Chapter 55: Importing Tilesets

Ever wanted to use a tileset from another game? This tutorial will teach you how. It’s actually a very simple concept—locate the data in the game that has the tileset you want, copy it, and repoint it. That’s it.

In this example I’ll import the Valni tileset into FE7. First I load Nightmare, an FE8 ROM, and the event table editor. I locate the tile config, object, and palette I want to use. In addition, I’m going to transfer a map, just so I can test that the imported tileset works without having to make my own map.

Wow, I sure am lucky! All the offsets I need are right next to each other! I’ll start with the object type. This is what it looks like:

I have to go to this offset and copy the data there. But how do I know to stop? Well, I have to know by finding the offset of the object type that comes before it. This is object type 10.

I go to object type 10 and see the offset 0x8165F7C. So the Tower of Valni object type ends at 0x165F7C. So I go to the offset 0x1609BC and copy the data from there to 0x165F7C using a hex editor. Pic below:

Then I paste it into some free space in the game I am importing to. I will use 0x1040000 in this example/for this tutorial.

Now I have to do the same thing for all of the other data I am importing. Actually, importing most data (aside from ASM, animations, and data that has pointers inside of it) works like this, so importing a tileset is nothing special. =O

Once I’m done copying the data from one game and pasting it into another, I have to repoint the data in the other game. Since I am importing into FE7, I open nightmare and load the Event Reference Module. I can replace an existing tileset and repoint the old pointers to the new tileset info.

(This just shows me repointing the Dragon’s Gate tileset to something else. You can also replace other entries besids tileset entries but you have to edit the Chapter Data Editor dropdowns to let you select said bytes, and you have to know what you are doing in general… it’s too complex for me to explain it, sorry.)

Anyway, as said, do that with each part of the tileset (and the map as well) and then enter the bytes into the Chapter Data Editor per normal.

Err, you’ll notice my thing is sort of kinda uh… “hacked” so that there aren’t any dropdowns. This is because having dropdowns is often times limiting because I can’t enter any value I want to. D=

Anyway, once that’s done, load up your ROM, test your map, and enjoy your imported tileset

Chapter 56: Animation Importation

Chapter 57: Custom Battle Animations – Frames

Okay, now this is one cool aspect of Fire Emblem hacking, in my opinion. In fact, if you want to have a good hack, you need at least a couple of these. In my opinion, of course.

Part 1: Briefing

A custom battle animation is just what it says. When you play Fire Emblem and you have animations on and you use say, Eliwood, to attack a bandit, you see a red-haired guy with blue armor stab a shirtless dude with an axe. Each of those characters has their own ‘animation’. An animation, in case you don’t know, is like a bunch of pictures shown right after each other to give the appearance of movement. You can google for more details.

So yes, we can have our own animations. That is some great stuff. But, you have to make the sprites—the little guys who do the moving—as well as format the sprites, which I will cover in this tutorial, and then script the sprites.

Where do you get sprites? Well, you can always make your own battle sprites. You could also use other games’ sprites, assuming they are 16 colors or less, because battle animations must be 16 colors or less—and I mean the ENTIRE sheet must use the SAME 16 colors THROUGHOUT—you can’t have each sprite use a different set of 16 colors. Usenti is a great way to reduce colors as it has a Palette option called “Requantize” which will forcibly reduce colors, and it also has a palette box to the right which can be used to manually edit colors.

You could also request someone to make a sheet (collection) of sprites for you, AKA an animation. But getting the sprites is YOUR problem. I can edit existing Fire Emblem battle sprites myself, which is an important skill, because most of the time in hacking, you have to be able to supply yourself with the things needed to hack.