Guide: Editing overworld sprites in Pokemon Platinum US

[Septfox]

A note of caution before you even begin; this process isn't for the impatient. There's currently very few tools available for editing anything in Platinum, and said tools are a pain in the ass to use because they weren't designed for editing this game. If you want a one-click solution, you'll have to wait 'til someone bothers making proper tools for the job :v

Things you'll likely need
An English Platinum ROM. It MUST be a true, unpatched, untrimmed ROM file. The sprite offsets are different in a translated game, not too sure about a trimmed one. Just use a fresh copy directly from your cartridge, 'tis ideal (you DO have a physical copy, right?).
PokeTEX English (available in the tool thread)
Modified sprite index file for PokeTEX (contains the sprites' locations in the ROM; I've attached it to this post, scroll to the bottom. download it into your PokeTEX folder)
Tile Molester (available here). For basic edits and recolors, Tile Molester has a paintbrush, linemaker, paintbucket, etc.
If you're going to do anything but a very basic edit or recolor, you'll want an image-editing program that can handle modifying one pixel at a time without making a mess of things, open multiple files in one window, and preferably create multiple layers for use in a "tool sheet" image containing bits from other sprites you might use (I used Photoshop 6.0 myself). If you don't have one, I believe GIMP is free, Google it.
Lack of carpal tunnel syndrome (optional, but you'd be in far less pain when this is over)
Patience


First and foremost, back up your ROM. PokeTEX requires that you save when you import a sprite sheet or change palette colors.


Next, boot up PokeTEX. A picture noting the basic controls:

Click the "Op. ROM" button at the top, find your ROM, and...open it.

Drop down the blank box at the top of the window; you'll see several entries, including the hero/heroine ones and the battle tower people. Note that there are several different ones for both hero and heroine; you'll have to come up with sprites for all of them if you want everything working properly. For now, we're focusing on getting the walk animations working. Select any of the tower sprite sheets except for 5.

(You can try saving the hero/heroine sheets and editing them directly, but they always screwed up when I re-imported them. I'm not sure what exactly the problem is. If someone else can get it to work right, then by all means tell me, and I will add the significantly-abridged method to this guide.)

The sprite sheet should appear in the left pane. Oggle it for a moment, then click the "Save poke" button at the bottom-right corner of the window.

At this point, I recommend creating a folder to drop .poke files, exported Tile Molester sheets, and anything you make in your image editor into. It'll save a bit of clicking later on.

Congratulations, your first step into sprite-editing hell has been made. Pat yourself on the back, then continue.
Open Tile Molester, making sure not to touch its hands. Click the "File" menu and click "Open..." (or if you're savvy, clicking the little folder will do). Browse to the folder where you exported the sprite sheet from PokeTEX earlier. You won't see anything at first; drop down the "File of Type" box and set it to "All Files (*.*)".

Double-click your .poke file that magically appears, and wait the millisecond it takes to load.

My, this looks like a bunch of gibberish! Tile Molester, by default, isn't set to display a file of this type. Of course, you're not going to let that stop you.
Click the "Image" menu at the top of the screen, and select "Canvas Size". Set it to 4 columns, 52 rows.

Click the "View" menu at the top of the screen, highlight the "Codec" sub-menu, find the entry "4bpp linear, reverse-order" and click it.

Click the "View" menu again, still located conveniently at the top of the screen, highlight the "Mode" sub-menu, and click "2-Dimensional".


You may have noticed (if you didn't you're completely out of it) that the image is no longer gibberish, but actually looks like wee little video game characters. The only problem is, the colors are all wonky. Easily fixed---click the "Palette" menu, highlight the "Import From" sub-menu, and click "This File...".

The offset for this size sprite sheet is 6708. Tower5 uses 8244. The size for this and any other sprite sheet is 16. Click "Ok".

Full list of hero/heroine sprite palette offsets:
hero: 13300
herobike: 11028
hero2: 6596
hero2f: 1196
heroback: 2872
herofish: 8756
heroride: 2276
heroshiny: 13300
herouse: 3040
herousepoke: 2276
Heroine sheets are identical in size, so the same offsets should work for them.

Again, if you're not a zombie or summat, you'll notice that the sprite sheet, or rather column, is now clear and colorful. Admire your handiwork for a moment, then get back to it. Long way to go and all.

Something to keep in mind; the "sprite column" is shifted to the right a little too much, and so the sprites will "wrap around" to the left side. Make sure you edit not only the sprite itself, but the "wrapped" portion on the left side.
If you only intend to edit the head of the sprite, you can make the sprites stop "wrapping" by clicking the button near the top-right of the tool bar that looks suspiciously like a fast-forward button.

It will make the sprite at the bottom of the "column" appear cut-off, but don't worry, it's just been shifted to the top and converted to gibberish.

Click the "Edit" menu, and click "Select All". Click the "Edit" button again, and click "Copy To...".

For the file type, select "Windows Bitmap". Name the file and save it in the editing folder I assume you made.

Now for the actual editing. I can only offer instructions for limiting the palette size and preventing a smeary mess with tools in Photoshop; for any other program, consult the help file or summat.
Open the file you just saved in Photoshop. Click the "Image" menu, highlight the "Mode" sub-menu, and click "Indexed Color...".

Set the palette to "exact", uncheck Transparency and click "Ok". This will prevent Photoshop from using transparencies while you paint and inadvertedly adding colors to the palette.

Open the sheet with the sprites you're going to use. I recommend coloring it with the colors of the sheet you imported from your ROM before you copy it over---it makes it much easier to get things right the first time later when you're modifying the palette in PokeTEX. Keep the colors themselves as close to the originals as possible, to ease reintergrating the sprite sheet with its .poke file. Yes, this means your character will be strangely-colored. No, there's nothing you can do about it at this point.
Important: Do NOT, in any way, edit the coding at the very top of the image. If I have to guess, I would say that this is the file's header. Screwing around with it makes Very Bad Things happen. Actually, it'll just make PokeTEX tell you to go do inappropiate things to your pet dog. Or that's what I assume it says, anyway. Someone forgot to translate the error messages. Don't touch it in any case.

Once you've completed your recoloring and editing, select each sprite with the "Retangular Marquee" tool and drag it over into its respective slot. If you recolored the sprite beforehand, the colors should automatically remap themselves to use their respective spots in the palette. If not, your sprite is going to look very strange for now.

Save the sprite sheet when you're done copying sprites over. Don't overwrite the one you originally exported, as it will be useful later.

Back in Tile Molester, click the "Edit" menu and click "Paste From...".

Select the sprite sheet you just saved and open it. It should automatically align itself. Resize the window so that it's slightly wider than the sprite sheet, and click the grey area to deselect and complete the paste operation.

All colors should automatically remap themselves to the palette if they're close enough to the originals. If not, don't fret, it doesn't much matter anyway. Click "File", then "Save As..." and save the .poke under a different name than the original.

Do not overwrite the original, as you will need it to restore part of the ROM you're about to overwrite.

Bring PokeTEX back up, and select the sprite sheet that you originally exported. Click the "Open poke" button at the bottom-left of the screen, and open your modified sprite sheet. One or two colors may be wrong; as mentioned at the beginning of this guide, Tile Molester especially, and PokeTEX itself weren't designed to handle this game, and a color or two might have gotten screwed in the import/export process. Ignore it for now, and click the "Unk.1" button near the bottom-left of the screen.

You're almost done. Click the "Extend" button at the bottom-right of the screen. The window will expand, and a pane full of numbers will appear in the left of the expansion.

This is the sprite's color mapping. You could, in theory, edit sprites solely through this interface, skipping this entire guide, if you were very good at visualizing the final product. But if you're not, read on.
There will be a red square around your character in the upper-left pane that contains the character sheet. Pressing the < and > buttons to the right of the color mapping move this square through the sheet. For now, select the first spot in the character sheet, select everything in the color map pane, right-click and click "Copy".

Drop down the box at the top of the window, and select either the hero or heroine character sheet. Down next to the color map, click < to select the first spot, select everything in the color map, right-click, and click "Paste".

To finalize the replacement, click the "Save ROM" button in the bottom-right of the window. Do this after each copy-paste cycle, or the change won't take.

Continue doing this until all the frames you have made are placed in their respective spots on the hero/heroine character sheet. The following shows what to replace (as some of the running frames look similar to walking frames:


Back (standing): A1
Facing right, right step: B1
Facing right, standing: C1
Facing right, left step: D1
Facing left, standing: A2
Facing left, left step: B2
Facing left, right step: C2
Back, left step: B3
Back, right step: A6
Front, standing: B6
Front, left step: C6
Front, right step: D6

When you're done, modify the palette so that your character is colored properly. I opened up another PokeTEX window and copied the colors from the original sprite sheet (since I was just modifying a tower sprite and reinserting it), but there's no reason you couldn't copy the HSL/RGB values directly from the sprite sheet you used with help from your image editor's Color Picker and palette view. Just keep in mind that you only have 15 colors to work with (+1 transparency color), and the first color must be set to the background color.


And there you have it. Repeat the same procedure for running, swimming, fishing, biking, etc etc.

If you would like a specific sprite added to the index, request it and I'll see if I can find it. For now, only sprites that I've deemed important are indexed. Eventually, I hope to get them all done.


Also coming soon: editing trainer screen picture and battle back picture.

Update: new offsets added to the PokeTEX sprite list. Credit goes to mindfreak over at The PokéCommunity Forums for listing'em. Only the "important" ones are named, still. Redownload below~

Bigger Update: pictures added. If any more are needed, lemme know.

Importantish Update: It was brought to my attention that I'm a screwup and forgot to include the palette offsets for ALL the hero/heroine sprite sheets, such as the ones used for biking/fishing/pokeballin'/etc. They have been added in the appropriate section of this tutorial.
Thanks to mouses11 on the PokeCommunity Forums for bringing this to my attention.

Credit to D-Trogh and his video found here for the locations of the sprites' palettes and the dimensions that enable easy editing of the sprite sheets in Tile Molester.

[Sky]

Thanks this is really helpful can u post more if you find out about how to edit the hero character.
Sky Blue

[SCV]

I saw what you said about accepting larger files at PC. The game does accept larger files. PokeTex just doesn't know how to insert them.

PS: Good job on the guide, its very expansive.

[bear831]

Wow great attention to detail I see what you mean about it being time consuming.

[Septfox]

I saw what you said about accepting larger files at PC. The game does accept larger files. PokeTex just doesn't know how to insert them.

Ah, ok. I was under the impression that there was only so much room for a file before it would start cutting into other files' space.

PS: Good hob on the guide, its very expansive.

Wow great attention to detail I see what you mean about it being time consuming.

Thanks~


It actually doesn't take all THAT long after the first time...but man, getting everything exported and imported and learning the process the first time isn't bloody fun at all :v

[ultikarp]

Exscuse me Septfox, but the link for tile moleseter as no actual EXE file, so how do you use it?

[soulsilver]

ah ok this will help i was about to edit my game and the overworld sprite thanks

[epicNeo]

I thought this deserved a bump. Also, I have discovered something the author may not have known:

information removed

EDIT: Sorry, I gave a lot of misinformation. This is the only bit of information that is true:

2. 1. In PokeTEX, you can hit Unk. 1 twice instead of once and it will overwrite the entire sheet, saving you a lot of trouble copying all the codes. I'm pretty sure this works, but to be sure, try it on a backup before you save it to the full version you are editing.

3. 2. When reimporting, major pallete changes can occur. If you can edit the sprites purely with the hex you'd be much better off.

[maldicion069]

Hi!!!!!!
I'm new at this the Rom Hacking (two years ago tried to create a Pokemon Digimon but I gave up because of the difficulty and the time they had to take him to do)
I am modifying the Pokemon Platinum in Spanish and want to know two things:
1 - What is file ''narc'' amending the POKETEX?
2 - If I use the palette 13300 for Heroine.narc.
What I need to modify codes cycleheroine, swimheroine, waterheroine ... and others having to do with the main characters?
It's that I used three codes and leave me the image in black or very dark and the image leaves me 13300 as

Another question, How do I change the card for trainers instead of the protagonist, leaving the other (in the game I'm doing I'm getting the sprite from Pokemon Ruby

P.D.: Sorry about my English.
If you want the game, when you complete step (many wild pokemon (almost) all evolve without swapping)

[ultikarp]

Could we use windows paint?

[epicNeo]

2 - If I use the palette 13300 for Heroine.narc.
What I need to modify codes cycleheroine, swimheroine, waterheroine ... and others having to do with the main characters?
It's that I used three codes and leave me the image in black or very dark and the image leaves me 13300 as

The provided files are not for Platinum. xD

[D-Trogh]

I only notice this now.. but did you by any chance write this tutorial after you had seen my video tutorial?
Not that it's THAT important, but if you did it would've been nice you thanked me somewhere.. =/

[Parma]

Going through Tile Molester is a pain in the ass. I made a .poke of Espeon with every frame from Mystery Dungeon 2 and I am currently that Espeon in my Platinum. Used PokeTEX and a image-to-ascii website. Did it in ONE day.
Made a Mew, Suicune, Arcainine, and Leafeon .poke as well back when I was a Platinum Spriter. All Overworld sprites. I could never figure out how to edit Pokemon sprites. I could do the recolors and all that crap in Photoshop... just could never figure out how to put it in...

Just one thing... you said use a clean English rom. I used a full English patched Jap Platinum.
Dunno if it's of relevance, just stating it.

OH YEAHHH!! D!! That's where I remember this tutorial from... DUH. lol.


And I don't mean to bash on this particular tutorial, it's good, it's just there's a better way for inserting custom sprites...

[epicNeo]

[QUOTE=Parma;53730]
Just one thing... you said use a clean English rom. I used a full English patched Jap Platinum.
Dunno if it's of relevance, just stating it.
[QUOTE]
It's of complete relevance. I'm quite sure there is no way that it will work.

[Joodude]

If this works with HG/SS, we could actually get Kris to replace the female character.

Just an awesome idea, though.