Final Fantasy Hacktics

I am a total noob at this.  All I want to do is swap my party units' colors with those of, lets say, Nanten or Death Corps. How would I go about doing that in the easiest way?

Thanks for help  

Not sure about this, but I think you actually have to export it (the .SPR) and apply Color map changes.

You can however pick different palettes in the ENTD tab but thats only for battles and you can't pick it for your party.

Hey Defias, glad to see you made it over. I have always thought it would be cool if alternate palettes could be used in the party, especially for invited units. Unfortunately no one (that I know of) is currently trying to implement this into the game. But there are probably a few ways you could do it for just changing the default party palette of a particular class.

The way I know how to do it would involve change the palette of the actual sprites. The programs you will need are:
Newest Version of FFTPatcher (see download section)
CDMage Beta (google search for the most recent version)
Graphics Gale (google search for the basic free version)
ISO of PSX FFT

Once you have these things you can start. Using CDMAGE to open the ISO, all the sprites are in the BATTLE folder in SPR format (SPR2 is for some monster sprites). If you are wondering which odd SPR file name relates to which Job you can look around here for a list or poke around this link for pics of the SPRs http://istaken.org/fft/ (http://istaken.org/fft/) . I would recommend just exporting the entire folder or you can just export the SPRs you want.

When you get to this point I will tell you the next part. This stuff will sound kind of confusing right now but you need to learn lots of stuff at the beginning to get anything done.

Hey there Cheetah

Alright i download all of those things and installed them.

Alright,  I looked into the battle folder.  Whats next?

Well, here's an interesting idea, which doesn't involve any programs...
Load up say... Black Mage's Sprite and save it's palette, then go to Knight sprite and put it's palette over Knight, this should... well, it will screw up a few things, it will make some units look completely "New and interesting!" it will make other units look like Crayola.

Okay now use ShiShiSpriteEditor, part of FFTPatcher, to open of the sprite you want to change the palette of. Choose the "Export" option and export the sprite sheet as a BMP (default I believe), it doesn't matter what palette of the sprite you are looking at just export it. Now using Graphics Gale open up your exported BMP. You will notice that the sprite sheet should appear with the standard colors/palette. Now if you have the palette window of Graphics Gale open, and it should be by default, you will see a whole bunch of rows of colors 16 in a row. The first five rows are for the first five palettes for the sprite, then three blank unused sprite palettes, then five rows for the palettes of the portraits. Now if you change the colors in the first row of 16 colors, or move the rows of colors around to the first row this will change the color of your sprite in your party during battle. You can select multiple colors by right clicking on the first color (marks it with an "X") and then clicking the last color in the row you want. Then there is a little pull down menu thing in the palette area and choose "Copy selected colors" or something like that. You can then click where you want to paste the colors and use the same menu thing and choose "Paste Colors" and then choose something like "all selected colors" and it should paste all the colors you copied before making it really quick to switch preexisting palettes to the first row. I would recommend repeating the process for the portraits too so they match. A little experimenting and it will all make sense. Once you have your colors changed around you can save the file you have been using and then open up the same SPR you were using in ShiShi and choose "Import" and choose the BMP you were just messing around. Save this SPR, maybe change the name so you still have the original if you ever want to use it. What you name it doesn't matter.

Go back to CDMage and the "BATTLE" folder and right click on the SPR that you want to change and choose "Import" and choose the SPR that you just saved after importing your changes using ShiShi. It will import, just accept any errors it gives you and then save the ISO with the changes you made. Now load the ISO up in your emulator and all should work nicely. Your unit will look the same in the formation screens and menus, but in battle the sprite should be the colors you choose for the first palette.

Hopefully this all works out for you. Do note that there are ways to change the palette of your sprites in the formation screen and menus, but that is a conversation for another time.

Good luck.

cheeta.. the unit.bin too..

Yeah I was referring to the unit.bin at the end of that speech, it is how you can change the palette of the sprites that appear in the formation screen. Luckily there is already a tutorial about that in this forum, I believe in the custom sprites section.

Wow thank you cheetah. I'll try it out right now and let you know how it goes  

Cool I will look forward to what you come up with.

I'm already having problems.  I opened up shishisprite editor and click on "open" but where are do i find the sprite sheets?   I also tried going on CD mage and opening up the "BATTLE" folder and right clicking KNIGHT to open with ShiShi editor but it wouldnt let me.

you have to export the individual files first. shishi opens only individual sprites

Ok thanks Zozma,  I'll let you know how I'm doing in a little

I've done everything right so far and I'm up to the Graphics gale point where i can select the colors.  But I'm confused on how to do that.  I click on one of the colors and change it but it doesnt do anything, I also do not see the "copy selected color" action.  Also how do i know which color box changes what?

Sorry for all the questions, I appreciate you guys helping me out but I'm almost there and further help would be great, thanks

Can you use the Chat found on the homepage? If you can we can help you out faster there.

Ya im on it right now my name is Cadet00 I think

Crap I still don't know whats wrong.  I do everything but they still show up as glitchy messes in game.  

Woot Woot!!!  Finally I figured out the problem.  It looks like I was importing the wrong file.  THANK YOU soo much for your help guys

Excellent to hear, with this amount of knowledge you should be able to start doing some cool stuff.