This project is quite interesting. I had been looking at various paint programs for ideas for my own, but separately I just stumbled across this post and this project.
I loved Deluxe Paint growing up. I think I had version two, because I don't remember having HAM mode in it. I used DigiPaint 3 for that. But even still Deluxe Paint had many more features so I didn't care about the extra colors.
The main features from Deluxe Paint that I don't see much in modern programs are, first indexed painting. Since we have 24-bit color pretty much universally, most paint programs are cavalier with their use of color, automatically anti-aliasing anything you put down on the canvas.
This makes other things less convenient or impossible. You can't do color cycling. You can't easily change the color of already painted areas (and include the shades of antialiased pixels in that change). It is hard to select areas of a certain color. How do you determine which pixels should be in the selection?
And this brings us to the other main feature I like about Deluxe Paint. You can grab any part of the canvas to use as a brush. The background color is automatically made transparent for the brush. So with a limited number of colors it is easy to know what part is going to be grabbed and which part isn't. Then, all tool operations can be performed with that brush, even keeping the colors preserved.
This second feature alone is quite powerful and very hard to find in other programs. When it is there it isn't as simple to use. Here you just click on the brush grab tool, drag out a square or lasso around what you want, and you're done. Maybe select a different background color depending on what part you want transparent.
In other programs the process is often not as easy, or obvious. Often you need to have a separate layer, with transparency, so that you don't get an ugly square for a brush. Also, the brush doesn't always work with all the program's tools.
I guess this has become a rant. Well anyway good luck to you and your project!
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