Characters and sprites

[Gamesoul Master]

You know how with some characters, if you try to add them in, they come up with Ramza's sprite on the formation screen and may end up being a bit glitchy?

What I'm wondering is... how difficult would it be to fix that particular problem? Would it require rewriting pointers to bring up the proper sprite value in the formation screen, or might there be some other possible method of getting it to work properly? I would only be wanting to add a couple new characters at most (undecided on which ones at this time, so I can't offer specific examples).

To clarify, this isn't necessarily a feature request or something like that. It could be taken as such, but only in a secondary kind of interpretation. The main point of the question is basically directly at whether it'd be possible for me to do this myself. With the sprite editor included in the latest releases of the patcher, I figured maybe there would be some kind of method to make this happen, but I see that using other sprites for a character could be a bit glitchy, especially when not all the files can be patched yet.

[LastingDawn]

Unit sprites are all in Unit.bin which  there is room for a few characters, but some of them use Ramza's 1st sprite which is a problem... unless you plan on removing Ramza's 1st sprite from the game, which if you don't plan to include the first chapter is quite easliy done.

[Gamesoul Master]

So if I limit myself to use only one character that has this problem, simply overwriting Ramza's sprite with the one I want (and making Ch.1 Ramza use a different sprite, like one of his later ones) would be perfectly fine?

And rewriting the pointers? Since some of them currently point to Ramza's first sprite, could they be rewritten to point to a different sprite instead (like via a hex editor), or is there more to it that would make the task nearly impossible?

[LastingDawn]

Ah, you know how to make sure that Ramza's first chapter sprite isn't chosen for your default character?

[Gamesoul Master]

I haven't actually tried, but I assume I change it in the ENTD where he first occurs with the sprite (at the academy or the first battle I assume, right?). Will I have to modify every occurance in the ENTD to reflect the use of the different sprite?

[LastingDawn]

Ramza is hardly ever in... eh might be best to just leave it as is, Messing with Chapter 1 Ramza is very tricky, especially since all of the evetnts he's in.

[Kourama]

Too bad we still don't know how the PSP version deals with the new sprites. All the old sprites from the PSX version are in UNIT.BIN but all of the new ones are in some unknown file.

It would be nice to figure it out and then maybe be able to apply it to the PSX version.

[Gamesoul Master]

What new sprites are there besides Dark Knight and Onion Knight? I see sprite files for both of those (and a few others that have standard-case names instead of upper case like all the original PS1 files have). And how does UNIT.BIN hold all the old sprites when it's only 64 KB (and there's no way that many sprites could be held in a 64 KB file)?

[Zozma]

the sprites themselves are not in UNIT.bin they are merely single images of the characters diagnol forward stopped direction to display on the menu...

theres barely room for customs... and YES it IS about rewriting pointers to assign the right one... Celia and Lede are a great example of something that can easily be fixed by changing the pointers to the dancer sprite and putting in their color palette and setting pointers for the palette to that as well.
(okay 3 pointer changes as you would need to set the right menu portrait as well, but celia and lede are already set correctly, but some arent like the final guest version of alma)

there are also a few priest sprites on that sheet that don't seem to be attached to any battle sprite.. they could be used for customs IF pointers were set.

(i was thinking.. i wonder if there were ANY way to make it so some of the customs menu sprite were assigned to read out of the battle folder there are a few sprite sheets that are dummied and could be used as a secondary unit.bin maybe?? who knows but this is all about not changing the size of the image right?)

[Gamesoul Master]

Alright, now he's the key question... Where are the pointers located? Are they known to be in a specific location, or has that yet to be figured out?

I'm now curious enough about where these new sprites are that I may want to take a look into it. It seems rather odd to me though that they wouldn't be in UNIT.BIN, since wouldn't there have to be something set somewhere to tell the game to look elsewhere if the job to display is one of the new ones? And if that's the case... couldn't we just find where that conditional is and change it?

[Zozma]

i don't have the answer to "where are the pointers" i really wish i did... ive tried to dig around for it in hex before but im not very good at that stuff....

(and really, im referring mostly to the psx version, its alot easier to play with... im sure that there are differences in locations...)

but really these pointers are probably the best answer to the custom character in the menu problems. (also there is a wldface4.bin or something like that that has a few empty slots in it, but would require the pointers to be set there...

(the first wldface is large and partially compressed editing it royally screws up other characters pictures in the menu and things like the shopkeeper and bartender....)