Welcome to PalMod!

PalMod is a fan project allowing you to edit colors (also known as palettes) for various fighting games. That usually requires pretty deep technical knowledge, a lot of time, and some luck to do correctly. By providing a straight-forward front-end and consolidating a bunch of community knowledge, PalMod hopefully makes this previously daunting process easy.

What PalMod does is update very certain areas of the game ROMs where the games store color values. Game play is not affected, just colors. If you're new to PalMod, please read the Get Started section or check out one of the YouTube tutorial videos. PalMod is pretty easy once you get started, but it can be very confusing at first. This Read Me is intended to fully but briefly cover all the functionality of PalMod.

PalMod is under active development in 2026 with updates about once a month or so. Check Version History for information on the latest changes. You can find new releases at https://zachd.com/palmod : I strongly recommend using the latest non-beta version. The beta versions also will usually have great changes, but may need a little more testing.

If you're a developer or romhhacker or just curious, the source code can be found at https://github.com/Preppy/PalMod . The newgamedummy is a base template you can use to add your own support for new games.

Getting Started

1. Download and install PalMod. By default, PalMod installs to C:\Program Files\PalMod. PalMod.exe and img2020.dat are the critical files and are updated regularly.
2. Download the ZIP for the game you want to work with. Extract out the files (the ROM set) for the game. Save a copy of the untouched game ZIP "just in case".
   • (If your game is in a CHD, use CHDMan.exe to extract out the files from that. You will likely then need to use bin2iso from Gdi2Data to convert that BIN to an ISO. Then use extract.exe to extract the files from the ISO.)
   • Some games require a few extra steps to work properly (for example if they are encrypted): these steps are noted (or linked to) in the Game Roms section below.
3. For most games, just open PalMod and use PalMod's File :: Load ROM by game to open that ROM. Each supported game is listed under the platform it normally runs on. (See here for a list of ROM names PalMod typically looks for.) The File Open dialog filter will show just the files from that ROM set that contain palette data. (If you don't see anything in this dialog, either you didn't extract out the ZIP or we don't understand that specific game version yet.)
   • You can also directly use PalMod's File :: Load Game to load games. For that you will need to change the file filter in the bottom right from "Aggressors of Dark Kombat" to whatever game you want to edit. That will update the view and show you the ROM files PalMod can use for that game.
   • Some games that spread their character files across multiple files. For those games, you will want to use File :: Load Directory instead. Use that and point PalMod to the folder containing your game's files. If the game files use "-simm" in their filename, then you definitely need to use the Load Directory option to load that game folder.
   • Or if you already know what file from the game that you want to use, you can just drag and drop that file onto PalMod and we'll load it for you that way if we recognize it. (PalMod's status bar will indicate if we recognize it or not.)
4. Make changes!
5. Click File :: Patch Changes (or CTRL+S) in PalMod to save your changes.
6. Copy that modified ROM file back into the ZIP. DO NOT MAKE A NEW ZIP! You made a copy of the zip in the first step, so updating this copy is not a problem. Do not add files to the ZIP: you should ever only replace existing files. (I stress to you: don't make new ZIPs or add files to ZIPs if that file didn't already contain that file. You'll confuse yourself.)
7. You can now load that ROM into your favorite emulator: have fun!

Some emulators (such as MAME) create a "NVRAM" folder that is a backup / cache of the game that it uses to load the game faster. If you do not see your changes reflected in the game, you may want (need) to delete or reset the NVRAM folder for your game in order to see your changes. For MAME, these files would be found under MAME\nvram\(YourGameShortName). (MAME for example lets you run MAME with the extra command line option "-nonovram_save" to avoid this cache, as in "mame.exe -nonvram_save MyGame".

MAME lets you have local file overrides. That means that you can just put your untouched "foo.zip" ROM in the MAME\ROMs folder, extract that "foo.zip" to "MAME\ROMs\foo", and then modify the files in that "foo" folder. Next time you load that game, MAME will use those updated files without you needing to update the zip.

Please note that WinKawaks (and FinalBurn Alpha and some other emulators) prefer it if you update an existing game ZIP or a copy of that game ZIP instead of creating your own. (You should always just be updating an existing ZIP anyways.) If you create your own ZIP, it may ask for a different version of the ROM then the one that you're using. Either shift to use that version or just use an existing ZIP that was already created for that game.

Most emulators will warn you that the CRC32 value for your game has changed now that you have modified it: this is unavoidable when we make changes, and thus expected. You should be able to continue once you hit OK. (For MAME you can just run the game via the command line, as in "mame MyGame" as opposed to launching it from the MAME UI.)

PalMod has a bunch of features and options: read up on those here.

Some games uses a lot of intertwined palettes (such as MvC2 Juggernaut's power-up glow palettes) that are applied to a base sprite. If you keep the "Process Supplement Palettes" option checked under PalMod's Settings : : Advanced Setings menu, PalMod will try to handle all these for you automatically for COTA, KOF02:UM (Steam), MBTL, MSH, MSHvSF, MvC, MvC2, SFIII:NG, SFIII:2I, SFIII:3S (Arcade), UNICLR, and XMvSF. If you want to change them yourself, a great guide to those MvC2 supplemental palettes can be found here. If you don't modify those - or don't let PalMod modify those for you - the character may flash in game when they use mismatched palettes.

Program Functions

This section covers all the options available in the PalMod interface and is probably worth a read at least once.

**** File menu ****

Load ROM:

Harder mode: Opens up a normal Windows "File Open" dialog. Use the filter in the bottom right of this dialog to select loading a single ROM from a game's ROM set. PalMod does not include any ROMs: you can get those from elsewhere.

Load ROM by game:

Easier mode: Use the platform-based filters to have the Load ROM dialog pop up with the game filter you want to use.

Load Directory:

This is how you load a set of ROMs that PalMod reads as a unit in order to support that game. Use the options here to load palettes for a game from the directory you extracted your game's ROM files to. This is useful for Dreamcast, Playstation, and the "newer" ROM dumps for various games. Newer game rips tend to prefer the "Directory"-based ROM sets.

Patch Changes:

This saves any changes made to the ROM or palette files. There's no undo from this. This commits all changes to memory and then to disk.

Copy colors to (DC or PS2)

MvC2 only: Copies the colors from the current DC (or Steam or PS2) 6-color mix to PS2 (or DC). Allows you to "copy" color edits across platforms.

Copy colors to Steam

MvC2 only: Copies the colors from the current DC (or Steam) 6-color mix to Steam. Allows you to "copy" color edits to your other ROM.

Open Extras File

For games that we can support it for, the Extras file allows you to specify regions of the ROM that PalMod will attempt to read as if they were palettes. This is very powerful functionality, so be careful with it. If the Extras file for that game does not already exist, you will get a dialog prompt where you can specify file creation options. The "add known palette regions as comments" can help provide useful context. The "create entries for unknown regions" will add everything not handled already as viewable regions. Once you have made your changes, save the file and reload the game in PalMod so that those Extras file options are loaded. The section Extra Files below goes further into detail here.

Close File / Directory:

Unloads the current game and stops work on it.

Load Last File / Directory:

Loads the last game you were working upon.

Exit

Uh

**** Edit menu ****

You probably already understand these, but the keyboard-based Color Picker options are pretty useful. You can use these as long as PalMod is the foreground application.

If you press CTRL+SHIFT+C (Copy Color at Cursor) while PalMod is the foreground application, PalMod will copy the current color of whatever your mouse cursor is pointing at. (This lets you copy colors from different applications.) You can then paste it whereever you want - or paste it into a text file and you can see what the color is in hex (such as "#ffe8f9fd").
If you press CTRL+SHIFT+V (Paste Color at Cursor), PalMod will both copy that color to the clipboard and then paste it into the current palette selection.
If you want to be even fancier, CTRL+SHIFT+N (Paste Color at Cursor, Next) copies the color, pastes it, and then moves on to the next color in PalMod's palette so that you can quickly copy a visible color table. Please note that all color imports are subject to the color format restrictions for the given game's hardware, so you may not be able to get "perfect" colors on older games.
Finally, there's a special CTRL+SHIFT+A option you can use to copy palette boxes. When you use this key command we copy the next 15 colors found. This is only (but very) useful for palette boxes, as in copying from another copy of PalMod, an image with palette boxes, or MAME's palette viewer. If this doesn't quite work for your needs, CTRL+SHIFT+N is the next easiest way to copy colors across. Our logic samples the first "N" colors found across the first determined visual section and then extrapolates color layout from there, so start at the first color's tile if you can. If your palette box has the exact same colors repeated multiple times at the start of the palette box, you will get better results by starting at the last instance of that repeating color's strip, since that lets us figure out what the "box" size is. Note also that various Microsoft Windows applications such as their Photo Viewer are stupidly "augmenting" the colors and distorting them, so if we're not detecting the colors cleanly you may want to switch to a not-braindead application (such as Adobe Photoshop Elements.)

**** Tools menu ****

Generate Gradient:

Available if you have more than 2 colors selected. Generates a gradient in the color space selected between the first and last colors selected. You can select various gradient math options: the results will be similar but you may have a visual preference for one particular math style.

Grayscale:

Converts the current palette selection to the grayscale option you have specified. I like "Weighted" usually.

Invert:

Inverts the current palette selection.

Reverse:

Swaps 2 or more selected palette colors, reversing the selections.

Revert:

Restore the saved palette from memory. Once you use Update or Patch, that updates the saved palette.

Blink:

Shows which part of the image the current palette selection modifies. Only useful if there's a preview image available.

Load Palette:

You can use this to either load palette information from these file types:

• Adobe Color Table (ACT) files (the older classic choice)
• indexed PNGs (the best choice usually)
• indexed BMPs
• GIFs
• GPL GIMP palette files
• HPL HipPalette files
• Microsoft ".PAL" RIFF palette files
• SF3:OE txt.dat (for SF3 only)
• BBCF Improvement Mod "IMPL" and "CFPL" palette files. (For BBCF only.)
• GGXXACR "PRPL" palette files. (For GGXXACR only.)

Note that Fighter's Factory usually writes their color tables upside down (256 to 0 not 0 to 256): PalMod will try to detect those and read those upside down so that things look right, but you can also directly load an ACT or PNG as "upside-down" to correct for that.

Save Palette:

Save your palette to a file out so you can use it in other applications or share it with a friend. PalMod's supported palette export file types are:

• .ACT (Adobe Color Table)
• .GPL (GIMP PaLette file)
• Microsoft RIFF ".PAL"
• .HPL (HipPalette)
• .TPL (TileLayer Pro palette).
• BBCF only: BBCF Improvement Mod palette (.IMPL) or BBCF palette (.CFPL)
• GGXXACR only: PRPL palette (.PRPL).

From this list, ACT is recommended. However - if you use the Preview window's Export Preview : Export option you can export the image as Indexed PNG and that is the absolute best option. That contains the visible preview and a normal palette easily readable within that file.

Mapping Palette

Very useful for sprite ripping. Updates the current palette to use a mapping palette compatible with the current color format for that game system. We keep track of the mapping palettes you use to help reduce potential color collisions. That way you can map some palettes, and then later map some more and we will try to avoid conflicting with your previous maps. That's only relevant if they will be on the screen at the same time, but can make your life easier. (PalMod's generated mapping palettes are markedly better than any generic "mapping palette" because we're paying attention to the specifics of the game's color format. A general usage mapping palette will not do this and thus may cause artifacts in rips.) We will mention if we loop the palette mapping table in the Status Bar: that's fine for most normal usage. The only time this really matters is if you're trying to map a stage or other very large composition: we will show you an error message in that case since no one map would be able to map that unit fully and uniquely. Consider chopping up the palette sets into smaller sequences if this happens.
The "Map Selected Palette" option builds and applies a map to the currently selected palette. If there are multiple palettes visible (we call these "paired palettes"), the last palette you clicked on (or the first one) is the "selected" palette.
The "Map All Paired Palettes" option builds and applies a map to all palettes currently loaded in the UI (Palette View). So for example if Captain America was loaded this would map both his main body and his shield.

Remap Unit

One of the downsides of gaming is also an upside: there are so many games and so many versions. The Remap Unit menu option is intended to allow people to more quickly support different versions of known games, inclusive of revisions (mvc ENU vs mvc JPN) and/or sequels.
You will first select the new ROM of interest. Then you tell us what file to output the results to. We will output either in the Extras syntax or the PalMod code syntax: you can select which via the file filter in that dialog. Once you've done that PalMod then does a binary search for every palette in the current unit in the loaded game ROM, and then writes all matches found to the file you specified. We do a little good faith check on delta variation (since for example a given palette might be found in multiple places within the ROM), but it's inherently a speculative venture. If there are multiple results for a palette we will list all of those: you may want to update to use a different offset than we select. If a palette can not be found in the new ROM, we'll simply list that it doesn't exist.

Generate IPS Patch File

Generates an IPS (International Patching System) patch file. This can be used to share or load your changes without patching the ROM itself. It commits the current palette to memory and then saves either all palettes that were modified in the current session since your last Save-to-ROM to a small-ish IPS file or every palette in the game to a larger IPS file. How to use IPS files. IPS patches use 24-bit addressing to indicate locations, so only game ROMs that are smaller than 16MB can have patches generated for them. If your ROM supports IPS patching, the option to export to IPS will be enabled once you have made at least one change in the current session.

Check MvC2-DC Edits Made By PalMod 1.2x

MvC2-Dreamcast only: Verifies that if someone changed a character palette that they also changed the secondary palettes associated with that palette. For example, if you modify Cyclops you also need to modify his Extra - 02 (c.HK) to match. This option also allows you to auto-correct your mix using our current up-to-date Process Supplement Palettes logic. This is only really useful for "old" mixes or if you didn't have Process Supplement Palettes on.

**** Settings menu ****

Colors Per Line:

You can choose between 8 or 16 colors per line. It's arguably easier to edit characters in 8 colors per line mode, and stages in 16 colors per line mode. I use 16 colors per line mode for exploring ROMs.

Color Format:

* Shows the color format being used for the current game. This can be changed when you are using the Developer Mode "Unknown Game" game loading option, allowing you to try to read the ROM as different color formats.

* You can also set the alpha mode in Developer Mode: some games may or may not want the alpha bits set. Note that if you're unsure what Color Format to use for a game, open up a related game in PalMod and see what Color Format PalMod uses for that: that'd be a good first color format to try.

* PalMod always treats the first color as a transparency or counter color and will not modify it since that would cause problems. Different games write a different number of colors before the next transparency color is needed. In Developer Mode you can set how often the game expects a transparency color.

Show 8-bit values for non-8-bit colors:

If checked, view of color values are based on 32-bit RGB values (0xAARRGGBB, 0-255, aka ARGB8888) instead of the actual game values. This is for readability ONLY. Most games we support do not support 32-bit color, so the 32bit color values have to be rounded to what the game can support when we save.

Include bonus data in CTRL+C copy

For ROM hackers. PalMod can do a neat little trick: write its basic copy string - something like "(/"415B)" - as an ASCII string to the clipboard, but also write an extended version of that data as Unicode to the clipboard. Palmod itself only looks at the ASCII version, but you and text editors look at the Unicode/extended data. Turn this on if you want the extra information, which includes ROM location for the current palette and expected bytes at that location given the current colors. I regularly use the extended copy information to figure out the palette locations and raw hex data for that palette. I can then use that information to work with new ROMs much more quickly by searching for those hexes in the new ROM in a binary editor.

**** Settings menu: Advanced Settings ****

Allow transparency for games that support it:

For Marvel VS Capcom 2, GGXXACR, and other games that support partially transparent characters: Allows you to make changes to the alpha/transparency value of colors. You can get cool ghost effects, but it's also really bad for competitive play. You will get a warning if you try to turn this on. :)

Process Supplement Palettes for MvC2, COTA, KOF02UM (Steam), MBTL, MSH, MSHVSF, MVC, SF3, UNICLR, and XMVSF:

Automatically process any extra palettes that are based on the currently selected palette. This is the easy mode. For MvC2, you potentially can do better yourself if you use the Eidrian Palette Guide. For other games, you may be able to better if you do it by hand or otherwise tweak colors.

Preview window is a child window:

Normally when we create the Preview window we do it such that it is a child window. If you untick this option we will create it was a peer window with its own system taskbar entry. You will need to restart PalMod for that to take effect.

**** Palette View **** (left side of the main PalMod UI)
Each square represents one color from a given color palette. A maximum of 256 colors will be shown at one time (or 128 in 8 color per line mode): for larger palettes, you'll need to traverse multiple pages.
Click to select a specific color, and then use the Edit Color options or Get Color to modify that color. Or select multiple colors to change a number of colors at once. You can also right-click upon those colors. You can copy and paste from color square(s) to other color square(s), or even send a friend a sequence of colors to copy to their PalMod via saving out a palette file (Tools : Save Palette), an indexed PNG (best option, Preview window's Export Preview : Export option), or by sending the palette string we copy to the clipboard when you press CTRL+C.
Note that in most games the first color is usually transparent, which is why you cannot change the first color for most games.
To select multiple colors at once, click on the first color of interest and then drag to the last color of interest. Or hold CONTROL (CTRL) and click on each color of interest.
While you can easily update the palette selections using your mouse, you can also change and move which colors are selected using your keyboard. Once you have color(s) selected, you can use CTRL + SHIFT + (directional arrow key) to move the selected region left, right, up, or down. You can also use CTRL + SHIFT + ALT + (left or right arrow key) to select another color into your selection, either on the left or right. (This is particularly useful in conjunction with pasting colors via the "color under the mouse pointer" option of CTRL + SHIFT + V.)
There are two unique right-click options that are particularly useful:

• Copy Offset: This copies the binary offset in the ROM for the selected palette entry to the clipboard. So if the palette started at 0x100 and you have selected the second palette color, the offset would be 0x102 (for most usage). Knowing where the palette is located can be helpful when you want to directly interact with the ROM in a binary viewer or editor. (If you're deeply curious about PalMod's palette knowledge, you can also just directly look at the game's header files on GitHub.)
• Copy Binary Data: This copies the currently selected palette colors to the clipboard in their binary form appropriate for the currently active color format. Note that this may not be correct for games that use quirky color representation (such as using chaotic/non-logical alpha values). But if you're trying to find known palettes from one ROM in another ROM, this can be really helpful.

**** Edit Color options **** (right side of the main PalMod UI)

Once you have selected a color square (or a number of them), you can change the RGB (Red Green Blue) or HSL (Hue Saturation Lightness) values until you find a color you like and works well. In some cases you can adjust alpha: be careful about this. It's a cool feature that should never be used for tournament mixes. Note that you really should edit in RGB. HSL editing is going to do a lot of things that will need to involve rounding so that it works for your old game, so be sure to double-check your final colors.

**** Dialog buttons ****

Transform:

Applies the currently selected Color Transform to the palette selection. By default this is Invert: you can right-click on this to change this.

Pick Color:

Pops up a color picker so you can select a color to use for the selected palette indexes.

Update:

Saves the current palette to memory. Note that you still need to Patch the change before your game is modified.

Preview:

Shows the Preview window that hosts the game sprites if we have any in our image file.

**** Preview window ****

Export Preview menu:

Export

Pops up a normal Windows "File Save" dialog so you can save a copy of your image to disk. The Indexed PNG option is brought to you using code from LodePNG. Indexed PNG export is highly recommended: your friends can simply import that PNG into PalMod as an easy way of exchanging colors.

Export Advanced...

Pops up an Export Preview window so you can save a copy of your image to disk. This option lets you select more options: exporting multiple previews at once and other non-standard file formats.

Import Layout menu:

Load Layout

Load your own sprite to use for the preview. This sprite can be a .RAW file, an indexed (Type 3) PNG file, or a non-animated GIF.
If you are trying to use a RAW file, the filename must include the H and W of the RAW, as in "ryu-w-67-h-100.raw", since RAW files do not include the H/W (height and width) values.
You can also use Type 2 or 6 (RGB or RGBA) PNGs but that will only work if they are using the current palette(s). Any colors that match will be used to form the preview: everything else will be ignored. This is very useful when you use a mapped palette in order to generate previews.
There is a special "PNG (treat as non-indexed)" option here: use that if your indexed image HAS the right colors in it, but the color table isn't ordered normally.
The special option "PNG (upside-down color table)" is for use with Fighter Factory-produced indexed PNGs that have upside-down color tables.
The special option "PNG (GIMP wrong-offset color table)" is for people that accidentally edited their indexed PNGs in GIMP. Don't do that! Use GIMP for RGB PNGs if you must, but not for indexed PNGs. Anyways, for each editing instance on your indexed PNG it screws up the color table and increments the values by +1. If you choose "GIMP wrong-offset" loading, we will thus load the PNG using the color table offset backwards by 1. That will fix once-GIMP-edited files. If you edited your file in GIMP multiple times, and you're just asking for trouble that way, you can load it into PalMod using this setting, save it out as a partially fixed indexed PNG from PalMod, load that partially fixed version, save it out, rinse repeat for as many times as you edited it in GIMP. This is painful and dumb. Don't use GIMP for indexed PNGs.

Load Layout Advanced...

Same as the previous, with more options. Lets you specify the dimensions (usually you would not want to change these), the import direction (normal, flipped vertically, or flipped horizontally), the composition method (Replace the current preview in the current layer, Merge Above it, or Merge Below it), and what Layer to apply to (when dealing with paired previews such Captain America and his Shield palette). Note that if you are using paired palettes (such as with Captain America and his shield) you really want to make sure both are the same size. We will forcibly resize all previews to all be the same size: this will be indicated in the status bar at the bottom of the main PalMod window if it happens.

Import Settings submenu

Trim imported previews

With this on, extra whitespace around the preview sprite(s) will be removed when you import a preview. Note that if you're working with a set of paired previews, they will all be normalized to the same size, so padding may need to be (re-)introduced in that scenario.

Use WinKawaks math first when importing CPS1/CPS2/NeoGeo screenshots

WinKawaks has "different" color math which makes palette matching impossible unless you account for that. Normally we trust the incoming preview colors first, but then if we find zero matches we switch our logic to presume the colors are wrong and adjust accordingly. With this setting on (recommended for WinKawaks users!), we presume that the incoming colors are wrong and use that special math first.

Use FBNeo math first when importing CPS3 screenshots

This description should be familiar! FBNeo has "different" color math which makes palette matching impossible unless you account for that. Normally we trust the incoming preview colors first, but then if we find zero matches we switch our logic to presume the colors are wrong and adjust accordingly. With this setting on (recommended for FBNeo users!), we presume that the incoming colors are wrong and use that special math first.

Settings menu:

Set Background Color

Choose a specific color to be shown as the background for the sprite.

Set Background Image

Choose a specific image to be shown as the background.

Set Blink Color

This is the color that will be shown when a given color index is "blinked". Normally white.

Blend Mode

Most games use typical alpha blending to draw their sprites. Some other games and some sprites use additive blending: blending the foreground sprite in with whatever background is present. The default setting "Default" will use whatever game mode any particular preview thinks it should be displayed as. You can also force PalMod to always use alpha blending or additive blending if you prefer. Additive blended previews will work best on stage backgrounds from your game. There are two blend modes for games specifically for the Playstation: Semi-Transparent Mode (STM) either On or Off. PS1 games use a Semi-Transparent bit for colors, not alpha, and the STM affects how they are displayed.

PNG/GIF drops here are palettes

With this on, any indexed PNG or non-animated GIF dropped onto PalMod will apply that embedded palette to the current view. With this off, any indexed PNG or non-animated GIF dropped onto PalMod will apply that embedded sprite to the current view (as if were a RAW file). If the colors used in an RGB PNG match the current palette, you can also drag and drop RGB PNGs and use them as previews. Note that we are using raw color comparisons: if your emulator uses brightening or other video post-processing filters, that will break color matching. Disable any graphic filters in your emulator if you want this matching to work. Note that if your filename has "-layer-number" in the filename, as in "NewChun-layer-1", we'll use that for that specific layer of the multi-layer preview instead of just replacing the full stack.

Blink Inverts Color

Normally PalMod blinks by switching the selection to white temporarily. Since this isn't always visible, you can choose this option to have PalMod invert the color instead of using white.

Use Background Color

Switch back to using Background Color instead of Background Image.

Tile Image Background

Like it sounds. Useful for small background images.

Clicks show color in palette

If you click on any part of the preview window, PalMod will highlight and select all matching colors in the current palette. That lets you understand what palette color affects any given part of your sprite. Or deselect this to turn this feature off.

Autoload fallback previews

PalMod has a lot of built-in previews, but there are a lot of games with a lot of palettes. By default if we cannot find a preview for the palette shown we will look for a "Previews" folder located where you're running PalMod from, and then for a named preview in PNG form at that location. (Note that both indexed PNG and RGB PNG will work, but indexed PNG will be much faster.) If we find that we will use it as the fallback preview if and only if we have no internal preview for that palette. The specific filename we are looking for is in the title bar of the Preview window. This option allows you to turn off this fallback loading path if you don't want to use it.

Zoom submenu:

Zooms the selected sprite.

**** Export Preview dialog ****

File menu:

Save

Choose where to save this to and what file type to use. Indexed PNG is the most portable: that lets you have a normal image with preview and includes an easy-to-use palette. JPEG is lossy (does not represent the true colors), sucks, and may be removed at some point in the future. "PNG file" (non-indexed) can be quite useful in conjunction with mapping palettes if you're trying to more easily adjust previews.

Settings menu:

Set Background Color

Chooses a custom background fill color.

Export paired palette to a single (indexed) PNG if possible

You probably want this on always, but: for paired palette (such as the Captain America palette that is shown with his shield palette), we normally combine them into one indexed PNG which makes it easier to share. But if you are doing more intense palette work, this option lets you export each palette (and preview) to its own indexed PNG. This is mostly useful for new preview production work.

Transparent PNG

Highly recommended: store the image without a background color so that all the color data in the file is solely the sprite in question. Makes working with the image later a lot easier.

Amount

"One" means show the current palette only: or whatever specific button is selected under Palette. Higher numbers mean show all those button's color options as well. We only allow for exporting multiple sprites at once if PalMod already knows what your sprite's peer palettes are (as in P1/P2 colors, A/B/C/D colors, etc).

There are two main scenarios for created colors: copying them from others and sharing them with others. It is by far easiest to exchange indexed PNG files: that lets you see exactly what you are looking at and has a palette that we can easily read.

**** Copying Colors From Others ****

PalMod supports import of a number of palette storage options.

Copying a palette from a file

From PalMod's Tools menu, you can import file-based palette storage via Load Palette. The options are:

• .act ACT Palette. The Adobe Color Table (ACT) format is a simple table of 256 colors. Many graphic tools can export or import ACT files, including Adobe Photoshop.
• .png Indexed PNG. The PNG file format is fairly flexible. In particular, Type 3 (Indexed) PNGs contain an embedded color table that PalMod can read and use. Indexed PNGs are particularly great for sharing palettes because you can see a preview of the image in question. Most fancy/modern graphic tools can export Indexed PNG files, including Adobe Photoshop.
• .bmp BitMaP image file. We support any indexed BMP files.
• .gif CompuServe Graphics Interchange Format files. We support importing the global indexed color table: we do not support importing color tables for individual frames.
• .pal Microsoft RIFF PAL. The old Microsoft RIFF file format supports PAL data. A few random applications and games we care about use that, so we added support. (Plus I worked on the RIFF team for a bit, so it was fun to add support.) Note that there are a variety of ".pal" file types: PalMod solely supports importing Microsoft RIFF PALs.
• .act Upside down ACT Palette. PalMod stores all of its RAW previews top-down. People sometimes create upside-down previews that require matching upside-down palette files: this option allows you to import those upside-down palette files.
• .png Upside down Indexed PNG. Same as with upside-down ACT files.

Copying a palette from the clipboard

PalMod can also import colors using the Windows clipboard (CTRL+C / CTRL+V), allowing you to copy within PalMod or directly from other applications. PalMod understands copy/text strings of the form:

• RGB numbers lead by a # sign. The format is #AARRGGBB or #RRGGBB . So if you copy #ff0000 and paste that into PalMod, that would give you a red color. The Windows 10 Color Picker Power Toy produced color strings in this format.
• RGB numbers. The accepted string types are RRGGBB, AARRGGBB, 0xRRGGBB, or 0xAARRGGBB . So if you copy ff0000 , 0x00ff00 , or 0xff0000ff into PalMod you would get red, blue, or green respectively. Most web color generation tools will allow you to copy a color string of this format.
• The PalMod format. PalMod has a private ASCII-string-based color storage format it uses. A PalMod color string looks like (#100130FFF0FEA0FA70E860B53083105200BFF08DF04AF006F003C00190FF20A42) . If you copy that example into PalMod, that will give you Chun-Li's Super Gem Fighter default palette. The syntax PalMod uses is undocumented and not particularly relevant, but a quick overview is :

  (	Required: lead character
  ?	Required: one character. Indicates PalMod's internal game identifier OR an overflow indicator. If an internal game indentifier is used, that value is mapped to the appropriate color format that game uses.
  ?	Required: one character. Either the color string length OR if the overflow indicator is used then this value will be the color format the string represents.
  (Color)	Required: one chunk per color. Each chunk is either 4, 6, or 8 characters at this time. The colors specified are imported according to the color format the string has been declared to represent.
  )	Required: terminal character

Copying a color from anywhere on your screen

Finally, PalMod can also copy any color from any location on your screen. While PalMod is the foreground application, move your mouse over any color you like on your screen. Then press CTRL+SHIFT+C to have PalMod copy that color to the clipboard. You can then Paste (CTRL+V) that color into any palette box you want to. Or you can just copy/paste directly: select a palette box in PalMod, move your mouse over any color you like, and press CTRL+SHIFT+V. You can also use CTRL+SHIFT+N to Copy, Paste, and then also move to the Next color in the palette. If you are trying to copy palette boxes, you can use CTRL+SHIFT+A to have PalMod copy the next 15 colors it detects from wherever the mouse is located. This logic is pretty fragile and thus may not work perfectly (especially if your image viewer is ""accidentally"" distorting the colors to make them look prettier), but can be helpful.

**** Sharing Colors With Others ****

There are a number of other ways that PalMod allows you to share colors.

Sharing a fully patched ROM

Once you're done with your changes, you can use File :: Patch Changes to save your changes to the ROM. To use your changes, copy that file back into your ZIP. Then if you need to share those changes with someone else, you can share either that changed file or the game ZIP.

Sharing via the clipboard

You can select any number of colors in PalMod's palette view. You can use SHIFT or CTRL or drag the mouse to select multiple color boxes. Then press CTRL+C to copy those colors to the clipboard. You can then paste those colors into another instance of PalMod or paste that color string into a chat program to share with friends.

Note that if you check Settings :: Include bonus data in CTRL+C copy, PalMod will include some bonus information in the clipboard string. That information is hopefully pretty useful for advanced users.

Sharing via an image file

This is the most excellent option. Go to Preview :: File :: Export Image. In that Export Image dialog, select the number of previews you want to export, and the palette you want to export (the P1 color, the P2 color, etc). Ideally you just export one preview at a time: that enables us to do special tricks. Once you have your selection configured, go to File :: Save.

PalMod will then allow you to export to a number of image formats: Indexed PNG, PNG Image, GIF Image, BMP Image, JPEG Image, an HTML web page, or a RAW texture file. Those are mostly self-explanatory, but two bear special mention:

• Indexed PNG is fantastic for sharing colors because it is both a preview and a color table in one. Due to limitations of the Indexed PNG (Type 3 PNG) format, it is only suitable for one character preview at a time: exporting multiple characters at once won't work well. We do have 256 colors maximum to work with, though, so you can export things like Captain America's palette and his shield's palette to the same Indexed PNG file.
• RAW textures are not directly viewable, as it is a paint-by-number preview stripped of color data. Other users can load that RAW in RAW-aware applications (such as PalMod, Adobe Photoshop, or GIMP) to see and work with the preview. Note that the RAW file format syntax is limited, so PalMod will include the height and width of the data in the saved file name to make your life easier.

Sharing via a patch file for that specific ROM

PalMod supports emitting patch data for the ROM in question via Tools :: Generate IPS Patch File. PalMod only allows IPS Patch generation for certain games, due to limitations of the IPS format. Additionally, the option will only be available once you have made at least one change to the game palettes. Once you do that and you select "Generate IPS Patch File", you will be prompted to either export a patch containing all the palettes that you have edited in your current OR to export a patch containing all the palettes that PalMod knows about for that game.

Additional background: The International Patch System file format contains basic information about what ROM locations to modify to what values in a ROM. It is important that you only apply the IPS file for a particular ROM to that particular ROM: other ROM/game variants might have shifted hex locations and thus not work as expected. IPS Peek lets you see the contents of any given IPS file. Lunar IPS allows application of the IPS files to your ROM. And there's a handy IPS usage tutorial here.

Sharing via a palette file

Finally, PalMod can also simply save out the current palette for the current character. When you use PalMod's Tools :: Save Palette menu option, you will be prompted to save in either .act ACT color table format (the most common palette interchange format), the .gpl GIMP Palette file format, or the archaic .pal Microsoft RIFF PAL file format. You probably will always want to save as an ACT file. Note that PalMod does support exporting the current palette as an upside-down ACT file: that can be useful for "old" previews that want an upside-down color table.

PalMod knows about a lot of fighting games and supports a lot of palettes for those fighting games. Yet there are more palettes in those games - and more games - that PalMod does not know about. PalMod can do pretty useful things in these scenarios:

1. For new games, PalMod will open any file you want it to and treat it as the color format of your choice.
2. For new palettes, PalMod will let you tell it what ROM regions to look at using an Extras file.

**** For new games: Unknown Game Mode ****

Go to PalMod's File :: Load ROM by game :: Developer Mode menu. Under there are two options: Unknown Game Mode (Single File) and Unknown Game Mode (Interleaved). This will let you open any file(s) you want in PalMod in a very raw view.

For most games, you'll be using Single File view. For some ROM dumps, you may need to use the Interleaved view. If you do use the Interleaved view, you will get a prompt to select the files you want to look at and how PalMod should read the data within them.

Most files viewed will not be useful in PalMod: it helps to know what file might contain palettes for your game. SNK palette files will usually have "p" in the filename, but for other companies you will have to spelunk around. For sprite based games, the palette data will be in there somewhere - the trick is having the patience to eventually figure out where they are located. Once you find one palette you usually will start finding more quickly.

You will need to create an Extras file to explore this file. I usually start with a huge range and hope, narrowing down slowly as I go.

Now that you've got a bunch of data comes the very hard part.

1. First, you need to know what color format to use. The setting you select under Settings :: Color Format is what PalMod will use to interpret the raw data in the file. Knowing what platform the game is for helps: PalMod indicates in that menu what platforms a given color format is usually used for. If PalMod supports another game in that series, try opening up that game and seeing what color format PalMod uses for that. Sometimes the MAME codebase can be an excellent reference. Other times you have to just struggle through.
2. As regards Alpha... you can usually ignore that for now. We only really need that once we start wanting to write the palettes back to the ROM.

Palettes in games are usually stored after the main game data, so they are going to be "later" in the file set. The notes in the MAME XML for the games can be helpful to guess at about where that might be - or to get the right filename. Additionally, palettes are typically stored in either of two fashions: per-game, as one contiguous block of all the palettes for everyone, or per-character, where all of the colors for one character are stored just after the rest of the character data. Per-game is pretty easy to work with: you'll hit the giant section of palettes and can party. Per-character is more challenging, since once you've found a character you need to find the next character. What I've found to help is to look for visual patterns in the data. For example, Capcom usually has data that looks like colorful towers shortly before the palette data, and thin towers shortly after the palette data. It's a lot of data to sift through: you'll start to figure it out as you go along. And once you've found one palette it's much easier to find the next and so on.

Once you're certain you've found the palettes of interest, you'll want to whittle down your Extras file to just reference palette regions. Don't use PalMod to write to non-palette regions: that won't work well.

If you need a color format that PalMod doesn't support, hit me up and I'll look into it.

But all of this exploration keys off of the Extra file, which brings us to the next section...

For new palettes: The Extras File

This is a powerful extension that lets you use PalMod to read regions of the ROM that PalMod doesn't already know about. If you are feeling bold, you can also use PalMod to modify these unknown regions of ROMs that PalMod doesn't know about, but please be careful: PalMod will cheerfully trust you that you are not stomping on important game data. So always remember to keep a back-up of your files just in case. To use this support you place an Extras text file in the same directory that you launch PalMod from. Badly formed Extra files will result in PalMod warning you: please pay attention to those warnings.

If there is no existing Extras file for that specific ROM already, when you go to File :: Open Extras File, PalMod will offer to create the Extras file for you. The Create options are:

Add known palette regions as comments

This option is helpful since you'll have reference in the Extras file indicating what palettes we already know about. This makes finding unknown palettes in existing ROMs a lot easier.

Create entries for unknown regions

This option also simplifies your search, since PalMod creates the Extras entries for you so that you don't need to. Remember that these listings won't necessarily be palettes, but they would be places where palettes might be. If you're working with an existing game that we know the color format for, it should be pretty easy to find unknown palettes since they should show up as discernible palettes without you needing to tweak the Color Format options.

Each Extra definition is comprised of three lines. You specify one line with the title for a given palette, the next line being the starting position in the ROM for that palette, and the third line being the ending position in the ROM for that palette. For example:

All Extras loaded this way will be available at the bottom of the top listbox as "Extra Palettes". When that is selected your specific Extras will show up in the bottom listbox. Any palette larger than 256 colors (or 128 colors in 8 color per line mode) will be shown across multiple pages. If you specify a gigantic palette we may show you a warning to be careful.

Once you find a palette - and usually it is pretty clear since non-palette data just looks like jumbled nonsense - you will need to figure out what game sprite that maps to. Changing the palette to a primary color can make figuring out where that palette is used in the game (if at all) relatively straight-forward.

Please note that any ROM locations/palettes present in both PalMod and in the Extras file is pure shenanigans: we will end up creating two copies of that palette and you would need to modify both to have anything good happen. Please don't duplicate palettes. PalMod will make a good faith effort to check for duplicates when it loads Extra files, and will try to warn you if it sees any dupes.

If you're using developer mode to explore new ROMs, you can also use a few settings provide more information to PalMod when it loads that Extra file:

1. Instead of using the generic "unknownE.txt", you can have a unique Extra file for any ROM. If the ROM name is "rom.bin", PalMod will first try to load "romE.txt" in PalMod's directory. If that does not exist, PalMod will then fall back to "unknownE.txt". This lets you have a unique Extra file per ROM.
2. You can have PalMod display the game name by using a special GameName tag:

   ;GameName=Text to display

3. You can set the Color Format palmod uses by default for that ROM by specifying:

   ;ColorFormat=Color Format Value

   , where that text is one of the bolded strings in quotes here (just put the string, don't put the quotes):

           { "BGR555LE", ColMode::COLMODE_BGR555_LE },             // BGR555 little endian (GBA)
           { "RGB444BE", ColMode::COLMODE_RGB444_BE },             // RGB444 big endian (CPS1/2)
           { "RGB444LE", ColMode::COLMODE_RGB444_LE },             // RGB444 little endian (SF 30th steam)
           { "RGB555LE", ColMode::COLMODE_RGB555_LE_CPS3 },        // RGB555 little endian (CPS3: 555 on a 29bit display (MAME, Capcom CPS3 on Steam))
           { "RGB555LE_Normal", ColMode::COLMODE_RGB555_LE_NORMAL },  // RGB555 little endian (555 on a 32bit display (or CPS3 games in FBNeo))
           { "RGB555BE", ColMode::COLMODE_RGB555_BE },             // RGB555 big endian 
           { "RGB666", ColMode::COLMODE_RGB666_NEOGEO },           // RGB666 using the NeoGeo color table
           { "RGB333", ColMode::COLMODE_RGB333 },                  // RGB333 for Sega Genesis/MegaDrive
           { "RGBA8887", ColMode::COLMODE_RGBA8887 },              // 32bit color half alpha (guilty gear)
           { "RGB555Sharp", ColMode::COLMODE_RGB555_SHARP },       // RGB555 using the sharp x68000 color table
           { "RGBA8881", ColMode::COLMODE_RGBA8881 },              // 32bit color 1 bit alpha
           { "RGBA8888", ColMode::COLMODE_RGBA8888_LE },           // 32bit color (uniclr. and modern computing)
           { "RGBA8888_BE", ColMode::COLMODE_RGBA8888_BE },        // 32bit color (ps3)
           { "RGB888", ColMode::COLMODE_RGB888 },                  // 24bit
           { "BGR888", ColMode::COLMODE_BGR888 },                  // 24bit
           { "RGBA8881_32", ColMode::COLMODE_RGBA8881_32STEPS },   // MBAACC: 32 bit color, except only 32 steps
           { "GRB555LE", ColMode::COLMODE_GRB555_LE },             // GRB555 little endian
           { "GRB555BE", ColMode::COLMODE_GRB555_BE },             // GRB555 big endian
           { "BGRA8888BE", ColMode::COLMODE_BGRA8888_BE },         // 32bit color (ps3)
           { "BGRA8888", ColMode::COLMODE_BGRA8888_LE },           // 32bit color (arcana blood)
           { "BGR555BE", ColMode::COLMODE_BGR555_BE },             // BGR555 big endian: Motorola 68000 games
           { "GRB888", ColMode::COLMODE_GRB888 },                  // 24bit
           // This section added to enable user exploration in dev mode: not needed directly for any games yet
           { "BGR333", ColMode::COLMODE_BGR333 },
           { "RGB333", ColMode::COLMODE_RBG333 },
           { "BGR444", ColMode::COLMODE_BGR444 },
           { "BRG444", ColMode::COLMODE_BRG444 },
           { "RGB444", ColMode::COLMODE_RBG444 },
           { "BRG888", ColMode::COLMODE_BRG888 },
           { "xBGR555LE", ColMode::COLMODE_xBGR555_LE },            // Different packing used by Sega Saturn, Asura Buster / Fuuki
           { "BRG555LE", ColMode::COLMODE_BRG555_LE },              // BRG555 little endian, used by Fists of Fury
           { "RBGA8888", ColMode::COLMODE_RBGA8888 },               // 32bit color used for Fighters History
   
           { "RBGA888_LE", ColMode::COLMODE_RBGA8888_LE },          // 32bit variant used for Fighters History
           { "RGBA8888BE_16", ColMode::COLMODE_RGBA8888_BE16 },     // Psikyo variant: BE on 16bit reads
   
   
   

4. You can set the Alpha mode PalMod uses by default for that ROM by specifying:

   ;AlphaMode=Alpha Mode Value

   where that Alpha Mode Value text is one of:

           { "None", AlphaMode::GameDoesNotUseAlpha },
           { "Fixed", AlphaMode::GameUsesFixedAlpha },
           { "Variable", AlphaMode::GameUsesVariableAlpha }
   

   An Alpha mode of None means that the game does not use nor care about the Alpha value.
   An Alpha mode of Fixed means that the game expects the Alpha value to always be set.
   An Alpha mode of Variable means that the game does use the Alpha value, and that that value can be changed in order to provide transparency effects in the game.
   
5. You can set the Image Section that loads for any images used by specifying:

   ;ImageSection=Image Section Name

   where that Image Section Name text is one of exactly:

           Arcana
           ArcSys
           BreakRev
           CPS2
           DS
           FrenchBread
           Garou
           GuiltyGear
           JOJO
           KarnovR
           KOF
           MatriM
           NEOGEO
           Other
           PGM
           RedEarth
           SamSho
           SEGA
           SF2
           SFIII
           SNES
           Taito
           WakuWaku7
           WindJamm
   

   If you don't know what image section you want to use, either do not specify this OR check the source code (sorry!) to see what PalMod uses for that game. The image sections are specified in the game_gamename.h file for that game.

;GameName=MvC2 Naomi
;ColorFormat=RGB444BE
;AlphaMode=None
;ImageSection=CPS2
Ryu Main Color LP
0x260a9c0
0x260a9e0, 0x00, 0x00

These optional overrides are only used in Unknown Game / Developer Mode. These optional game name, color, alpha, and image section overrides must be specified before any hex entries in the file. This is because we need to know the color size when we first load palettes.

This is just a quick overview of the Extras file: there's a larger guide on the PalMod site.

The file names you can use are listed in the next section.

Game ROMs

(FWIW, PalMod can not download nor find ROMs for you. Please don't ask. The "fightcade JSON" handles that for Fightcade, and for other emulators a simple Google search usually works great.)

PalMod works by editing the core ROM files used by the game. Since you read the Getting Started section, you know to download the game ROM, make a copy of it, and then PalMod can modify the files you extracted from that ZIP. When you're done, you'll put the changed files back into the ZIP. Please never add new files to a game ZIP: that doesn't make any sense and won't do anything. We're only going to be changing files in place.

There are two basic systems that PalMod uses to load game ROMs. The first is by loading a single file from the ROM set. This is used when there are one or two specific files from the ROM set that contain that game's palette information. This is standard for old games or old game rips. You load these ROMs by using "Load ROM" or "Load ROM by game" in the File menu. The second method, using "Load Directory", is for games where the palette data is actually split across multiple files. This is useful for the newer "SIMM" rips, Dreamcast games, and Playstation 2 (or 3) games in particular.

Here's a table of the files we look for when we deal with single-file game ROMs. There can be some slight variance in file names: PalMod should be able to load most variants, and has internal adjustments to handle those where necessary. If your game ROM doesn't load properly or look right in PalMod, please let us know and let us know which specific ROM you're using. It's possible that you have some particular variant that PalMod doesn't know how to handle yet. If your file names don't match at all, check the table after this one for the games we handle via Load Directory.

There's a flaw in the implementation of most NeoGeo emulators where they forcibly want either ".bin"-style or ".p1"-style file extension names if the ZIP has been modified. So if you get a message in your NeoGeo emulator that "file-p1.p1" or "file-p1.bin" is missing, just update every file in that ZIP to use the opposite filename style. If the filenames end in .bin, change them to use the post-hyphen part of the filename, as in changing "foo-bar.bin" to be "foo-bar.bar", and "foo-ack.bin" to be "foo-ack.ack". Or the filenames did not end in .bin, change them all to end in .bin.

You should always expect to get a message from your emulator about the CRC32 value for your game having changed. The CRC32 value just keeps track of the exact precise file revision, and we have to change that when we edit the file. If you play online, both people using the same ROM version should help eliminate any desyncs caused by potential emulator confusion.

Game Name	Extras Filename	Usual ROM name
Aggressors of Dark Kombat	AoDKE.txt	074-p1.p1
Aquapazza: Aquaplus Dream Match (Steam)	(N/A)	a0.arc (in the main AquaPazza folder)
Art of Fighting 1	Aof1E.txt	044-p1.p1
Art of Fighting 3 (ROM p1)	Aof3P1E.txt	096-p1.p1
Art of Fighting 3 (ROM p2)	Aof3P2E.txt	096-p2.sp2
Asura Buster	AsuraBusterE.txt	pgm3.u1, pgm2.u2, pgm1.u3, and pgm0.u4
Avengers in Galactic Storm	AvgrsGSE.txt	sf_00-0.7k and sf_01-0.7l
Battle K-Road	BtlKRoadE.txt	4-u46.bin and 5-u39.bin
Battle Master: Kyuukyoku no Senshitachi	BMKNSE.txt	battle master - kyuukyoku no senshi-tachi (japan).sfc
Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon S: Jogai Ranto!? Shuyaku Sodatsusen	BSSMSJRE.txt	Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon S - Jougai Rantou! Shuyaku Soudatsusen (Japan).sfc
Bleach: Dark Souls (NDS)	BleachDSE.txt	3494 - Bleach - Dark Souls (Europe) (En,Fr,De,Es,It).nds
Breakers Revenge	BreakersRevE.txt	245-p1.p1
Capcom Fighting Evolution (PS2)	CFEe.txt	SLUS_209.50. Please note that CFE does weird palette swizzling.
Capcom Fighting Evolution (Steam)	CFJe.txt	cfj.21D3D8A7. This is read-only support. Please note that CFE does weird palette swizzling. NOTE: Use ArcTool for packing/repacking as described below.
Capcom vs SNK 1 (CVS1)	cvs1e.txt	Capcom_vs_SNK_Millenium_Fight_2000_Unlocked.bin (or mpr-23504.ic1)
Capcom vs SNK 1 (Steam)	cvs1Se.txt	cvs1.21D3D8A7 NOTE: Use ArcTool for packing/repacking as described below.
Capcom vs SNK 2 (CVS2)	cvs2e.txt	SNKGD_SL.bin (Fightcade uses an encrypted version inside the CHD: use "GD ROM Explorer" to extract and decrypt that using the DES key for GDL-0008, make changes, reencrypt it, and then repack with NAOMI GD-ROM IP Patcher)
Capcom vs SNK 2 (Steam)	cvs2Se.txt	cvs2.21D3D8A7 NOTE: Use ArcTool for packing/repacking as described below.
Clay Fighter: TE	cftee.txt	Clay Fighter - Tournament Edition (USA).sfc
COTA (X-Men: Children of the Atom CPS2)	cotae.txt	xmn.05a
COTA (X-Men: Children of the Atom Steam)	cotaSe.txt	xmcotaj.21D3D8A7 or xmcotau.21D3D8A7 or f000.bin NOTE: Use ArcTool for packing/repacking as described below.
Cyberbots (CPS2)	CybotE.txt	cyb*.04
Cyberbots (Steam)	CybotSE.txt	cybotsj.21D3D8A7; cybotsu.21D3D8A7 NOTE: Use ArcTool for packing/repacking as described below.
Daraku Tenshi (Psikyo)	DarakuE.txt	prog.u16
Double Dragon	DoubleDragonE.txt	082-p1.p1
Dragon Ball Z: Extreme Butoden (USA)(3DS)	DBZEBe.txt	3DS1366 - Dragon Ball Z - Extreme Butoden (USA)-decrypted.3ds
Dragon Ball Z - Hyper Dimension (SNES)	DBZHDE.txt	dragon ball z - hyper dimension (japan).sfc
Fatal Fury: King of Fighters	FatalFury1E.txt	033-p1.p1
Fatal Fury 2	FatalFury2E.txt	047-p1.p1
Fatal Fury Special (Neo-Geo)	FatalFurySAE.txt	058-p1.p1
Fatal Fury Special (SNES)	FatalFurySE.txt	Fatal Fury Special (USA).sfc
Fatal Fury 3	FatalFury3E.txt	069-p1.p1
Fight Fever	FightFeverE.txt	060-p1.p1
Fighter's History	FightersHistoryE.txt	lc00-1.1f (which uses lc01-1.2f too)
Fighter's History - Mizoguchi Kikiippatsu!! (Japan)	FightersHistory3SE.txt	Fighter's History - Mizoguchi Kikiippatsu!! (Japan).sfc
Galaxy Fight: Universal Warriors	GalaxyFightE.txt	078-p1.p1
Garou (Neo-Geo)	GarouE.txt	kf.neo-sma
Garou (Steam)	GarouSE.txt	p1.bin
Guilty Gear: Dust Strikers (DS)	GGDStrikersE.txt	0590 - Guilty Gear - Dust Strikers (Japan).nds
Gundam Wing: Endless Duel (SNES)	GundamE.txt	Shin Kidou Senki Gundam W - Endless Duel (Japan).sfc
Hajime no Ippo (Japan GBA)	HIppo-GBAe.txt	Hajime no Ippo - The Fighting! (Japan).gba)
Hokuto no Ken (PS2)	HK_BE.txt	HK_B.bin
Hyper Street Fighter 2 (CPS2)	HSF2-03e.txt; HSF2-04e.txt	hs2u.03 (portraits); hs2u.04 (characters)
Hyper Street Fighter 2 (Steam)	HSF2Se.txt	hsf2j.21D3D8A7 (Japan); hsf2.21D3D8A7 (English) NOTE: Use ArcTool for packing/repacking as described below.
Jackie Chan in Fists of Fire (Kaneko)	JChanE.txt	j2p1x4.u70
Jojos (CPS3: ROM 50)	jojos50e.txt	50
Jojos (CPS3: ROM 51)	jojos51e.txt	51
Jojos (the RPG for SNES)	JojosRPGE.txt	JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken (Japan).sfc; or JoJo no Kimyou na Bouken (Japan) (Translated En).sfc
Jojos Venture	Venture50.txt; Venture31.txt	50 (for characters); or 31 (for HUD)
Justice League Task Force (SNES)	JusticeLeagueTFE.txt	Justice League Task Force (usa).sfc
Kabuki Klash: Far East of Eden	KabukiKlashE.txt	092-p1.p1
Karnov's Revenge	KarnovsE.txt	066-p1.p1
Karnov's Revenge Revolution	KarnovsE.txt	066-p1kre.p1
King of the Monsters	KOTMe.txt	016-p1.p1
Killer Instinct (SNES)	KIE.txt	Killer Instinct (USA) (Rev 1).sfc
Kizuna Encounter (Neo-Geo)	KizunaE.txt	216-p1.bin
Kizuna Encounter (Steam port)	KizunaSE.txt	p1.bin
KOF94	kof94e.txt	055-p1.p1
KOF95	kof95e.txt	084-p1.p1; or 084-p2sp.p2 (for 95 Special 2017)
KOF96	kof96e.txt	214-p2.sp2; or 214ae-p2.p2 (for 96 Anniversary Edition 2.0)
KOF97	kof97e.txt	232-p2.sp2; or 2kf97-p2p.bin (for 97 Plus) or 232ae.p2 or 232ae-p2.sp2 (for 97 Anniversary Edition) or p1.bin (for 97 Global Match (Steam))
KOF98	kof98e.txt	242-p2.sp2
KOF98AE: 2016	KOF98AE2016E.txt	242ae-p2.sp2
KOF99AE	kof99AEe.txt	A,B colors: kof99ae_p2.bin; or C,D,AC,BD colors: kof99ae_p3.bin; or 152-p2.bin (ND or Korean); or proto_251-p2.p2 (prototype); or 251-p2p.p2 (prototype)
KOF00N	kof00Ne.txt	257-pg2.sp2
King of Fighters EX2: Howling Blood (GBA)	KofEx2E.txt	King of Fighters EX2, The - Howling Blood (USA).gba
KOF01	kof01e.txt	262-p2-08-e0.sp2
KOF02	kof02e.txt	265-p2.sp2
KOF02 (2002 PS2 hack)	KOF02PS2E.txt	265ps2-p2.bin
KOF02:UM	kof02ume.txt	pal_a.bin (main) bar.bin (HUD) clear.bin ("Clear" text) conte.bin (continue palettes) max2bg.bin (MAX2 backgrounds) rank.bin (Ranking palettes) psel.bin-n (Character Select)
KOF03 (bootleg 1 or 2004 EX Ultra Plus)	kof03e.txt	2k3-p1.bin (bootleg 1); or 2k3-p1up.bin (2004 EX Ultra Plus)
KOF:XI	kofxie.txt	gdrom_KOFXI_v5_AllFighters.bin
Last Blade	LastBladeE.txt	234-p1.p1; or lastblad_game_m68k for Last Blade (Steam)
Last Blade 2	LastBlade2E.txt	243-pg1.bin; or P1.bin for Last Blade 2 (Steam)
Magical Drop II	MagicalDropIIE.txt	221-p1.p1
Magical Drop III	MagicalDropIIIE.txt	233-p1.p1
Martial Masters	MartialMastersE.txt	v104_32m.u9
Matrimelee	matrimeleee.txt	266-p2.sp2
Mega Man X (SNES)	MMXE.txt	MegaMan X (usa).sfc
Mega Man X2 (SNES)	MMX2E.txt	MegaMan x2 (usa).sfc
Mega Man X3 (SNES)	MMX3E.txt	MegaMan x3 (usa).sfc
MMPR:TFE	MMPRe.txt	Mighty Morphin Power Rangers - The Fighting Edition (USA).sfc
MSHVSF (CPS2 ROM 6)	mshvsf-6ae.txt	mvs.06a
MSHVSF (CPS2 ROM 7)	mshvsf-7be.txt	mvs.07b
MSHVSF (Steam)	mshvsfSe.txt	mshvsfj.21D3D8A7 or mshvsfu.21D3D8A7 or f000.bin NOTE: Use ArcTool for packing/repacking as described below.
MSH (CPS2 ROM 5)	MSHe.txt	msh.05
MSH (CPS2 ROM 6)	MSH06e.txt	msh.06b
MSH (Steam)	MSHSe.txt	mshh.21D3D8A7 or mshj.21D3D8A7 or f000.bin NOTE: Use ArcTool for packing/repacking as described below.
MSH: War of the Gems (SNES)	MSHWOTGE.txt	Marvel Super Heroes in War of the Gems (USA).sfc
Mortal Kombat (Arcade)	MK1_A_E.txt	l5_mortal_kombat_t-unit_uj12_game_rom.uj12 (or the mkt-uj12.bin set)
Mortal Kombat (Sega Genesis)	MK1_SEGA_E.txt	mortal kombat (world) (v1.1).md
Mortal Kombat (SNES)	MK1_SNES_E.txt	Mortal Kombat (USA).sfc
Mortal Kombat II (Arcade)	MK2_A_E.txt	l3.1_mortal_kombat_ii_game_rom_uj12.uj12
Mortal Kombat II (Sega Genesis)	MK2_SEGA_E.txt	mortal kombat II (world).md
Mortal Kombat II (SNES)	MK2_SNES_E.txt	Mortal Kombat II (USA).sfc
Mortal Kombat 3 (Sega Genesis)	MK3_SEGA_E.txt	mortal kombat 3 (usa).bin
MVC1 (CPS2/Arcade)	mvce.txt	mvc.06 or mvc.06a
MVC1 (Dreamcast)	mvcDe.txt	0.bin
MVC1 (Steam)	mvcSe.txt	mvscj.21D3D8A7 or mvscu.21D3D8A7 or f000.bin NOTE: Use ArcTool for packing/repacking as described below.
MVC2 (Arcade)	mvc2e.txt	MarvelVsCapcom2_unlocked.bin
MVC2 (Steam)	mvc2e.txt	mvsc2.21D3D8A7 NOTE: Use ArcTool for packing/repacking as described below.
Neo Bomberman	NeoBombermanE.txt	093-p1.bin
Neo Turf Masters	TurfMastersE.txt	200-p1.bin or 200-p1.p1
Neo Geo Battle Coliseum (NGBC) (Atomiswave)	NGBCe.txt	NeoGeoBattleColliseum.bin NOTE: The normal NGBC ROMs are encrypted. You want the Darksoft unlocked ROM "NeoGeoBattleColliseum.bin" (yes there is a typo.)
Ninja Masters	NinjaMastersE.txt	217-p2.sp2
Primal Rage (SNES)	PrimalRageE.txt	Primal Rage (USA).sfc
The Punisher (CPS Dash)	PunisherE.txt	pse_29.10f and pse_25.10e
The Punisher (Steam)	PunisherSE.txt	punisherj.21d3d8a7; punisheru.21d3d8a7 NOTE: Use ArcTool for packing/repacking as described below.
Rage of the Dragons	RotDE.txt	264-p1.p1 (same for NeoGeo and Steam)
Ranma Nibunnoichi: Chougi Ranbu Hen (SNES)	RanmaCRHE.txt	Ranma Nibunnoichi - Chougi Ranbu Hen (J).sfc
Ranma Nibunnoichi: Hard Battle (SNES)	RanmaHBE.txt	ranma 1-2 - hard battle (usa).sfc
Real Bout Fatal Fury 1 (Arcade)	RBFF1E.txt	095-p1.bin
Real Bout Fatal Fury 2 (NeoGeo)	RBFF2E.txt	240-p1.bin NOTE: Fightcade instead uses 240-pg1.p1 from rbff2h.zip
Real Bout Fatal Fury 2 (Steam)	RBFF2SE.txt	p1.bin
Real Bout Fatal Fury Special (Arcade)	RBFFSE.txt	223-p1.p1
Red Earth (CPS3, Stages)	RedEarth30E.txt	30
Red Earth (CPS3, Characters)	RedEarthE.txt	31
Red Earth (CPS3, Coming Next)	RedEarth50E.txt	50
Red Earth (Steam)	(N/A)	redearth.21D3D8A7; warzard.21D3D8A7 NOTE: Use ArcTool for packing/repacking as described below.
Ring of Destruction: Slam Masters 2 (Arcade)	SlamMasters2E.txt	smbe.05b
Samurai Shodown	SamShoE.txt	045-p1.p1
Samurai Shodown II	SamSho2E.txt	063-p1.p1
Samurai Shodown III	SamSho3E.txt	087-p5.p5
Samurai Shodown IV	SamSho4E.txt	222-p1.bin for FC1 222-p1.p1 for FC2
Samurai Shodown V	SamSho5E.txt	270-p1.bin; or ssvx_p1.rom for Samurai Shodown V (Xbox Hack)
Samurai Shodown V Special	SamSho5SpE.txt	272-p1.p1
Savage Reign	SavageReignE.txt	059-p1.p1
Sengoku BASARA X (PS2)	BSRE.txt	BSR.bin
Shin Gouketsuji Ichizoku: Bonnou no Kaihou (PS2)	BnKE.txt	SLPM_662.78
SF2:WW (CPS1: ROM 09)	sf2ww09e.txt	sf2e_28g.9e
SF2:WW (CPS1: ROM 10)	sf2ww10e.txt	sf2_29b.10e
SF2:WW (Steam)	sf2wws-e.txt	bundleStreetFighterII.mbundle
SF2:CE (CPS1: ROM 21)	sf2ce-21e.txt	s92_21a.6f
SF2:CE (CPS1: ROM 22)	sf2ce-22e.txt	s92_22b.7f
SF2:CE (Steam)	sf2ceS.txt	bundleStreetFighterII_CE.mbundle
SF2:HF (CPS1: ROM 21)	sf2hf-21e.txt	s2te_21.6f
SF2:HF (CPS1: ROM 22)	sf2hf-22e.txt	s2te_22.7f
SF2:HF (Steam)	sf2hfSe.txt	bundleStreetFighterII_HF.mbundle
SFA1 (CPS2)	sfa1e.txt	sfz.06
SFA1 (Steam)	sfa1Se.txt	bundleStreetFighterAlpha.mbundle
SFA2 (CPS2: ROM 7)	sfa2e.txt	sz2j.07b NOTE: Fightcade instead uses sz2u.07 from sfa2u.zip
SFA2 (CPS2: ROM 8)	sfa2-8e.txt	sz2j.08b NOTE: Fightcade instead uses sz2u.08 from sfa2u.zip
SFA2 (Steam)	sfa2Se.txt	bundleStreetFighterAlpha2.mbundle
SFA3 (CPS2)	sfa3e.txt	sz3.09c
SFA3 (Steam)	sfa3Se.txt	bundleStreetFighterAlpha3.mbundle
SFZ3 Upper (CPS2)	sfz3ue.txt	StreetFighterZero3Upper.bin
SFZ3 Upper (Steam)	sfz3uSe.txt	z3u.21D3D8A7 NOTE: Use ArcTool for packing/repacking as described below.
SFZ3 Max (Steam)	sfz3mSe.txt	z3uu.21D3D8A7 NOTE: Use ArcTool for packing/repacking as described below.
SFIII1 (CP3S)	sfiii1e.txt	50
SFIII1 (Steam)	(N/A)	bundleStreetFighterIII.mbundle
SFIII2 (CPS3)	sfiii2e.txt	50
SFIII2 (Steam)	(N/A)	bundleStreetFighterIII_2ndImpact.mbundle
SFIII3 (CPS3: ROM 10: used for Gill Glow/X.C.O.P.Y.)	sfiii3-10e.txt	10
SFIII3 (Steam ROM 10: used for Gill Glow/X.C.O.P.Y.)	(N/A)	bundleStreetFighterIII_3rdStrike.mbundle
SFIII3 (CPS3: ROM 51: used for everything else)	sfiii3e.txt	51
SFIII3 (Steam ROM 51: used for everything else)	(N/A)	bundleStreetFighterIII_3rdStrike.mbundle
Shaq Fu (SNES)	ShaqFu_SNES_e.txt	Shaq Fu (USA).sfc
SSF2 (CPS2: ROM 3)	ssf2-3e.txt	ssfe-03b
SSF2 (CPS2: ROM 4)	ssf2-4e.txt	ssfe.04b
SSF2 (CPS2: ROM 7)	ssf2-7e.txt	ssfe.07
SSF2 (Steam)	ssf2-Se.txt	bundleSuperStreetFighterII.mbundle
SSF2T (CPS2: ROM 3)	ssf2t-3ce.txt	sfxe.03c or sfnl.03 (for New Legacy)
SSF2T (CPS2: ROM 4)	ssf2t-4ae.txt	sfxe.04a or sfnl.04 (for New Legacy)
SSF2T (CPS2: ROM 8)	ssf2t-8e.txt	sfxe.08 or sfnl.08 (for New Legacy)
SSF2T: New Legacy (Arcade hack: ROM 9)	ssf2t-9NLe.txt	sfnl.09
SSF2T (Steam)	ssf2tSe.txt	bundleSuperStreetFighterIITurbo.mbundle
SSF2T (GBA)	ssf2t-GBAe.txt	Super Street Fighter II X - Revival (Japan).gba
Street Fighter 1 (Arcade)	StreetFighterE.txt	sfd-19.2a
Street Fighter 1 (Steam)	StreetFighterSE.txt	bundleStreetFighter.mbundle
Street Fighter: The Movie	STFME.txt	sfm_0_v1.12.prom0
Super Dodge Ball (Neo-Geo)	SDodgeballE.txt	208-p1.p1
Super Gem Fighter (CPS2)	GemFighterE.txt	pcf.07
Super Gem Fighter (Steam)	GemFighterSE.txt	pfghtj.21D3D8A7 (Japan); sgemf.21D3D8A7 (English) NOTE: Use ArcTool for packing/repacking as described below.
Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo (CPS2)	SPF2TE.txt	pzf.04
Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo (Steam)	SPF2TSE.txt	spf2tu.21D3D8A7 (English); spf2xj.21D3D8A7 (Japan) NOTE: Use ArcTool for packing/repacking as described below.
Super Variable Geo (SNES Japan)	SVGe.txt	Super Variable Geo (J).sfc
Survival Arts	SurvivalArts_A_E.txt	prl-r6.u4
SVC: SNK vs. CAPCOM SVC CHAOS Plus (Arcade bootleg set 2)	svce.txt	svc-p2pl.bin Other SVC ROMs are encrypted, which is why we don't do anything with them.
SVC: SNK vs. CAPCOM SVC CHAOS (Steam)	svce.txt	pl.bin
Tattoo Assassins (DECO32)	TattooAsns.txt	pp44.cpu, pp45.cpu
Tekken Advance (GBA)	TekkenAdvance_GBAe.txt	Tekken Advance (USA).gba
TMNT: Tournament Fighters (SNES)	TMNTTFE.txt	sns-ky-0.u1
Top Fighter 2005	TopF2005e.txt	top fighter 2005 (unl).bin
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (Arcade)	UMK3_A_E.txt	l1.2_mortal_kombat_3_u54_ultimate.u54
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (DS)	UMK3_DS_E.txt	Ultimate Mortal Kombat (USA) (En,Fr,De,Es,It).nds
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (Sega Genesis)	UMK3_SEGA_E.txt	ultimate mortal kombat 3 (usa).bin
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (SNES)	UMK3_SNES_E.txt	Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (USA).sfc (or sns-a3ze.u1 for fightcade)
Unknown Game Mode	UnknownE.txt	Any file at all!
Vampire Hunter (CPS2)	VampireHunterE.txt	vphj.09a
Vampire Hunter (Steam)	VampireHunterSE.txt	nwarru.21D3D8A7 (English), vhuntjr2.21D3D8A7 (Japan) NOTE: Use ArcTool for packing/repacking as described below.
Vampire Hunter 2 (CPS2)	VHunt2e.txt	vh2j.09
Vampire Hunter 2 (Steam)	VHunt2Se.txt	vhunt2.21D3D8A7 NOTE: Use ArcTool for packing/repacking as described below.
Vampire Savior (CPS2)	VSAVe.txt	vm3j.10b NOTE: Fightcade uses two zips for this. Update vsavJ.zip, not vsav.zip.
Vampire Savior (Steam)	VSAVSe.txt	vsavj.21D3D8A7 (Japan), vsavu.21D3D8A7 (English) NOTE: Use ArcTool for packing/repacking as described below.
Vampire Savior 2 (CPS2)	VSAV2e.txt	vs2j.10
Vampire Savior 2 (Steam)	VSAV2Se.txt	vsav2.21D3D8A7 NOTE: Use ArcTool for packing/repacking as described below.
Vampire The Night Warriors (CPS2)	VampireNightWarriorsE.txt	vamj.09
Vampire The Night Warriors (Steam)	VampireNightWarriorsSE.txt	vampj.21d3d8a7 (Japan), dstlku.21D3D8A7 (English) NOTE: Use ArcTool for packing/repacking as described below.
Virtua Fighter 2 (Genesis)	VirtuaFighter2GE.txt	mpr-19107+mpr-19108.bin
Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer	GowcaizerE.txt	094-p1.p1
Waku Waku 7	WakuWaku7E.txt	225-p1.p1
Windjammers	WindjammersE.txt	065-p1.p1
World Heroes Perfect (Neo-Geo)	WorldHeroesPerfectE.txt	090-p1.p1
X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse (SNES)	XMMAE.txt	X-Men - Mutant Apocalypse (USA).sfc
X-Men vs. Street Fighter (CPS2 XMVSF)	XMVSFe.txt	xvs.05a
X-Men vs. Street Fighter (Steam XMVSF)	XMVSFSe.txt	xmvsf*.21D3D8A7 or f000.bin NOTE: Use ArcTool for packing/repacking as described below.

Everything in the table above is for games loaded using Load ROM. This next table is for game files loaded using Load Directory:

Game Name	Extras Filename	Usual palette file names
Aquapazza: Aquaplus Dream Match (NESICAxLive)	(unsupported)	the PAL files: select the main folder and we'll find them
Aquapazza: Aquaplus Dream Match (PS3)	(unsupported)	the PAL files: select the main folder and we'll find them
BlazBlue: Central Fiction	(unsupported)	the PAC files under the data directory. NOTE: You must use GeoArcSysAIOCLITool so that PalMod can read the files
CVS2 (Dreamcast)	(unsupported)	PL00PAK.bin and the other PL*PAK.BIN files
CVS2 (Playstation 2/3)	(unsupported)	PL00PAK.bin and the other PL*PAK.BIN files
Daemon Bride	(unsupported)	the main directory (contains the Flashrom folder)
Daemon Bride: Additional Gain	(unsupported)	the main directory (contains the Flashrom folder)
DanKuGa	DanKuGae.txt	dkg_mpr3.20 and 3 other files
Dengeki Bunko: Fighting Climax IGNITION	(unsupported)	Acr_s.pal and the oter PAL files
Guilty Gear: The Missing Link (PS1)	(unsupported)	the main directory of the extracted ROM that contains the AX, BK, CH folders and so forth
GGXX:AC+R (Steam/PS3)	(unsupported)	ab.bin and the other BIN files NOTE: You must decrypt the files first! Follow chloe's excellent guide.
GGXX #Reload (Steam/Community Port)	(unsupported)	cddata03.bin and the other BIN files
Jojos (ROM 50)	jojos50e.txt	jojoba-simm5.0 to jojoba-simm5.3 NOTE: These are usually in "jojoba.zip". Most emulators use both "jojoba.zip" and "jojobanr1.zip", but you only care about jojoba.zip.
Jojos (ROM 51)	jojos51e.txt	jojoba-simm5.4 to jojoba-simm5.7 NOTE: These are usually in "jojoba.zip". Most emulators use both "jojoba.zip" and "jojobanr1.zip", but you only care about jojoba.zip.
Jojos Venture (ROM 50)	Venture50e.txt	jojo-simm5.0 to jojo-simm5.1
King of Fighters 2002UM (PS2)	(unsupported)	Extract out the ISO and then point PalMod to the root folder. We load a lot of files.
MARVEL Cosmic Invasion	(unsupported)	Point PalMod to the "MARVEL Cosmic Invasion" folder after you've run the special step below.
Melty Blood Actress Again Current Code	(unsupported)	sion.pal and the other PAL files
Melty Blood: Type Lumina	(unsupported)	Chr001_p1.pal and the other PAL files: follow the guide
Melty Blood: Type Lumia "ReallyReal" Expansion Hack	(unsupported)	Follow the normal MBTL guide after installing the ReallyReal Expansion Hack.
Mighty Warriors	MWarrE.txt	prg_ev and prg_od from the ZIP
Million Arthur Arcana Blood (Steam)	(unsupported)	the PAL files in your Steam install
MSHvSF (PSX)	(unsupported)	PL00_10.A0 and the various other PL files in the DAT folder NOTE: This is a stub implementation that exposes the primary and bonus colors but is not exhaustive. If you want more, be specific.
MVC (PSX)	(unsupported)	PL00_10.A0 and the various other PL files in the DAT folder NOTE: This is a stub implementation that exposes the primary and bonus colors but is not exhaustive. If you want more, be specific.
MVC2 (Arcade)	mvc2e.txt	mpr-23051.ic20 and various other files
MVC2 (Dreamcast)	(unsupported)	pl00_dat.bin and the other PL*DAT.BIN files
MVC2 (Playstation 2/3/iOS)	(unsupported)	pl00pak.bin and the other PL*PAK.BIN files
MVC2 (Steam: file view)	(unsupported)	pl00_dat.bin and the other PL*DAT.BIN files NOTE: this option is for people who have extracted out the files from the AFS. Otherwise use the Load ROM by Game option.
Nitroplus Blasterz: Heroines Infinite Duel (NESICAxLive)	(unsupported)	the PAL files: select the main folder and we'll find them
Nitroplus Blasterz: Heroines Infinite Duel (PS3)	(unsupported)	the PAL files: select the main folder and we'll find them
Nitroplus Blasterz: Heroines Infinite Duel (Steam)	(unsupported)	the random file names in the Data directory
Persona 4 Arena Ultimax (NESICA Community Port)	(unsupported)	char_ag_pal.pac and the other char_*_pal.pac files NOTE: You must decrypt the files first! Follow the guide!
Persona 4 Arena Ultimax 2.0 (NESICA Community Port)	(unsupported)	char_ag_pal.pac and the other char_*_pal.pac files NOTE: You must decrypt the files first! Follow the guide!
Red Earth (Arcade, Stages)	RedEarth30E.txt	redearth-simm3.0 to redearth-simm3.3
Red Earth (Arcade, Characters)	RedEarthE.txt	redearth-simm3.4 to redearth-simm3.7
Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max (PSP) (SFA3 MAX)	(unsupported)	the PL*PAC files from USRDIR\usa\data
Street Fighter EX2 Plus (Europe 990611)	sfex2pe.txt	x2p-05m.3h and the other "x2p-" files
SFIII1	sfiii1e.txt	sfiii-simm5.0 and sfiii-simm5.1
SFIII2	sfiii2e.txt	sfiii2-simm5.0 to sfiii2-simm5.3
SFIII3 (ROM 10: used for Gill Glow/X.C.O.P.Y.)	sfiii3-10e.txt	sfiii3-simm1.0 to sfiii3-simm1.3 Japan: sfiii3n-simm1.0 to sfiii3n-simm1.3a NOTE: Fightcade uses these files from sfiii3nr1.zip
SFIII3 (ROM 51: used for everything else)	sfiii3e.txt	sfiii3-simm5.4 to sfiii3-simm5.7 Japan: sfiii3n-simm5.4 to sfiii3n-simm5.7 NOTE: Fightcade uses these files in sfiii3.zip
SFIII3EX	sfiii3e.txt	sfiii3ex-simm7.0 to sfiii3ex-simm7.3
SFIII3: 4rd Strike (ROM 10: used for Gill Glow/X.C.O.P.Y.)	sfiii3-10e.txt	4rd-simm1.0 to 4rd-simm1.3
SFIII3: 4rd Strike (ROM 51: used for everything else)	sfiii3e.txt	4rd-simm5.6 and 4rd-simm5.7
SFIII3 (DC/PS2)	(unsupported)	pl00pl.bin and the other PL*PL.BIN files
Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[cl-r]	(unsupported)	Aka.pal and the other PAL files
UNDER NIGHT IN-BIRTH II Sys:Celes	(unsupported)	Follow the guide. Point PalMod to the main "UNDER NIGHT IN-BIRTH II Sys Celes" folder after you have installed that package.
XMvSF (PSX)	(unsupported)	PL00_10.BIN and the various other PL files in the P\P0 folder NOTE: This is a stub implementation that exposes the primary and bonus colors but is not exhaustive. If you want more, be specific.

The games in that table that do support Extra files are interleaved across multiple files. The games in that table that do not support Extra files are split with one character per file: we can't meaningfully map an Extra file across that.

If you're trying to find game ROMs to change, Google is your friend. If you're using Fightcade, just google "Fightcade JSON".

Special Steps for Melty Blood

For some games you just need to extract the ZIP and point PalMod to those files. For Melty Blood Type Lumina, follow this guide. For Melty Blood Actress Again, though, you need to work a little harder.

(The "root" folder in this example is "MBAACC - Community Edition 2.0". You may have a different name for yours, but the contents are the same.)

From your root folder go to "Tools". Locate "dump.exe" under "File Extractor", you will need this. Copy/cut the program into "root\MBAACC"

Under "root\MBAACC", you'll find the files 000#.p. We want to extract 0002.p. Drag the files into dump.exe and a command prompt will pop up. Once it finishes extracting you should find a new folder named "out".

Under "root\MBAACC\out", you'll find a file named "data". Move that folder up back into "root\MBAACC" so that your new path is "root\MBAACC\data". Make sure you also put "0002.p" into the "data" folder so "mbaa.exe" can't find it. This will force the game to check the information in the "data" folder, which we can edit freely.

Open PalMod and select "File::Load Directory::Melty Blood AACC (Steam/Community Port)" Select the "data" folder: you'll be presented with the game's palettes to freely edit.

Special Steps for Guilty Gear

Guilty Gear uses encrypted files by default, but you can replace those with decrypted versions. So first you need to decrypt your files using xrd_decrypter.exe (or get a copy of the decrypted files), and then PalMod will be able to work with them. Please follow Chloe's guide on this.

Special Steps for the Capcom Collections on Steam

The Capcom Fighting Collection and Marvel vs Capcom Collection use ARC-compressed files. You will need to use ArcTool to unwrap the files. Get the tool from here which has a handy guide there as well. Copy the ArcTool folder to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\MARVEL vs. CAPCOM Fighting Collection\nativeDX11x64\arc\pc\ArcTool". Run "Marvel 2 Unpack.bat". Then point PalMod to the "mvsc2.21D3D8A7" file that will now be in the "game_50\bin" subfolder there. Once you are done making changes and have patched that ROM, run "Marvel 2 Repack.bat" to pack it all back. At that point you are done and can run Steam to see your changes. For all other games, use the CollectionTool.bat .

Special Steps for the Marvel Cosmic Invasion

MARVEL Cosmic Invasion uses sprites (yay!) but has odd references. You can get the game to use standardized references by following this guide. Once you are done running that script point PalMod to the MARVEL Cosmic Invasion folder and you should be good to go.

Special Steps for Persona 4 Arena Ultimax (P4AU)

Follow the guide to install the palette file overrides.

Special Steps for "Dragon Ball Z: Extreme Butoden (Nintendo 3DS)"

For "Dragon Ball Z: Extreme Butoden (Nintendo 3DS)" we expect the base USA ROM, which is labeled 3DS1366. You would want to decrypt it with the Batch CIA-3DS Decryptor before you can use it with Citra or PalMod.

I need the game ROM.

Sorry: we can't help with that. Use a search engine. Or if you're using Fightcade make sure you've installed the latest Fightcade JSON so that games auto-download: it is updated fairly regularly with new games and locations.

My changes aren't showing up in the game.

Once you have patched the game files, you need to have copied those files back into the original ZIP. Don't ever make new ZIPs (other than for backups): just replace the files in the ZIP with the changed files. If you're changes aren't showing up, you most likely modified the wrong ZIP: you're changing the one that the game is not using. Find the one that it is using. If you are modifying the right ZIP, double-check to make sure your emulator doesn't have an "NVRAM" folder caching data for the game: resetting that can ensure it uses the up-to-date ROMs.

My changes still aren't showing up in the game and I'm using Fightcade.

If you're using Fightcade, Fightcade often uses multiple ZIP files for any given game. If you make changes but they're not showing up in Fightcade, they're probably in the other ZIP that Fightcade is using: change that one instead. This has notably been a source of confusion for people working with SF3 and Jojo's ROMs.

I made changes and now I'm getting a CRC32 error.

That's actually good and means you changed things: you need to ignore that error.

I get a CRC32 error and the emulator won't load the game now.

For games with multiple revisions the exact ZIP filename indicates to the emulator which version of the game to load. If you made your own ZIP (don't do this), that can block your emulator from loading the game. If you did not make your own ZIP, then this means that the emulator has a bug where it wants to load the "core" / "prime" version of the game when it encounters CRC errors. You can check in the MAME XML to see which revision of the game is the "prime" version, or just look at the error dialog for name it's using: that will usually give you useful information.

• What PalMod version you're using
• What version of what game you're trying to use
• What palette you're trying to modify, if relevant
• What version of what emulator you're using, if relevant
• What went wrong
• If it worked until recently - when did things go wrong, if you remember?