Disclaimer

Palette swapping overrides a LOT of core graphics functions in the game. It has been beta tested for over a month but you may still find issues. If you have performance or functionality problems, you can turn every palette swapping override off completely using the in-game setting.

See end for known issues. Do not report known issues as bugs.

Basic guide

• Turn on the palette swap setting in petza settings. If you don't see the setting, you don't have the right version.
• Make sure you're using PNG photos. GIFs are limited to 256 colours and won't perform well when using multiple palettes in a photo.
• Add a resource/palettes folder to your game folder
• Add 256-colour indexed bmps to the palettes folder. The actual image doesn't matter, just the palette. You may want to stick to the texturable colour ranges i.e. 10-149 - you are guaranteed not to cause any graphical issues by changing colours in this range.
• You can have maximum 255 palettes. If you need more, look into using EZLoader.
• In your PET lnz (NOT breedfile lnz), add [Palette] section and then the name of your palette file. e.g. if your palette is called oddballz.bmp, put oddballz in the [Palette] section.
• Clothes will display in the pet's palette. This isn't a way around this at the moment!

Advanced guide

You will find that some colours you change in your palette won't show up as your chosen colour in-game. This is because Petz has always remapped some colours.

You can stop most of this remapping by using the Unlock Palettes setting. The following indexes are reserved for game functioning and should not be changed in your palette: 0, 200, 201, 243, 253

You may find that unlocking palettes causes graphical issues with basegame graphics.

When Unlock Palettes is on, you can add a special palette called petz.bmp which will function like replacing the palette bmp in the Petz exe.

You can use the experimental PWS palette swapper (also on Ratshack) to hex more easily.

Known issues

• Using magenta/index 253 will now be transparent in all scenes, like it always was in custom playscenes. This was always the game's transparent colour and this is necessary for palette swapping to work. Please don't report this as a bug or ask for it to be changed! Ask in your local petz community (Petzcord, PL etc) how you can best deal with this rather than discussing on the petza discord.
• If you have a zoom setting in Windows, you may find it distorts the game. This is a basegame bug. Again, please discuss in your local petz community - I can't currently help with this but other people will have advice!
• Pets that are partially/fully offscreen won't paletteise correctly in photos
• GIF photos won't function well with multiple palettes in a photo, because GIFs are restricted to 256 colours. Use PNG photos.
• Pet clothes display in the pet's palette. This isn't currently possible to fix.
• LNZ toys, mice and cockroaches cannot be paletteised - this might be coming in a future version.