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1 user currently in Rom Hacking:  hukka |
| Acmlm's Board - I2 Archive - Rom Hacking - New at graphic hacking, looking where to start |
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Kanraku Newcomer Level: 3 Posts: 2/3 EXP: 58 For next: 70 Since: 06-30-05 Since last post: 124 days Last activity: 122 days |
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| Hello, I'm interested in ROM graphic hacking, I want to hack an SNES rom as I mentioned here:http://board.acmlm.org/thread.php?id=15688 (I misunderstood what constituted a "newbie" thread) I've tried looking at guides, but they just confuse me, and I don't know which one is going to help me do what I want to do. I tried using tile editing programs but I didn't really understand those either. I suppose I was kind of hoping that there was a magical program that gave you access to all of the graphics in the game as they're seen, but from what I've seen, tile editing is the easiest way to go about it. Can anyone give me some tips on where to start on SNES graphic editing? Thanks, Kanraku |
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Bit-Blade Pixel Artist Level: 34  Posts: 252/445 EXP: 229264 For next: 24387 Since: 03-16-04 Since last post: 2 days Last activity: 7 hours |
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| You mean pixel art. Being good at pixel art is the basis of all rom graphics hacking (other than 3D rendered stuff). The second most important part of pixel art is having a good knowledge of color mixing (photoshops color picker will help out a LOT in that regard). If you are serious about becoming a good pixel artist, knowing how to select good colors is a must. For instance, you have to know what saturation and desaturation are (how vibrant or grayed out a color is), luminosity (light and dark, although this term is not used for contrast), and just an overall understanding of what colors look good, and how much you might need to desaturate some colors so that they will mix together even though they would not normally do so at their brightest and most vibrant (and eye bleeding) shades. For myself, I use photoshop for pure pixel art since you can customize it to sort of emulate tile dimension via its grid set up, not to mention that its mouse features are extremely convenient. Anyway, what you really want to look for are pixel art guides. To edit snes roms graphics you have to keep a few things in mind. Firstly, are the graphics compressed? With snes roms, theres a VERY good chance they will be. With a lot of knowledge you might be able to decompress it yourself (lots of work there) or you might be able to convince a skilled person to decompress them for you. Compression routines can be a DAMN pain in the ass. Second, is there an editor for said rom? Editors often have handy tools included in them that make graphics editing much easier, like a little tool for zelda 3 that will decompress the graphics and recompress them when you are finished editing. Finally, the actual snes pixel art editing. I recomend YY-Chr, since it's fairly easy to use once you understand all of its features (which are immensely useful). It will, by default, give you its own variation of the NES palette, which you can customize to whatever you like. You cannot copy stuff from photoshop into yy-chr, not even with paint shop pro, which has superb clipboard compatibility. Rather than go through the aggravation of not being able to copy and paste your graphics from the photoshop medium to the YY-Chr/Snes medium, just stick to one and save yourself the trouble where you can. For practice, I would highly recomend editing NES graphics first. It's a good way to start if you have zero knowledge of pixel art. move along slowly so you don't overwhlem yourself. Final note, actually. If you don't have the patience to learn how to use Tile Editors then you really shouldn't be rom hacking. This is a hobby that requires great patience, much of the time. It isn't all about using someone elses rom editor. It's about hard hacking the game itself, like hacking palettes with hex, and there are other, harder things that are soley data related. Anyway, yeah, if you're unwilling to learn then this hobby is not for you. |
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Kanraku Newcomer Level: 3 Posts: 3/3 EXP: 58 For next: 70 Since: 06-30-05 Since last post: 124 days Last activity: 122 days |
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| Thanks for the info! Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't want to put forth the effort, I just don't want to put forth the effort towards the entirely wrong program. Although I do want to create a skin, most of the graphics would be coming from other games, or I thought I could take regular graphics and degrade them to the right color depth in PSP/Photoshop. So I don't know if the whole pixel-by-pixel thing is neccesarry. Well, it makes sense that a rom would be compressed. I kind of doubt that there would be an autocompresser for a somewhat unpopular game such as Tetris Attack, so I guess my options are limited... I will have a lot of spare time this summer, so I guess I could try to decompress it myself. I guess I'll take a look around for information about that. Thanks again! |
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Bit-Blade Pixel Artist Level: 34 Posts: 254/445 EXP: 229264 For next: 24387 Since: 03-16-04 Since last post: 2 days Last activity: 7 hours |
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| Graphics piracy/modification is a VERY good way to learn how to become a good pixel artist. It forces you to teach yourself to adapt to certain pixel art styles, and it also serves to help you reverse engineer pixel art techniques. It's actually how I learned, back in the day when I was trying to hack zelda 2... Anyway, if you're going to port graphics you are probably going to have a hell of a time of it. Unless the compression routines are known and documented for the games in question, re-contructing the tiles into yychr or some other tile editor is goign to be a HUGE pain in the ass, and I've done it a few times myself. Anyway, good luck with whatever you decide to do. |
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