Darkken:
While I have a decent education in the principles of how games work, and store and call up data and all of that, I have no firsthand technical knowledge whatsoever. All of the issues you bring up, such as the replacing of individual animation frames and palette issues, are concerns I've had since the beginning. However, I personally have no ability to address them. What I CAN do is draw a very mean sprite, and it's already established that this project, one way or the other, is going to need a fully-realized Schala. The way I look at it, I may as well help where I can, right?
Anyway, to respond to some of your specific points. I think we've all been working off of the assumption that Ayla's sprite frames would have to be replaced by Schala's, rather than creating a new sprite sheet or expanding an existing one somehow. By the same token, Ayla's sprite would have to then replace Schala's. Clearly, playabe Alya's sprite sheet and non-playable Schala's are arranged in totally different ways and have totally different numbers of frames. Even so, from what I understand, making this switch would be possible. Ayla would lose a majority of the frames she has now, but as a non-playable character, she's not going to need most of them. So this should not be an insurmountable problem.
Palette conflicts are indeed a concern. However, as you say, there is a way to switch palettes, and that would solve the problem. I'll bet that someone here already has an idea of how to do it. If not, we'll find somebody who does.
The Frog/Glenn situation is a lot more serious, however. I frankly don't know of any way to expand Frog's alloted space for sprite animations.
It sounds like you've made good progress already with sprite hacking. Probably everyone involved in the graphical or technical side of this project would be interested in seeing your work. As to how the sprites are jumbled in how the game stores them, I feel your pain. I've seen raw sprite sheets from Trigger and they are a mess. I frankly don't see why they were arranged in such a counterintuitive manner, but there you go. At any rate, I'm sure we can decipher them with enough time and effort.
Jake-A-Roonie:
If you, too, are going to need a more complete Schala sprite, I may as well go ahead and do it now. Then, when the time comes to implement the sprite in Crimson Echoes, I can simply provide it to the actual ROM hackers and let them do their magic.
Yeah, I'll go ahead and start on it this weekend. I'm extremely particular about my work, so it will be some time before the sprite is done. (All the more reason to start early.) The number of frames to draw is simply enormous. However, it will be worth the wait.
Also, thank you for pointing out the sprite reference you linked to! That actually should help quite a bit. I'm also going to do a quick run-through of the Zeal portion of Trigger, just to make sure that there aren't any frames I miss.
Of course, I could just work off of the raw Schala sprite sheet provided here at the Compendium, but as Darkken points out, it's like a jigsaw puzzle. I think it will be easier to draw the sprites manually, then apply them to Ayla's sprite sheet when the time comes.
OdF
