Color Shifting – 200% More Graphics for Free! (VB6)

Color shifting is a very fast, very simple effect that can greatly simplify the work of game artists. (Above is a demonstration using a classic StarCraft Siege Tank.) It is also extremely simple to implement – all we do is shift the red, green, and blue values of each pixel to the right or left. This allows us to generate two additional color variations on a source image without any extra work. (Read the rest of the article for details and sample code…)

Because gray-toned values have RGB values that are identical (or nearly identical), color shifting doesn’t change the appearance of gray pixels. This is pretty clear on the siege tanks above, as the color shifting merely adjusted the subtle hues of the gray regions…