My/our Red Mage Sprite

[Lydyn]

just do this: Open the edior, open the unit file renamed as a spr file save its color palette and then import the color palette of the character u want to put in. paste it with the exact same colors there and then import the origional unit.bin color palette (which is all black) and save and import!

.... I'm sorry, I must sound like an idiot, but those directions just confuse the hell out of me. >.< I know when I edited my sprites, I opened them up and edited what was called the Colormap because the Palette was uneditable for some reason and I just saved over whatever they had. So, I'm totally confused by these direction - sorry! I'm also using GIMP if that helps any, since I can't get Photoshop right now and paint is just stupid.

Edit: Might also help to know I exported the BitMap images and edited those for the Battle Sprites, and didn't even mess with the palette options.

[Zozma]

okay let me try to explain again eherm.. not too good at this:

1) Extract Unit.BIN and type that file name into the sprite editor to open it.

2) Extract the color palette, even tho its all black so you have a backup of it.

3) Import the color palette of the character that you are going to add to this    
    unit sheet.

4) Now that you can see the sprites extract the file as a bmp  and paste a copy of the character you wanted to add, with the exact same color palette you just imported.

5) Save that import your newly editted bmp file and then import the origional unit color palette. then save it.

6) Import this over the unit.bin (always back up files you experiment on first tho) and then open the game and test it out. you'll notice that the color palette is probably the wrong one. im not sure if anyone else would know how to change it with another program BUT, i used snes pal to open unit.bin went to address 00F000 this is the beginning of all the different color palettes for the sprites, for example, Teta is linked to the pigtailed girl sprite so i looked on the sprite sheet to see that in a row she was sprite number 17, i started at address 00F000 and scrolled thru and found that blue gold and brown color palette as the 17th palette.

[Lydyn]

I don't understand from #3 and on, sorry.   I don't know how to import color palettes... or where to import them or how to do anything with them. Like I said, I messed with the Colormap, not the palette.. or whatever.

[Xifanie]

Palette
---------
Export
Import

However Zozma forgot to say that you need to load the sprite sheet of the character you want, export it, then you can load UNIT.BIN and import that palette.

[Lydyn]

Ugh... maybe screen shots would help? What I did was...

• Opened UNIT.BIN and exported the palette (Named UNITBIN.PAL)
• Opened GIN_M (Bard Sprite) and exported the palette (Named UNIT_HEAVENLY.PAL).
• Opened UNIT.BIN and imported UNIT_HEAVENLY.PAL.
• Exported it as a BMP (Named UNITBIN.BMP).
• Opened GIMP (my imaging program), opened UNITBIN.BMP, and carefully selected the new white/yellow colored Bard and copied.
• Opened UNIT.BIN and imported UNITBIN.PAL again.
• Exported it as UNITBIN.BMP (over-write).
• Opened new UNITBIN.BMP in GIMP and carefully placed the new white/yellow bard over the other one and saved.
• Imported the new UNITBIN.BMP into UNIT.BIN
• Imported new UNIT.BIN into the ISO.

Now, while nothing glitched at all, and it works fine ... the colors in game are messed up. The new bard image is all icky brown and pure white instead of the silvery-white and grey. Zozma said something about palettes at the end, but.. I didn't quite understad what he ment.. as I'm assuming that's what I did wrong?

Edit: Okay, I found the HTML thingy Zozma was talking about I think. When you change it to a different code, the whole background changes, right? But... I don't know what I should do with it to make my Heavenly Knight appear normal.  

Edit-Edit: Nevermind! All I was doing was editing the colors... *sigh* So, I'm still at a loss on what to do.

[Zozma]

okay.. one moment let me try this again (nice portrait who is it?)

first picture:
open unit.bin and select palette and save that.(i still renamed it to unit.spr)

picture two:
open the sprite that you want to use (here its teta) do the same thing, save her palette as well. export her picture into bmp form and copy that forward diagnol direction.

now third picture:
Open the unit.bin and go to palette and open the teta(example) palette you saved as you can see now they all appear to have her colors.
now export that file as a bmp too and paste the copy of tetas forward diagnol animation over one of the spries in the unit sheet ( pasted it over pigtailed girl because teta's sprite is linked to that one.)
you're almost done, but now you need to re-import the unit.bin's color palette so everything looks black again.
save it and then go back in with cd mage or whatever and import that file back into the the unit.bin file within the game.

[Lydyn]

*Throws arms up* I followed your directions exactly and all I'm getting is a default bard sprite ... like I didn't even do anything!

This is literally what I did, step for step;

• Opened Sprite Editor
•

Sprite Editor: File -> Open: UNIT.BIN
• Sprite Editor: Palette -> Save: UNITBIN.PAL
• Sprite Editor: File -> Open: GIN_M.SPR
• Sprite Editor: Palette -> Save: HEAVENLY.PAL
• Sprite Editor: File -> Export: Bard_Heavenly.BMP
• Right-clicked on Bard_Heavenly.BMP -> Open With: GIMP
• GIMP: Selected the right-forward position exactly
• GIMP: Edit -> Cut/Copy (They do the same thing)
• Sprite Editor: File -> Open: UNIT.BIN
• Sprite Editor: Palette -> Open: HEAVENLY.PAL
• Sprite Editor: File -> Export: UNIT_HEAVENLY.BMP
• Right-clicked on UNIT_HEAVENLY.BMP -> Open With: GIMP
• GIMP: Edit-> Paste
• GIMP: Moved copied sprite over the Bard
• GIMP: File -> Save (UNIT_HEAVENLY.BMP)
• Sprite Editor: File -> Import: UNIT_HEAVENLY.BMP
• Sprite Editor: Palette -> Open: UNITBIN.PAL
• Sprite Editor: File -> Save As: UNIT.BIN
• CD Mage: Open FFT.img
• CD Mage: Open Events Folder
• CD Mage: Right-click UNIT.BIN and select Import: UNIT.BIN
• Close CD Mage
• Start FFT ISO[/list]

Absolutly no change what-so-ever ... *Sigh* Can you tell me what I did wrong?

P.S. I have no clue who's portrait it is.. but it's nice. ^_^

[kenj_083]

P.S. I have no clue who's portrait it is.. but it's nice. ^_^

It is Aliste's sprite from the psp version.

[Zozma]

what the heck was i thinking... you pasted this over the normal bard sprite?

ugh if so.... then all you really have to do is change the corresponding color palette inside of unit.bin to match your new bards color palette exactly.....

you probably didn't mess up at all if you did no pixel changes to your bard like sprite....

count across and down all of the sprites to figure out which palette it is.
(pigtailed girl/teta was the 17th palette).

i dont know if you have a way to access the colors in unit.bin but i do by using "snespal" all of the palettes starting with ramza start at address "00F000" and of course the palette for your custom sprite with the same program is address "000000"

[Sen]

GIMP that is what I'm using now.

and hey you can download it for free maybe it can help those who have difficulties in making sprites or even portraits for viewing the color map.

[Zozma]

thanks for the info, ill give it a try.

[Sen]

Are you ok with FFTA style Blue Mage? or should I make a new design?

its not yet finished!!

[Lydyn]

count across and down all of the sprites to figure out which palette it is.
(pigtailed girl/teta was the 17th palette).

i dont know if you have a way to access the colors in unit.bin but i do by using "snespal" all of the palettes starting with ramza start at address "00F000" and of course the palette for your custom sprite with the same program is address "000000"

I cannot express how much that still confuses me. Maybe it is a good idea you download GIMP and can tell me step-by-step what to do ... 'cause I'm a really visual person and have no clue what all this freakin' palette business is about. Sorry.

[Cheetah]

Sen: I'm liking the Blue Mage sprite, I think it would get more attention if you posted it in a different forum thread though. The only thing I would recommend working on is the hat. The feather looks great, just make the crown look more like a hat/turban.

[Lydyn]

Oh.. dear.. sorry guys! I totally derailed this completely off-topic. Sorry! I moved our discussion so you guys can get back on topic. ^_^

[Kheldarn]

Well, I'm sure you know by now, but you're pasting the Bard over the Bard. That's not gonna change anything. You have to paste the Bard over the character you want to replace. Also, since there's already a Bard, there's not much point to pasting in a second one.

Instead of pasting the existing Bard over the existing Bard, paste an edited or a different sprite over the Bard. THEN you'll notice a change.

Also, while you're in your image editor (GIMP, in your case), you need to import the Bard's palette, to ensure that the sprite you're importing has the colors you want. I use PSP 9, so I know nothing about how you'd go about importing a palette in GIMP. You can always just re-open UNIT.BIN in Shishi, import the Bard's palette (that you saved as HEAVENLY.PAL), then export UNIT.BMP.

After you've pasted the new sprite over the Bard, and made sure the palette is how you want it, save it, import it into UNIT.BIN with Shishi, then re-import the UNITBIN.PAL file.

[Lydyn]

Uh, yeah ... we moved this topic a while ago now, as to not distract from the main point of the topic. ^^

[Cheetah]

Okay so this Red Mage is almost done, I finally got all the programs here running so things are moving along quickly. Right now I'm just figuring out the alternate palette colors. I have 4 of 5 so far and wanted everyone's thoughts on it. For the final palette I thought I would ask for submissions, just to give everyone a chance to contribute since palette swaps are quite easy.

Rules:
1) This is a palette swap so if you change a color, you need to change every pixel of that color or it wont work.
2) Only change the colors, moving pixels around would make it no longer a palette swap.
3) To be considered you have to adjust the sprite and the portrait to match up.
4) I don't care what programs you use, but please post you submission in this thread as a PNG or a BMP. Absolutely NO JPEG.
5) I will post a BMP of the main stances and the portrait for use of submissions, please submit in this format.
6) Ummm lets say 3 days to submit (subject to change).
7) This is ment as a way to bring the community together, but if people don't want to participate I will just come up with a 5th palette myself.

Okay so a preview of the palettes so far is here. And the submission BMP will follow that.

[Kourama]

Nice work Cheetah! The Red Mage looks great.

[Sen]

You put other palletes also for other factions using RedMage