How to Change Colours

[Sher Shah Suri]

I recently downloaded APE so I could design some animals too, and I have a question - how do you change the animal's color?

[Fern]

There are tutorials down near the bottom of the forum here at Tek.

There are also tutorials over at Zookeepers Lounge. If you have questions for the Lounge sign up at the Download Directory and ask them there as ZKL has its registration turned off, but Jay is available at DD.

[Sher Shah Suri]

OK, I did as the tutorial did and got to the point of renaming the .pal file and replacing the existing one. When I tried to put it in the ztd, it doesn't show up.

[JohnT]

Sher,

 

What pal file did you use to recolor your animal? If you used a pal file from another ZT animal, it should show up in APE. Here is an example. I recolored the African Buffalo to the Bluejays in game pal file bluejay.pal. I deleted the afrbuf.pal and inserted the bluejay one. Then changed the bluejay.pal to read Afrbuf.pal. I rezipped the animal file and loaded it in ape as an existing project. Here is sample picture of what the animal now looks like,

 

 

I also took a picture of the recolored animal in the "zoot" program so you could see the animal better. I always use zoot because you can preview and change things so much easier than APE. Here's that sample pic.

 

If you use other than ZT animal pal files, they might not work in ape. But, if you follow the example above, you should be able to see the new colors in the animations section of ape. Be sure you delete any animals you create in ape after you have saved the one you made. Otherwise, ape may add that animals file and uca to another animal you bring up. That's just one of the problems with APE. I hope this helps.

[Sher Shah Suri]

I was trying to put the polarbear.pal into the .ztd, which I had open. I clicked 'Add' and it didn't show up.

[JohnT]

I don't know what you mean by "I clicked add and it didn't show up". What are you clicking "add" on? You are changing pal files, not adding something by clicking add.

 

You can't add different pal files in APE itself. You have to save an animal such as the African Elephant as a user created animal. Save it to your desktop or any folder,

Then open that ztd with an uzpip file, then you have the animal file. In the animal file you have to folders i.e. 12345678 and 12345678.uca. Open the first folder and you will see the several folders and a pal file. That is the pal file you change. Delete it and add your own pal file, and rename it the same name as the original pal file.

Rezip the animal file into a ztd, and load it in ape as an existing file. I don't know how to explain it better. Did you read the tutorials here and at zkl? They explain it better.

[Sher Shah Suri]

I mean, I'm using WinRAR and clicking "Add" to put the .pal in the open .ztd.

[JohnT]

But you still have to delete the original pal file and then rename the pal file you are adding to the original pal name. Also, are you adding your pal file to the same folder that the original one is in? It is so much easier to just unzip your ztd to switch pal files. I am not familiar with winrar, but I don't think you should be trying to use it to do pal file changes.

 

I think you should follow the steps I suggested in my previous post as I believe that winrar try is not working for you. :flowerysmile:

[Fern]

You would have to extraction the file because I know you cannot rename a file while it is in winrar. You can edit notepad things, delete files but not rename.