Trouble finding certain sprites

[grenadier42]

I'm attempting to program a FFT clone with XNA, and it's going swimmingly so far, but I need sprites for menus and terrain and whatnot, but a Google search turns up nothing besides characters and said character's portraits.

I decided I would rip them myself, but as I am a noob, I have absolutely no idea where those menus/etc. are, or how to rip them. I've already used Shishi to rip character sprites via Printscreen, though.  

(Also, if this is in the wrong place, feel free to whack the gay [not really] noob.)
 

[DarthPaul]

Shishi can export sprites as bitmap images.

Also if you get whacked by that hammer you won't be back for a while.

[grenadier42]

Shishi can export sprites as bitmap images.

Yeah, but it exports spritesheets, right? Those aren't of much use to me, since I don't know where the various limbs go or in what order, etc etc. Using Shishi's preview and printscreening was actually a bit easier for the full sprites, I think.

Also if you get whacked by that hammer you won't be back for a while.

I suppose BANHAMMER!!1 should have told me that much, eh?  

Anyway, I suppose if I really need to I could find a full-size screenshot of Tactics and carefully crop the menus out, but if there's an easier way to do it...

Also, I remember a video on Youtube of a guy programming a Tactics clone, and he had all the menus and terrain and whatnot. Unfortunately, I can't find that damn video again to ask him about it. >_>

[DarthPaul]

Yeah, but it exports spritesheets, right? Those aren't of much use to me, since I don't know where the various limbs go or in what order, etc etc. Using Shishi's preview and printscreening was actually a bit easier for the full sprites, I think.

Never even thought of that.

Just don't save the printscreens as jpegs or your fucked.

[grenadier42]

Just don't save the printscreens as jpegs or your fucked.

Hah. Jpegs in video games... D:

Player: "Why is Ramza all fuzzy looking?"
Me: "Sorry, it's Jpeg and it's 'FUZZY COMPRESSION BULLSHIT'."

 

Do you have any ideas about the menus?

[JordanErick]

I was having the same troubles looking for those damn menu sprites. I believe it tells you their hex/file location on http://www.m-l.org/~greerga/fft/ , then just use tilemolester to go take a look. As for terrain, there isn't any sprites for those. As it's actual 3d, but there are texture and mesh files, more info can be found on the ffhacktics.com main site under wiki->maps.

On another note, for which limbs go where etc. When you run shishi's if you click on a full sprite on the right, all the sprite peices that were used will be lit up with a yellow box. Then it's just a matter of writing all that info out..... Though it's possible there is a spreadsheet or something on the forum, since to make shishi they would've had to map them out.

[Cheetah]

The menus for FFT are generally pieced together so taking a good screen shot will be much easier.

There will be a new version of ShiShi in the near future which will have a majority of the other graphics ready for you to rip. So you will likely just have to wait.

As far as maps are concerned, I would recommend looking in the hacking thread and getting ahold of Gomtuu's map viewer. The newest versions allow for viewing the textures.

[grenadier42]

JordanErick and Cheetah, you are now God.

EDIT: Epic wordfilter.  

[Smash]

Well, for one, spritesheets are alot less smaller than full sprite sets, and would be excellent to mod later on. The drawback would be figuring out the alignments and the issuing of parts to form the animations, thus making lengthy codes and all that jizz.. But it would be worth it in the long run, notheless.

[grenadier42]

all that jizz..

Heh. Hehehe.

But it would be worth it in the long run, notheless.

Maybe, but I doubt what I'm doing will really come that far. If it does, maybe I'll recode the rendering, but meh.

Anyways, I found out from the site JordanErick posted that under the "event" folder:

frame.bin
Summary: Icons for menu system, status affection names and icons, and interface blocks.
Format: Standard multi-paletted image with the 768 bytes of 24 palettes at the end.

I have a hunch that this is what we're looking for, but I'm not up on my 1337 haxxorz. I've already tried forcing tilemolester to open this, it gave me a bunch of 4-color crap, basically. I'mma screw around with it some more and see if I can get anything out of it, but if someone more versed in the ways of 1001011101001-speak (well, sort of) can help me with this, again, much appreciated.

EDIT: Well, basically, how in the hell do I edit/view/molest .bin files? :p

[Cheetah]

I have been working with frame.bin extensively for the past three weeks. Go to the Final Fantasy Tactics: Complete thread under projects and look back a few pages to see some images. It has a lot of stuff, just not the actual correct sized menus. But it has all the pieces.

[grenadier42]

Alright, thanks again Cheetah.

By the way, I'm an idiot with the map texture thing. I just realized there is a "maps" section on the homepage with top down views of the maps, and I can printscreen the textures from there. Sorry 'bout that...

EDIT:

Well, thanks to Cheetah's thread, I have the frame.bin file, but it looks like it's the wrong palette, so how do I apply the right palette? (Wow, I must sound like such a freaking noob right now. D: )

[Vanya]

All the palette data is at the end. All you have to do is extract it and format it. Tedious, but doable.

[grenadier42]

All the palette data is at the end. All you have to do is extract it and format it. Tedious, but doable.

Well, yeah. So if the frame.bin's palette is at the final 768 bytes of the image... *shrug* I'm going to fuck around with it and see what happens, but I very much doubt I'll succeed. Heh.

EDIT:

Well, I loaded frame.bin into Molester (heh), set it to Two Dimensional and 8bpp Linear (so the basic form of the sprites became visible), went to Import Palette from This File, and set Offset to (37568 - 768 = ) 36800, and Size to 768 bytes, as would seem to be indicated by the Inspection, but... still the wrong palette. I know I might be missing some hidden meaning in the Inspection description (since I am a nooblet), but this is gettin' nuts.  

[Vanya]

Try offsetting the palette address by +/- 1 byte. and try setting the size to 16 or 256 bytes.

[grenadier42]

Thanks Vanya. I think I'm gettin' closer.

[Cheetah]

Offsets for various palettes using Tilemolester. I believe it is required in decimal not hex:

36864 Good for the windows
36896
36928
36960
36992
See the pattern, keep counting up by 32 for the various palettes up to
37536

[grenadier42]

Well, thanks Cheetah, but I still can't get it to work. I think I'm missing something, but I don't know what. I'm attaching screenshot(s?) of what I did.

(I must be making an idiot of myself, but I'm quite persistent. )

Crap, I thought the attaches would be links, sorry.

3rd picture is what I started with, the 4th is what I did, and 1 and 2 are the end result.

[Cheetah]

Wrong settings. 4bpp I believe for viewing, keep trying different things. For the internal palette the size is 16.

[grenadier42]

Well, I can't get it to work. >_> Guess I'm screwed for right now. I'mma screencap and rip sprites via Paint. Heheheh.