ok. nvm on this. i figured something out. i was trying to remember all those old tutorials about terrain making and since we really didnt have anything other that basic windows paint programs back in the early days, those tuts are outdated and tbqh, not accurate to a point.
in a nutshell, it does not matter what color is in the m.pcx. all you need to do is is go into the "edit pallet" feature of the program you are using to tweak your colors. click on the area where you want your texture to go and see what position that color is in according to the pallet editor.
now after you create your vertical tile strip, the same 0-255 is now top to bottom. NL always used a black tile at the top of the strip...that is tile 0, you dont use that one. then the rest are 1-255 which will match the colors in the pallet editor from left to right. top left corner is 1, bottom right corner is 255.
now, you can either match them to those positions, OR better yet, edit the 1st few colors in the color pallet the same way novalogic did since they would use basic colors at the top of the pallet and shades of colors on the bottom row for their transition tiles. remember, all color positions can be edited. you do not need to match certain colors to certain textures, its all about positions.
sure wish just one of those old tuts made it this simple.
lol
