About Game Color Palette Generator

Generate game-ready color palettes with hex, RGB, and normalized float values. Part of the DevTools Surf developer suite. Browse more tools in the Game Dev collection.

Use Cases

• Game artists generating consistent color themes for game worlds
• Indie developers creating retro-inspired limited color palettes
• Shader programmers converting hex colors to float uniforms
• UI designers building in-game HUD color systems

Tips

• Export normalized 0-1 float values for direct shader use
• Generate complementary palettes for enemy vs. player theming
• Test palette contrast ratios for UI readability in-game

Fun Facts

• The NES could only display 25 colors simultaneously from a palette of 54 — game artists had to be incredibly creative with limited color budgets.
• Color theory in games follows the same principles as film — warm colors (red, orange) signal danger or aggression, while cool colors (blue, green) indicate safety or healing.
• Shader languages use normalized floats (0.0-1.0) instead of 0-255 integers for colors because GPU hardware natively operates on floating-point values in the rendering pipeline.

FAQ

What's different about 'game' palettes?

Output includes normalized float values (0.0–1.0) used by game engines (Unity's Color.RGBA, Unreal's FLinearColor). Plus HSV for procedural generation.

Does it include gamma correction?

Toggle between sRGB (what you see) and linear (what shaders use). Linear values come from gamma-corrected sRGB; different math, both needed in game dev.

Which platforms' palettes?

Pre-defined palettes for NES, Game Boy, PICO-8, pixel art, retro CRT. Or generate custom palettes with specified palette-size constraints.

Is this for Unity and Unreal?

Both. Copy values as Color.FromArgb (C#), FLinearColor (UE4/5), or float4 (shader). The tool outputs all three.