bryanthaboiShiny Palette Example
Recolors the player's overworld sheets to teal and repaints Pallet Town — and ships no ROM-derived pixels to do it.
Persona: the Artist. This is the canonical answer to "how do I ship a recolor legally": you ship the transform, not the image.
Try it
python3 tools/modkit.py validate mods/examples/example_shiny_palette --base imported
python3 tools/modkit.py lint mods/examples/example_shiny_palette
luajit mods/examples/example_shiny_palette/tests/example_shiny_palette_test.lua
Enable it (example_shiny_palette = true under mods in options.lua, or
the F10 manager) and start the game. On first load the transform runs once
and writes save/mod-derived/example_shiny_palette/sprites/*.png. Delete
that directory to force a re-run.
What it demonstrates
| Seam | Where |
|---|---|
assets_transforms |
manifest.json + transforms.lua — the recipe that derives art |
content.palettes:register |
main.lua — the v2 named-record palette shape |
content.palettes:override |
main.lua — the vanilla four-triple shape |
content.sprites:patch |
main.lua — trueColor opt-out, nothing else touched |
events:on("assets.transformed") |
main.lua — the empty-state warning |
The legal pattern
transforms.lua runs inside a restricted context with exactly two
filesystem roots: read assets/generated/** (the player's own imported
cache) and write save/mod-derived/example_shiny_palette/**. There is no
require, no love, no io, no os. The only way data leaves the
sandbox is the ctx table.
Because the derived file keeps the same relative name as the cache file it came from, the asset resolver finds it automatically:
assets/generated/sprites/red.png <- the player's import
save/mod-derived/example_shiny_palette/sprites/red.png <- this mod's recolor
Every consumer of the first path transparently gets the second. No
sprites:override, no path string in main.lua — and modkit lint can
prove the repo carries no cache-derived bytes, because it carries no bytes
at all.
The one thing that does need a registry entry is the 4-shade contract.
The renderer normally re-shades an overworld sheet into the current
palette's four grays, which would throw the teal away. trueColor = true
opts out:
mod.content.sprites:patch("SPRITE_RED", { trueColor = true })
patch, not override: image, frames and walker stay whatever the
merged view already holds, so the derived sheet keeps supplying the pixels.
Empty state
No ROM imported yet? ctx.exists(rel) is false, the transform writes
nothing, the mod still loads, and main.lua logs a remediation line naming
the directory to delete once you have imported. It never errors.
Original assets
assets/accent_sparkle.png is a 16x16 four-shade sparkle drawn for this
example. It is the only image in the directory and it is original work.
Credits
- pret/pokered — the overworld sheet layout the transform recolors.