If something didn’t work right, make sure you:
Didn’t overlap changes (change with one program, then change with another without exiting/reloading and all)
Forget byte reversal when typing in the hex, or even do byte reversal twice
Forget to convert properly (dividing/multiplying by 8, inserting the right values into GBA color picker)
Edit the wrong colors (use the palette viewer to help know which colors you are editing)
Edit the compression bits (be sure to avoid 00’s unless they are part of an actual color—remember, 00s come about every 4 bytes).
Wooh! We’re done!
Chapter 45: Working with gbage
Here we’re gonna learn a little bit more about graphics, palettes, and TSA. Just a little bit more.
Load GBAGE and your ROM, to start.
There are 3 main things you can input into GBAGE. The offset, palette, and TSA. The width and height can be adjusted to make the image look good. I’ll say it again just to make sure you know it: size is in tiles, and tiles are 8x8 pixels, and the GBA screen is 240x160.
You can dump and insert/load raw graphics. It’s like the raw hex for it. You can’t SEE anything unless you save it as a bitmap, however.
If you’re editing uncompressed graphics (just uncheck the ‘compressed’ button, although you have to know where the uncompressed graphics are) you can scroll through it by hitting the +/- block, +/- line, and +/- screen buttons. You can load palettes the same as normal as well.
When you save a bitmap, it’s best to save as a PNG, because PNG is one of the best common image file types out there in both functionality and size. You can then edit the image; however, I have to warn you about tampering with it too much. If you add colors to the image and save it, it’ll mess up the palette. If you insert an image with more than the original amount of colors, it’ll overwrite data AFTER the palette. Furthermore, sometimes images may appear to use more than 16 colors, but don’t actually—it’s all a bit tricky so just be safe with what you’re doing and constantly back-up as mistakes in graphical editing can easily lead to a completely messed up and glitch ROM (in the most unpredictable ways).
Similar things can happen with graphics. This is why when you check the ‘Import Graphics’ or ‘Import Palette’ button in GBAGE, also check the ‘abort if bla bla’, because it stops GBAGE from overwriting data. If it DOES abort, there is an easy way to insert your data without much fuss. Just find some free space (I manage mine pretty well so I know where I have free space in my ROMs) and put in new offsets for your data, then hit “Repoint X pointers” to repoint the graphic or palette pointers. This will insert the data without worry about space and then repoint the graphic or palette so the game knows where the new data is.
Another thing: it is VERY good to document what you find and change in GBAGE. I don’t spend my time bolding stuff unless I mean it. If you write down cool graphics you find while scrolling through, you can just go back to your list of graphics and what image # they are and be like “hey, I want to edit that”, then go to the image and do what you want with it. Also, when you repoint stuff, you’ll want to know where it is in case you need to go back and do stuff to it.
This includes palettes! Finding palettes isn’t the most fun thing ever. You might as well take 5 seconds out to write where the palette is so you save yourself 5 minutes later on. *even though it only takes me like 30 seconds to find a palette most of the time*
That being said, I have a little documentation for FE7’s graphics. Nothing for FE6 or FE8 not because I’m biased, but because I’ve just never hacked those as much. Oh wait, that could be considered bias… teehee. I only made one hack of FE6 so far and haven’t done much with FE8 except for importing data from that game for my hack Fire Emblem: Sacred Contention.
Graphic Documentation
----------------------
#s for use with GBAGE
FE7
----
800 - Levelup
802 - Numbers
805+ - Map Effects, Staff Anims?
825 - "To Be Continued"
826 - "Game Over"
835 - Statsheet Related Stuff
836 - " "
839 - Arrows
846 - Chapter Title Bar? (Menu?)
847 - Chapter Title Bar (When Starting Capter)
848 - "Game Over" again
849 - Letters
854 - "Help"
855 - Misc. Graphics
857 - Arena Menu Stuff?
860 - Weapon Type Icons
861-862 - ^Same, but scrunched up and split apart
865 - Another background
866 - Vertical Arrow in statsheet (not sure)
867 - Above, but horizontal
868 - More Text
874 - Star
879 - Main Menu Graphics
880 - ^Same
883 - Sound Room Graphics
884 - Mode Select Stuff
898 - "Personal Information" Scroll
900 - Main Menu BG, Statsheet BG
904 - Class Roll Primary Weapons Graphics
906 - Another Text Font
907 - Another Text Font
(CGs between here)
1099 - "Fin" Text
1100 - Player Ranking Text
1101+ - Credits
1135 - Intro Text
1153 - 2003 Nintendo Presents
1154 - Various Weapons that circle around in opening
1156+ - Water Droplet Animation
1187+ - Opening "CG" Backgrounds (broken up into many pieces...)
1273+ - Misc. Opening Effects (I'm guessing, anyway)
1368 - "Fire Emblem" Shadow
1370 - Sword, "Fire Emblem", "Press Start", and Copyright Graphics
1371+ - More
Misc. Effects? Thunder sparks are here...
1376+ - Beginning of Portraits/Chibis.
Wait! I have more!
Arena Dialog Background
-------------------------
Image Data at 0x3EFA3C
Image #797 in GBAGE, data is LZ77 compressed
TSA at 0x3F2618, uncompressed
Palette at 0x3F2ACC, uncompressed
Battle Preps/Miscellaneous Background
--------------------------------------
Image at 0x407440
Image #865
Palette at 0x40D130
Menu & Statsheet Background
----------------------------
Image #900
0x418E44
Palette at 0x41E2D8
CGs
----
Start at around image 922, first broken up into 240x16 pieces, then total CGs, TSA and battle
palettes can be found at CG table, please see CG editor or other doc for more information.
Opening Text
-------------
Starts around image #1135 offset 0x5E9D4C
Fire Emblem Shadow
--------------------
Image #1368 0x66AB48
Title Screen Background
------------------------
Image #1369 0x66AF8C palette at 0x66AF6C
Armads at 0x66F294 Image #1370
"Fire Emblem", Shadow, Sword, misc.
stuff at Image 1371 offset 0x66FD80
^Palette at 66FCE0 (note: multiple palettes for different parts, change the palette index appropriately)
OK, that’s all I have to share with you.
I think I’ve said enough about that topic then. Next, about palettes—there are different graphic modes. GBA almost always uses 4bit, so unless you’re an NDS hacker *like me*, I wouldn’t worry about it too much. I don’t think any images use 256 colors (which would be 8bpp), nothing definitely uses Truecolor or Indexed bitmaps, and the only other graphics are ones that use 2bpp and lower which isn’t included in this tutorial as GBAGE doesn’t support it (and it’s not very useful).
“Gray scale” makes it so that the image is grayscale. This is sometimes useful. It’s most useful when you’re scrolling through images trying to find out what they are. If it’s set to grayscale, it’s easier to see the details of an image and make out what it’s supposed to be, as opposed to using some palette with weird colors.
If you load a palette that is compressed, just click the appropriate button to load it properly. Else, said button will be greyed out.
The palette index is for palettes with multiple uh… indexes. Sometimes there are alternate palettes for an image that can be loaded with the ‘palette index’ button (for example, map sprites). You can quickly scroll through these by clicking the up/down arrows next to Palette Index.
Oh wait, there’s a way to edit colors in GBAGE too, I forgot! You can use the Color Control box and type in RGB (has to be divided by 8 though) to edit colors. I’m not really good with it, so you’ll have to experiment with it yourself if you want to use it…
Now, onto the last menu. Tile Control. You can choose to use TSA and, if the TSA is compressed, you can choose to load said compressed TSA.
The “amount of bytes to ignore for displaying” is a feature used to skip tiles to align images. I can’t explain it too well, but sometimes if an entire image seems to be off a little bit, either adjust said feature or the size. Usually you’ll see a weird tile at the top-left corner or everything will look like it’s shifted a little when this is needed.
You can even manipulate the tiles with GBAGE. “Tile index” is which tile you want to select, starting from the top-left, going to the right and then down the rows. You can flip the tiles horizontally, vertically, make them use another graphic by altering the graphic number, or make a tile use another palette in the index by adjusting the Palette index. This is extremely useful for TSA hacks—however, newer versions of GBAGE don’t let you edited compressed TSA, in which case you will have to use a decompressor to decompress the TSA separately and then edit it.
I realize that this part is a bit more difficult than the other aspects of GBAGE, and so I’m going to help out a little. First of all, you need to use TSA, and if it’s compressed, hit that button.
While I’m at it, you may be thinking “how do you even know where TSA IS?”. There are several ways to find TSA:
Find it in a pointer table/array. For example, the Battle BG Array Editor (it’s a nightmare module) has a list of graphics, palette, and TSA for battle background.
Use debugging. If you don’t know how to debug though, this won’t prove to useful.
Look using a hex editor. Often times TSA, palette, and graphics are all right next to each other. In fact, most of the time they are. Thus it wouldn’t be surprising to find TSA data right after the palette data, for instance. Being able to recognize different types of data is a skill you’ll develop over time just by experimenting and studying—it’s mostly as simple as looking for patterns.
Anyway, back to editing the TSA. You can click anywhere on the image and select a tile like that (probably preferable), or type in a “tile index” to select which tile to edit. The “Graphics” slot dictates which tile should be used at this spot in the graphic.
It’s like this:
The raw graphics are a bunch of building blocks.
The palette is the paint.
The TSA is the map telling which blocks go where.
However, not only can the TSA tell which blocks go where, but also control how they are placed—which you can change by clicking “horizontal” and “vertical” under Flip—and reuse blocks an infinite amount of times. It can even specify which palette a tile uses, which can be changed by clicking up or down on the “palette” box. This makes it so that a 16 color image can be more than 16 colors by having different parts of the graphic use different palettes and thus different colors.
Here you can see that I’m editing the tiles at the bottom right. I’ve not only flipped them but I made one of the tiles (the tile being highlighted) use palette “1”. Unfortunately palette 1 is just a dud—it’s just a bunch of 00’s there and 0000 = black, so we get a black box, but it still illustrates how the Tile Control menu of GBAGE can edit TSA to change how images are displayed in-game.
There is one other use for changing the palette. If you’re not sure what tile you are editing, you can change the palette quickly and spot the tile that changes palette—that’s easier than trying to tell which tile was just flipped or something.
Now, let’s get some practice with the title screen menu background. I’ll tell you where the graphics, palette, and TSA are, so load them into GBAGE. Note that the graphics are compressed.
Graphics- [Approximately] Image 1369, Offset 0x66AF8C
Palette- Offset 0x66AF6C
TSA- Offset 0x66EDC0
Once that’s done, you should see the following in the image panel:
WAIT! I CAN EXPLAIN!
First of all, there’s an extra tile there that is causing some problems. We can use the ‘ignore bytes’ feature to get rid of that. Ignore two bytes (the equivalent of one tile).
That should look something like that.
And that’s how that should look. Yes, it should look like the whole image is flipped upside down and every row is also flipped upside down. The reason why is because the game undoes these flips. I don’t know why, but it’s the truth. The game initially processes the image like this, and then it undoes the flips. It’s a result of uncompressed TSA—compressed TSA is not flipped like this, meaning “what you see is what you get” with compressed TSA. If you’ve done the chapter on battle backgrounds, you’re familiar with compressed TSA already.
If we really wanted we could flip each tile and change the order manually. But as I said, that isn’t necessary, because the game does that for us. Still, we can practice manipulating TSA by changing random tiles. Just click on a tile and edit the ‘graphic’ part, flip it both ways for the lulz, and edit the palette. Just so you know how it works.
Here’s one more example of how this works, just for emphasis:
And my results (the tile at the top):
That’s just to show you what I mean. And with all that practice and explaining done, you should now have a decent grasp of editing graphics using GBAGE, or at the very least, you should be less intimidated by all the features popping out at you!