Topic: Question about battle sprites

[fedorajoe]

Battle sprites appear to be a 3x3 grid of squares, each 8x8 pixels in size, but with not all squares in the grid being displayed.  Does anyone know how to change which squares are displayed?

I imagine it's probably similar to how monster sprites are arranged, but I haven't seen it discussed.

Basically I want to turn this...



Into this...



Thanks!

[chillyfeez]

I'm sure it can be done. I've definitely stumbled upon the battle sprite tile arrangements before, and they could probably be manipulated in that way pretty easily. The thing of it is, change the arrangement for one character and you change it for all. Are you willing to alter all of their special poses?

[Bahamut ZERO]

The thing of it is, change the arrangement for one character and you change it for all. Are you willing to alter all of their special poses?

Looking through the Special poses to see which ones would be effected by that change:

DK Cecil (Darkwave): You'd have to lower his sword by like 1 horizontal row, as the sword just barely uses the UL (upper left) 8x8 tile (I'll just refer to as tiles from here on)

Tellah (Recall): The "!" bubble uses the UL tile, but you could just nix that and it would look just fine

Yang (Kick): Part of one his arms uses the UL tile, but you could probably just move his entire pose down 3 pixels and be good

Palom (Boast):  One of the cloud-things use the UL Tile. You could nix that one, and turn the other into a straight line with diagonals beside it to show he's yelling

Porom (Cry): The UL Tile is used here for... I guess her tears? Idk. You could nix that and just give her a more emotional looking expression or something lol.

P. Cecil (Cover): One of his hands are in the UL Tile. You could just have him block with a shield  since you'd have the BL (bottom left) tile to play around with.

Cid (Scan): His stupid magnifying glass spills over to the UL Tile. You can just move his hand down two pixels and be good

FuSoYa (Regen): stupid ball-shape-thing uses UL. You could just not use that and be good

A lil bit o' extra work to do if you (Fedorajoe) go that path, but a shit ton less than I figured it'd be. I'd say go for it.

(Also wanna point out I think it's dumb Square just didn't use the whole 3x3 area in the arrangement data. Gonna have to rethink a couple characters' poses in my own project now that I know this )

[fedorajoe]

Oh gosh, seriously?  How disappointing!  I figured each character had their own setup.

In that case I probably won't bother, I'll just have to butcher my creation despite how proud I am of it.  :p

Thanks, all!

[chillyfeez]

Just thinking... If you look at a character's battle sprite sheet, don't they all have a single empty tile actually right there in the ROM? If I'm remembering wrong (possible, I'm not actually looking at it as I type this) then fine never mind, but if it is so then I bet the sprite arrangement could be rewritten to actually include that empty box. It could be left empty if you didn't need it, but used if you did want it. I mean, the arrangement probably uses an FF in that corner to signify an empty space which could easily be replaced with whatever hexadecimal represents that tile (assuming character sprite arrangement works like monster sprite arrangement).
 
I mean, don't get your hopes too high - there are a lot of ifs in this one, and any of them being revealed as a no renders this whole theory useless. But if...

[fedorajoe]

You are correct, sir.  That empty space in the 3x3 grid is represented in every character's sprite sheet and simply isn't read.

See, what you're saying is closer to what I was thinking.  It made me think of when you create a custom summon and you have to manually designate which parts of the sprite get displayed where.  I'll be there's an FF that has to be changed to an 01 somewhere, or such, which would cause that blank space to read for every sprite.

[chillyfeez]

So yeah, I was thinking the same, but after looking into it a bit, it seems we were wrong. Having battle characters represented by a full 3x3 grid is actually impossible, because the game only loads enough sprite data for eight sprites per character at a time. I can easily move the active tile from top left to bottom left, but I won't be able to make all nine tiles visible.
 

[fedorajoe]

And it's all-or-nothing?  Like, a change to one impacts all sprites?

If so, too bad.  :(

[chillyfeez]

Yeah the sprite arrangements apply to all characters that's why when you look at the graphic tile sheets each character's corresponding sprites are in the same spot. So the game says:
"Special pose... That's tiles 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 37 and 38 in positions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8 and 9."
I can change any of those numbers,  but the changes would apply to all special poses, not just Golbez.

[thepatirckinator]

You can ask Bahamut ZERO to work on Battle Sprites for Golbez. For example, converting Edge's hit sprite into Golbez. Whatever sprites that Golbez need fixing for fedorajoe, he may do it for you. You'll have to ask fedorajoe first.

[thepatirckinator]

Here are the complete Golbez battle sprites for Fedorajoe's Final Fantasy IV: Playable Golbez hack. I thank Paladin, Fedorajoe, Square Enix, Bahamut ZERO, and this site for the Playable Golbez SNES Sprites. To make fedorajoe's dream come true, here are the complete battle sprites for Golbez. You guys can tell fedorajoe that I've made a complete Battle Spritesheet for Golbez.

[Bahamut ZERO]

Oh wow, those sprites are pretty badass. Good job!

Suggestion for the portrait: I bet you could make one helluva SNES-styled Golbez portrait using DK Cecil's portrait as a base/skeleton. Not that I'm saying there's anything wrong with the one you've got in the mix. 

[thepatirckinator]

Here's the same thing as before but with the SNES-styled Golbez portrait using DK Cecil's portrait as a base/skeleton. Credit Goes to Paladin.

[thepatirckinator]

I've haven't heard much about fedorajoe because he must be busy working on his Final Fantasy IV: Playable Golbez Patch.

[thepatirckinator]

Here are the full battle Golbez sprites for fedorajoe's Final Fantasy IV: Playable Golbez Edition converted from Dream Golbez.