each sprite palette can only hold 3 colors as the first color is always transparent.

And yes, you'll have to figure out which color was used in a sprite yourself, but that's as simple as downloading a screencap and using the color picker tool. Since the color space of the GBC is so large, there's not really a specific set of colors that define the console like for the NES, so you can get away with just choosing the colors you want.

If you want to emulate the look of a particular game however, then yes, you'd need to figure out what colors that particular game uses consistently to replicate the look and feel of it.

Hope that answers your questions!

[LyricalReverie]

Yes, it absolutely does answer it.

I prefer to restrict myself to a particular set of colors as color theory still is something I am slowly learning and having literally every color usable in my project would be more of an issue than a potential advantage. I was originally going for the NES color palette, but it was an arbitrary choice and after brainstorming a bit, some Game Boy games actually have a color palette that fits my project more.

Just thought I should explain it!

Anyways, that is a bit trickier than just downloading a specific color palette, but it is doable.

Thank you.