Hi Egypt :)
I promised a tutorial on how to find your paint reaction values a while ago
I'm going to start it in about 5 minutes
There's a lot of theory involved, so it does not make a lot of sense standing next to a paint lab while listening
So if you're interested in this, just listen for now, and be prepared to download some tools for later use.
There is a wiki page that explains a bit about paint reaction values:
Paint Reaction Values
On the very bottom of that page, I have just posted a spreadsheet that can help you figure out your values
If you want to follow now, it makes sense to download, unzip, and open it
The spreadsheet consists of three tabs: Reactions, Expected, Export
In the Reactions tab, you will put your measured values
The Expected tab contains the values that you would get if you had reactions with 0 values (or no reactions at all)
You can use the Export tab to copy your data to a file that is used for Sigil's PracticalPaint tool
To measure your reactions, you need to use another tool :)
I recommend Color Cop, as it's freeware and easy to use
Here's a URL for it:
http://www.download.com/3001-2383_4-10226381.html
Amtep tells me that it's more precise to count the number of pixels in the colour bars - I agree, but personally, I dislike counting, and have never done this, so let's go with the Color Cop for now :)
To get a grasp of what paint reactions are, let's step back a little and imagine mixing paints in real life
Take some yellow and some blue, and you will get green
If you take equal amounts of both, you will expect to always get the same shade of green
Most of the paint ingredients in ATITD behave like that
But in some cases, the two ingredients you use give you a different result
So you may get a lighter or a darker shade of green than what you expect
These changes can be quantified by measuring the RGB values
(RGB standing for red, green, blue)
Let's take clay and copper as an example
If you put 1 clay in your paint lab, you should get RGB values like 128 96 32
If you put 1 copper in your lab, you should get something like 64 192 192
So if you mix those two, you would expect a red value (the first value of those three) of (128+64) divided by 2
Now clay and copper is one of those ingredient pairs that do have reaction values
Just asked Excel, and it said that (128+64)/2 is 96
So you would expect a red value of 96 for clay and copper
However, if you measure it, you will probably get a different value, say 110
In this case, your reaction value for clay and copper is +14
(and affects red)
Paint reaction values are individual for each character, but...
they always affect the same colours, and they always exist with the same ingredient pairs
We know which colours (RGB) are affected for each ingredient pair
This is good news for you, since you don't have to test all ingredient pairs, but only those that will have reactions
All the others react as expected
The spreadsheet reflects which ingredients you need to test
I have left Dead Tongue out of it entirely - you really don't want any paint recipes with that shroom, it's too rare
The order in which ingredients are put into a paint lab is important for paint reactions
In our clay and copper example, we put in clay, then copper, and got a reaction value of +14 for red
If we put in copper, then clay, we may get a different reaction
It will also affect red, but the number might be different - let's say you get a red value of 90 for that
(The expected value was 96)
The reaction value for this would be -6
All right, now let's see how to measure this
Color cop has a widget that stays on top of your screen all the time
You can click and drag its eye dropper tool to the area you want to measure
The area you want to measure is the bit where the name of the colour appears on your paint lab
Color Cop gives you the RGB values of that area
(As said before, you could count the pixels in the red, green, and blue bars instead, if you are so inclined)
The RGB values then go into the spreadsheet
Let's take a look at that one to see where it goes
The tab for this is "Reactions"
The first line is Cabbage and Potash
So you would put in 1 cabbage, then 1 potash, then drag that eyedropper to the area
The R value goes in cell D3 ("Colour Pick 1", "Red")
You do the same with the G and B values (E3 and F3)
Then you fill up the paint lab with any ingredients so you can take out the paint and start the next test
You repeat these tests with all the other ingredients that are listed
So next would be Toad Skin and Potash, etc.
There are another three columns next to those you have just filled in
That's where the RGB values go for the same ingredients put in in the opposite order
So to fill cell G3 ("Colour Pick 2", "Red"), you put in Potash, then Cabbage, and measure the resulting RGB values
From these results, the spreadsheet then calculates the reaction values
It's not terribly important for you to understand the rest of the spreadsheet, but let's take a quick look at it anyway
The last set of columns in that tab stores the expected colours (those that you would get without any reaction values)
It refers to the "Expected" tab to see what RGB values your ingredients have, then adds them together and divides by 2
The "Colour Difference 1" and "Colour Difference 2" columns calculate the difference between your measured values and the expected ones
Once you have measured and put down all the RGB values for all listed ingredient pairs, you can go to the "Export" tab
The first column does not look very appealing, but you can copy it to a text file.
Call that text file "reactions.txt", and you can use it just like that for Sigil's excellent tool PracticalPaint
Here's another link for you:
http://www.atitd.net/forum/showthread.php?t=6823
This is the forum thread where Sigil introduces his tool
It contains the tool itself as an attachment
The beauty of this tool is that it attempts to find optimised recipes for all paint colours
And it usually manages to find most of them :)
A few things need to be tweaked to be able to use PracticalPaint effectively:
The tool has a file called colors.txt
This file contains the colours that it attempts to find recipes for
There are 4 colours missing from the file - it's a good idea to add these colours to the list
Even if you already have good recipes for those colours, you want them in that file, because the tool tries to find recipes that are closer to the target colour than any other...
The missing colours are Carrot, Violet Red, Feldspar, and Light Slate Blue
(the forum thread tells you what values to put in for these)
You should also remove Cyan and Magenta, as these colours are not known in ATITD as paints
The thing you absolutely need to tweak is the paint reactions, as these are individual to you
These are in the file reactions.txt
Just overwrite whatever is in that file with your copy from the spreadsheet
You can also change some other parameters, such as ingredient costs
These are hidden in the file ingredients.txt
All you need to do once you have done these changes is run the program, and it will spit out a list of recipes for you to try and verify
Depending on the parameters, this could take between 20 minutes and several hours
In the spreadsheet, you will find one line that asks you to test sulfur against potash
Both of these are catalysts
Catalysts have RGB values of zero
So if you just put in 1 sulfur, then 1 potash, then measure the RGB values, you will find that there is not much there to measure
You need to put in another ingredient to actually see the reaction
I used red sand for this - I'm sure there are cheaper alternatives around
Red Sand because it does not react with either sulfur or potash on its own
So you can measure the pure reaction between your two catalysts
The tab "Expected" tells you the RGB values for red sand
Those would be the values you expect to see if the reaction was zero.
So to find the correct reaction values, you would subtract the expected values from the measured values, and enter your results in the corresponding fields.
Well then, please try this out and see how you get along
Send me a /chat if you have any questions later on as you use all these tools
If there are any questions or problems that several people have, I will do an additional session later on