Trying (and failing) to export a sprite

[omgwine]

I hope one of you guys can help me out here, or at least direct me to accurate information, because the tutorials on the site seem to be less than accurate.

All I am trying to do right now is the Nizbel example.

http://www.chronocompendium.com/Term/Editing_character_or_enemy_graphics.html

Pulling the final answers for the locations directly from the text, I go into the Temporal Flux compression tool, and immediately become confused. Because if I decompress the data to a new file, I get one result, and if I decompress it to a copy of the ROM, I get a different result. The two options yield output of the same size. The tutorial page is silent on all this but I think I read in a thread or something that I should decompress to a copy of the ROM. So I do.

The tutorial then gives an address that is "probably" Nizbel's palette, and tells me to decompress it. But if I decompress from that address, then the output file just ends up being empty. The sprite info spreadsheet contradicts the tutorial when it comes to the palette index (at least it seems to me that they are referring to the same thing) so I try doing the same calculations with the index version of the number, but I get the same result.

And regardless, you can't import a palette from another file unless that file is a save state, right? So what method should I be using to grab the palette via decompression? How would I put the two bits of output together?

Anyway, back to the sprite data itself. It looks like pieces of Nizbel, but no matter how I set the number of columns, I can't seem to get the rows to line up and produce a coherent sprite sheet. Should I be expecting a strange number of tiles, like in the Crono example I saw elsewhere on the forum, or what?

I've tried all of this with three different ROMs. One of them still had the header but it didn't appear to make a difference. Any ideas on what I might be doing wrong?

Thanks in advance.

[justin3009]

Copy and Paste a separate SMC and decompress to that.  And yes, when you export it, Nizbel's tiles will be a jumbled mess.  That's how you know you did it right.  The palette will be odd as well when you check it using Tile Molester.

[omgwine]

Yeah, that's what I did, and I do get a jumbled mess. That's what I was expecting. But am I not supposed to be able to unjumble it? Or should I be doing that manually somehow?

[justin3009]

You probably will have to unjumble it manually.  But if that's the case, seems like you're wanting a full sprite sheet of Nizbel?  If so, http://www.chronocompendium.com/Term/Image:Nizbel_Sprites.gif.html

[omgwine]

Well, I was actually only attempting Nizbel because that's what was in the tutorial and I figured I should get that under my belt first. I'm just having trouble making sense of the tutorial.

Alright, I suppose I get the gist of the whole sprite assembly thing now. Can you shed any light on the palette problem? I'm sure I'd be able to get the palette working from a save state, but I thought that the method in the tutorial would be less of a headache. I'm just not sure what the tutorial is trying to say.

When you follow the palette instructions, do you get meaningful output? Supposing that you get the output you want, how can it be applied to the jumbled Nizbel?

Thanks again.

[justin3009]

Save States are the best thing you can get for a palette.  Just get a SS of him in game, load the palette up, save it and scroll through until you hit the right one.  It's so much easier.

[FaustWolf]

It's perfectly possible to generate arbitrary palettes in an image editor and apply them to individual sprites. However, it seems that extracting palettes from savestates is a rather popular method. In any case, yeah, we'll be getting a new, more comprehensive, and hopefully more understandable sprite insertion tutorial sometime in June. [JP NOTE: shhhh ]

The current tutorial mentioned decompressing palettes? Palettes are naturally uncompressed, except the overworld palettes to my understanding. You can see and edit the palette of your choice by checking the Sprite Info Spreadsheet for the palette index associated with Nizbel and navigating to the appropriate address in SNESPal. There should be absolutely no decompression involved with NPC and enemy palettes.

[omgwine]

Ah, that would explain it. I'll keep an eye out for new developments and such. Cheers.

Edit: I was about to say "You know what would be really useful around here? A wiki. I am not a fan of wiki-izing everything but it would be useful in this case because there is a lot of information being discovered and tossed around all the time. It would be nice if mistakes like that could be corrected quickly and easily as well. Just a thought."

And then I realized that those pages are wiki pages, though it doesn't appear to be possible to sign up. I guess they could use more attention, haha.

[FaustWolf]

Yeah, all Compendium resources are being focused on CE right now. Once it's released there will be a frenzy of guide writing and wiki updating. I'm really behind on the Chrono Cross technical wikis too.

[omgwine]

Which derivative work will be finished first, Crimson Echoes or Black Sigil ?? ?

If you win, I will send pie. And inside that pie: lols.

[FaustWolf]

I'm thinking Black Sigil might just make it. Yeah, the sprite style is pretty close to CT, which is a real treat no matter how the game turns out (Nintendo Power gave it a 5/10 score). I'm willing to bet that the Black Sigil sprites have full 16-color palettes though.