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Continued frustrations

Started by HyperMushrambo, 03, October, 2012, 09:37:23 PM

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HyperMushrambo

Hello again everyone. After a VEEEERY long while I'm back. I've been using the .5 version of the Editor to try to replace Felix and Jenna's sprites with Agatio and Karsts, and if I can succeed at that I want to also use Saturos and Menardi. It's been a pet project of mine for a long time. I understand the compression thing but one thing I thought would work was using the editor, exporting Agatio's battle sprites as pngs, and then re-importing them on the character I want. It STILL just leaves an invisible character. What am I doing wrong? The image is the right size and everything, I checked. Someone haaaalp?

Misery

Have you tried any other image formats? What happens if you just export the sprites and import them back without any changes? What about exporting a player character sheet and put Agatio or Karsts sprites in it, then import? I haven't tried importing sprites myself, so I'm not sure what is wrong...

Kain

I never answered because I'm not too familiar with sprite work but if I had to wager some guesses it would be incorrect file types, programming error or the sprite is an improper size.  -shrug-  I don't use the editor so I'm not sure what to say.
You misspelled retard...oh the irony!

HyperMushrambo

Misery: PNG is to the extend of my knowledge the only acceptable format. The player sheets don't work, they must be individual images from what I've grown to understand.

Kain: I can only think it's programming error since the sprites are the EXACT size, to the pixil. I checked.

Rolina


HyperMushrambo

#5
Yup. Exactly 64 x 64.


Update:
FWAHAHAH! I figured it out! The sprites, when imported, have a WHITE background rather than transparent. Even though the background is transparent in all editing programs I used, when it enters the editor the transparent pixils are replaced with solid white. For some reason this completely prevents them from loading properly. One must go in by hand to edit the white pixils back to transparent. I ran a test and it seems to work now so huzzah! Now to begin the arduous process of editing all the sprites so I can have the main characters I want to have! I even intend to edit the script if possible to switch the names! Wish me luck everypony!

Edit: The "everypony" up there was unintentional. Clearly I have been spending WAY too much time watching MLP...

I'm also going to have to work out what to do about their downed sprites since as enemies they have none of their own.

HyperMushrambo

#6
A couple fun notes: For one, the editor has no undo button so if you screw something up it is ruined FOREVER. Two: there's an issue where if you change a sprite the wrong way or something else it screws up the rom so you can't get past either the black screen before the nintendo logo or past the camelot logo. This just happened and I can't fix it so I have to redo all the sprites I already entered.

(I'm mostly just recording observations for others to read at this point)

Karst has one of the most complex humanoid battle sprites in the entire game. She has several distinct hairs, a fairly complex color scheme and her scythe adds on an extra layer of difficulty to work with. Her scythe has very inconsistent colors, however. At some angles it's all grays, whites, and blacks, and others it has gold and red in some places that only white was at before. The animators actually took time to darken a pixil to give Karst a belly button.

Some characters have different orders to their sprites. For some it's standing sprites - attack sprites - psynergy sprites- taking damage sprites- and downed sprites. Others are random. Karst, Agatio, and Jenna share the exact same order, as do some others. However, the first 5 sprites are all the standing sprites on all battle sprites I've seen.

It is impossible to alter map sprites?

The editor is at least partially aware of the transparency on the sprites that I've been fighting with since the sprites when imported have an outline of transparent pixils around the outside of the sprite. For some reason all other transparent pixils around and inside the sprites are either turned white or black. Swapping the direction a sprite is facing in Paint.NET can actually change whether the transparent pixils are white or black but I have no idea how or why and it seems to be totally random but it remains consistent in each sprite, thankfully.

Agatio's front sprites must be flipped horizontally to match the main characters' like most other monsters. They face right rather than left. Karst's, however, don't for some inexplicable reason and in all cases the back sprites seem to face the same way.

Editing sprites is a MAGNIFICENT way to really realize the poses the characters take when casting psynergy or attacking, poses that usually flash by too quickly in-game.

The average number of sprites for a being that casts psynergy or uses special attacks is 17, not including the main characters' "downed" sprites, which no enemy has. One notable exception are the pirates, which only have 11.

There is no way to copy/paste ANYTHING in the editor as far as I can tell.

Sheba's hair goes very squared when she attacks, it makes me wonder if the notorious unknown blond portrait might have originally been intended for her.

The blasted load times when importing a sprite or filling a large area with transparency or color are VERY tiring.

That's all I've got for now.

Edit: New issue arises! I was doing just fine until I went to the desert. Lo and behold when I fought the scorpian, agatio's sprite randomly transformed into one of felix's swords. I have NO clue why this happened. After completely erasing the sword's sprite data, agatio has this weird habit of going invisible during the menu screen. He'll be standing there just fine then BLIP! invisible. I don't... know why... >< I can't seem to fix it either. After more testing I've discovered that it happens to whichever character is in my third slot. They blip into an item for some unknown reason. I.... think it might have been caused by my walk-through-walls cheat... somehow. I don't know how. But when cheats were disabled it stopped happening. I have no idea what just happened.

Sorry about the polyposting. I got a bit over excited.  :Sweat:

Rolina

Oi oi, stop it with the polyposting.  If you have new things to say, just edit them in.

Aile~♥

Take ALL the posts of your poly-posting spree and copy/paste them into the first. Then replace the contents of the later posts with "to be removed" or something similar. Just a suggestion.
[sprite=16, 6, 0]:P[/sprite]

Lloyd: Easy as pie.
Genis: Sweet!
Presea: ...Sweetie pie...
Zelos: Let's not start on this again...

[spoiler=epic mindscrew][/spoiler]

HyperMushrambo

Is that better? My apologies. Anyway, I hope that some of my experiences fighting with the sprites might be useful information to someone else later on.