   Calculating Shades of Colors
  In my 3D engine i calculate the dot product between the light source vector and the normal vector. I then use this to calculate my light intensity(1-255). At the moment i am using a color palette hack with indexed color values. This is a problem because if i wish to use 24bit colors, i will need to fill a palette with all 255 shades for all 24bit colors. Is there a way to calculate the shades from lightest to darkest of a base color. egRGB)254 142 24, the hex value being 0xFE8E18. If i wanted 255 shades of this color what would the formula be to calculate these shades? Is there a formula? Or am i going about this all wrong? 
  So it''s a software engine and this is for shading? Just separate the color into its RGB components, multiply each by the intensity and divide by 256 (actually 255 for real correctness, but a shift for 256 is a heck of a lot faster), and then put them back together. ;  Yea it is a software engine.Thanks, your solution is good. 