Some specific color values will behave slightly differently to normal colors. Those are Special colors. They exist in 4 Variations:
Older versions did not support gradual transparency. Instead, a special color was used to indicate the non-visible background of a graphic.
This is obsolete, as you can just use graphics with transparent background instead. However, you can use this special color to write information in the background that won't be visible in the game.
Player Colors are 2x8 colors which get substituted by 8 shades of a color the player picks.
Pak192.comic makes heavy use of the first player color, which defaults to red in single-player games. The second player color can be ignored for the most part.
Light Colors are colors used to indicate light. At night, they do not get darker, some even brighten up. Some Windows of a building should use one of the colors that become golden at night.
(Colors in the left column turn to the colors in the right column)
These colors were initially used for the grey menu. By now, menus don't darken either way, and those colors are mostly obsolete.
Transparency and Special Colors[edit | edit source]
Transparency enables mixing and matching special colors whenever there are two images above one another, eg. frontimages in buildings.
This can be used to add more shades of player colors (using black/white overlay);
Add Shades of Lightcolor during the day (again using black/white overlay, which will be black at night);
Or use additional Lightcolors (eg. mixing red and yellow for oranges).
Note that Transparency does not use a full color channel, so slight discoloration and loss of detail are to be expected when using this method.
Adding Special Colors is pretty much optional. Avoiding accidential use of Special Colors is the real pain, especially menu-gray in a snowy landscape.
The Tool "Shades" can be used for graphics without transparency. With Transparency, the best method is a photoshop action, downloadable here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/t7krokkarc65dd1/SPECIAL%20COLORS.atn?dl=0