answered Modding B/W Pokemon Sprites

[Abacus]

So, palette swaps are doable when it comes to modding B/W pokemon sprites, but I can't figure out how to mess around with the pixels for the life of me. I've used CrystalTile2 to both manually rearrange pixels and to import images, and these changes show up when I view the a/0/0/4 narc with ConsoleTool. But when I try to play the game itself, the pokemon have their same old boring sprites.

Has anybody found a way around this?

[Shiny Sheimi]

Seeing as nothing seems to really be out there in the way of making it easier to edit sprites, it definitely must be a tough job. But surely there is somebody out there who has the technical skills.

Haha... *bump*.

[Abacus]

Meh, disregard my post. Figured it out after some trial and error. I can post a step-by-step guide if anybody's interested.

[aragornbird]

Really? You figured out actual Pokemon sprite editing? This could be a new breakthrough.

Please post some screenshots and a tutorial if you don't mind!

[Andibad]

hm, yeah baubary was post a comment in a forum, he was create tools for viewing only for ncgr+nclr+narn+nanm+... for viewing a animated sprite .. yeah is not perfect but is can be help you to create custom animation .... or used TINKE (yeah you must deal with many bug in Tinke)...

yeah is just experiment, and it working , but don't trying replace on CT2, since CT2 is have bug on reinsert data on narc if is was not same size ...

[Bond697]

hm, yeah baubary was post a comment in a forum, he was create tools for viewing only for ncgr+nclr+narn+nanm+... for viewing a animated sprite .. yeah is not perfect but is can be help you to create custom animation .... or used TINKE (yeah you must deal with many bug in Tinke)...

yeah is just experiment, and it working , but don't trying replace on CT2, since CT2 is have bug on reinsert data on narc if is was not same size ...

how about a link to barubary's post?

[Andibad]

hm i will check my history (if is not deleted) ...

Edit: I don't know about right thread, i can't find on my history.

i just confused search it for thread about this since is have a lot new thread and new comment on sprite resource forum, i just can't found it now, also is was late night so i little sleepy, sorry.

If i not wrong, http://www.propl.nl/random/oov/OilOfVitriol%200.2b.zip (is seem used WPF) is tools from barubary (you can found on gbatemp, rom hacking, or on sprite source forum, you can see barubary comment in some thread if you care see it). Is just viewing, and i was experiment and test with this tool (i was see on some document i was found randomly from google search). This tools sometime can't read a special marker like a sleep animate (on pokemon BW) so is not really perfect. console tools is have bug on viewing narn file so is just viewing a cell only (not all). the main sprite is just ncgr+nclr only, narn+another data is just for animated purpose, and last file with not have any extension is a special marker (after i compare, most is same), but don't know what it is.

for editing narn+nmcr+nmar, i don't know for some variable on here, all are experiment so i not really can edit these file.

ncgr is main sprite data (0x11 if is on animated sprite set) is need decompressed

nclr is main pallete data

ncer is main cell mapping data (is like a small object) (ce = cell) is need ncgr and nclr data

nanr is a animate frame (0x11 if is on animated sprite set) is need decompressed (an = animated)

nmcr is animated sprite cell (c = cell ?) is need nanr data

nmar is animated sprite will shown (a = animated ?) is need nanr data

is called cellular graphics (ncgr,nclr,ncer,nanr,nmcr,nmar).

so is possible to edit pokemon sprite, is possible make trainer sprite become animated sprite, since trainer sprite is a cellular graphics, is have ncgr,nclr,ncer,nanr,nmcr,nmar data so is possible to make them animated ...

[Abacus]

Alrighty. First I can go over swapping color palettes, then when time permits I'll go over playing around with pixels, and finally comes waiting/praying for somebody smarter than I am to show us how to edit the moving animation aspect of the in-battle sprites.

For swapping color palettes, you'll need CrystalTile2 and ConsoleTool. Extract a/0/0/4, then open it up with ConsoleTool. You should see something like this:

Now, each pokemon has 20 separate components - #0 through #19 all govern the mysterious question mark that you get in the case of a glitch. The next 20 are pokemon #1 - Bulbasaur. Marked are the files that actually matter when it comes to palette changing. Now, open up the non-shiny palette first, then the 4 bulba-images. So it looks like this:

Now go to the color palette tab. It should look like this. See all of Bulbasaur's colors right there?

Nice. Now, let's say that we wanna make Bulbasaur purple. You gotta figure out which color on the palette corresponds to which Bulbasaur color. Not too hard. Then you go and change the Red/Blue/Green values of each color you wanna change.

Go back to an image of Bulbasaur, and you should see the change.

A zoomed-in image:

Go back to the color palette tab, and click the upward-facing blue arrow right below "help." Export the altered color palette as a .nclr file. Exit ConsoleTool and open up CrystalTile2. Load a/0/0/4, and find the file in the window with the same number as the color palette you just edited.

Import your edited .nclr file to replace the existing one. If all goes well, then once you've reinserted the narc, your pokemon's color ought to be changed:

Life is rather hectic right now; I'll explain how to play around with the pixels themselves as soon as I get the chance.

[Oxnite]

Alrighty. First I can go over swapping color palettes, then when time permits I'll go over playing around with pixels, and finally comes waiting/praying for somebody smarter than I am to show us how to edit the moving animation aspect of the in-battle sprites.

...

Life is rather hectic right now; I'll explain how to play around with the pixels themselves as soon as I get the chance.

Thank you very much for this, Abacus! Nice to know.

Now I'm eagerly waiting for the 'Pokémon's sprite pixel edit tutorial'.

[aragornbird]

Thanks so much, Abacus! Woo, now I can implement some new gender differences in the next version of my hack.

Looking forward to the next part.

[Shiny Sheimi]

Seeing great progress here. Thanks to everyone working on this, and looking forward to seeing the full explanation of how to edit the sprites. I know you've already helped me out with this, Abacus, and thank you so much, but as I explained in my message I'm having troubles with CrystalTile.

[suaqua]

I feel like it wouldnt be that hard to make a tool out of this which organizes the sprites by pokemon and shiny/nonshiny

[Shiny Sheimi]

I feel like it wouldnt be that hard to make a tool out of this which organizes the sprites by pokemon and shiny/nonshiny

The files for the Pokémon sprites are already organised in that way. Inside the narc, there are 20 files for each Pokémon, the first 18 being files to do with the sprite itself and then there's 2 palette files, one for shiny and one for non-shiny (the sprites themselves are not coloured sprites, rather they're indexed) and the sprites are organised in national dex entry order. The reason that they're so difficult to edit is that the animated sprite isn't what you'd expect - instead of being a series of static sprites rolling to form an animation, they're made up of pieces of "body parts" of the Pokémon on a sheet and the game instructs the pieces how to move over each other, like pieces of paper sliding over one another in layers, and obviously, this can make editing the image a little difficult.

Sorry if you already knew this!

[suaqua]

i did I meant a tool that has it so that all you need to do is change the color palettes that are designated to each pokemon

[Shiny Sheimi]

i did I meant a tool that has it so that all you need to do is change the color palettes that are designated to each pokemon

The method that Abacus has demonstrated above is incredibly simple, even for an amateur, so I really don't think a tool would be necessary. The method is only for editing palettes, though, but I believe Abacus has worked out a method for editing the sprites' pixels, which I'm hoping he/she will post soon.

Edit: It occurs to me that you might be talking about replacing one palette with another, but this is as simple as exporting a palette file and importing it into the place of a different palette, using CrystalTile. Although I would not recommend this as the colours for different Pokémon do not always fit one another, aka the main body colour on one Pokémon won't always correlate to the main body colour on another - it may code for something else, like the eye colour or what have you.

[Oxnite]

How do I actually open ConsoleTool? I can't find an .exe anywhere when I download it.

[IAL32]

Console Tool is a Jar format, wich can be run installing Java Runtime.

[Oxnite]

Console Tool is a Jar format, wich can be run installing Java Runtime.

Thank you very much, hehe!

[Honeyichigo]

Well, you guys don;t seem to have a rule regarding thread bumping, so I;m just going to assume this is okay...

So, is that tutorial about messing with the sprites themselves, rather than just the pallets, going to be posted any time soon? I'm rather interested in it.

[Abacus]

Oh my gosh, thank you for the bump!

My personal life had suddenly become very hectic very fast, and after that I just sort of forgot about the tutorial. I'll Post it within the next day or two.

Edited March 12, 2012 by Abacus

[Abacus]

Since my discovery was several months ago, and I foolishly failed to document the step-by-step process I took, I've been trying to remember exactly what I did to get a perfect result. I set out to paint a dark blue bull's eye right in the middle of Wobbuffet's stomach, and I *did* end up with the desired target symbol, at least.

The only snafu that occurred was due to somewhat of a beginner's mistake. I couldn't, for the life of me, get an NCLR color palette to load for an image in CrystalTile2. "Load Palette", export/re-import and "DATA->Palette Conversion" all seemed to fail. The end result of this was a purple bull's eye, bumping the color count up to 17 and losing a shade of blue due to the 16-color palette size.

Still, progress!

[Honeyichigo]

Wouldn't it have made more sense to use a shade already on Wobbuffet's palette if it's already at 16 colours?

But that aside, it's great that you figured out how to edit the image itself. I will await your how-to guide eagerly.

[Abacus]

It was my exact intention to do what you suggested.

Since I couldn't load the proper color palette in CrystalTile2, I exported the image with a wonky color palette to edit with Paint. The color that WOULD have been dark blue was a purple with this wonky palette, so I used that exact same shade of purple for the bull's eye, thinking the game would automatically translate it back to a dark blue. It didn't.

Thanks for your enthusiasm! The guide will come as soon as I re-discover how I got the right color palette loaded in CT2. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Shiny Sheimi]

It's great to see you've returned, Abacus. Been waiting on this information for a long time, and I'm so glad it's finally arrived! Will be looking forward to your detailed guide!

[Andibad]

actual you can using mkds editor for pallete file (nclr), is more easy replace color import from pal files.

If you want expand sprite you must know about OAM. Sprite is have many type, is need segment command, need cell, narn and ect. If you want arrange that , you must know what is OAM, know hex editing, pointing, animate frame, arm addressing on emulator and ect. I was see some hacking project on gbatemp, yeah on translation project. Most of them using ct2. And some need hex editing because is need expand on some segment/cell.

Yeah i waiting too abacus about you tutorial yeah changing pallete is easy one for newbie soo not confused than other