The Glenn Thread

[FaustWolf]

Vehek, I read your post about the hard-coded limitation on where player character graphics packs can be stored. Does such a limitation exist on where NPC and enemy graphics packs can be located?

I'm wondering if it's possible to move a few of the NPC/Enemy GFX packs mixed in with the player characters. I see that the Millennial Fair dancer and a little girl of some sort are sandwiched in between Frog and Crono...actually, that sounded off-color.

Has the CE team decided to definitely insert Human Glenn, or is this still in question? I'll help as I can; is there an estimate on how many extra subtiles are going to be needed to make Human Glenn a reality?

[Vehek]

There's no limitation AFAIK for NPC/Enemy graphics.
I made a small hack that allows PC graphics to be loaded from bank $41, which solves that problem. It's used in the 8th character hack.
http://www.chronocompendium.com/Forums/index.php?topic=4461.msg89335#msg89335

[FaustWolf]

Wow, you've done the necessary ASM work and everything. Kickass, Vehek!

What, exactly, are the remaining difficulties that have to be overcome to get Human Glenn functional?

[Agent 12]

get Vargose back 

seriously though everything we need to know we can do...it's a matter of sitting down and doing it (and getting sprite editors...)

I wanted to make a sprite assembly program with a GUI but I can't figure out graphics....I'm really bad when it comes to graphic stuff if you haven't noticed. 

--JP

[FaustWolf]

Alrighty then, I'll make some headway on the sprite insertion guide and hopefully internalize all the info I'm putting down, then I'll give this a shot perhaps.

It's definitely a given that human Glenn is in, I take it? If so, let's make this happen.

[Agent 12]

If a glenn is made there is absolutely no way that I wouldn't put him in.  I actually made the tech editor because they were talking aobut glenn techs in this thread.


That being said if as much progress gets made in the next 6 months as has been made in the last 3-4 years...then were probably not putting him in.

--JP

[justin3009]

Vehek and I can help with graphics.  I think Vehek, Vargose, and I are the only ones that actually know how to work with Sprite Assembly a bit...but since Vargose si gone just ask Vehek and I.  We'll do our best to help.

[FaustWolf]

Okay, I'm full of sprite assembly knowledge and am feeling frisky. What's the current status of the Glenn sprite sheet? It seems that Human Glenn will follow Frog pretty closely in terms of animation frames, so I might be able to begin even lacking knowledge of CT sprite animation.

I slightly worry about running into the kind of problem illustrated in this thread, but I think we can bypass the need for a Size 1 sprite assembly through creative positioning of Human Glenn's tiles.

I can't sprite worth a damn (or at least not efficiently), so I'd suggest that a general spriting call go out to the community if we are still in need of new enemy sprites or if the Human Glenn sprite sheet needs finished (unless justin wants to take care of that, of course). Whatever artists can create, I can insert up until mid-January. I imagine the Size 0 sprite assembly restriction doesn't apply to enemy sprites in any way.

[Vehek]

I'm not particularly good, but I've tried and couldn't figure out how to fit Glenn's climbing or battle stance frames into a size 0 sprite assembly.

[FaustWolf]

Oh snap, I hadn't checked those ones out yet. We might really need to resolve the Size 1 assembly issue then.

EDIT: I'm not seeing a problem with the battle stances I've checked out so far, but the climbing frames definitely can't fit into a Size 0 assembly as far as I can tell.

[Vehek]

The main problem right now is some sprites won't fit into the four 4-tile groups.
A much more minor issue is that Zeality wrote some lines indicating that Glenn is still a frog.

[Chrono'99]

Ah sorry, I just deleted my post because I wanted to add something... Here is the original post which you've just replied to (Vehek)...


So, to clarify, what are the big problems with implementing human Glenn in the game? (...apart from the current lack of Glenn sprites?)

I don't know much about sprite assembly, but if Glenn's climbing animation glitches, couldn't we just not use this animation, to bypass the problem? We'd have him use the same animation as the one for walking for instance. People would notice this little trick but it's not like it's game-breaking or anything. We could do this with other animations if they pose problems, and we'd have less frames to sprite as a result.

Concerning the actual spriting, Magus' spriteset could be used as a template for most frames, perhaps, since he looks kind of similar to Glenn. Modifying his spriteset (palette swap, head swap, and a few tweaks on the clothes) would be easier and faster to do than drawing everything from scratch.

[Chrono'99]

And here's what I wanted to add...


What about making Glenn human outside of battles and frog in battles? We could replace the "draws sword" animation with "morphing into frog form" or something.

[FaustWolf]

Apparently VRAM space is handled in such a way that each player character can be composed of only four tiles, and if a character is composed of greater than four tiles then the extra tiles overlap the next character's tiles in memory. You basically get the dilemma illustrated here.

I would freakin' love to get this issue solved, but I haven't even scratched the surface on CT's memory management yet. I think Mauron, Vehek, Geiger, and Jlukas are the only ones with that capability.

[Vehek]

As an example of my frustration fitting some battle sprites into size 0 sprite assembly...
Damn pixels... Most people probably wouldn't notice if they were cut out when not zoomed in, but still...

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