# Desert Paint Lab

This is a tool for players to record their [Pigment Laboratory](http://www.atitd.org/wiki/tale6/Pigment_Laboratory)

ingredient reactions in [A Tale in the Desert](http://www.atitd.com/).

### Features

* Easily scans your screen for the Pigment Lab reaction values, without any math, measuring, or manual number entry.

* Warns you when a reaction clipped below 0.

* Supports multiple character profiles.

* Can export to [PracticalPaint](http://www.atitd.org/wiki/tale7/File:PracticalPaint.Zip) data format.

* Includes simulator for experimenting with recipes without spending ingredients.

* Includes a recipe generator

## Tale 9

* New papyrus texture in interfaces

* Earth Light was replaced by Falcon's Bait mushrooms. Practical Paint still uses the name EarthLight internally, so the data files still use that name here as well.

* macOS is now a 64-bit app. Windows remains 32-bit due to incompatibilities with the UI library.

* macOS build does not support Catalina (is not notarized)

### Known issues

* Multiple screen setups requre setting the resolution to the combined resolution of all screens.

* UI does not lay out properly on high-density screens. Buttons and dropdowns are where they should be, but draw in the wrong place.

* A batcher installed on a Pigment Lab will prevent finding the right part of the screen with the resulting color.

## Tale 8

in the game.

## Directions

### Download Desert Paint Lab

This application should run under Mono on Mac, Linux, and Windows.  If you are on Windows,

and do not have Mono installed, you can install [GTK# for .NET](http://www.mono-project.com/download/#download-win),

without the need for installing Mono. On Mac or Linux, download and install the [Mono runtime](http://www.mono-project.com/download).

### Set Up a Profile

The first time you run Desert Paint Lab, it will prompt you to make a profile.  You may either create a new profile, or import an existing PracticalPaint reactions.txt file.

### Start Testing!

Add two ingredients to your Pigment Lab.  Select those same ingredients in Desert Paint Lab.  Then, with the Pigment Lab dialog unobstructred, select the **Capture** button.  Once you are satisfied with the result, click the **Record** button.  The data will automatically be added to your profile.

### Clipped?  Huh?

Occasionally, you will see a warning dialog that informs you that a "Reaction clipped."  That means that one or more of the color components moved outside of the testable range.  This makes it impossible to calculate the reaction from these two ingredients.

You can solve this by doing a three-way test.

1. In your clipped reaction, let's call your **1st** ingredient **A** and your **2nd** ingredient **B**.

1. Select a **non-catalyst** ingredient **C** for which you have already tested **C + A** and **C + B**.  It is OK if there was a reaction in those earlier tests.  Desert Paint Lab can work out the math.

1. In Desert Paint Lab, select ingredients as follows:

    1. **C**

    2. **A**

    3. **B**

1. Add the ingredients in your Pigment Lab _in exactly that order_.

1. Capture.

1. Record.

For clipped reactions, your **C** ingredient should be one that corrects for the clipped color.  Here are some suggested **C** ingredients for clipping correction:

Clip Color  | Clip Direction | Correction | Suggested "C" Ingredient

------------|----------------|------------|---------------------------

Red         | Low            | +Red       | Carrot (224) or Red Sand (144)

Red         | High           | -Red       | Silver Powder (16) or Toad Skin (48)

Green       | Low            | +Green     | Falcon's Bait (240) or Copper (192)

Green       | High           | -Green     | Red Sand (16) or Silver Powder (16)

Blue        | Low            | +Blue      | Falcon's Bait (224) or Copper (192)

Blue        | High           | -Blue      | Red Sand (24) or Clay (32) or Carrot (32) or Silver Powder (32)

In many cases, it may be easiest to go back and do these three-way tests after you have finished all of your other testing.

### Catalysts

For catalyst to catalyst reaction tests, follow the three-way instructions, as above.

### Finishing Up

When you're done testing your reactions, you can either use the built-in Pigment Lab simulator (`Window > Run Simulator`) to experiment with recipes, without dipping into your precious ingredient stocks.  Alternatively, you can export your reactions in PracticalPaint format.

## Generating Recipes

### What do all these settings do?

* _Minimum Ingredients_ is the minimum number of ingredients the generator will use in a recipe. It's best to leave this at 1 so the simple single-ingredient recipes are included (like 10 carrots for 'carrot')

* _Maximum Ingredients_ limits how many ingredients will be used in a recipe. Ingredients after the 5th will still affect the resulting color, but won't use their reactions.

* _Silk Ribbon Recipes_ sets the generator up to create recipes for silk ribbons. Ribbons use a base concentration of 50 instead of the 10 that is used for paint.

* _Maximum Concentration_ is the maximum recipe concentration. Recipes with a concentration above 10 will still produce a single db of paint, but can use larger quantities of ingredients to make smaller color adjustments. Increasing this will increase the time required to search all the possible combinations.

* _Full Quantity Depth_ is the number of ingredients in the recipe that will use up to the "full quantity" value as the limit for those ingredients over the ingredient's maximum.

* _Full Quantity_ is the maximum quantity of any ingredient to use up to the Full Quantity Depth. For example, with a Full Quantity of 15 and a Full Quantity Depth of 3, a recipe could use up to 15 of each of the first 3 ingredients. After that it will be limited by the setting for that specific ingredient.

## Known Issues