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Mass Sprite Sheet Expansion Battle & NPC

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i would love a patch for that!
great job and there's you saying u don't contribute enough get the f**k outta here lmao


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See, i like the example of just using sprites as the portraits. FF5 and several others did this and it was just fine.

looks like the Woman turned out pretty smooth in battle. That's good to see. Her hair looks a MESS close up lol...

Anyway, here is the finished version. I hope that "hit" frame looks alright.

[Image: 41_26_12_15_1_47_57.png]

Also, about the engineer, IF i were to rearrange his colors on the sprite, i could retain the black on his clothes and use the blonde shades on for the trim on his hat and clothes, but because palette 4 still looks better. Ill stick with leaving the skin-tone trim. because there are no trim colors he actually only uses 10 colors by default... this sprite is also used in the dungeon where u find gogo as well, yes using palette 0 but without any lucky charms lol. so i guess Ill leave it as is since vanilla uses both those palettes for him.

I also experimented with palette 2. it actually looks decent. you have the best version of gold trim and a choice between red, dark green or even purple clothes lol... still I'll stick with vanilla palette 4.

[Image: 41_27_12_15_3_43_42.png]

Ok here you go! a finished version of the Train conductor.

IF for some odd reason the colors are bugged in battle, remove the tent.
however the vanilla sprite only seems to use 10 colors so that shouldn't matter. Also to note, just like the vanilla ghost sprite, there is no obvious sign of the "blinking" and "winking" animations since you can never see this character's eyes.

Now that conductor is finished, it would not be hard to do the Impresario from the opera house...
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[Image: bl8xwlibw3brvnnzg.jpg]

So, I actually got to test the whole thing directly using them as NPCs instead of just PCs and in battle, using LE+ (Big thanks to Madsiur on that one). After some tweaking, fixing a few typos, and doing several things I had just forgot to change/import here is the result.

No, it is not possible to get 66 (I think) NPCs on a map at one point in time. Actually, while it would let me put 31 on the map it would only draw the first 19 at one time. Never ran into that before, course this is also the first time I've tried to put that many NPC on one single map all in one screen so...

The point is: Yes this screen shot is edited together. I had to display 19 at a time, screenshot, then put the screenshots together. That being said, other than alot of shuffling around in the LE nothing else was added or changed during the making of it.

Other notes:
NO I do not have full PC style sheets for every single sprite in this shot, some are still just NPC sheets ready for full sheets.
NO I could not fit every single potentially playable sprite on the map, a few are left out (about 10 or 12 I think) and I'm still making room to add a few more custom sprites (If I can find some fitting ones that work with vanilla palettes.

All that aside, I'm really liking this screenshot. Goes pretty far in showing the size of it all (better than a battle screenshot anyway).

Also, another Thanks to Zozma for cranking out a ton of expanded NPC sheets and keeping them in vanilla palettes. It has really helped take alot of needless guess work and temporary "filler" work out of the job. (Not to mention the extra work I would have had to do to removing the temporary filler sprites).

For the record, I didn't reduce the size of the inserted picture because of all the stuff in it, AND I was a little to proud of it to put it behind a spoiler tag. Will probably go back in a day or two and scale it down more reasonably, but at the moment I just couldn't make myself do it. Forgive me.


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I still like that picture the best...

Anyway, planning on posting an "all but complete" version of the BASE/CORE patch shortly.

I say "all but complete" because it still has room for more stuff to be added, not that it doesn't work, is broke, or needs more code (least it doesn't need more code unless issues discovered in testing). It will probably get updated a few times, BUT is very usable depending on what the user plans to do and how much custom work is done after installing. So no reason not to "release" this version. It won't be the FINAL version of the CORE patch though so keep that in mind.

I'm going to do something a little odd with the readme. Frankly, anything beyond how/what to install is pretty open ended. So I have no clue what to write in the readme beyond basic install instructions. Beyond that anything will be added on as as needed/mentioned basis.

Just for my own sake of not forgetting, basic installing proceedure is currently as follows:

Headered- V1.0 Rom
FF3usME expansion to 32mbit (and any other desired "Manage Expanded ROM" features)
Apply SEx Patch (What's wrong with "Sprite Expansion Patch" for a name?)
Apply SEx-Pot Patch if desired ("Sprite Expansion - Portraits" portraits using sprites as base)
Apply Madsiur's expansion patch for LE+, expanded Map/NPC/Exit/+ patch
Apply SEx-ED Patch (In-Progress. "Sprite Expansion - Event Dialog Patch")

*Edit* Due to a "whoops" on my part, and doing things with my eyes closed... Madsiur's LE+ patch is probably going to be included in the Core/Base patch. Unless he would rather it not be, or several people have major issues with that being included. (It was required anyway for LE to work anyway I just really didn't intend on having it be part of this patch directly.) It can be sepperated, I think, but would require alot of back tracking. As I said... "whoops". 

Okay, I know I need to work on the actual name of this. The original name doesn't really fit with the final product. I'm working on it.

Still open to suggestions, ideas, custom sprites with vanilla palettes (still have a few open slots), and a few vanilla sprites that could use full sheets. (Need to update that list of complete again its alot bigger, any/all esper sheets still needed I know. Least I'd like to have them anyway.)

Think that covers it for the moment.


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Well.... It looks like I am going to be gone for quite some time again. As this is the last day I have access to a pc before my long cross country move.
I was working on Impresario but didn't get far enough along to post anything significant. (as I said though he would be easy to create using the newly made train engineer as a base template) a new version of Arvis could also be made with that sprite as well...

Anyway, I hope that I've been decent help for this project as its something I'm interested in as well. Plus, I personally feel that I managed to tackle one of the more difficult human npc sprites (That woman) whew the hair looked like such a mess up close and pixonal lol. The fun part of this project was challenging myself to stick to the vanilla palettes and give the sprites as much potential as possible.

Just one last side note here, its actually extremely easy to create professional looking battle ready sprites out of these npcs if you just remember that practically all of the npcs bear distant resemblances to various original playable characters and can thus be used as templates.
Examples:
The Figaro Chancellor was created using the imperial soldier

Daryl was made with Terra as a base (there are some close resemblances, making me think the original sprite maker of this game did the same when making the Daryl npc.

Vargas, obviously modeled after Sabin

Rachel had resemblances to Celes

I once made a version of Zigfried that shared the same poses as Cyan. (a great choice template)

Katarin was an oddball exception, she is short, but not short enough to use Relm as a proper template so she turned out to be an experiment...

Anyway, my point being that making a good choice on using a pc character template made it easy to produce several sprites over such a short period.
I suppose ill be back one day to finish...
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Believe it or not, I'm still working on this. The current issue is dealing with sprites being displayed on the save screen (probably shops and party select as well but I'm fairly certain if I can make one work the rest will follow).

The issue is, as I see it, the game is loading all the playable characters into VRAM, then displaying them from there, as needed, in the saved slots. Since I'm not always using the first few sprites as playable characters, I need it to check what sprites are assigned to those character slots and load those sprites instead. (It could still load them all, it just can't load the first 22 sprites on the list, blindly, then use them after).

Pretty sure I can work with the palette side of it, current plan is to create a new table of NPC palette assignments, (similar to the original battle palettes table) then use that instead of direct OAM data. Haven't come up with a reason it wouldn't read from my table instead of the OAM data blocks with the proper adjustments at least.

The reason I call it an issue though, OAM data only contains the location of the sprite in VRAM. Meaning, what good would it do to expand OAM data if there is only enough VRAM for the normal characters? Best I can figure, it needs to check what sprite the character has been assigned (by reading from SRAM/RAM), then load that sprite to the location in VRAM which is pulled from its own table. Could still use the same table of VRAM addresses, just need to adjust the address of the sprite sheet being loaded every time, prior to the actual loading into VRAM. At that point, OAM data would only need minor expanding (actually, not so much expanded as completed/filled out).

It actually shouldn't be that hard to do (writing the code to check,adjust, continue) but I have to figure out where those values are and how to get that value adjusted so it can read from the standard sprite address table.

This is gonna be a little tricky on the save menu, since each save game could have different sprites assigned to the same actor at different times (for instance if sprite 0 is assigned to actor 0 during the WoB, then changed to sprite 120 for the WoR, this would require actor one to be displayed with two different sprites. Might even have to read the data, then temporarly assign the sprites in a 1-12 order so it can display up to 12 different sprites regardless of their actor, then go back to normal when not in the save menu.

Eitherway, yes its still alive, just have some highspeed stuff to get figured out before it can move forward.


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Less an update or "notification of advancement of project", more of a "write it down before I forget what I'm thinking". Also, posting the idea gives somebody the chance to inform me if I'm obviously barking up the wrong tree, like a dog that's been sniffing to much glue.

After analizing C3/1632 again (thanks for the suggestion m06 btw) and tracing out some subroutines/filling in some blank comments/smoking half a pack of cigarettes... I "think" I can, possibly cut into the subroutine of the subroutine that checks if Locke is dressed as a Soldier (possibly voiding the need for this code that is run during ever single character load on the save screen) and somehow make it load the needed sprite (which is already loaded from the save games here) into Vram, using the normal table of vram addresses, then instead of showing the correct sprite number on the screen, simply load OAM data for sprite 1-12 in custom order in the proper places on the save game screen. (Meaning Save 1 would show OAM data for sprites 1-4, Save 2 show 5-8, etc).

In theory, this might work if the correct sprites are loaded, in the required order, in VRAM (if I'm correct, OAM data blindly looks to a location in VRAM for a standard PC sprite sheet, not checking WHAT sprite is in that location).

This plan (if I can do it) would allow 12 sprites loaded, 12 sprites displayed for three saved games. This still leaves an issue with palettes...

I'm not sure if it is even possible, BUT, since I'm only using the first 12 sprite sheet spots, I have to wonder why I can't use the unused VRAM (that would normally contain the other 10 possible sprites) as well as the vram normally used for PC palettes (5 palettes worth?) To load 12 palettes, in the required order to match the custom loaded sprites, from the battle palette table (which already contains one palette for each character) then display all 12 save screen sprites, in order, with their own battle palette, again in order 1-12.

If any of this actually works, then it should allow any sprite assigned to a PC to show up correctly on the save screen.

If anyone knows why this is doomed to fail, speak up. Hopefully I'll get a chance to try it sooner than later. Course next comes shops/character select which I'm not looking forward to any more than this part.


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a bit late but I am sure the riding kefka pose was made by odbarc, as well as clyde (if it isn't zozma's that is)


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I probably should update this patch, not sure I have the ability to do that myseof even if I did know how.
It currently has a full sprite for everything above Ramah, several portraits (which it already had) most importantly, there was a major counting problem in the pointer list, as well as some sort of funky palette list which is now fixed. Shop sprites should work now, rosters should work (important) and I'm working on strainghting out the event code screwed with by full sheets.
I wanted to fix the save/load screens (the most obvious problem) but that seems to REALLY not like me for some reason or I just can't get my head around the proper code ATM.

I guess I could just add an updated attachment link to the 1st post? Eventually, to cover the major bugs of the original.

Oh, and just for the record: "wolf monster" I was always refering to was the Vomammoth. Not sure if that ever got cleared up or not.


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I made some changes to the first post. Comments, notes, etc. That sprite list grew, a lot. If I get past my current issue, I'll have something noteable (that actually works) to link to.

Hopefully.


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