This article will provide some insight into how palette categories work, more specifically, how their icons animate.

What are palette Categories?

Palette categories are tabs that contain a set of parts. You may recognize them as the tabs to get mouths, eyes, wheels, weapons, etc.

Icon Images List

The actual icons themselves are stored in individual folders relating to what editors they're based on. Here's the list of what the game has :

• editors_building~
• editors_creature~
• editors_flora~
• editors_outfits~
• editors_planner~
• editors_scenario_1~
• ScenarioEditor
• editors_vehicle~

Palette_Categories List

The files that determine the icon animations for specific categories are stored in the following folders :

• accesories_editor_palette_category~
• Adventure_brush_palette_category~
• Adventure_props_palette_categories~
• building_editor_palette_categories~
• building_paint_palette_category~
• captain_editor_palette_category2~
• captain_editor_palette_category~
• cell_paint_palette_category~
• celltocreature_editor_palette_category~
• creature_editor_palette_categories~
• creature_paint_palette_categories~
• flora_editor_palette_categories~
• flora_paint_palette_category~
• ufo_editor_palette_categories~
• vehicle_editor_palette_categories~
• vehicle_paint_palette_category~

paletteCategoryIconList : How It All Animates

After opening up the category folder of your choice, there are .prop_t files that determine how icons animate for each type of tab available. Fortunately, they all seem to follow the same format as each other. Inside these .prop_t files, there is a key named "paletteCategoryIconList", this is what determines the animation of the category icons.

Here's an example of how this list labels the icons :

[editors_xxx~!Image.png]

"editors_xxx~" is the name of the folder where the icon, "Image.png", is found.

Take that into account when dealing with things such as vehicle editors or adventure editors, which may either use multiple or reuse "editors_xxx~" folders. Also note that most of the images will be named as hashes, so copy the hashed name and use it to search up the image to get a better understanding of what it looks like. Not all the images in the IconList are available, search up all the hashed names in the appropriate editors_ folder to see what the game actually uses.

Since the formats are the same for every .prop_t file, just take into account which line number is for which function. Please pay close attention to the image names for the following lines, certain palette categories may reuse the same kind of image for the lines mentioned here.:

• Line 3 : Unselected
• Line 5 : Unselected, Cursor is hovering over it
• Line 6 : Unselected, Clicked on
• Line 7 : In Use
• Line 9 : In use, Cursor is hovering over it
• Line 10 : In use, Clicked on
• Line 11 : Unselected

Demonstration / Example

Below is a visual demonstration of how things work :

Click on this link to see a video demonstration of a properly animated category icon

And there you have it, that should cover the basics of how the category icons animate in Spore!