Background Mod

This mod lets you change the menu backgrounds.

Before continuing, please make sure you've reached the "Making Mods" section of the Sky Editor guide to ROM editing.

Instructions

1. On the New Project window, choose "Background Mod" in the drop-down, and fill in the name with something that makes sense. Then click OK.
   
2. Wait for the loading to complete. This may take a while depending on your computer.
3. The backgrounds are under (Solution Directory)/(Project Directory)/Backgrounds. You should see two kinds of files: *.png and *.original. Do not touch the *.original files; they're there so Sky Editor can quickly tell if you've modified any *.png file (this saves time, since Sky Editor doesn't have to rebuild any files you haven't changed).

Remarks

The number of colors you can use is a bit tricky. There can be no more than 255 colors in the entire image. Each 16x16 tile can have no more than 8 colors. And you can't have too many dissimilar colors too close to each other. How many this means requires an illustration.

Imagine our palette for the entire image looks like this:

1. Color 1
2. Color 2
3. Color 3
4. Color 4
5. Color 5
6. Color 6
7. Color 7
8. Color 8
9. Color 9
10. Color 10
11. Color 11
12. Color 12
13. Color 13
14. Color 14
15. Color 15
16. Color 16

Each 16x16 tile can have any 8 consecutive colors in this list. The first tile might use colors 1 through 8, the next tile use colors 9 through 16, and so on, until we reach the limit of the image, like so (red is tile 1, blue is tile 2):

1. Color 1
2. Color 2
3. Color 3
4. Color 4
5. Color 5
6. Color 6
7. Color 7
8. Color 8
9. Color 9
10. Color 10
11. Color 11
12. Color 12
13. Color 13
14. Color 14
15. Color 15
16. Color 16

 But that's only if the colors are drastically different. The palettes can overlap if the colors are used more gradually. Tile 1 can use colors 1 through 8, tile 2 can use colors 3 through 10, and tile 3 can use colors 2 through 9, like so:

1. Color 1
2. Color 2
3. Color 3
4. Color 4
5. Color 5
6. Color 6
7. Color 7
8. Color 8
9. Color 9
10. Color 10
11. Color 11
12. Color 12
13. Color 13
14. Color 14
15. Color 15
16. Color 16

Now what does this mean in terms of how many colors you can use? I don't know. Sky Editor will do its best to maximize the number of colors you can use, but it doesn't do quite as good of a job as whatever tool Chunsoft used. If you have too many colors, you'll see this in the Errors window when building the modpack:

If you see that, it's up to you to reduce the amount of colors you're using. If you contact me, I might be able to help identify where the problem lies, but it may be a while before I can get to it.