Mario & Sonic Guy
Old rivalries live on!
Being a texture hacker, I've studied the various texture formats that are used. Anyway, here's a list of all the texture formats to keep note of.
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I4
Color Format: Grayscale
Memory Usage: 4 bits per pixel
Transparency: No
Semi-Transparency: No
Texture Quality: Low
This texture format only utilizes grayscale colors. Although it can't have transparency, the color black is usually used as a transparent color for this format.
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I8
Color Format: Grayscale
Memory Usage: 8 bits per pixel
Transparency: No
Semi-Transparency: No
Texture Quality: High
Same as I4, except for that the texture is in better quality.
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IA4
Color Format: Grayscale
Memory Usage: 8 bits per pixel
Transparency: Yes
Semi-Transparency: Yes
Texture Quality: Low
Same as I4, except for that it has transparency support. Some textures of this format use transparency as the color black.
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IA8
Color Format: Grayscale
Memory Usage: 16 bits per pixel
Transparency: Yes
Semi-Transparency: Yes
Texture Quality: High
Same as IA4, except for that the texture is in better quality.
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RGB565
Color Format: RGB
Memory Usage: 16 bits per pixel
Transparency: No
Semi-Transparency: No
Texture Quality: Some color loss
Uses multiple colors, but doesn't accept transparency. Better quality than CMPR, but does suffer from some color loss.
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RGB5A3
Color Format: RGB
Memory Usage: 16 bits per pixel
Transparency: Yes
Semi-Transparency: Yes
Texture Quality: Some color loss
Same as RGB565, except of that it has transparency support. It does suffer from a stronger amount of color loss than RGB565, however.
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RGBA8
Color Format: RGB
Memory Usage: 32 bits per pixel
Transparency: Yes
Semi-Transparency: Yes
Texture Quality: High
This texture format doesn't compress textures in any way. As a result, textures appear in perfect quality, along with the inclusion of transparency. However, it uses the most memory among all the texture formats. Therefore, it's rarely used much in most games.
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CMPR
Color Format: RGB
Memory Usage: 4 bits per pixel
Transparency: Yes
Semi-Transparency: No
Texture Quality: Variable
This texture format uses lossy compression on textures to reduce their memory. As a result, this format is used more frequently than the others. The quality of these textures can vary, but this texture format does mess up video game sprites. Unlike other texture formats that have transparency support, this texture format only uses a maximum of "1" transparent color.
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CI4
Memory Usage: 4 bits per pixel
Palettes: IA8, RGB565, RGB5A3
Maximum Colors: 16
Palette Memory Usage: 64 bytes + 32 bytes for every 16 colors added (96 bytes maximum)
This is one of two texture formats that use palettes. These textures are limited to only 16 colors, but at least they're friendly to video game sprites, unlike CMPR.
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CI8
Memory Usage: 8 bits per pixel
Palettes: IA8, RGB565, RGB5A3
Maximum Colors: 256
Palette Memory Usage: 64 bytes + 32 bytes for every 16 colors added (576 bytes maximum)
Same as CI4, except for that these textures can have up to 256 colors in their palettes. The maximum number of colors is always equal to a multiple of 16 whenever the palette is adjusted.
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Regarding a memory usage scale, it's almost always as follows...
1: RGBA8
2-4: IA8, RGB565, RGB5A3
5: CI8
6-7: I8, IA4
8: CI4
9-10: I4, CMPR
Hope that this helps for anyone else who does texture edits.
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I4
Color Format: Grayscale
Memory Usage: 4 bits per pixel
Transparency: No
Semi-Transparency: No
Texture Quality: Low
This texture format only utilizes grayscale colors. Although it can't have transparency, the color black is usually used as a transparent color for this format.
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I8
Color Format: Grayscale
Memory Usage: 8 bits per pixel
Transparency: No
Semi-Transparency: No
Texture Quality: High
Same as I4, except for that the texture is in better quality.
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IA4
Color Format: Grayscale
Memory Usage: 8 bits per pixel
Transparency: Yes
Semi-Transparency: Yes
Texture Quality: Low
Same as I4, except for that it has transparency support. Some textures of this format use transparency as the color black.
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IA8
Color Format: Grayscale
Memory Usage: 16 bits per pixel
Transparency: Yes
Semi-Transparency: Yes
Texture Quality: High
Same as IA4, except for that the texture is in better quality.
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RGB565
Color Format: RGB
Memory Usage: 16 bits per pixel
Transparency: No
Semi-Transparency: No
Texture Quality: Some color loss
Uses multiple colors, but doesn't accept transparency. Better quality than CMPR, but does suffer from some color loss.
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RGB5A3
Color Format: RGB
Memory Usage: 16 bits per pixel
Transparency: Yes
Semi-Transparency: Yes
Texture Quality: Some color loss
Same as RGB565, except of that it has transparency support. It does suffer from a stronger amount of color loss than RGB565, however.
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RGBA8
Color Format: RGB
Memory Usage: 32 bits per pixel
Transparency: Yes
Semi-Transparency: Yes
Texture Quality: High
This texture format doesn't compress textures in any way. As a result, textures appear in perfect quality, along with the inclusion of transparency. However, it uses the most memory among all the texture formats. Therefore, it's rarely used much in most games.
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CMPR
Color Format: RGB
Memory Usage: 4 bits per pixel
Transparency: Yes
Semi-Transparency: No
Texture Quality: Variable
This texture format uses lossy compression on textures to reduce their memory. As a result, this format is used more frequently than the others. The quality of these textures can vary, but this texture format does mess up video game sprites. Unlike other texture formats that have transparency support, this texture format only uses a maximum of "1" transparent color.
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CI4
Memory Usage: 4 bits per pixel
Palettes: IA8, RGB565, RGB5A3
Maximum Colors: 16
Palette Memory Usage: 64 bytes + 32 bytes for every 16 colors added (96 bytes maximum)
This is one of two texture formats that use palettes. These textures are limited to only 16 colors, but at least they're friendly to video game sprites, unlike CMPR.
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CI8
Memory Usage: 8 bits per pixel
Palettes: IA8, RGB565, RGB5A3
Maximum Colors: 256
Palette Memory Usage: 64 bytes + 32 bytes for every 16 colors added (576 bytes maximum)
Same as CI4, except for that these textures can have up to 256 colors in their palettes. The maximum number of colors is always equal to a multiple of 16 whenever the palette is adjusted.
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Regarding a memory usage scale, it's almost always as follows...
1: RGBA8
2-4: IA8, RGB565, RGB5A3
5: CI8
6-7: I8, IA4
8: CI4
9-10: I4, CMPR
Hope that this helps for anyone else who does texture edits.