Time to play devil's advocate.
OK!
Some of the coloring principles you see in the original maps that are on the chopping block now are applied elsewhere in the game and might be worth saving.
For example, the pink/purple shading you see on the dark lines. It turns out that if you look around, you can find many examples throughout the game of purple being used to shade brown.
Absolutely. With the PCE's limited 512-color range, those shading colors are often the best choice.
And Falcom used them masterfully in the game itself, IMHO.
I certainly don't mind that pinkish shade being used on rocks and wood. You only have to go out into nature to see those reds in a lots of rocks and types of wood.
They make it look like a deliberate choice in their main graphics, and not just a limitation.
The original map again, just for reference.
Purple isn't the only shading color that's ever used with brown, don't get me wrong, but it's in there a lot.
Absolutely ... and where it works well as a stylistic choice, it's really great.
But, IMHO, it just doesn't work in the maps.
Take a look at what I've done to the actual colors that are used ...
ORIGINAL MODIFIED
R G B R G B
108 72 72 pink (contour) 72 72 72 grey (contour)
72 72 72 grey (contour) 72 72 36 brown (contour)
72 72 36 brown (contour) 72 72 0 brown (contour)
72 108 108 blue (river) 72 108 108 blue (river)
72 108 108 blue (vegetation) 36 108 36 green (vegetation)
72 108 72 green (vegetation) 72 108 36 green (vegetation)
108 108 36 yellow (vegetation) 108 108 36 yellow (vegetation)That's an absolutely minimal change to those contour lines.
I've just taken Falcom's colors, and I've moved them one partial-step down in brightness to create a little more contrast, and remove the pink chroma-shift from what is supposed to be a hand-drawn map, and where it looks inappropriate.
Two of the 3 colors are identical ... just shifted onto other parts of the shaded line.
You couldn't make a smaller change, and yet it makes a distinctly visible improvement to the map.
The blue river color hasn't changed at all, but it has been removed from the vegetation, and replaced with a green.
Now ... looking at those green values side-by-side, yep I went a bit too far with those. There is now an extra step down in the shades which gives a bit too much contrast and saturation in the vegetation that doesn't quite fit with Falcom's faded-out look.
So, it's been well worth this exercise in justification, and I've changed the vegetation to now use just one new color, and to make the green more subtle.
It gives the same impression, but it definitely does fit in better with Falcom's look.
ORIGINAL MODIFIED BETTER
R G B R G B
72 108 108 blue (vegetation) 36 108 36 green (vegetation) 72 108 36 green
72 108 72 green (vegetation) 72 108 36 green (vegetation) 72 108 72 green
108 108 36 yellow (vegetation) 108 108 36 yellow (vegetation) 108 108 36 yellow
In the case of the maps, changing this purple to grey, along with changing the blue vegetation to green and upping the contrast a little, probably isn't going to cause a disruption in the visual style. It could be that it would fool everyone. If it helps things look not-stupid on an LCD, then cool, we can go for it.
However, I think we really need a CRT test to say for sure.
It will definitely help people with an LCD, and it's a minimal change.
I have no doubt at all that you'll find that it looks fine on a CRT.
