Stupid Palace Tricks

<BODY BACKGROUND="gif/pnbbg.gif" BGCOLOR="#F0F0F0" text="#000000" LINK="#4040A0" VLINK="#800000" ALINK="#00FF00"> <h1><img src="gif/exo.gif" alt="SPT" width=128 height=142 align="left" hspace=8>Stupid Palace Tricks</h1> <h2>Part 1:<br> <img src="gif/SPTBar.gif" alt="A Tale of Three Bars" width=301 height=62> </h2> <br clear="left"> <img src="gif/3bars.gif" alt="3 Bars" width=276 height=277 align="right" hspace=8> Welcome to the first installment of <strong>Stupid Palace Tricks</strong> <IMG align=absmiddle width=13 height=1 SRC="gif/dot_black.gif"> a collection of informative, stultifyingly useless, or pointlessly fascinating tips from your host and his life-eaten associates.<p> Today's trick: taking control of the Palace room GIFs.<p> Almost everyone knows that the room pictures are GIF picture files, stored in the "Pictures" directory within your Palace directory. As you visit different places, new GIFs amy be added to named subdirectories of "Pictures."<p> What most people <em>don't</em> know is that you can replace these pictures with your own GIFs <IMG align=absmiddle width=13 height=1 SRC="gif/dot_black.gif"> as long as they are the right size (512x384) and use the <a href="">Palace color palette,</a> Palace will never know the difference. So you could replace the Beach with a shot of Lake Erie, or the Pit with a picture of your high school. As long as the pic is valid, Palace will happily use it.<p> The picture at the right shows three versions of Harry's Bar. The very top is just the plain old "BAR.GIF" image. The center is <em>almost</em> the same: a light grid has been painted over it, and the coördinates of a few key spots (such as the chairs) have been marked. The bottom is a black-and-white dithered bitmap version of the bar.<p> Why the alternative versions of the bar? The grid was originally added to make it easier to "spoof" someone (i.e., use "msay") in Harry's. You can't use "msay" in a Cyborg-Free zone like Harry's, so having a few key spots pre-marked, and the whole room gridded, made it easy to quickly guess what "@" values to type-in by hand to get good spoofing going in the bar.<p> The B&W version was made (along with B&W versions of <em>all</em> the rooms) so that I could run Palace on my old Mac Powerbook 140 <IMG align=absmiddle width=13 height=1 SRC="gif/dot_black.gif"> a machine with Color Quickdraw in software, but only a B&W display. This <em>is</em> an especially-stupid trick, because user props still come in in full color (meaning they usually appear as nothing but a black blob on the powerbook screen). Still, it works! And I have used it once or twice when no other machine was handy. I even went so far as to B&W-ify the splash page PICT resource in the Palace binary itself, using ResEdit.<p> Other useful GIF hacks might include labelling doors, so you know where they lead; insane tweaking of the color maps, for a psychedelic palace; heavy blurring and resampling of the GIFs to make the files smaller and faster-loading; recoloring all the rooms to complement your own hair and eyes, Barbara Streisand style. <p> <!--BEGIN Palace Ring> <table width="100%" bgcolor="#000033" border=0 cellpadding=4 cellspacing=0> <tr><td align="center" valaign="center"><font color="#f0cf00"><b>The Palace Ring</b></font> <a href="http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Park/5049/palacering.html" target="_top" onMouseOver="window.status='The Palace WebRing Homepage' ; return true"> <img src="gif/PRing.gif" align="abscenter" alt="The Palace Ring" width=45 height=36></a> <a href="http://www.webring.org/cgi-bin/webring?ring=twp&id=62&prev" target="_top" onMouseOver="window.status='Jump to the Previous Ring Site' ; return true"> <img src="gif/PPrev.gif" align="abscenter" alt="Previous Ring Site" width=36 height=36></a> <a href="http://www.webring.org/cgi-bin/webring?ring=twp&id=62&random" target="_top" onMouseOver="window.status='Jump to a Random Ring Site' ; return true"> <img src="gif/PRand.gif" align="abscenter" alt="Random Ring Site" width=33 height=36></a> <a href="http://www.webring.org/cgi-bin/webring?ring=twp&id=62&next" target="_top" onMouseOver="window.status='Jump to the Next Ring Site' ; return true"> <img src="gif/PNext.gif" align="abscenter" alt="Next Ring Site" width=36 height=36></a> <a href="http://www.webring.org/cgi-bin/webring?ring=twp&id=62&skip" target="_top" onMouseOver="window.status='Skip the Next Ring Site' ; return true"> <img src="gif/PSkip.gif" align="abscenter" alt="Skip Next Ring Site" width=43 height=36></a> <a href="http://www.webring.org/cgi-bin/webring?ring=twp&id=62&next5" target="_top" onMouseOver="window.status='See the Next Five Ring Sites' ; return true"> <img src="gif/P5.gif" align="abscenter" alt="See Next 5 Sites" width=32 height=36></a> </td></tr> </table> <!END Palace Ring!> <p> <em>Got a Stupid Palace Trick? <a href="book/thebook.html" target="_top">Put it in the book!</a><p> <h6>Last Update: 7 April 1997</h6> </body>