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Library of the Ancients => Final Fantasy IV Research & Development => Topic started by: Swordtheguy on October 09, 2009, 08:26:23 PM

Title: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Swordtheguy on October 09, 2009, 08:26:23 PM
First off, hi.
A have a quick, if not slightly noobish question.
I'm looking to edit some sprites, Pally Cecil in particular, to look closer to their After Years appearance.
But I've been spoiled by FF6 plethora of hacking programs and as such I'm kinda at a lost. Is their no program made to edit FF4 sprites like their are for 6?
And if not, can someone recommend a good Tile Editor?
Thanks in advance.
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Phoenix on October 10, 2009, 01:01:28 AM
There aren't any utilities that I know of to change the character graphics. A tile editor should be fine, though. I use Tile Molester, which works pretty well.

If you need them, the offsets for the battle sprites and palettes are:

Code: [Select]
D0200-D7E3F Battle Character Graphic Data (4 bitplanes, composite)
D0200-D09FF Dark Knight Cecil
D0A00-D11FF Kain
D1200-D19FF Young Rydia
D1A00-D21FF Tellah
D2200-D29FF Edward
D2A00-D31FF Rosa
D3200-D39FF Yang
D3A00-D41FF Palom
D4200-D49FF Porom
D4A00-D51FF Paladin Cecil
D5200-D59FF Cid
D5A00-D61FF Older Rydia
D6200-D69FF Edge
D6A00-D71FF FuSoYa
D7200-D77FF Pig
D7800-D7B5F Golbez
D7B60-D7D1F Anna
D7D20-D7E3F (blank)
E7F00-E80FF Character Battle Palette Data

Good luck
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Swordtheguy on October 10, 2009, 02:22:48 AM
Thanks ,very awesome.
You wouldn't happen to have the overworld sprite too, would you?
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Dragonsbrethren on October 10, 2009, 06:15:26 AM
I don't have the offset handy, but the overworld sprites are in 3BPP format.
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Phoenix on October 10, 2009, 07:26:32 AM
Sure:

Code: [Select]
68200-6823F Overworld Character Palette Data
AB4FA-AB50B Overworld Character Palette Pointers (1 byte per character, values 00-03)
D8200-DB4FF Overworld Character Graphic Data (3 bitplanes, composite)
D8200-D84FF Dark Knight Cecil
D8500-D87FF Kain
D8800-D8AFF Young Rydia
D8B00-D8DFF Tellah
D8E00-D90FF Edward
D9100-D93FF Rosa
D9400-D96FF Yang
D9700-D99FF Palom
D9A00-D9CFF Porom
D9D00-D9FFF Paladin Cecil
DA000-DA2FF Cid
DA300-DA5FF Older Rydia
DA600-DA8FF Edge
DA900-DABFF FuSoYa
DAC00-DAEFF Mini
DAF00-DB1FF Toad
DB200-DB4FF Pig
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: JCE3000GT on October 28, 2009, 01:08:00 AM
Here is an old program I got from Yousei's FF3 forums along time ago, I've found it very useful in editing FF4's palettes.   :happy:
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Grimoire LD on December 23, 2009, 05:13:31 PM
A rather stupid question, but I can't seem to find the location of the Portraits and their Palettes in rom, I think this would be the last thing I need to make Baigan seem semi-legit.
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Phoenix on December 24, 2009, 10:19:20 AM
Here you go:

Code: [Select]
688D0-689CF Character Portrait Palette Data
ED5C0-EEF3F Character Portrait Graphic Data (3 bitplanes, composite, 384 bytes per class id)
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Grimoire LD on January 01, 2010, 07:50:11 PM
Thanks, sorry for the very late reply, just enjoying the season is all, hehe.
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Zozma on December 19, 2010, 08:44:16 PM
Okay, so i finished anna's sprite and portrait. but i am out of characters to use for what im doing with my game.
I want to dummy "piggy" status and use that sprite for her, but my question is... how do I go about assigning the pig sprite/portrait to a specified actor? (i guess its number 16?)
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Paladin on December 20, 2010, 05:04:35 AM
Great Anna portrait you've made there Zozma!  :childish:

Unfortunately I don't know if I can be of much help to your question. My wild ass guess is there's probably code somewhere that specifies which character/actor takes which portrait; I don't think there's a simple byte value that sets it on the character/actor data...

If you're dummy-ing out the piggy status for all other uses besides Anna I assume you're going to set that status (temporarily?) on another character to use her (temporarily)? If you do that you'd just replace the portrait graphics used when you are in pig status which is that of a small pig (but I believe it is the same overall size as any other portrait) with your new Anna portrait. When you change the character to piggy ("Anna") status the sprite (battle and map) and portrait would change correctly. However IIRC the pig status portraits use the underlying character's portrait palette...meaning I'm not 100% certain you can control the color of the portrait which might defeat you...however I've never tested changing the pig status portrait.

Anyway that's just some random thoughts...

Also, I have created a fully-functional Anna battle sprite, though I've never used it yet. If you're interested I can post up a bitmap of the graphics (I don't have them handy here at work)?
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Zozma on December 20, 2010, 06:12:13 AM
Thank you for your reply. I decided to leave "piggy" alone because it does not have a "special" animation

and I just went along with replacing yang with her instead lol. sounds like an odd choice but with all that I have been able to do thanks to this site, I have just enough space left to give her a full learnable set of magic [and this is after giving one full learning set to: Kain, Edward, and Cecil and making rydia naturally learn 3 of her summons and fire2/ice2/bolt2 naturally.

I would certainly like to see your version of her battle sprite if you get the chance, to compare. Also do you know if anyone has a good golbez portrait?

Ohhh i forgot to mention i have the whole completed map sprites for Anna and Golbez as well. I've encountered a problem tho, I assigned the apropriate "npc" color palettes to those characters map sprites which they look perfect in town, but overworld their colors are wrong :/ did i miss something or do i have to edit one of the 4 pc map palettes instead?
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Paladin on December 20, 2010, 06:43:03 AM
...making rydia naturally learn 3 of her summons and fire2/ice2/bolt2 naturally.

Just make sure you edited the event where she returns to the party in Dwarf Castle to not automatically add those spells to her list or you'll get them twice. I made that mistake at first when I messed with changing that once.

I would certainly like to see your version of her battle sprite if you get the chance, to compare. Also do you know if anyone has a good golbez portrait?

Sure, I'll look it up later this evening when I'm at home. As for Golbez's portrait, I did one for him in my craptacular hack where Paladin Cecil becomes a Golbez knock-off... It was just a simple edit of the Dark Knight portrait, but I'll post that up too if you find it useful.

Ohhh i forgot to mention i have the whole completed map sprites for Anna and Golbez as well. I've encountered a problem tho, I assigned the apropriate "npc" color palettes to those characters map sprites which they look perfect in town, but overworld their colors are wrong :/ did i miss something or do i have to edit one of the 4 pc map palettes instead?

IIRC there are only four 8-color palettes used by the character's map sprites, some of them share palettes, for example Rosa, Edward, and Tellah all use the same palette. I don't know where the link is for palettes to map sprites but I didn't think there was a difference between world map and location maps. For example I edited the above palette that was mapped to Rosa, Edward, and Tellah to have a yellow shade so I could give Rosa and Edward blonde hair rather than white. After I changed the palette and made the proper tile edits it was just fine for all maps... So, if you're making Yang be Anna then it's probably using whatever palette he normally uses (I think it's shared with Cid and the Twins IIRC). I think the key would be figuring out where the palettes are mapped to the overworld PC sprites and changing the values so you could specify any palette you want (so you could create a custom)...I don't know where that data is. I would be interested to know however!
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Zozma on December 20, 2010, 07:36:57 AM
well actually there are like 8 palettes 0-3 are the ones shared by the player characters normally and then
4-7 are the ones used by the npc's (for example, the one anna uses is shared by many npc's including baigan, u know the yellow and red palette. and then golbeze has the blue and gold palette but they just don't work on the overworld map :(

maybe where i found it had 2 things i was supposed to change and i overlooked it... hmm... I might have to use Cecil's palette as he was turned into golbez anyway lol...
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Paladin on December 20, 2010, 08:19:39 AM
I believe that the SNES can only load so many palettes at one time, probably the NPC sprite palettes you're expecting (4-7) are not loaded on the "world" maps because NPCs are never on the world maps (other than the transportation sprites; airships, hovercraft, tanks, chocobo, and bab-il giant). The available "slots" are instead loaded with some other palettes specific to that context.

The "location" maps probably load all of the (or a larger set of valid) sprite palettes since many more NPC sprites are used in that context. It may not be safe to assume that the same NPC palettes are always loaded for every location map since different groups of sprites may be used on different maps requiring different palettes.

In any case it would require some in-depth testing to confirm these assertions as facts unless someone already did it... however that's the behavior I observed when I was doing mods. I just made the safer bet to use (or modify) one of the four PC sprite palettes that are definitely always loaded, but I wasn't doing anything quite as drastic as you are...
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Paladin on December 20, 2010, 01:24:05 PM

I would certainly like to see your version of her battle sprite if you get the chance, to compare. Also do you know if anyone has a good golbez portrait?


Here is my custom "Anna" battle sprite tile set:
(http://www.finalfantasyiv.net/host-files/hacks/custom-anna-sprite-tile-set.gif)
Download BMP in RAR Archive: http://www.finalfantasyiv.net/host-files/hacks/custom-anna-sprite-tile-set.rar (http://www.finalfantasyiv.net/host-files/hacks/custom-anna-sprite-tile-set.rar)

Note: My Anna was designed to be used as a type of white mage; I intended her three special commands to be White, Aim, and Heal. Her "special move" is therefore a bow and arrow to work with the Aim command. Also note, this sprite served as a basis for my "Rosa Revision" which will be available in my up coming hack.

Here is my portrait and custom battle sprite for Golbez:
(http://www.finalfantasyiv.net/host-files/hacks/custom-golbez-portrait-tile-set.gif)
(http://www.finalfantasyiv.net/host-files/hacks/custom-golbez-sprite-tile-set.gif)
Download both as BMP in RAR Archive: http://www.finalfantasyiv.net/host-files/hacks/custom-golbez-sprite-and-portrait-tile-sets.rar (http://www.finalfantasyiv.net/host-files/hacks/custom-golbez-sprite-and-portrait-tile-sets.rar)

Note: My Golbez was used in my (rather poor) "Golbez Hack" where I replaced Paladin Cecil with this Golbez Sprite. The idea was for Cecil-as-Golbez to use the commands Dark Wave, Black, and Cover. The "special move" is intended to be the waves of dark power emitting from his hands or the black magic cast. I think a number of other special commands could work for him like Spirit Wave or Recall...
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Zozma on December 20, 2010, 09:48:56 PM
Ohh those look nice. I had intended Anna to be a "dancer" instead for mine i think i overdid it with the special animation tho lol
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Paladin on December 21, 2010, 02:57:20 AM
Ahh... very nice pixel work my friend! I like some of the moves you gave her. The dance sprite would probably work o.k. I don't think it's overboard.

It will be interesting to see how your hack ends up.
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Zozma on December 21, 2010, 02:43:22 PM
Thanks. as far as map sprites i have already had success with both Golbez and Anna by changing cecil's palette to shades of bluish-green and reds and a shade of yellow. Amazingly the colors are completely compatable with both anna and golbez, and also revamping edward's (because green/red/yellow are in his battle sprite it improves his look overworld)

Having only 6 color's available excluding black and transparent. I wish i could expand the character overworld palette so that the 4 palettes of 8 became 2 palettes of 16. one could do so much with that... oh well

Anyway. [This next part is unrelated to sprites but perhaps you can point me in the right direction?] As for the character gfx standpoint im pretty well set, as for the abilities? well I renamed "Call" into "Skill". Rydia's "skill" is still to summon, but I plan on using that 3rd magic window for all characters to have a special "skill" window.

This will replace commands like Sing/Dance/Call/Peep etc each character learning skills pertaining to their job as they level up, making any of them useful even till the end of the game. But my problem is that enemy skill names do not display properly in any of the menu's AND player spells names are too short. I've been trying to expand the player spell length in all menus to match the length of the enemy spells, but even when I do that the enemy spells still don't line up... is there anywhere that tells exactly how to line up all of the skills both player and enemy with the length of 8 characters? I can only find parts of the info i need but I am also ok with cutting the enemy spell names down to 6 to match the player spells if i must.
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Paladin on December 22, 2010, 10:04:13 AM
 :hmm: That's a bit of rabbit hole you want to go down... but I know the hackers that are smarter than I have discussed this stuff before...

...and with a little searching here are some good resources...

Firstly you'll want to dig into the following topic where Phoenix was working on adding spells to spell lists, he figured out a pretty ingenious way to reprogram the ASM code to put the spells you want into the proper spell lists (a down-loadable patch is included in the thread)...

"Learned spells not being added to list": http://slickproductions.org/forum/index.php?topic=795.0 (http://slickproductions.org/forum/index.php?topic=795.0)

Along those lines this topic where Deathlike was working with the spell learning stuff might have some interesting info in it too:

"Spell Learning List": http://slickproductions.org/forum/index.php?topic=917.0 (http://slickproductions.org/forum/index.php?topic=917.0)

As for changing how the "Monster Attack" spell names are displayed that's a bit of a tougher nut as you're going to have to mess around with some ASM code...

Primarily start with this post in the topic listed previously about adding spells to lists:
http://slickproductions.org/forum/index.php?topic=795.msg7604#msg7604 (http://slickproductions.org/forum/index.php?topic=795.msg7604#msg7604)

Dragonsbrethren and Phoenix discuss the problem of the monster spell name lengths; disassembled ASM code with offsets is included.

Furthermore these topics on window data might be of interest...

"FF2 US Window Data": http://slickproductions.org/forum/index.php?topic=88.0 (http://slickproductions.org/forum/index.php?topic=88.0)
"FF2 US r1.1 Battle Window Data": http://slickproductions.org/forum/index.php?topic=864.0 (http://slickproductions.org/forum/index.php?topic=864.0)

...if you want to try and tackle making the spell names longer.

Finally this topic has some discussion over some of the "Monster" Spells which may be pertinent:
"Enemy Special/Magic Attacks": http://slickproductions.org/forum/index.php?topic=463.0 (http://slickproductions.org/forum/index.php?topic=463.0)

Good Luck!
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Zozma on December 22, 2010, 10:26:30 AM
alright. Thanks for all your help!

I have managed to be successful in exactly what i wanted, but by making enemy spells the same length as player spells. its annoying to have to cut words short but worth the time i saved trying to expand player spell names by 2 to match.

all those window issues... anyway i can add any monster spell to a players magic list and it appears properly now in any menu. now its a matter of turning some of them into things i want in the skill list such as songs or dances etc

I also do not have to worry about which menu a spell is placed in when learned since each character has all of their lists in the proper orders... :)
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Zozma on December 24, 2010, 03:30:45 PM
err I apologize in advance for having a noobish barrage of questions, but I am just trying to get everything right with my sprite situation. (I've been completely successful in everything that ive set out to do to the game so far, so I'm hoping work out the rest of it here...)

First off, Yang completely got the boot when I added Anna into the game with a full sprite. I would actually like to re-add him using Anna's original slot... but I am curious if its possible to make the game read that sprite slot as a full sprite and not a half sprite as it looks like there is space for it there, or at least for most of it. or is there perhaps a way to assign that actor to read from a blank location in the rom so i can add in another sprite or two?

Second, I probably will dummy the piggy status in order to add Baigan to the game (since I don't have a playable paladin now lol) but does piggy actually have its own palette? I know it reads from the palette of whoever has the status but does it have one on its own? [at any rate, i will share my sprite when its done]

Third and most important tho, I can't seem to find the start of the adress' of where an actor's assigned sprites are. I freed up the 3rd tellah actor, for example, and I need it to appear in every way to be Rosa, except for the magic list which I created a fake set for.  All the info I can find is the other part of a character data where it shows their name and job and stuff but not the sprite etc.

any way to point me in the right direction here...?

Edit: Btw, I never liked the way they did rosa's sprite so... I gave her a facelift... what u think?
And perhaps an update for Yang too since i never liked his either lol..
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Zozma on April 08, 2011, 05:45:29 AM
ok so i got a problem... im having a really hard time finding the pointers for the battle sprites, see i learned that the piggy sprite (sprite 0E) actually has the pointers for a full sprite so i filled it with a full golbez because it uses his palette as well. this left exactly enough space for a 15th full sprite (sprite 0F which initially was used for golbez 1/2 sprite. provided that im willing to part with the little moon sprite in the background of the intro scene lol) the problem now is that i need to change both the sprite and palette pointers for sprite 0F in order for it to display properly... ) for the life of me i cant seem to find this info anywhere... all i need is to find those pointers so i can make the game see that there is a full sprite there :(

By the way, I'm also working on something just for fun. Playable Magus Sister sprites lol... ill showthem when i get the chance
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Zozma on April 16, 2011, 01:06:11 PM
More sprites!

my version of: Sandy, Cindy, and Mindy the magus sisters

compatible with TileED to insert them. all 3 use the updated palette i created for my facelifted Rosa sprite

Sandy is designed to animate properly for special skills "Jump" and "Sing"
 
Cindy and Mindy's special looks appropriate for things like palom's "Focus" etc
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Deathlike2 on April 16, 2011, 03:38:19 PM
Here's a few small comments..

Sheila looks somewhat like Faris in her Dancer class..

Mindy looks too much like Young Rydia with a palette swap.

Sandy looks kinda like Celes with an outfit similar to Faris or Lenna as Dragoon.
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Zozma on April 17, 2011, 02:13:36 PM
well,

a i deliberately modeled Mindy after young rydia for the sake of looking similar to the child sprites

b sandy in general looks remotely similar to celes in the first place and i doubt, from your particular point of view, that anyone could make one look otherwise given that these are oldschool 2d with limited detail available.

c sheila was not inspired by anyone in particular, the sprites in ff4 and ff5 are very similar i give you that, and my intended look for her was initially a short haired dancer. sheila's npc has purple hair, i just ended up making it longer and i never gave much thought to that.

i dont suppose you have anything good to say? i only did these for fun and since i had them, i shared. not that this board is so active. what a downer. well there there if anyone actually does end up wanting them. im over the sprite business for now i guess.
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Deathlike2 on April 17, 2011, 02:36:13 PM
My comments were not intended to be negative... just my observations on the matter.

Otherwise everything else looks interesting if not different.

I'm not entirely a fan of a strict palette swap (since you're doing sprites) unless it was really good. Perhaps you should consider looking at Relm or Cara (FF5) as your base instead of young Rydia?

 :edit:
I remember a pic (probably photochopped) of FF5, where the FF5 main characters were bosses and the bosses were the characters... perhaps that might give you some ideas? I don't remember where I saw such a pic, but I do remember it existing in the bowels of Gamefaqs.
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Zozma on April 17, 2011, 03:24:16 PM
i recall not particularly caring for cara's battle sprites to be honest, and relm would be good if they used the same build and size as ff4 and 5. i prefer things to match. really i guess it wouldve worked better to leave her little hood on, but of the choices for a starting base, rydia palom porom, hers seemed more apropriate. my attempt was also for the 3 sharing the same palette, if that isnt obvious, they do. i may mess with it again but frankly as you probably know, i doubt they will actually get used by anyone...
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: fedorajoe on May 17, 2011, 09:56:59 PM
Does anybody know the location of the overworld vehicle graphics?  They aren't with the other map sprites.
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Zozma on May 18, 2011, 12:44:07 AM
they are compressed differently, but just below the map sprites.

with tile ed the setting to view them properly is snes 3bpp, you also need to scroll that little bar over to "16"

this also allows you to see the menu portraits i think? or perhaps it was something else... anyway
this will do it. as you can see it begins with the view of the black chocobo from the airship or whatnot
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Paladin on May 18, 2011, 09:17:18 AM
It's offset 0x0E01F8 w/Header FWIW.

:edit:

FF-II SNES v1.0
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Zozma on May 18, 2011, 03:12:17 PM
oh that's right, it could vary depending on the version? i guess
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Paladin on May 18, 2011, 03:18:10 PM
oh that's right, it could vary depending on the version? i guess

I'm sure they're always in the same relative place in the SFC/SNES versions of the game. The offset may be different between versions (I qualified my previous post).
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: fedorajoe on May 18, 2011, 07:00:48 PM
Sweet, thanks again to all!
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Zozma on May 23, 2011, 10:17:14 PM
btw for anyone who wants it...

this is an updated anna portrait im using, theres an enlarged one to view here and then the version that is ready to insert using tiled
provided that anyone actually wants it.
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: fedorajoe on May 24, 2011, 07:33:10 AM
Wow!  That is some excellent pixel work!

You should do a post on all the elements/changes you're putting into your ROM hack.  I'd be interested to know what the party setup will look like.

BTW I have discovered that keeping Edward alive in the Toroia region is NOT easy.
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Zozma on May 24, 2011, 08:51:00 AM
what do you mean? because of his hp? well I gave him an hp growth more similar to rosa's in my patch but around lvl 20~25 it is still pretty low. however in my patch his songs are so much more useful in this part of the game. You do not have control of his songs but their success rates are very high and multi target. inflicting any of the following : Sleep, Charm, Curse, Hold, and Toad if he is a Toad.

just the songs alone this time around make him uniquely useful for this part of my patch. that and his 3rd harp isn't magnetic so up until dark elf his offensive is probably as useful as yang's.

I imagine rydia would be hard to keep alive at this point in the game too as her hp is similar to default edwards
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: fedorajoe on May 24, 2011, 09:32:30 PM
Well, Edward at level 25 has about 280 HP...  :(  Considerably less even than Rydia.  But, I put some non-magnetic gear in the Toroia armor shop that only Edward can use (Scholar cap and robe) and made them quite strong.  So he ended up having about the same staying power as everyone else, even with that low HP.  It was fun taking him through Cave Magnes and the Tower of Zot.  The game should have been that way to begin with!
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Zozma on May 25, 2011, 08:44:33 AM
well in my patch he also has the advantage of speed as well making it easy to use a song before most of the enemies attack, and lullaby and song of charm are as accurate as they can get, definitely not missing as much as their white/black magic versions. I still may have to make the magnet cave enemies stronger because you have a party of 5 here, Baigan is with you and since he cant use his sword or axe hes more useful here with his paladin white magic.
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Agahnim on January 16, 2014, 10:30:39 PM
hey. sorry for necroposting. i want to change some battle sprites with tile molester but i have some issues.

im following the method from the second post of this topic. i opened the tile molester, open the rom, then i navigate into the correct offset and then... this:

(http://s13.postimg.org/6tz5cctvb/ff4.png)

the question is... how can i find the correct palettes?

thanx in advance. please answer me with image examples :D because my english isnt very well (im from greece)
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: chillyfeez on January 16, 2014, 11:31:27 PM
The palette offsets are in this thread, too, I believe.
View them with SNESPal (http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/32/).
You'll have to change the palette manually in Tile Layer, but you can save it in order to easily use it again.
Let me know if you understand that. I tend to use "Big" English.

 :edit:
Hmm... I've never used tile molester. I don't know for sure you can save palettes. Probably, though. If not, get tile layer.
Phoenix gives the offset for battle character palettes in the second post in this thread. Each character has its own palette. They follow the same order (dk cecil, kain, young rydia, tellah,.etc.)
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Paladin on January 17, 2014, 05:44:40 AM
Here's some stuff:  :terrydia:

PNG With the 16 Color Default Palettes for Battle Sprites
http://www.finalfantasyiv.net/Emulation/Documents/FFIV-Bat-Sprite-Palettes.png (http://www.finalfantasyiv.net/Emulation/Documents/FFIV-Bat-Sprite-Palettes.png)

Excel Spreadsheet with the RGB values for all the default Battle Sprite Palettes
http://www.finalfantasyiv.net/Emulation/Documents/FF4PalettesRGBValues.xls (http://www.finalfantasyiv.net/Emulation/Documents/FF4PalettesRGBValues.xls)

PNG With the 8 Color Default Palettes for Menu Avatars
http://www.finalfantasyiv.net/Emulation/Documents/Avatar-Palettes.png (http://www.finalfantasyiv.net/Emulation/Documents/Avatar-Palettes.png)

And probably more immediately helpful; my actual Tile Layer Pro palette files I use for GFX mods:
http://www.finalfantasyiv.net/Emulation/Documents/Palettes/FF4_TileLayerPro_Palettes.rar (http://www.finalfantasyiv.net/Emulation/Documents/Palettes/FF4_TileLayerPro_Palettes.rar)

The file names of the palettes in the RAR should be pretty easy to figure out what they're for. "Weapons" are the battle sprite effects for weapons if you want to work with those graphics. "Grayscale Finder" is just a group of palettes that can be useful to view the graphics tiles without knowing or having the correct palette (and you're trying to figure out what you're looking at). It probably has some that make more sense in different bit plane modes (for example if you're looking at fonts in 2bpp, map sprites in 3bpp, or battle sprites at 4bpp).

Hope these help, have fun modding GFX  :clocke:


Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Grimoire LD on January 17, 2014, 08:56:32 AM
Hey Paladin has it ever been a long time since I've seen you around! Always glad to see a familiar face on the boards. Thanks for these documents, they should come in handy.
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Agahnim on January 19, 2014, 05:38:08 AM
Code: [Select]
E7F00-E80FF Character Battle Palette Data
all i want is to insert the hex values (from the second post of this topic) into tile molester and get the correct palettes. is it so hard to do?

i really dont know how to use snespal :D
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: Gedankenschild on January 19, 2014, 06:51:15 AM
i really dont know how to use snespal :D

If you don't like using snespal maybe you should take a look at Digisalt's SNES Palette tools:

http://digisalt.de/main.php?ccat=1256&site=1301483992&part=0&lang=GB

I used that one for my mobile sprites hack knowing absolutely nothing about all this and it worked out very well...

Regards!
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: chillyfeez on January 19, 2014, 11:14:07 AM
It's not hard, but it's not quick either.
Open the rom whose palettes you want to edit in SNESPal:

(http://memberfiles.freewebs.com/22/01/115500122/photos/undefined/Using%20SNESPal1.jpg)

Jump to the offset where the palettes are located:

(http://memberfiles.freewebs.com/22/01/115500122/photos/undefined/Using%20SNESPal2.jpg)

For battle characters, there are 16 colors. You have to manually change the colors in your graphics editing program (I use Tile Layer, but should work the same using Tile Molester). SNESPal displays colors as values of 0-31 instead of 0-255, so multiply SNESPal's value by 8 if you want the colors to match exactly. The quicker and less accurate way would be to just match the slider positions for the R/G/B values:

(http://memberfiles.freewebs.com/22/01/115500122/photos/undefined/Using%20SNESPal3.jpg)

When you have done this for all 15 colors (the first color is background, make it whatever works for you. I chose white.), your palette will match the game's:

(http://memberfiles.freewebs.com/22/01/115500122/photos/undefined/Using%20SNESPal4.jpg)

Each battle character has a different palette, so you'll have to repeat the process if you want to see the next character's (Kain) palette, and so on.

Incidentally, if you want to actually change the game's palettes, SNESPal will allow you to do that as well.
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: TheBigT2000 on March 14, 2014, 12:50:24 AM
Whoever made that Baigan portrait is a saint! I'm making a hack that makes Baigan Playable. Can you send me that portrait?
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: chillyfeez on March 14, 2014, 01:27:36 AM
I'm guessing you're talking about the one Zozma posted to this thread back in 2010?
I think you can download it from that post. It can be imported using most spriting tools, I'm pretty sure.
Judging by what he said in the post ("I doubt anybody will ever use it"), I get the impression he'd be ok with you doing so, but he hasn't posted on the forum in about a year so you might have to figure out how to get in touch with him.
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: TheBigT2000 on March 14, 2014, 01:43:06 AM
Okay then, also do you know what editors I could use to edit portraits?
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: chillyfeez on March 14, 2014, 10:02:43 AM
I use Tile Layer. I recently detailed the entire process I use here (http://slickproductions.org/forum/index.php?topic=1905.45) (scroll about halfway down the page).
I've heard a couple of people talk about YYCHR lately though, which apparently cuts through a lot of the tedium I'm used to.
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: TheBigT2000 on March 14, 2014, 04:57:17 PM
What is the offset for Edge's Portrait?
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: chillyfeez on March 14, 2014, 10:19:13 PM
Here you go:

Code: [Select]
688D0-689CF Character Portrait Palette Data
ED5C0-EEF3F Character Portrait Graphic Data (3 bitplanes, composite, 384 bytes per class id)

If you jump to ED5C0 in your graphics editing program and scroll down, you'll find it pretty easily.
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: TheBigT2000 on March 15, 2014, 05:47:40 PM
I still can't find it  :isuck:
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: chillyfeez on March 15, 2014, 11:24:53 PM
If you've jumped to ED5C0 and you don't see anything that even remotely resembles character portraits, then you're probably in 4 bitplane mode instead of 3 bitplane mode.
SNES has two different ways of interpreting data to display images - I don't fully understand it myself, but a notable difference between the two is whether the system is using an 8 color palette or a 16 color palette.
If you're using Tile Layer, you can change image mode in the view menu:
view > mode > SNES 3BPP
This will yield a screen that looks like the one in my post here (http://slickproductions.org/forum/index.php?topic=1905.msg20549#msg20549).
Title: Re: Basic Sprite editing
Post by: TheBigT2000 on March 16, 2014, 01:00:18 AM
Oh, thank you!