Final Fantasy Hacktics

Alright, so I went and test-swapped the SERIA and LEDY files for a test run using the Miang and Miluda sprites for Alicia and Lavian.

Those were fine, which I assume can be owed to the fact that those files are never used.

So I went and also swapped out the sprite used for Malak's death scene, replacing it with the spiky-haired warrior for Rad.  Along with that, I swapped out Rafa's Guest sprite with the Red Mage sprite for Lezales.  In the first scene everything seemed to be going well (at least as far as Rad goes).

(http://i511.photobucket.com/albums/s356/Voyde/SCUS_94221_09082008_150140_0581.png)

But then when I got out to the battle things got a little screwy.

(http://i511.photobucket.com/albums/s356/Voyde/SCUS_94221_09082008_152259_0503.png)

As you can see, Rad seems to be using the other.spr spriteset for some reason, thus becoming a glitchy mess of chickens and such (even though I edited the ENTD to use the swapped out Malak sprite).  In addition to this, Lezales still appears as Rafa, even though I swapped out the sprite with a Red Mage.  And I double-checked to make sure I assigned the right one in the ENTD and I did.

EDIT: I also patched all necessary files using FFTPatcher, and followed the steps in Lydyn's guides to the letter.

Can anyone help with this?

hmm i thought it was just me because the same thing happened to me but i noticed when i was importing the sprite for rad it asked if i wanted to add zero's because the sprite was too small i think that could be it  

Hmm, interesting.  I didn't get anything about adding zeroes, though.  When I swapped out the sprites it just gave me the typical "file is bigger, file will be truncated" bit.  And I figured that since Malak's death sprite and Rafa's Guest sprite are complete sprites that wouldn't matter cuz it gives that message pretty much everytime you swap a sprite.

Are there any other irregularities that you might have noticed?  I think it might have been something wrong with editing battle.bin or the ENTD files, but I can't be certain because I know I did just as the guide instructed.

EDIT: BTW, I did this with a non v1.3 ISO just to be on the safe side, since I know that patching an ISO already patched with v1.3 has bad side-effects.

no thats not the problem, you have too many different sprites in the same scene, there is a limit of 9 different sprites (including the ones that appear after the battle (delita, chocobo, and ovelia)

in my scene i had to change the enemy chemist to an archer to reduce the sprite number by one.

get what im saying?

Ramza, Rad, Gafgarion,Agrias, Alicia, Lavian,male archer, male chemist, Rafa
= there is 9 right there, not even including ovelia, delita, and chocobo

see? the map can hold a higher number of units, like 12 but the map also can only hold the 9 different sprites

(also you used celia and lede's second sprites for these customs? do their arms attach right? those are both type 1 sprites miluda and miang. but celia and lede are type 2)

Ah, I see.

So does that also explain why Rafa still looks like Rafa instead of the swapped Red Mage sprite?

I understand in this case that I need to go ahead and change up the enemy sprites, but and that should fix up the change in Rad.  But will that also fix Lezales or would there be too many new sprites to support anyway since Lavian and Alicia no longer share the same sprite?

no, you used the wrong rafa, there are two rafas the one named "rafa' is the guest version check the other version which is H79.spr

also you might still have complications after the battle when the time comes for the princess abduction scene.

Crap.  I totally assumed (EDIT: 'h79' would be the guest and 'rafa' was the main Rafa).     Bad on my part.

Thanks a ton for all of the help.

no i think you're right i think 79 is the version that joins you, but i still think you probably mixed up the job you put in that map.

Oops, typo in that last post.  I meant 'h79' as guest and 'rafa' as join.  I thought it would be like that on account of the way that Malak was set up in a similar fashion.  I'll check it out from all possible angles.  I'll post any more problems I have after working on the stuff we've mentioned.

Thanks a ton, once again.

so vanya's lovely warrior sprite fits in malak's sprite? thats good to know since i am having trouble finding things that fit into that crappy malak sprite.

So far as I can tell, it works pretty well, actually.  I have a new problem now, though.

What are the specifics regarding the differences between Type 1 and Type 2?  Because I'm getting the dislocated arms effect with the Miluda and Miang sprites being used by Alicia and Lavian imported over SERIA and LEDY.  Is there a way to specify that the sprite must use Type 2 instead of Type 1, and vice versa?

there doesn't seem to be a way to change that yet, tho zodiac has mentioned it being possible in the future to change sprite type. and obviously changing that is merely a value stored elsewhere...

for now you need to find out what sprites are type 1 and 2 that you can use. you can find a list of all normal sprites and what type they are in a list below all the custom sprites in the sprite section of the main page of this site.

Alright, well, that's good to know then.  I didn't think about that when I imported the sprites, so I suppose I will need to look into some stuff then.  And I copied the list, too.  Thanks for the heads up on that.

EDIT: BTW, you were right about the Rafa sprite.

Note that Spiky Warrior is designed to go over the Generic Male Squire. Having to pad with zero's if you place it in a larger sprite won't have any adverse effects, but truncation can screw up some of the animations.

was malak a truncation if used with warrior? that butthead has the smallest sprite of all full human sprites it seems. friggin malak
(im going to dummy malak and rafa out of the playable character list mwahaha)

I'm just going to give them useful jobs.

im just going to cut the skillsets in half so i can use the skills for other things.
and make them only guests appearing where they normally do for story purpose.

once i have a way to edit effect files hydragon pit will be a watera spell, and then ill have a level 2 earth spell and a level 3 gravity spell.

Quote from: "Vanya"Note that Spiky Warrior is designed to go over the Generic Male Squire. Having to pad with zero's if you place it in a larger sprite won't have any adverse effects, but truncation can screw up some of the animations.

Are there any specific animations you can think of?  And if it becomes necessary, how do I pad with zeroes?

it should tell you that the file is smaller and then prompt the question, just as it would for truncation. but it looks like you already have the file inserted.. did it ask you at the time?

i use cd prog for insertion because it allows a little more to go in, but it doesnt ask those questions. you can get cdprog from the main site here.

I don't really know exactly which. i guess it depends on how big a difference there is between the Spiky Warrior and the .SPR file you're trying to insert it into. Why in the world did square decide to compress half of each .SPR? Freaking pain in the ass.

i just wish they had made all the sprite files the same size....

As my father says, "Wish in one hand, sh** in the other and see which one fills up first." Unfortunate but true.

Well, Spiky seems to work well in the Malak sprite.  And I realized there is a severe lack of custom female sprites of Type 2. A buttload of Type 1, but Type 2 is lacking, it seems.

Of course that is nixing the Misty and Jenna sprites, on account of they're already being used by lastingdawn as Alicia and Lavian substitutes.

lust is a type 2 but im planning to do some major reconstruction on her now that shishi is so advanced.

Sounds good.  Speaking of spriting and customizing, would there be any way that someone could make a beginner's guide to that sort of stuff?  I'm rubbish at it right now, cuz I don't know how to modify the sprite pallette, and I don't necessarily know exactly what's involved.  Plus, no Photoshop for me, cuz I don't own it.

theres a topic "custom sprite making/inserting how to"
also there is a tutorial on the main page of the site.

Ah, must've missed that somehow.  Thanks a bunch.

Sorry bout the double post, but the topic "custom sprite-making/inserting how to" doesn't actually give any advice on how to make new sprites or tips on how to go about changing the palettes.  Also, there is no tutorial for sprite-making and palette-customizing on the main page, at least not that I could find.

Any other advice anyone can give me?

Palette edits depend on the drawing program you're using. Pick one and then we can get to more specifics.

Well, I downloaded SNESPal and GIMP, and MSPaint comes standard.  That's pretty much it on the drawing and graphics front, though.

mspaint = good for all your major reconstruction on sprites

gimp = good for arranging color palettes, eh thats what i use it for

snespal = good for directly opening .spr files and changing colors one at a time....

I use shishi for extraction of bitmaps and checking for errors.

I do everything else in NeoPaint.
*NeoPaint isn't free, but I'm a pirate anyway!*

Okay, so here's the rub.  If I use MSPaint to edit a sprite, how do I go about making sure that it is still within the color limit?  Are there any specific steps to follow?

i use a program to limit color to 16
then i open any old sprite (say a male squire, and change his color palette to match those 16 colors. (i use snespal directly on the .spr file but you could also use something like gimp after extracting the "squire" into a bmp)

export the new squire as a bmp and copy/paste my new sprite onto it and save.

import that file into shishi and there ya go...

i've never actually used a bmp that wasn't extracted from another spr file
since the palette setup is already in place.

In NeoPaint, it displays the 256 color palette used in the file, but I can set it to shrink it down to a 16 color palette. this will automatically restrict it to the first 16 colors. Also, for portrait work, NeoPaint has a built-in palette editor. I just wish I could open the effect files in it.

Alright, so I opened up SNESPal to see what it can do, and what I can work with.

...And the entire thing confused the hell out of me.

There are so many colors, how am I supposed to know which are the right ones to edit?  

You'd have to know the values of the colors you want to edit. I think it's easier to use a bitmap editor, though. SNESpal is pretty much only good for editing things you can't open in a graphics program. IMO.

So what would be the best to use in this case?  Nixing those programs that I can't find a bootleg for, or just can't afford strait up.

I'd say use NeoPaint.

And how would I go about getting NeoPaint?

Check your PM.

Thanks a ton.  I should be able to get a good grip on things now once I've looked up all this stuff.

Let me know if you have any questions about NeoPaint. =)

i made a discovery, if no one is aware of it yet anyway...

Malak (12) the dead version is linked to what i once thought to be an unused unit.bin sprite! its the one in the top right corner, the priest sprite that looks similar to zalmo.

also i've learned a great trick for lowering sprite file size. you know the book reading animation when you attack with a dictionary? well the loose arm thats not holding the book can be deleted and you can just leave the arm attached to the body itself. do this for both front and back facing frames and get rid of the loose arms and the size of the file will drop quite a bit. i am actually able to fit my berserker into the malak sprite now!

I've been doing something similar with the dark "filled-in" areas of the headless torsos.

But I didn't know about the Malak sprite.

that probably means that the other unused priest in the formation screen is linked to a battle sprite too... but which one.......

alma (14) is linked to the funeral priest
and dead malk (12) is linked to the priest that comes before simon
its probably a low numbered job .... but who knows.

Quote from: "Zozma"so vanya's lovely warrior sprite fits in malak's sprite? thats good to know since i am having trouble finding things that fit into that crappy malak sprite.

Just figured out the hard way that, not only does Spiky not fit into Malak's sprite, so too do several other custom sprites not fit into SERIA and LEDY.  

Quote from: "Zozma"also i've learned a great trick for lowering sprite file size. you know the book reading animation when you attack with a dictionary? well the loose arm thats not holding the book can be deleted and you can just leave the arm attached to the body itself. do this for both front and back facing frames and get rid of the loose arms and the size of the file will drop quite a bit. i am actually able to fit my berserker into the malak sprite now!

This is great news!  Now I can use the Malak sprite like I had been hoping to!  ^_^

don't get too far ahead of yourself tho, his sprite is still pretty small.
i totally wasnt expecting my berserker character to fit in there, but its one of the only ones that i was able to get to fit.

his sprite along with clouds, only have the same capacity as a skeleton or a goblin which don't have all the arm frames (but could)

as it is right now, i can't even fit my fully animated 10 year old boy in there!

i wish there was a way to expand the capacity of all human sprites to the max which is 45056 without damaging the game.

Blast!

Wait a tic, is your berserker finished now, or is that the reason you were able to fit him?  The fact being he's incomplete?

well he has all the arms, but im in process of giving the viewable parts more muscle. i can put the sprite up for download when i get home tho.

theres a screenshot on the http://www.ffhacktics.com/forum/viewtop ... &start=280 (http://www.ffhacktics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=303&start=280)

 section

He looks totally awesome.  I can't wait to test him out!

he's up on that page

man, the Dami.spr has max human capacity but its set as a monster and only small ones fit in there...

id love to use it for a human boss, but noooooo...