Replacing chracter sprites

[Vargose]

I have noticed alot of people talking about replacing character sprites in CT. I have started the process myelf using Tile Molester, SNESPal, and IrfanView. I was wondering if anyone knew some tricks to make it easier. For instance the tiles are not in any apparent order, its hard to tell what some of them are, which leads to a great guessing, trial, and error game. Don't get me wrong, I am progressing along fine, but any help would be appreciated.

Also I was wondering about Tech lists for characters. Can they be changed? I saw some discussion on that.

[justin3009]

Well, instead of using Ifran View i used paint.  I'm not sure if anyone would resort to that but i would.  

PS: Mspaint

[BlueThunder]

That is what I use.

[ZeaLitY]

He's asking how to coordinate the animations, which is indeed tough unless you're changing color or minute detail.

[Vargose]

Yeah matching the animations is very hard. I found a trick last night that helped. It is just to have an original Chrono Trigger open in Tile Molester, along with your new one. It really helped me to get the walking animations right. Cause when you change Palettes it is really hard to tell what the other sprites are doing.

What is a good program to start making your own sprites? (Cause I will end up having to do that). I could use paint, which I have done before for different projects.

[Vargose]

There is another way. Chicken Lump has mentioned it before, and to my knowledge he has done it. Nu replacing Chrono for a hack contest. This could also help with the dreaded frog being too small for glenn problem.  I was playing arround with this today. Decompress an enemy or NPC graphic. Change the Palette of the character you are replacing. Then paste the decompressed graphic over the character you want to replace in tile molester. You have to watch out here. You can't just put it anywhere, and it probably won't work with every character, and you want to be careful which tiles you are pasting over. Then in Chrono Tweaker change the sprite animation and sprite assembly to match the NPC or enemy you pulled the graphic from.   Now this only really helps with the walking animation. Like when your character runs he will stand still, lol. Alot of the other animations will be limited aswell. Now you still have to replace all the battle animations.

[Vargose]

***correction

ChickenLump not JLukas mentioned a similar process

[nightmare975]

Please use the edit button!

Before Greylensman gets you!

[Vargose]

Sorry, I am not forum 1337

[nightmare975]

Sorry, I am not forum 1337

Hey, it's alright, you just need to know stuff like to become better.

[CyberSarkany]

Whats a "forum 1337"?
Did someone ever consider to make a whole "new" char? There has to b some kind of jig(or many other words my dic. told me) for the chars, because the sprite are just a shape. Or am i totaly wrong?

[Chickenlump]

My first idea was to just swap a few bytes relating to Sprite Assembly Data and Animation Data. I had a playable NU once, but he was limited to the frames of animation he already had. He could walk and other basic stuff, but it was very limited. Even the easy way would have required redoing all his animation data to recycle his few animation frames to match the many different animations possible (Crono has 255 animation frames, Nu had...what... 9?).

The ideal way would be to place new graphics in, and edit the sprite assembly to peice them together manually for each frame of animation, instead of overwriteing and guessing when editing the bits and peices of scattered body parts.

[Chrono'99]

Anyone know where I can find SNESPal? The link in the Encyclopedia is broken.

[Chickenlump]

http://romhacking.deadbeat-inc.com/utils/snspal03.zip

If you need anything rom hacking related, you should bookmark
http://www.romhacking.net , it's recently opened, and already one of the best hacking sites out there, and getting news on the front page is very easy for anyone to do themselves. (And right now, there's 2 Chrono Trigger tools on the main page....   ).

[Chrono'99]

Thanks