Custom palettes help

About

This is a tool to improve the accessibility of Azure Dreams (PS1) by modifying some in-game colors.
It can be difficult for players to distinguish the elements of some monsters based on color, especially for players with color vision deficiency or color blindness. This feature allows users to create a set of custom palettes for each monster and element combination that meets their particular needs. Using custom palettes does not change the checksum generated, so players with different color needs can use the same seed URL and set their own custom palette file without getting a checksum error.
In the future, this tool will hopefully be expanded to include things like mini-map colors.

Accessibility

I have designed this tool with accessibility in mind, with the intention that users with any level of color vision (or none at all) may use it successfully. Please see "Helpful tips" for suggestions on how to improve your experience. This tool also supports keyboard-only and mouse-only navigation.
If you have an accessibility or other type of concern, please post a message in the #randomizer channel of the Azure Dreams Discord and '@pro_grammar'.

How To

Import your NTSC-U copy of Azure Dreams (PS1, SLUS-00614) in BIN format by clicking the button labeled "Import BIN file" and selecting the file.
Please wait a moment; the process of reading the file might take several seconds. If the file was read successfully, a portion of the monster Hikewne's sprite sheet should appear after a short while. If the file was not read successfully, the page might reload or an error message might appear near "Import/Export".
(Optional) If you already have a palette file, you may import it by clicking on the button labeled "Import palette file".
Modify the sprite colors as desired (see "Modifying palettes" below).
When you are finished or want to stop for the moment, click "Export palette file" to download your work. You may come back later and continue where you left off by repeating this process, being sure in step 3 to import the palette file you've just downloaded.
To make your custom palettes appear in-game, go to the randomizer home page or click the randomizer seed URL if participating in a race. Provide your BIN file as usual, then select your custom palettes file under "Customizations > Custom palettes" before clicking "Randomize". Generate your CUE file as usual and play.

Modifying palettes

Only available after importing your BIN

Monster - Choose which monster you would like to modify. The spritesheet for that monster should appear on the left after a moment.
Colorway - Monsters can appear in one of four different colorways: default enemy, fire, water, and wind. In the original game, all enemy monsters will have the "enemy" colorway, and your familiars will always have the colorway of their current element. When using the randomizer's "Randomize enemy elements" feature, all monsters will have the colorway that corresponds to their element, so players can react to the element accordingly.
There are also some extra colorways that might be used for things like projectiles or which might go entirely unused.
Change this setting to show what the monster looks like in the colorway selected. Modifying the palette colors will modify that particular colorway.
Background color - Choose what background color should appear behind the spritesheet, where the spritesheet has transparency. This does not affect the palette used in-game at all- it is only to make it easier to use the editor. The color of the sidebar will stay the same to keep text legible.
Palette colors - The 16 colors that are used for the selected monster in the selected colorway. The sprites are drawn with each pixel having one of 16 different values. One value, value 0, is always reserved for transparency. Pixels with one of the other 15 values are colored using the color defined for that value.
Click one of the colors labeled 1 through F and select a new value. With the color selection window open, you can undo your change by pressing "Escape" on your keyboard, or keep your change by pressing enter or clicking outside the box to close the color selection window.
Azure Dreams uses 5 bits per color channel compared to the 8 allowed by browsers, so the value you choose will be rounded to the nearest available value.
Spritesheet - The area on the left shows the sprites from game. Click on any non-transparent pixel in the spritesheet will cause a message to appear next to the color value used by that pixel. Click on any transparent pixel in the spritesheet (the background color) to hide this message.
To change which set of sprites is shown for the selected monster, change the spritesheet. This is purely to see more of the sprites; which spritesheet is selected has no bearing on the custom palette output.
Copy/Paste - Click the Copy button to save the current palette colors to a buffer (this does not use your browser clipboard). You can then change the monster ID and/or colorway, then click the Paste button to replace all colors in the palette with those previously copied.

Import/Export

Import BIN file - The first step to using the tool. See "How To" above.
Import palette file - Used to import a previously-created palette file. This file is copied into memory; any changes you make will not directly change an imported file. Instead, click "Export palette file" to create a new file with the changes.
Import text - Clicking this will replace all palettes currently in memory with the palette data in the import/export text area. This can be useful if you have copied palette data to your clipboard instead of downloading it to a file. If you have clicked "Export text" to fill the import/export text area, clicking this will restore the palettes to their state when they were exported.
Export text - Clicking this will output all palettes currently in memory to the import/export text area. This can be useful to take a temporary snapshot, so if you don't like a change, you can revert it by clicking "Import text".
Export palette file - Download a file containing any palettes from memory. This can be used with the randomizer, or imported again to make further changes. If you import a palette file and make changes, the imported palette file will remain unchanged. You will need to click "Export palette file" to produce a new file with the changes.

Helpful tips

(especially for users with color vision deficiency, a.k.a. color blindness)

To see what pixels use a particular color value, change that color back and forth between a light and dark color, pressing Escape to restore the color if desired.
For the opposite, i.e. to see what color value a particular pixel in the spritesheet uses, just click on it. A message will appear next to the color value you clicked. If no such message appears, then you have clicked on a transparent pixel (which uses the background color), as clicking on the background color hides this message. You can verify that this was a transparent by either changing the background color or clicking on a non-transparent first to bring up the message then clicking on the spritesheet pixel in question, which should make the message go away.
To know what color a particular palette color is, just click it. Modern browsers like Firefox will display the amount of red, green, and blue in the color selection window that appears.
You can freely set the background color of the sprite area as you work to increase the contrast with the other colors. It has no effect on the palette file you will generate.
This tool will not work properly on old browsers like Internet Explorer. Make sure you are using a modern desktop browser like (at the time of writing) Mozilla Firefox.

Special cases

Since true black is used for transparency, attempting to select it will cause the color to be snapped to the next closest shade, #080808.
Kewne and Hikewne always use the default ("enemy") colorway, even if changed to another element. These have been left as editable in case a future update to the randomizer allows them change their colorways.
The model of Kewne in town is completely separate and thus not changed.
Monster portraits in the status screen are not changed.