PAL — VGA Palette (.PAL)

A .PAL file is exactly 768 bytes: 256 RGB triplets in VGA 6-bit format. No header. PALETTE.PAL, the game's primary palette, is stored compressed (flags=4) inside FA_2.LIB.

Tools

fx

fx pal info <file.PAL>     # summary
fx pal dump <file.PAL>     # entry-by-entry listing

fxs

Opening a .PAL record (in a LIB or standalone) shows a 16×16 swatch grid with per-index RGB tooltips, and can set the palette applied to PIC/CB8 previews — see gui.md.

Other Tools

No standard image editor reads the raw 6-bit VGA palette format directly. Use a hex editor to view or patch individual entries (3 bytes per color: R, G, B at 6-bit scale).

• HxD — free, Windows; lightweight and fast for small binary files like .PAL
• VS Code + Hex Editor — free, cross-platform; convenient if already using VS Code for text editing
• 010 Editor $ — paid; binary templates allow a labelled struct view over the palette entries

File Layout

Single-byte values only; no multi-byte integers.

Offset	Size	Type	Description
0x00	768	u8[256×3]	R, G, B for each palette index 0..255

Each channel is stored as a 6-bit value (range 0–63). Scale to 8-bit for display or PNG output:

uint8_t to_8bit(uint8_t v6) { return (v6 << 2) | (v6 >> 6); }

The System Palette

• PALETTE.PAL is the game's primary palette. It is stored compressed (flags=4) inside FA_2.LIB and must be extracted before decoding paletted PIC files.
• Each game version (USNF, ATF, FA) ships its own palette — do not mix them.
• Palette index 0xFF (255) is reserved as transparent across all PIC sub-formats.

Round-Trip Notes

The format has no derived or redundant fields, so decode → encode reproduces the input byte-for-byte; tests/test_pal.cpp asserts it, alongside the 6-bit → 8-bit scaling values.

Related

Formats: PIC — consumes this palette (inline palettes use the same 6-bit encoding); LIB — carries PALETTE.PAL DCL-compressed.