Color

I'm a kid at heart - when I got my first color video card (a Hercules??) and opened up the paint program, I felt like a kid with a box of crayons or a watercolor set. SVGA was even better, of course, and being able to take my usually aimless doodling and create a city is the best of all! So let's look at SCURK's color palette like a big box of crayons - this is after all a "software toy."
 

This is the WinSCURK  palette. 
Yo Maxis! How 'bout some more color here?
 
This is the DosSCURK  palette. Looks like 192 colors, but I think there is some repetition... 
 
The first thing we are going to have to deal with is some disappointment. With the whole palette laid out before you, you can see that there is a lot of repetition - SimCity is not a 256-color program! In the Windows versions, it uses only 169 colors. The DOS  version is a bit better with (about) 192 colors. Anybody know about the MAC version? Furthermore, this is not exactly a peacock-like selection of colors, just how many shades of blue do we need? Another point, which becomes painfully obvious when you start sharing your tiles with others, is that the different versions of SCURK do not use the same colors - this results in "color shifting," also known as a scrambled mess. (Look at M. Wrenburg's Color Shifting page for a solution).
 
WinSCURK palette sorted by hue DosSCURK palette sorted by hue
(The white squares show how many colors are "missing") (note that not all of these color squares are unique)
 
These limitations are especially painful because the Color Palette is really the heart of SCURK. As a "SCURK artist," you need every shade and nuance of color you can get in order to overcome the pixelation factor and "fool the eye." However, as you get to know the colors that are available, you will see that there is still a lot that you can do. Because it is more varied, I will focus on the DosSCURK palette on these pages. However, the same principles apply to WinSCURK.

First of all, think about the colors of the buildings in your city or town. Unless you live in Disney World or the Aegean Islands, greys, browns, and earth tones predominate. Also there is some red (mostly bricks), blue (mostly windows), and green (vegetation). Fortunately, those are the colors that predominate the palette - a whole range of greys, browns, greens, reds, and blues (too bad the ranges aren't better organized in the actual palette).  For the most part you'll want to use the darker tones within these color ranges. Real cities just aren't all that bright.
 

Ranges of color
 
These color ranges are the most important part of the palette. Although you can, and should, use any color you want in any situation, certain colors are used more than others for specific parts of a building. The following table is a guide, not at all comprehensive and not a rule book, but I hope it can give you some ideas next time you are sitting in front of a blank screen getting ready to SCURK a new building:
 
White Walls, Highlights
Black Windows, "Glass Box"-type buildings
Grays Walls, Highlight for Windows, Rooftops
Browns, Tans Walls, Bricks, Rooftops
Reds Brick walls, Roofs
Blues, Blue-Greens Windows, "Glass Box"-type buildings
Greens Vegetation, Rooftops
Yellows Highlights
 
When I start SCURKing a new building or part of a building,  I look for the predominant color and start with that - I can always correct it with the <fill> tool later.  I don't slavishly follow any system like in the table above, but those are more or less the color usages I keep in mind. As I draw more detail onto my building, I get more specific with my colors. As I get more specific, I start focusing in on shade and contrast, two topics that I am covering on the next pages.

For now, let's concentrate on the relationships between the color ranges. Although they are badly organized, you can still see that the various ranges complement each other.  By being aware of the similarities between the color ranges, you can pick a color from a complementary range when you need an effect - blending two areas of color together, adding subtle shading, adding texture, making a gradient, whatever you need. In the diagram below, I try to show how the color ranges are related - the long red arrows link complementary color ranges.  Pay close attention to the relationship between the main ranges of grey, brown, and blue which are related especially closely - the short red arrows link individual complementary colors:

As you can see, you can start working with a color from one range and then easily jump to a related color in another range. This works especially well the greys and the browns and blues, you can pick almost any color in the brown or blue range and find a grey that matches it, and vice-versa. This technique of using a closely related color is a powerful tool  in overcoming the limitations of the color palette. You don't have a very wide range of any one color, but by using the related color you can extend the range, and thereby give greater apparent detail to your buildings.

Now I'm going to throw in two disclaimers. ;-) The first is pretty obvious - the above "color chart" is by no means exact, I did it "by eye." Once again, it's really just a guide to give you some ideas when you are SCURKing. Second is that the effects of mixing colors are rather subtle and not to be applied as large areas. Rather, they work best when you mix a few pixels of each complementing color:

Here's another subtle technique. Besides the main color ranges there is a entire range of "lights" and "darks" - the colors at the beginning and end of each range. The colors at the "dark end" of the different color ranges are pretty much all alike - almost black. You can use them almost interchangeably. Let's look at the color palette again. Notice that there is a group of colors that are almost indistinguishable from "pure black," and a group of colors that are very dark, but still have a bit of individual color to them. You can use the "almost black" colors wherever you would use pure black but don't want as much contrast or need a bit of "blending"- for instance a very dark shadow on a light wall. Likewise you'd use one of the "very dark" colors wherever you need to blend from a definite color to black.
 

"Pure Black" orange: very dark, still has some color 
red: almost black
 
The colors at the beginning, or "light end," of the color ranges work the almost same way. There are "very light" colors that are good for blending or for "off-white" surfaces, and there are (a few) "almost white" colors that you can use when you don't want to use "pure white."
 
orange: very light, still has some color 
red: almost white		 "Pure White"

Again, the actual usage of this technique is very subtle. In the example below, I am contrasting green to orange in the building on the right-hand corner, so I use a very dark green in place of black in the windows. On the left side, for the white walls I use both white and an off-white in order to give the wall some texture:

 
 
The most important tools you have in SCURK are your own eyes. None of my observations above are "rules," but I hope that they can help you see the possibilities available in SCURK's color palette.
 

 

 

Note for DosSCURK users: There is a "false" color on the DOS color palette. Immediately following the main range of greys in the middle of the table there is a range of colors that go from brown to a greenish-brown (olive). The very first color (darkest in this range), which comes right after the last (darkest) grey, is a slightly greenish brown.

When you draw a pixel with that color it will look O.K. in all the SCURK views but is a bright bilious green in the main SimCity 2000 program. Don't use it!  It's about  the same color as the old-fashioned "green-screen" terminals used to use for text - awful. Somebody made a little programming error... Anyway, that is the only "bug" in the color palette that I know of, and it may be just on my computers (I'm using various ATI video boards, but Lee Sojot tells me he's seen the same bug). Please write me if you know of any other SCURK bugs. 


 
saci@voicenet.com