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Author Topic: How do you edit graphics for the Mute spell? (Patch request)  (Read 1884 times)

General Public

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How do you edit graphics for the Mute spell? (Patch request)
« on: June 09, 2013, 02:47:40 PM »
The Mute spell in Final Fantasy 5 has an animation which includes a circular graphic that 48x48 pixels and includes very large Japanese text that (I assume) means "Mute". Final Fantasy 3 (or rather 6) for the U.S. has a Mute animation that is also large and circular but has the English word "Mute" in it, instead. Does anyone know how to edit graphics for the Mute spell? I am wondering which tile editor to use, how many bits per pixel, whether the graphic is compressed, that sort of thing. I have attempted to find it in Tile Molester 0.16 but not really found the graphic in question. I would like to fine a way to replace the Mute spell graphic in Final Fantasy 5 with the one from the English Final Fantasy 3 (or rather 6).

If anyone knows how to do this and is able to do this FOR me and make an IPS patch that changes the Japanese Mute graphic in Final Fantasy 5 to the English one from Final Fantasy 3/6 for US, that would also be fine. Or you could try and teach me how to do this. I'd really like to hear from anyone who understands how to do this sort of thing. As a 48x48 pixel graphic, given the 8x8 pixel tiles, that is 6x6 tiles (although the corner tiles are empty because the graphic is circular in shape). I know how to edit SINGLE-tile graphics that are just 8x8 pixels in a tile editor. But this one is much harder to figure out, I can't figure out how to do it, in fact I can't even find the graphic when I open the ROM in the tile editor.

The palettes for both versions of the graphic appear to be similar, maybe the same: white and shades of gray, as well as clear pixels. It appears to have 7 colors besides the 1 color reserved for clear colors, based on looking at the graphic from a screenshot in a picture editor. So that would mean it's 3 bits per pixel.

Anyway, attached I have the 48x48 Mute graphic from Final Fantasy 5 with the Japanese text in it, with 7 colors and 1 transparent color, just so people can see why this graphic doesn't exactly belong in the English translated version of the game (yet RPGe did not patch it in version 1.10 of their translation, so apparently this must have been too hard even for them to do). I can definitely tell that this is hard to change.

I wonder if anyone can figure out how to change this to a graphic that says "MUTE" in English, such as the one from FF3US? I am totally baffled by this.

In fact, if you can figure out how to fix this, it is probably better if you make the IPS patch for it and post it on this site than I do, because this seems to be rather advanced, to edit such a large graphic that takes up so many tiles on the screen (6 tiles high times 6 tiles wide equals 36 tiles). Oh, and I just checked, the 8x8 squares in each corner, each of them has 1 pixel in the corner that is lit up. So it really uses all 36 tiles, even the corner tiles. Take a look at the 586 byte PNG file attached and see for yourself. Hmm, and I just calculated that 48 pixels by 48 pixels with 3 bits per pixel comes out to 864 bytes uncompressed, if there isn't any overhead (48 times 48 divided by 8 times 3). So if the graphic were completely uncompressed it would take up 864 bytes in the ROM... quite a lot!!! I guess that means SquareSoft must have compressed it somehow. Perhaps somebody here knows what compression algorithm SquareSoft used for graphics in SNES RPGs such as Final Fantasy 5? Even if it were only the size of the PNG file here, that would still be 586 bytes, although probably most of the PNG file size is due to overhead. Then again, the ROM is 2 megabytes, so I guess if they really wanted to, they could just put the whole 864 bytes of this image in there uncompressed. I am guessing that the compression method is probably the same one used for monster sprites, because monster sprites are also similarly large graphics.

Anyway I'd REALLY appreciate it if someone can figure out how to do this. And just think of the possibilities it would open up, you could also edit all the other compressed graphics in Final Fantasy 4, 5, and 6 (assuming they all use the same compression algorithm, which might not be true). I don't see a lot on graphics-hacking in Final Fantasy 5 in the documents here. A lot more work seems to have been done hacking Final Fantasy 6, I would assume the graphics compression in Final Fantasy 5 would be done the same way, or perhaps in an easier way using a less advanced algorithm.

Even if you don't know how to do this, if you can think of any helpful ideas based on what you know about how the Final Fantasy 5 ROM does things, like if you know how it stores graphical data, or if you can find a pointer to the animation for the Mute spell and thereby figure out what section of the ROM holds the Mute graphic in it, that would be great.
« Last Edit: December 08, 2014, 04:42:34 AM by Jorgur »
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Jorgur

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Re: How do you edit graphics for the Mute spell? (Patch request)
« Reply #1 on: June 10, 2013, 03:09:28 AM »
According to my old docs, attack animations are stored in the D9 bank, in GB (3BPP) format. I can't quite remember exactly what that information is, but it could be a good place to start. FF5 generally does not compress graphics at all; it should be visible if you set up the tile editor to use the correct format for it.

It will probably be difficult to find someone to simply make the patch for you. Most people lurking around here are either just checking in or working on their own projects. However, if you are determined to create the patch yourself, I will be glad to give you some assistance along the way. The goal actually isn't that difficult to reach, the challenge lies mainly in locating the graphics.

Some useful information:
http://slickproductions.org/forum/index.php?topic=1167.0

If you are new to ROM hacking, I recommend the Romhacks.net tutorial. For information related to battle animation graphics, see Light Phoenix' Animation Guide. You may also want to have a look at the ROM overview in my hacking docs.

 :edit:
Oh, and good luck with the project!  :happy:
« Last Edit: June 10, 2013, 03:24:41 AM by Jorgur »
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General Public

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Re: How do you edit graphics for the Mute spell? (Patch request)
« Reply #2 on: June 13, 2013, 11:09:20 PM »
Quote from: Jorgur on June 10, 2013, 03:09:28 AM
According to my old docs, attack animations are stored in the D9 bank, in GB (3BPP) format. I can't quite remember exactly what that information is, but it could be a good place to start. FF5 generally does not compress graphics at all; it should be visible if you set up the tile editor to use the correct format for it.

It will probably be difficult to find someone to simply make the patch for you. Most people lurking around here are either just checking in or working on their own projects. However, if you are determined to create the patch yourself, I will be glad to give you some assistance along the way. The goal actually isn't that difficult to reach, the challenge lies mainly in locating the graphics.

Some useful information:
http://slickproductions.org/forum/index.php?topic=1167.0

If you are new to ROM hacking, I recommend the Romhacks.net tutorial. For information related to battle animation graphics, see Light Phoenix' Animation Guide. You may also want to have a look at the ROM overview in my hacking docs.

 :edit:
Oh, and good luck with the project!  :happy:

Thanks for the info. Heh, I don't even know what "the D9 bank" means. I am not very good at ROM hacking, at least not yet. I need to study up a lot more on this stuff. It is all so confusing!

:blits:

I will try and look at those tutorials and see if I can make any sense out of them. HiROM, LowROM, FastROM, SlowROM, it is all so confusing... I do know all about how to make and use IPS patches, and can edit single tiles such as characters in an 8x8 fixed width font in a ROM by using a tile editor. I know all about using emulators but I'm pretty beginner-level at ROM hacking. Most of the ROM hacking stuff is just way too confusing for me right now. Maybe I'll be able to learn it and after then I might even find it easy, I don't know. I am glad you could point me in the right direction at least, by telling me the graphics in FF5 are not compressed and that they are visible if you set it up with the correct format. So right now my biggest unsolved mystery, at least here, is figuring out how exactly the tiles in a multi-tile graphic are organized in a ROM.

:omghax:

Oh, and the Mage Mashers (or MageMashes for short)... those daggers inflict "Mute" on enemies about half the time, so you get the "Mute" graphics (and sound too) if you use the "Mute" white magic spell or if you use that type of dagger, and then that circle with the Japanese text appears, the 48x48 pixel graphic I would like to replace with the one from Final Fantasy 3/6 US that has a similar shape and size and palette but has the word "MUTE" in English and all caps. I did do a pretty good job of making a .PNG graphic with transparency out of screenshots of the "Mute" graphic in Final Fantasy 5, that attachment I had on the original post. I was also trying to do it for the graphic of the "Mute" graphic for Final Fantasy 3/6 US too, but it was taking too long to edit it pixel by pixel and put in all the transparent pixels in the right places while keeping all the ones from the graphic and I was getting bored and wanted to post my message already so I posted it with only one of the 2 graphics I was originally going to include since I got impatient when working on the 2nd one. It took up less bytes as .PNG than as .GIF. Anyway, my pixel graphics editing skills ought to be good enough for editing this graphic once I figure out how to find it in the ROM and how exactly the various 36 tiles are arranged to form a single 48x48 pixel image. It probably has something to do with these "banks" and with the "mappers" that map the memory to those banks. This article I found here about what these "banks" are just reads like a bunch of mumbo-jumbo to me now, I don't know enough about this topic for it to make any sense yet. Apparently SNES addresses and ROM addresses are different, and both of them have "banks"... quite a complicated system, especially with the HiROM and LowROM differences and all that, not to mention the fact that an SNES header and SRM header are totally different. It's going to take me quite a while to wrap my head around all this info before I can understand it fully. At least I understand IPS patches and several other things really well, that helps make up for all the things that I don't understand at all.

:wtf:

I am going to read a bunch of tutorials now... BRB a thousand years from now when I'm finally done.

:banonsmash:

:edit:

I have found the location of the graphic in the ROM! There is a map of the ROM at a Japanese website here. From the Google Translate, I got "190000 - magic effect graphics [24Bytes * 1326] [3BPP SNES format] ". Also, 256 bytes = 100 in hex and 512 bytes = 200 in hex, so the 512 byte header of a headered ROM means adding 200 to the address. So in a headered ROM if I go to address 190200 (the 200 added for the header), there are the magic effect graphics. And selecting the codec "3bpp planar, composite" in Tile Molester works as expected.

It does not take up 36 tiles in the ROM! The graphic appears to start at the exact address 193F98 (in a headered ROM). Finally found it! (Without a header the address would be 193D98.) If you go directly to that address in Tile Molester you'll find it. It appears that for the outside rim, only some of the tiles, for the upper left quadrant of the circle, and for the Japanese text inside, are in the ROM. Apparently the ROM code does horizontal and vertical flips of the outside rim of the circle so only the upper-left part of the circle is needed, as it can do a horizontal flip for the upper-right, a vertical flip for the lower-left, and both horizontal and vertical flips for the lower-right. As for the Japanese text inside, the tiles for it are not flipped. I should be able to work with this now.
« Last Edit: June 14, 2013, 02:05:36 AM by General Public »
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Mission Accomplished!
« Reply #3 on: June 14, 2013, 06:01:02 AM »
Well, somehow I managed to produce the patch I was wanting to either make myself or have someone else make. Instead of using the graphics from FF3US I made a new version of the Mute spell graphics based on the one in Final Fantasy 5, only translating the Japanese characters in it into English, but leaving the circle around it the same.

Now I am proud to announce a patch for Final Fantasy 5 to translate the graphics for the Mute spell from Japanese into English (the one thing that RPGe didn't translate back in 1998).

It is here as an attachment. I'll submit it to this site for approval as a patch for anyone to download on the main FF5 patches page.
« Last Edit: December 08, 2014, 04:43:39 AM by Jorgur »
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Jorgur

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Re: How do you edit graphics for the Mute spell? (Patch request)
« Reply #4 on: June 14, 2013, 06:58:32 AM »
Downloading and testing...

First impression is quite good - screenshots and a very thorough readme. It patched successfully and worked as it should.
One thing you might want to add is a patch for headerless ROMs, as they are more common these days.
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