The Glenn Thread

[Agent 12]

cool,

It honestly shouldn't take that long to do once we get the scrambled up tilemolester stile sprite sheet......hopefully

--JP

[Agent 12]

OK, I'd call this version 1.0 I guess.

A few things:

* I think the exception bug might be fixed..the only way I was able to repro it though was if I clicked in the tilebox before a rom was loaded the loaded the rom.
* The stupid "Section" nibble screws things up. I guess it allows you to load a tile that isn't in your sprite sheet?  For now I just color a tile with a "section" greater than one some solid color.  There's a surprising amount of these, though sometimes it's just cause that frame is garbage but not always.  For example..almost all of Robo is in a different section. Note that you can still edit the tile with a section in the editor you just can't have the live preview of it.  One work around for this could be to load a HUGE tilesheet with all of the PC's but honestly that'd be kind of a pain and we don't really need it for Glenn.
* There's now zoom either from the menu or keyboard shortcut ctrl +/-. 
* I put in all the PC's thanks to Justin.
* One  unfortunate side effect with this is these sprites sheets started off small. So when I "zoom" in on them I'm using a pretty lazy algorithm and some pixels can shift.  So...for example if you select the upper left tile of crono it should really be blank but it looks like the hair inthe tile to the left of him is shifting over.   Of course you can make your own nicer sprite sheets and point to them in your SpriteAssemblyInfo.txt file.
*Chrono'99 if you have a spritesheet for Glenn with the way we are going to put it in the ROM I can start on them..it's a pretty boring job so I'd like to just do a couple a day..
* I really need to get a kick ass icon for my editors

Enjoy

--JP

[FaustWolf]

Oh, the "Section" nybble allows you to go vertically further down in the spritesheet than row 0xFF. So if the nybble is set to 0x0, you can go down to row 0x0FF. If it's 0x1, you can go down to row 0x1FF. If it's 0x2, you can go all the way down to row 0x2FF. Etc. It's sort of a "spritesheet range" modifier to my understanding. Not sure if that info helps any.

[Agent 12]

Yea i'm aware of what it does, it's just with the way this editor is set up I only have access to the current sprite sheet for the "live preview".   Later on when I have more time I'll try to make it load from the ROM and then the section will be a piece of cake.  For our purposes it hopefully shouldn't matter since I'm assuming Glenn will all be from his own sprite sheet.

Even if it's not (like I said above) we can still use the GUI for editing, just not for a cool live preview.

--JP

[Chrono'99]

Here's how the spritesheet will look like in the ROM. It's obviously incomplete but still usable for whoever wants to start the sprite assembly:



I'm also making a sheet with colored backgrounds to make it easier to see the different frames (though you also have to compare with the "un-cut" spritesheet to make out some difficult parts, especially the hilt of the sword):



There are about ten redundant tiles I think, but I'm afraid that removing all of them would make the sheet unreadable to everyone except me.

[Agent 12]

Awesome, I do think that eventually we should remove the redundant tiles but keep everything documented.  I'd like for the "official" glenn thread to be as efficient as possible.

This is definitely enough for me to try my hand at throwing this in a fresh rom and seeing what comes out at the other end.

So here's an outline of what I think should happen:

1) Apply 8th character fix.  Where is the 8th character fix patch, and wher eis a post describing in detail exactly what it does (i want to know what bytes it changes and why)
2) Once I know number one I want to know how to edit the bytes that change where it's pointing too so I can repoint it to wherever I want
3) We need to pick a spot to put the graphics,  and put them there in a FRESH ROM
4) TF has the new "Custom Data" window where we can tell TF not to overwrite the data at certain spots.  Everyone who ever touches the rom will need to make sure they mark this data to not be used.
5) we'll do editing stuff to get everything working i nthe fresh rom
6) We'll double check that the space still hasn't been written to by TF (I trust TF and all but I haven't used this feature enough to blindly accept that it worked) and apply the patch to the CE rom.

--JP

[Chrono'99]

Also posting an updated version of the "un-cut" spritesheet (I corrected the running north frames to make them fit in Size 0).

[Vehek]

1) Apply 8th character fix.  Where is the 8th character fix patch, and wher eis a post describing in detail exactly what it does (i want to know what bytes it changes and why)

It was an attachment in this thread. (It was one of the deleted attachments.)

It changes part of the character graphics routines. The patch I made puts a JMP command at 00E695 and some code at 24F540-24F5D3.

[Agent 12]

Vehek:  So was that code in unused space?  and did the jmp command replace another command...maybe a return? So instead of returning it runs your code then returns? 
Chrono'99: Is that sprite sheet starting from the first row?  It seems like it's starting half way through a sprite and some of the "common" first sprites are missing (facing up for example)?  If we can start from what will be (when all is said and done) the beginning of the final sprite sheet then we won't have to throw away any work we do.  Also it seems to be common to putt an "empty" tile in the very first slot (it's useful too)  Anyways i didn't expect the work today to be finalized work this was more to give the sprite assembly a whirl in a common usage task. 

OK FW you're mind is about to be blown A few things.....first off I was an idiot I didn't realize exactly what "section" was it had nothing to do with FW's explanation it was just me being an idiot :-/ section is now implemented correctly and thus about 95% more sprites are editable now

Second I tested out adding Glenn frames and added some new features to make real world use less of a pain.  Here they are!

Add Super Tile Command: This command assumes that the currently selected tile is at the "upper left" of the super tile and adds all 4 sub tiles.  CTRL + space = keyboard short cut
Set Shift: Incase you don't want to manually move each tile one pixel at a time you can input the coordinates you want them at (in decimal) and move the tile there instantly.
Point and click:  Clicking on a subtile sets it to the currently selected tile
Grab:  Right clicking a subtile sets the selected tile to the same subtile you right clicked.

It took me about um..4 minutes to make glenn's 6 walking forward animations.  Best way is definitely going to be to love the keyboard shortcuts. The whole process for the walking tiles was:

ctrl+ up/down/left/right super tile to right place
click top of super tile i want
ctrl Space (sets the super tile
ctrl + shift + left/right to next super tile.

--JP
albeit the walking animations are in the rom in a nice organized way but you get the point.


--JP

[FaustWolf]

Fantastic! You're probably created better game editing tools than what Square had back in 1995. I can't wait to make use of this.

[Chrono'99]

I put the frames in the same order that Frog's frames appear in the CT Character Library ROM, which I assume is the same order as his frames appear in the CT ROM. I thought it would be easier this way, because if we make Glenn's frames correspond to that of Frog's, we won't have to change any sprite animation at all (except the "slurp" ones) as they would already point to the right frames. Correct me if I'm wrong though.

Concerning the redundant tiles, if you want to remove them, should we do it from the start to avoid basically doing this sprite-assembly work twice? I have no problem with removing all of them, but sprite-assembling will be more difficult because you'll have to open all these sheets in something like Photoshop and zoom in them for almost every frame to compare the tiles and look for the right tile to put at which slot and at which pixel coordinates (something which is also necessary with the current sheet, but to a lesser extent).

[Agent 12]

I still think we should remove the redundant tiles.  I'm willing to zoom in if were going to do this I want it to be perfect.  If you're keeping track and can provide hints it'd be awesome (like I dont need to know the exact XY position of the tile but even just saying "the left half of his body is redundant) I would save time looking for it.  I'm pretty sure when this is all said and done I'm going to know the sprite sheet like the back of my hand anyways .


As for the sprite sheet I think maybe I just got thrown off by the lack of a "facing up" (frame 0) or "facing right" sprite.   Also like I said it's really useful to have a blank tile in the upper left to reference.  Here's Frogs sheet that Justin sent me.  JUst so you know with the animation checked (character library rom? ) when you first load the character they aren't in frame 0, you have to go to frame 1 and then go BACK to frame 0 (so press R then L on the save point).  It threw me off :-/ and maybe you just missed facing right in the sheet?

So anyways summary:

1) Need those two missing frame
2) Would be nice to have a blank tile in the upper left (this is definitely worth removing the 1st redundant tile)
3) Love the idea of doing it in the order of the animation checker (character library). I have 2 zsneses with a fresh rom and edited rom open for that.


When I get the updated sprite sheet, I'll insert all of glenns standing walking running animations....that oughta give us a huge boost in motivation .  By the way I'm working on the assumption that fixing the palette is as simple as it s for NPC's in tile molester:

Load Glenn in a zsnes game
Make a save state
load the rom in tile molester
browse to that location in the rom
load the save state in tile molester
Press arrows until it looks right.


Will that work or is there different steps for playable characters?  If so can someone give me a step by step?
--JP

[Chrono'99]

Alright, I'll remove the redundant tiles.

I used the CT Character Library to check the frame order but I hadn't noticed the frame 0 either. Frame 50 (or maybe it's 4F or 51 or something) is actually a repeat of that "facing up" pose so I thought it was just far down the list. Apparently there are simply two totally similar "facing up" poses (we should probably keep them both to preserve animations).

The "facing right" frames are not missing; they're just mirrored versions of the "facing left" frames.

For palette hacking I look for the right addresses with FaustWolf's CT Sprite Insertion guide and I change the colors one by one with SnesPAL and screenshots to compare with the spritesheet. Frog's palette is at 130000 according to the guide. I didn't know TileMolester could actually write palettes into the ROM.

[Agent 12]

The "facing right" frames are not missing; they're just mirrored versions of the "facing left" frames.

*slaps self in forehead*

Yea we'll definitely have two "facing up" animations if that's what frog has

I didn't know TileMolester could actually write palettes into the ROM.

Hrm......maybe i'm making that up haha...  I feel like I didn't do it by hand for like the dragon tooth....or agitator........maybe I just used the existing palette

*gets exited for having standing/walking/running glenn

--JP

[justin3009]

Question on the sprite sheet.  Is Glenn using the wrong hand for his sword?