Part 1b: Palette Preparing
So, what you are going to do is place all 16 colors of your palette in the top-right corner. The very top-right color must be the background/transparent color, and the colors after that can be in any order you desire. How to get the colors? You can either manually use the eye-dropper tool and select each color and then place one pixel of it in the top-right corner, or you can use the “Usenti method”, which I invented.
To do the Usenti method of palette preparing, you must first download and open Usenti. It should look like this:
Then, drag your image (standing frame) onto Usenti (or use File->open to open your standing frame).
At the right is a palette box. It has a list of all the colors used in that image. Because battle sprites must be 16 colors or less, your palette should be no more than 16 colors. (Having more than 16 colors is a spriting issue, so if it IS more than 16 colors, ask some spriter how to get rid of colors.)
Here is my palette box:
As you can see, there is one row, or 16 colors. Now what you must do is take a screenshot of Usenti by pressing the screenshot button on your computer. Then, open up a new window of MS Paint, and paste your screenshot into that window. Then, using the select tool, find the 16 colors in your palette box, select them, and copy them. This is what I’m talking about:
Then, paste that bar into your standing frame image, near the top-right, and zoom in, like so:
Now we have some colors here that aren’t actually apart of the palette. I’m talking about the red, white, and green outline, as well as the black stuff in between, and the grey outline. We need to get rid of all that, which can quickly be done by usingt he bucket tool and making all those dumb colors into the transparent/background color (dark green in this case).
Great, we have what we need. Now we use the eyedropper tool to select each color and put one pixel of it in the top-right corner. Watch.
Do you see the colors at the top-right? The very top-right pixel is the dark green background color, with the rest of the colors to the left and below that. Just make that the area of the palette space is 8x2 pixels (8 times 2 = 16 colors), i.e. one row should only have 8 colors. If you by some chance don’t have 16 colors and have like, 14 colors, just make the rest of the area dark green (transparent color).
Now, delete the big squares of colors, and save your image, which should look something like this:
(Note: I’m zoomed in at 2x or 200%)
Part 2: Testing the Foundation to Your Animation
You now have one frame. Wooh, that may have seemed like a lot of work. In fact, your first time, it probably will be, especially since you have to read my long, detailed explanations of how to do everything. But once you know what you’re doing, it should only take 5 minutes, if that.
Now that we have one frame, we can base every single other frame off of this one, because the palette is set-up (well, maybe it is). However, to be safe, we are first going to test your animation, to make sure that the first frame was made right.
WHAT?!
WE ONLY HAVE ONE FRAME?!
Yes, but that one frame will be the basis for every other frame, so it better work right!
We’ll just make a simple animation script. It starts with a text file, a simple notepad file ending in .txt. Since my guy is named Kelik and his class is “Legend” and he uses a sword, I appropriately called him Kelik Legend (Sword).txt.
Since I’m nice, I’ll give you guys a template script. As long as you have one frame called “standing.png”, it should work. Which reminds me—ALWAYS SAVE YOUR FRAMES AS PNG’S. Why? Because BMP’s take up a lot of space, and I always use PNG’s, so it’ll be easier to follow this tutorial if you do too. Plus, if I remember correctly, FEditor Adv only accepts 24bit bitmaps, and I could explain that to you, but I really don’t want to.
------------------------
/// - Mode 1
C03 -
C07 -
3 p- standing.png
/// - Attack Frames
C04
C1A
C1F
/// - Frames after hitting but before stopping to wait for HP depletion
C01
/// - RETURN TO BASE
3 p- standing.png
C06
C0D
~~~ -
/// - Mode 3
C03 -
C07 -
3 p- standing.png
/// - Critical Frames
C04
C08
C1F
/// - Frames after hitting but before stopping to wait for HP depletion
C01
/// - RETURN TO BASE
3 p- standing.png
C06
C0D
~~~ - Mode 5
C03 -
C07 -
5 p- standing.PNG
C05
4 p- standing.PNG
C01
4 p- standing.PNG
C06
3 p- standing.png
C0D
~~~ - Mode 6
C03 -
C07 -
5 p- standing.PNG
C05
4 p- standing.PNG
C01
4 p- standing.PNG
C06
3 p- standing.png
C0D
~~~ - Mode 7
C02
2 p- standing.PNG
C0E
3 p- standing.PNG
C01
2 p- standing.PNG
C06
2 p- standing.png
C0D
~~~ - Mode 8
C02
2 p- standing.PNG
C0E
3 p- standing.PNG
C01
2 p- standing.PNG
C06
2 p- standing.png
C0D
~~~ - Mode 9
3 p- standing.png
C01 -
~~~ - Mode 10
3 p- standing.png
C01 -
~~~ - Mode 11
3 p- standing.png
C01 -
~~~ - Mode 12
C03 -
C07 -
3 p- standing.png
/// - Attack-That-Will-Miss Frames
C04
C1F
/// - Frames after hitting but before stopping to wait for HP depletion
C01
/// - RETURN TO BASE
3 p- standing.png
C06
C0D
~~~ - End Animation Data
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Everything between the dashed lines is part of the template script, so copy and paste it into your text file. Then save it.
You now have a working script. You don’t know what it does though, because I haven’t taught that, and I don’t plan on teaching it. Ever. In this chapter. :P
In all seriousness, all it does is show the standing frame for literally every single animation mode. But that’s cool enough for us. Let’s crank up FEditor Adv with our ROM so we can insert this bad boy.
Oh, but quickly, a review of what we have:
one frame called ‘standing.png’ with the sprite and the palette at the top-right that we spent forever making
a script that we gave a nice name to with the codes I provided you
That’s it. And both items are in the same folder, because I said so (hint: put them in the same folder).
OSHI- IT’S FEDITOR ADV
Yes it is. This is the “Class Animation Creator”. What you want to do is hit the “Load from Script” button. Then, select your .txt file animation script. FEditor Adv will run through it and stuff. If your script is error-free and so is your image, nothing will come up. If some error does, here’s what you should check:
size of image (should be 248x160)
file type of image (PNG? if that somehow doesn’t work, try a 24bpp bitmap)
palette (if you didn’t prepare the palette, try doing that. If you did, make sure it’s less than 16 colors!)
script is .txt file with what I gave you
Blazer (check to make sure he isn’t being dumb and didn’t forget something or mess up something? if it’s none of the above it might be this… >_>)
At the end, in the small dialog box at the bottom, it should say “Mode: Complete” if it’s all done.
NOTE: IF IT GIVES IN AN ERROR YOU MUST HIT “RESET ANIMATION” BEFORE YOU TRY TO INSERT THE ANIMATION AGAIN. I ALSO SUGGEST HITTING “QUIT” AND RELOADING THE EDITOR IF FEDITOR ADV IS GIVING YOU PROBLEMS. (If you’re wondering why I bolded that, I got an e-mail saying that someone got stuck for 1-hour because they didn’t; and admittedly it’s not the most obvious thing in the world and I should have mentioned it, so yeah, here it is.)
Here’s the dumb part. You have to save the animation by clicking “save to file…”. I usually make a new folder called “Animation Data” within the folder where I am keeping all my frames and the animation script, and I save it in there. Just name it something logical and then go to the Class Animation Manager in FEditor Adv.
Okay, so now you have to find the animation you want to insert over. You type in a new number into the “Input Index”, which neatly corresponds to the animation list supplied in the folders of Nightmare Modules.
Once you find the animation you want to replace, you hit “Insert” and find that one file you just saved with the “Class Animation Creator” part of FEditor Adv. Let FEditor Adv do it’s shit, then save your ROM with FEditor adv.
