This is not a new tutorial, this is just me sharing some observations about
HP's tutorial for creating new patterns. Before you read this, you should probably at least scan over that.
First things first.
You do not actually need Illustrator, or to make the image into a vector. If you're like me, that will save you a lot of time fiddling with a program you aren't familiar with.
If you want to make a simple "flood fill" type texture, such as a fabric texture or a new carpet texture, you can simply desaturate your image, clean it up a bit, make sure it tiles correctly, resize it, and then skip all the way to the end. You don't need to worry about channels at all. In Delphy's program, follow HP's instructions, then select 1 for "number of recolorable palettes". Go down to Palette 1 and click the box to select a default color for your pattern. Save it and test it in game.
If you want to make a texture with multiple color selection thingies, HP's tutorial starts talking about rasterizing and defining colors, and making it seem really complicated. It isn't. First thing that will help you wrap your head around this is each "channel" is just the same as an alpha layer in TS2. Basically, you need to make one for each layer, and it works exactly the same as an alpha. If you want the color to show through, make that bit white. If you don't, it's black. Shades of grey will darken or lighten the color. You can have up to four colors, which means up to four alphas.
To make your texture ready for loading into Delphy's program, make a new image and paste your regular image into it. Then, copy the first of your "alphas", and click "channels" in your new image, and select the first channel. Then just paste your alpha into it. HP mentions the order to layer them, this just means that the color that is the "background" needs to be on the bottom, and then each color is layered on top. Think of this as layering on paint, which would you put first, second, etc.
Your design is going to look funky in the preview window. That's not what it looks like in game, so don't worry. To control what colors it defaults to, select colors in the boxes on the bottom for each one of your "alpha" layers.
Above all, don't look at HP's tutorial and freak out. It's needlessly complex, and making a simple pattern is actually really easy. It will probably take some testing and messing around to figure out exactly how to do everything, but if you know your way around photoshop, you can do this.
