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Back in the day of 8-bit graphics and color palettes, it used to be fairly common to see tilesets where the water or lava cycled through a simple animation. It actually did this by changing the colors in the color palette.
I want to write a blog post about this technique (and how you could adapt it to modern systems that don't use a color palette), but I'm struggling to find any such animated (or animatable) tile sets. Or even any clear examples of the technique in games of yore.
Any suggestions?
Thanks,
- Joe
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You can search some GrafX2 tutorials. This app can use color cycles technique for animation.
Or watch tutorials or docs about Tileengine - game engine on C, which can use color cycles in games.
I think, in Tales of Phantasia (remake for PS1) water (and maybe lava - I don't remember) was created in that technique. Simple example - awesome water in main menu.
Maybe for water (and lava... and other things) in Tales of Destiny and in Tales of Destiny 2 was used same way.
Reposting a classic demo of what can be done with color cycles: http://www.effectgames.com/demos/canvascycle/
Some tech talk with Mark Ferrari: http://www.effectgames.com/effect/article-Old_School_Color_Cycling_with_...
(Almost) same method, different game: Mega Man X:
Big fan of many of these workarounds from back in the day. Hope this helps.