Dumb newbie question about graphics

[Caspar]

Hi,

We're just in the process of prototyping our first mobile game, but are stuck on one, pretty basic (we think), question about graphics.

A lot of the phones are claimed to support n-thousand colours on-screen, but we come from an old-school gaming background and have been stung by this before. When Nokia claims a phone can display 262,000 colours (or whatever), does that mean you can ACTUALLY display 262,000 colours, or does that number refer to the available palette?

For instance, the old game systems used to offer a palette of 12-bit or higher colours, but could only display 512 at once. Is that the case with phones?

Sorry for asking such a newbie point, but I've searched around on the web and can't find any info about this.

Many thanks in advance for your help!

[Caspar]

Okay, so I'll answer my own question...

I caught up with an old friend who's worked with mobile games, and he says that the devices usually can display their maximum palette, but that game artists often work within a specific 256-colour palette on a per-sprite-basis. Similarly, the backdrops are drawn within a 256-colour palette.

Also, while looking around I came across this useful resource - a 12-bit colour palette saved as a TIF, which it's possible to extract a Photoshop .act palette from (I used Pixen on the Mac but I'm sure Photoshop can do it too): http://wap.atomictag.com/3d/palette/12bitPalette.tif

Cheers,
C

[RochaBR]

When using a 16bit image on canvas it looks great...
But you sure gotta be careful with the number of colors of the cellphone... A 16bit image looks dreadfull in a 4 color phone.