Noob editing questions

[Zakyrus]

Here are a few noob questions I have for editing CT:

1. What I did was slightly moved the "Giant Blue Star" object in Zeal Palace: Regal Hallway so that it appers precisely(sp?) ontop of the pendant's jewel(when you hold it up to open the door). Now, is there any quick way to change the palette of the blue star to a teal color(or any color), or would I have to actually copy the sprite and modify it myself?

2. I made a blade called "Eternity" for Crono. It has 255 attack, 100% critical rate, and deals 9999 on critical hit. The problem is, is that since I used an unused weapon slot, the sword's graphics are green in color. How do I go about changing this? I want to change it to have the same graphics as the Lode Sword. (Later on, I'll import graphics and have a "sparkle" effect)

3. I made a scythe for Magus called "Reaper". It has byteflag "instantly kills an enemy", the only problem is that it works on bosses too. I want to change this so it deals damage on bosses instead. Any ideas?

3. I would like to be able to allow monsters to have greater than 32,000 HP. Maybe bump up the max to 65,535 or preferably 250,000 ...for my super mega boss ~Dark Nu!!!

4. I would like to add new tilesets to the game, more specifically I am adding animated backrounds/skies for areas that display a backround behind the scenery. Example would be Denadoro Mts. Gauntlet(the backround is terrible, and horribly pixelated especially for a 32bit game.) If someone can give me the lowdown of how this can be done I would greatly appreciate it. The backrounds would be simular to those found in Donkey Kong Country, where there were multiple layers(I think 5) and each layer could scroll with the player's movement on their own levels or in some cases were animated on their own. I seriously doubt this is possible (the multiple scrolling layers) but I know CT is atleast capable of animated TILES. So at worst I would just be able to have 1 'layer' of backround that appears to have 'multiple layers' and have that animated.(but of course would not be able to obtain the "each layer scroll according to player movement" part). Any experienced in the knowledge of CT graphics modding are more than welcome to post your input on this.


5. What is the mem value that checks if someone is playing on a NEWGAME+ I need this for various things. (Kindof like where the shiny spot appears on the right telepod, but I can't seem to find the mem_check >_<)

6. This goes for those that know of the CTEC program, you can expand the SRAM size. What exactly is SRAM size for? And why would I want to change it from 64 to 256? I am assuming that 256 is far better, but don't want to run the risk of messing up lots of work to my CT Rom by changing it.


Question:
Temporal Flux~~ I am editing location events and change barely anything. Then a location somewhere else in the game screws up. Is this just me or does this happen to anyone else? BTW, if Geiger sees this, we need UNDO function in TF.

[Chrono'99]

1. What I did was slightly moved the "Giant Blue Star" object in Zeal Palace: Regal Hallway so that it appers precisely(sp?) ontop of the pendant's jewel(when you hold it up to open the door). Now, is there any quick way to change the palette of the blue star to a teal color(or any color), or would I have to actually copy the sprite and modify it myself?

You may simply change the sprite to something else (there are "brown star", "red star", etc., not sure if they are "giant" though). You can also switch the palette to one used by another sprite (using Chrono Tweaker), or you can directly modify the colors with SnesPal (it will change the small blue star palette too though, since it's the same one).

The command MemCopy88 allows to directly edit palettes too, but you have to input the color infos in raw hex form, it's not the best solution.

2. I made a blade called "Eternity" for Crono. It has 255 attack, 100% critical rate, and deals 9999 on critical hit. The problem is, is that since I used an unused weapon slot, the sword's graphics are green in color. How do I go about changing this? I want to change it to have the same graphics as the Lode Sword. (Later on, I'll import graphics and have a "sparkle" effect)

I don't know... Maybe you can change the color using SnesPal, but I'm not sure if it will also change the color of something else if the palette is used for other items.

3. I made a scythe for Magus called "Reaper". It has byteflag "instantly kills an enemy", the only problem is that it works on bosses too. I want to change this so it deals damage on bosses instead. Any ideas?

Well some enemies are immune to Black Hole, you might want to search about that. No idea how to do this kind of thing though.

3. I would like to be able to allow monsters to have greater than 32,000 HP. Maybe bump up the max to 65,535 or preferably 250,000 ...for my super mega boss ~Dark Nu!!!

No idea. Maybe have the boss silently change into a different form with other stats when he "dies" for the first time (like the Bird/Imp combination who change into a single Imp)?

4. I would like to add new tilesets to the game, more specifically I am adding animated backrounds/skies for areas that display a backround behind the scenery. Example would be Denadoro Mts. Gauntlet(the backround is terrible, and horribly pixelated especially for a 32bit game.) If someone can give me the lowdown of how this can be done I would greatly appreciate it. The backrounds would be simular to those found in Donkey Kong Country, where there were multiple layers(I think 5) and each layer could scroll with the player's movement on their own levels or in some cases were animated on their own. I seriously doubt this is possible (the multiple scrolling layers) but I know CT is atleast capable of animated TILES. So at worst I would just be able to have 1 'layer' of backround that appears to have 'multiple layers' and have that animated.(but of course would not be able to obtain the "each layer scroll according to player movement" part). Any experienced in the knowledge of CT graphics modding are more than welcome to post your input on this.

Multiple layers is probably impossible but I think you can make one layer move using the Scroll Layer command. You can also do it for the layer3 (like in 2,300 AD with the moving fog). In some maps, there are indeed animated tiles (conveyor belts) but I don't think there are enough of them to make a decent background.

Question:
Temporal Flux~~ I am editing location events and change barely anything. Then a location somewhere else in the game screws up. Is this just me or does this happen to anyone else? BTW, if Geiger sees this, we need UNDO function in TF.

Sometimes the texts in the location is messed up, just click on them and re-update/write mem/save to correct them (provided the non-messed up text still shows in the event window). For some reason the location music changes to silence sometimes too. I'm not sure if something I did in one location ever messed up something in another location (I understand it can happen though).

[Zakyrus]

No idea. Maybe have the boss silently change into a different form with other stats when he "dies" for the first time (like the Bird/Imp combination who change into a single Imp)?

Why did I not think of this? Thanks for reminding me that a few CT monsters had this.

Multiple layers is probably impossible but I think you can make one layer move using the Scroll Layer command. You can also do it for the layer3 (like in 2,300 AD with the moving fog). In some maps, there are indeed animated tiles (conveyor belts) but I don't think there are enough of them to make a decent background.

I figured as much. Oh well, I can always make a tileset "appear" to have multiple scrolling layers by the tileset animation itself. An example would be to have mountains with animated/moving clouds. This is possible as long as it is all on one "layer" right? Meaning that the clouds and the mountains are part of the same tiles, just the clouds themselves on the tiles are animated. Unless of course tiles have a limited amount of steps in the animation. I hope you know what I mean, as sometimes I am terrible at putting things into words (oh, why can't everyone be telepathic? It would be so much easier to 'think' it to you ).

[Zakyrus]

Oh, and is there any way to EXPAND the amount of location pointers? I have found free space in various maps but I am running out of location pointers to use. Also, how many maximum objects are allowed in one location? Thanks again.

[Chrono'99]

I don't know about location pointers, but 1F objects seem to be the limit. I tried to add more once and it messed up. Location exits are limited to 10 too.

[Zakyrus]

...but 1F objects seem to be the limit. I tried to add more once and it messed up. Location exits are limited to 10 too.

I was afraid of this. I somewhat knew in the back of my mind seeing as Leene Square and Millenial Fair are two seperate areas. I am praying that someday TF can expand this. (If it's possible I can wait for it, I have plenty of other things to work on in the meantime.)

[Chrono'99]

Well in my opinion it's not that annoying. Two areas can be better for gameplay purpose, to separate stuff a bit so that the player remember the overall layout and the locations of the NPCs. If there was some huge area with too many NPCs scattered around the player might not remember who he has to talk to if he's searching for someone.

[Geiger]

Not sure how many objects are allowed offhand.  I thought the beta team had figured out the limit and I had programmed it in.

As for "undo", it takes roughly 75% of the time to write an undo function that it took to develop any paticular item.  Given that you can always make a copy of your ROM, or just reopen the ROM without saving, do you really want me to spend my limited development time on "undo"?

---T.Geiger

[Zakyrus]

As for "undo", it takes roughly 75% of the time to write an undo function that it took to develop any paticular item.  Given that you can always make a copy of your ROM, or just reopen the ROM without saving, do you really want me to spend my limited development time on "undo"?

---T.Geiger

You have a valid point.

[nightmare975]

Not sure how many objects are allowed offhand.  I thought the beta team had figured out the limit and I had programmed it in.

As for "undo", it takes roughly 75% of the time to write an undo function that it took to develop any paticular item.  Given that you can always make a copy of your ROM, or just reopen the ROM without saving, do you really want me to spend my limited development time on "undo"?

---T.Geiger

Not to be rude but maybe you could just replace the revert map function to a simple undo?

[Zakyrus]

Not sure how many objects are allowed offhand.  I thought the beta team had figured out the limit and I had programmed it in.


---T.Geiger

By the way, just for everyone to know: Location "{12A} Tyrano Lair Exterior" has 60 objects, go look for yourself. It would be nice if all locs. could use this many. Also, the Coliseum mod uses (I beleive) 54 objects. How did they do it?

[JLukas]

Not sure how many objects are allowed offhand.  I thought the beta team had figured out the limit and I had programmed it in.


---T.Geiger

By the way, just for everyone to know: Location "{12A} Tyrano Lair Exterior" has 60 objects, go look for yourself. It would be nice if all locs. could use this many. Also, the Coliseum mod uses (I beleive) 54 objects. How did they do it?

The limit is 64 Objects.  TF will stop with a warning if you try to add more than that - "Error - cannot have more than 0x40 objects"  It sounds like Chrono'99 had a different problem with the event mentioned above.

[Zakyrus]

I did get the shining star to change colors/tint with MemCopy, figured out teal, light blue, pink, yellow, and green. But I am not at home right now, so it'll be a little while until I can post the exact commands.

As for the rest of the above, I am still working on them...

Also, no one has answered my question on SRAM. What exactly is the difference between 64 and 256 for CT?

[Geiger]

Those are probably the size of the Save RAM in Kilobits.  So 8k and 32k for save file sizes, I guess.  Not sure how it would help you though, unless you want to hack the ASM to allow saving and loading of more data.  And then you have to figure out where you can store that in memory.

---T.Geiger

[Zakyrus]

Thanks Geiger, that makes alot of sense. So the SRAM is pretty much useless for now.