Quake I Palette and Colormaps
This is a mirror of Quake's 256-color palette, as well as the colormap used by the game.
Includes the Quake palette in following formats: .aco, .act, .ase, .pal and the original palette.lmp (raw lump of RGB values, 768-bytes), a plaintext hex matrix, and a .png of the palette and the colormap.
Note that the .ase file included is an Adobe Swatch Exchange version of the palette, not an Aseprite file. For technical information, including usage of the palette in that game and a script that generates a near-identical colormap, see here: https://quakewiki.org/wiki/Quake_palette
This palette is below the Threshold of Originality and therefore in the public domain. The link above includes a citation of id software's John Carmack agreeing with and reinforcing this, so there should be no problem.
Palette and colormap by id software artists. Quake wiki mirror, file format conversions and technical information credits are included on the link above. OGA mirror unchanged from the download on quakewiki except for bundling in the colormap file.
quake_palette.zip 60.3 Kb [54 download(s)]
Comments
AFAIK copyright status of palettes is debatable and may depend on country etc. My understanding is that a small SET of colors can usually not be copyrighted, but a specific ordering of the colors can -- consider that an arrangement of colors can be seen as abstract painting for example. Many such paintings consist just of a few colored squares arranged in specific ways. Now this is a grey area but I just wouldn't be completely sure here.
Copyright status of palettes is not really debatable. They aren't copyrightable. If different jurisdictions change the circumstance, then only one jurisdiction should be assumed; the hosting site's jurisdiciton. We don't list licenses for every different jurisdiction. If the asset rises above the threshold of originality and becomes a specific ordering of colors, then it isn't a palette any longer, it's a work of art. The above asset is a palette, CC0. double-confirmed by the original author.
Fair enough, what I'm trying to say is that if something like https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79816 is considered artistic expression (i.e. copyrightable) despite being extremely abstract and due to the fact the colors are ordered (any list is) and arranged in a grid, someone could argue the preview picture here (which I understand to be a straightforward visualization of the palette) might be considered an abstract art as well, even despite the opinion of the original author. Honestly though my doubt is probably unreasonably paranoid.