1

ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: PalMod: color hacking for fighting games

« on: May 14, 2022, 06:49:31 pm »

Hey Preppy,

Thanks a lot for the links and the reply !
I started looking into the hacking of 3S and RE and it does look interesting, I think I noticed some small task I could tackle... I'm just a bit hesitant to commit right now.
I'll mos def have some free time in the coming months, but not just yet. 

For the tinted palettes every single item in the game except for the characters and health bar portraits have a tinted/shadow duplicate.

Namely :

- the backgrounds... it's used for the shadows under the chars and the super art freeze (huuuge amount of palettes to edit and manually enter every time you want to replicate a change you made in the "normal" background palette)

- the portraits, as you noted

- the icons from the select screen (I think they use the same palette as the next item below, I list it just to be thorough)

- the icons from the warrior path (with the white/grey gradient behind the character icon)

- the win / loose backgrounds (I'm a few versions late as I lacked time this past month, but last time I checked, palmod was still missing the grey one used for 12. I found the address in my old files [0x0070B480 to 0x0070B520], it's a bit too wide, but that did the work... note that I was too lazy to try and find the tinted version of it...)

- the select screen background the blue arrows and cursor selectors (not 100% sure for the last two), the final score font, icons, special points (I think), etc...

Most get activated when P2 hits start.

To replicate the tinted palette here is the only method I'm currently aware of, maybe there is some mathematical way that could make it easy, but I never could figure it :

1) I open my freshly modified .png image in photoshop (portrait, background, icons... either edited in palmod or in photoshop, for backgrounds, mostly)

2) I select everything on this image except for the uniform background colour

3) I create a new layer atop, in multiply mode and fill it with a uniform mid-grey (RVB : 124, 124, 124)

4) flatten and save as .png

5) go to ESN's and download the desired item in one form or another (I mean normal image, or tinted version, with the matrix palette or any other available, it doesn't matter)

6) in photoshop I paste my edited greyish item on top of ESN's to match the exact pixel width or image position/formatting, this will allow to re-import it on the site (for Icons we did a full page with every icon, not individual images for each char icon as they are in palmod now)

7) re-import the image on ESN's site to get the colour code from the image... provided that part of the site still works

8 ) sometimes I have to the change the header that will not match palmod's (Remy's portrait)
Or most likely, if we're speaking of something big like a background, or the whole icons sheet, I have to paste it on a text file, count separate 256 or 512 chunks of characters, add the needed header for palmod code aaaaaaaaaaand paste it back in palmod, block by block if we're talking backgrounds. For the icons I also had to figure which code bit was which icon as we used a sheet with all icons on it and the code generated on ESN's will have all icons one after the other.

A bit cumbersome, isn't it ?

If you could figure how to easily replicate the colour modifications that happen when you add a mid-grey layer in multiply in photoshop and automate the process, that would be great.

Of course some people will want to do something more with it, like playing a bit more with the colour saturation, or whatever, but since your script is optional I think it's more likely that it would save every one a lot of time and stale effort.

Twelve is another battle, no rush for anything 

[Spoiler:]

2

ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: PalMod: color hacking for fighting games

« on: March 28, 2022, 05:10:12 pm »

Hey Preppy,

Thanks for the update, I the improvements are definitely welcome.

I took  some time to mess a bit more with 3S in palmod, to further test how it worked with ESN's.
I focused on the portraits that I had left vastly unfinished plus some stages which needed some fixes, or that I had lost completely lost.
I haven't had enough time to try to fully edit a stage straight in palmod yet though, but it's still something I intend to do.

Thanks for the info about Suupa's discord, and it confirms what I had seen. Really impressive and cool stuff, I would be glad to help, if I can.

Is there an open link or is it more confidential ?

On the same line, pushed by the cool discoveries of how CPS3 hacking evolved I did some research on Warzard.
This is a game I would like to... like, as it is both beautiful and unique.

Seeing Suupa's work and coming across Yumeji's Street Fighter (1) bosses hack gave me some hope that Warzard could turn out to be more interesting to play nowadays.
No full boss hack yet as it would be tremendous amounts of work to achieve, without even considering general game design.

But I came across Yoshi's discord where they edited some things to make Kenji more interesting, messed with the musics, very impressive again.

I lacked time at the moment, but I saw some cool Palmod edits of backgrounds from warzard there... It must have been very painstaking to reach that level of polish without an external tool like photoshop.
Really great stuff.

On my side I only edited small things so far as I find the game very nice as it is. I'll try to getting into it for a while.

For the ESN-Palmod "bugs" I think that all except for one are errors we made when searching for addresses, ripping background, portraits, etc... plus errors made by visitors who inadvertently further messed up with the site.
Just in case, here are the few things I noticed, some of these issues may have been fixed in the latest release, you never know if the team missed something :

Spoiler:

- Ibuki's portrait, third palette's panel, last (three ?) rows are somehow not displayed in palmod - FIXED !

- I had more frequent errors with Remy's portrait, and I think that I met issues when trying to copy/paste code from ESN... I think I had greyed out his new portrait palette in photoshop, and used ESN's to generate the code to import in palmod... which wouldn't work at first. I think the issue lies in the address range we registered for one of the two palettes on the site(normal or tinted) - ESN related

- Same thing for Gill's portrait, I managed to partially fix the display in ESN's site with an old backup from my HD, allowing to upload a palette, but contrary to Remy, neither the normal or tinted image work... somehow the address range is wrong. I couldn't completely manage to isolate the correct code portion to paste into palmod and got bored with it. - ESN related

- Hugo's stage : when importing code from ESN's some of the last panels are not in the same order as in palmod, mainly the two 64 color blocks related to the parrot' animation that are inverted with part of the nearby background. - don't know why, but it's not really palmod related.

- Yun's stage : took me some time to figure that one out... when copy-pasting code from ESN's into palmod, I had to offset the first entry in order to have the code match the correct order. To be clear, I started pasting code on the second color in palmod, not the first. Otherwise everything was slightly shifted, leading to multiple manual (useless once I figured it) fixes. Well, this let me try out the "select color by clicking on it" feature. - most likely something that has to do with the address range that must have been slightly different (and yun's stage is now completely broken on ESN's)

I partially fixed a few entries on ESN's to make it a bit more usable, but it's a bit of a lost cause at this point and the palmod improvements will hopefully render it deprecated sooner or later.
Hey, you finally fixed the most annoying and long lasting bug : select several colors, edit RGB, then switch to HSL without changing the selection, click on a slider and values are reset to pre-RGB modification. At last ! Big thanks

An ESN-esque site would be great help... for every game probably, but especially for 3S as it is a special kind of mess...
Warzard, MVC2, even Vampire are sooooo much more ordered palette wise and things looked easier there (haven't looked at backgrounds yet).

Mostly, this would be super useful for backgrounds and portraits, icons (I edited Icons to match the new portraits and using ESN's site was a real pain there as I had ripped all icons together.

If you can now easily add automations for other games, maybe you could add one for the tinted (shadow) palettes in 3S which are all over the place and, as far as I could tell, only replicable using ESN's site ?

Here is the only way that I know of, to add these in palmod :

Open the portrait, background, icon, etc that you want tinted in photoshop, add a medium grey multiply layer on top (R=124,G=124,B=124), save to .png, import in ESN's, copy the generated code to a wordpad format, and count series of 512 characters to isolate chunks corresponding to the  2 times 64 colors, add the proper code at the start and ending of each block and paste.

I may have missed something, maybe there are some steps I could cut or simplify, but it sure is time consuming.

If you could automate this down the road, that would be a life saver.
Same with Twelve's Xcopy palettes > generating each char's xcopy from twelve's 7 palettes would be really cool.

As always do things as you intended, it turns out great.

cheers

3

Personal Projects / Re: Mega Man World 5 DX

« on: February 19, 2022, 06:06:20 am »

hey marc_max, seriously, your hacks are beautiful, you have some real talent.
Making tools for others is something great
Take your time and do whatever you want.

Thanks for Mole Mania, I must have missed the info, looks like a nice little puzzler.

4

ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: PalMod: color hacking for fighting games

« on: February 11, 2022, 01:26:59 pm »

Hey Preppy, I had a busy week at work, sorry for the late reply.

> About Palmod and ESN's, the error is on my part, sorry for misleading info.
Last time it "happened" was on version 1.66 or so (when you introduced the click on image to select color feature).
I ran a thorough check and it still works, my bad.

Maybe at the time, I made a mistake when copy pasting code (probably with the parenthesis, sign and letter that changes from palette to palette).
The real problem is ESN's site being  half destroyed and remy's stage script not working. Nothing to do with palmod.

The good news is it let me experiment fro a while with the click on image to select it.
I ported some shadow versions of 3S stages and portraits that were lost on ESN's site as the entries have been destroyed by clumsy visitors.
The click on preview  helped me try and manually fix a few things.



Useful.

At some point I'll try to spend some time on editing a stage directly in Palmod, but I fear it is far too complicated to work, I'll let you know if I manage to do something convincing.

> about the music and multiple palettes, thanks, I read your explanation, it is very clear.
For people passing by, reading this, the 16 colors update adds all the other features (unlock, extra music on alternate stages, and random select stage fix). Neat.
Unless I missed something, you'll still have to manually copy/paste colors from your regular 6 colors mvc2 to the newer 16 update, or you'll encounter errors.

thanks for all the updates !

EDIT :
mmm, I may have found a few oddities between ESN's site and the current palmod.
Thinking about it, I re-checked what I was doing at the time of 1.66 version and tried to tie loose ends I left unfinished at the time.
I'll list everything when I'm done testing and checking a bit more, give me some time.
Still, mostly, everything works now and the "errors" are most likely due to some mistakes we did when building the database for ESN's, or maybe errors added by visitors that didn't fully understand what was going on the site and destroyed entries in various ways.
Anyway nothing breaking the program, but maybe you'll spot something useful there, who knows.

Btw, your pointers towards SFIII3 EX led me to Suupa Buu's youtube and I'm :
1) glad he's well and still active
2) very impressed with what he did lately... wow

cheers

5

ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: PalMod: color hacking for fighting games

« on: February 01, 2022, 12:44:24 pm »

Hey Preppy,

I'm glad to hear Jed's still active and aboard this project !
Very talented and passionate, doing very complicated things on many different games.
Just checked your site and I didn't notice all the updates he did to the code.
Wow, 16 colors, stage select from all stages, default unlock... nice.
Thanks Jed.

About the newer SFZ3Upper, that's cool if you manage to add this version as well at some point, but as far as I'm concerned, I have waaaaay too many games to edit right now and not enough time 

No need to include photoshop edits import as a function in palmod.
Down the road, being able to select/deselect colors directly from clicking on the preview image would prove even simpler than working in photoshop.
In PS, you may have extra layers modes, but it is still a hassle to select colors from the "matrix" image.
Plus I really like what you did with the layout where you can have an idea of the layers displayed more or less as seen in game, and then, layer by layer. This could be very effective. Great work !

On a side note, I noticed something changed in the color format on the newer palmod compared to what ESN's would generate. As far as I tried a few versions ago, the newer palmod was incompatible with ESN's.
But seeing that we still can import in palmod 1.22, then reopen in the newer one, it's no big deal... Especially since ESN's is completely broken from years of people unaware of how the site would work.

cheers,

PS : edit : Quick question are the 16 colors hack and the new music hack compatible ?
I didn't see any info about it, and I'm not sure the new tracks are not playing because of an error on my part or because f a possible incompatibility (the 16 colors is the one I installed last).

6

ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: PalMod: color hacking for fighting games

« on: January 30, 2022, 07:31:55 am »

Hey Preppy, thanks for your reply.

SFIII:3S EX sounds great, I'll wait and see, also, updated stages in mvc2 could be cool... I kinda like them as they are, except for that huge clown balloon that I would love to get rid of.
Funny, I searched a bit online the other day if there was a way to get rid of that clown now and came across an old thread where Jedposum ripped apart mvc2, with no luck about the stages.
Go TV !

Thanks about the SFZ3 Upper info, I think I got rid of that version a week ago as it's a bit deprecated now
Well, it doesn't matter, I have far too many games to edit if I'm bored with 3S, Vampire Savior and mvc2.
Plus I like SFZ3 colors.

Cool about the fix, I'll give the select by clicking a try then, this should help fix a couple of difficult edits.
And about the possibility of adding to the selection by clicking on the fly, a maybe is already cool, thanks !

On the subject, though, I haven't bothered editing stages with the new palmod yet, it is too complicated to select them as it is right now, so I kept using photoshop+ESN's.
I still have photoshop edits I never could try as ESN's site hangs.
But your re-rips allowed me to fix long lasting errors we made when ripping 3S's stages back then, great !

And I'm fine with the window size, just asking.

cheers.

7

ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: PalMod: color hacking for fighting games

« on: January 25, 2022, 06:43:15 am »

Hey Preppy, I tried the newer palmod this past year and I'm really impressed with all the work that went there. It's incredible ! 
The number of supported games is unbelievable, the spritesheets are really neat, I haven't tried to add unknown games yet but it's really cool to know it is possible.
I'm really happy with it, Now it is so much easier to edit things and the games I tried are thoroughly covered... I have a few questions and requests though, so here they are :

- What is SFIII:3S EX in your list ? EX edition ??? What, a new hack ?

- What is the expected format for Street Fighter Zero 3 Upper on NAOMI ?
The only version I found is a zip+chd and palmod doesn't recognize it.

- The new feature "clicks show color in palette" is dope, it's a definitive improvement to edit portraits, backgrounds and 3S palettes which are big and not as well organized as Mvc2's.
But right now, unless I missed something, it's a bit pointless as you can only select colors one at a time, and you loose your selection as soon as you drag the previewed image to look at another sprite that was out of your screen. Maybe it is because my screen is small, but I drag the spritesheet all the time plus I always edit several colors at a time.
A small change could remedy this :
you have to manually check this option in the settings list for the function to be active.
Could it be toggled on/off if you CTRL+click or simple click ?
That way you could still normally drag the image in the preview window by clicking on it without CTRL held and pick colors with CTRL+click at any time.
Also, could any further CTRL+click on a different color add to the selection ? (and CTRL+cilck on an already selected color take it out of the selection)
That would make things so much easier.

- I don't have such a big screen, and I used to work with two palmods opened, to temporary stack colors, or have the originals as reference. Now, the new editor window is slightly bigger, the spritesheets tend to take space... it is difficult to get everything on screen at once.
Could the editor's window size be somewhat adjustable, up to the point where everything is as compact as possible ? Maybe a simple dragable corner, down to the right would do it.




thanks to all the team for the work, I'm really looking forward to what's next !

8

Personal Projects / Re: Final Fight AE CPS2 Beta Starts February 1st!

« on: December 27, 2021, 10:42:10 am »

Hey,
@GameHAckFan & @Anubi 2 , you could also contribute to Palmod :

http://zachd.com/palmod/

Currently, it doesn't support Final Fight or Final Fight anniversary, but it already supports tons of games, mostly but not only arcade ones.
Adding support there shouldn't be more difficult, provided you know the palette's addresses.
I mean, even if the team wasn't interested (which I doubt), there is now a "unknown game" mode that lets you fiddle with it all by yourself.

Also the next fixes and updates to this hack seem incredible, Grego, thanks a lot !

9

Personal Projects / Re: Secret of Mana, Turbo - Beta 210818

« on: September 15, 2021, 12:44:02 pm »

Hello again, it's been some time since I post something, I find the pixel work harder this time and I am not 100% satisfied with it, but I hope to enhance it in future versions (it was hard making the new hair animations, especially the Randi hair). This is the walking front animation sequences.



The references are still the same, Hawk, Angela and Carlie from Seiken Densetsu 3.

The colors tiles are the repeated tiles and the mirror tiles, there are some rare tiles positions in the animation sequence of Randi, I hope not to have made any mistakes.



If there's any color which does not belong to the palette, it´s a intruder color result of the pixel work, and it will be removed. On the other hand, I will do something with the compatibility problems of the palette colors with the background game colors (thanks Queue).

See you later.

Wow, this is all very impressive, it is beautiful, congratulations !

If I may add constructive feedback, Randy's hair normally would almost roll over his face before flipping back into place after each step.
You missed that detail in your rendition and the hair look a bit flat.
I think in general, the original art being simpler, the devs chose to enforce movement by zooming in an exaggerated way on things moving forward at the end of the move (girl and guy's hand for example).
Just my opinion, anyway it is very difficult and really nice !

10

Newcomer's Board / Re: Mame IPS patches?

« on: July 11, 2021, 05:39:45 pm »

I think I understand your problem.
The CPS3 roms have been redumped or changed format a few years ago.
Old format went like 10, 51, etc...
The newer format is something like simm_1.1, simm_1.2, etc... (quoting from memory, so this is a bit inacurate, but you should get the picture).
I have a small utility taht allows to convert CPS3 rom files one way or the other.
So you could turn your pathced 10 into the fourn new corresponding roms (and recreate IPS patches if you want to softpatch).

Here is the utility :

https://www.mediafire.com/file/gbwb3ffw5qpac8w/CPS3ROMconverter.7z/file

11

Personal Projects / Re: STREET FIGHTER 2 DELUXE NES

« on: March 24, 2021, 01:38:31 pm »

Hey all, I just thought I'd let you know that you really made me interested in something I had zero interest for.
Your work is really amazing and very inspiring. keep it up ! 

12

ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: Hack ideas: for those without the skill but with all the ideas.

« on: October 22, 2020, 01:29:06 pm »

Gegege no Kitarou: Gyakushuu! Youma Daikessen on PS1/PSX is one of the most beautiful 2D games ever made.

It is an adaptation from Shigeru Mizuki's famous manga.

If I'm not mistaken, this is the very last game released on PSX, so it got next to no press and stayed in Japan.
Even today, it is pretty much unknown.

There is a Saturn version, bu I couldn't find an iso/bin that would work in retroarch, so I couldn't compare.









It is beautiful, has a unique macabre atmosphere, huge bosses, great voice actors doing all the dialogues, impressive music both traditional Japanese while very bold, and run 'n' gun platformer style, think a bit of megaman and Contra.
And yes, Kitaro has two different sets of sprites when facing left and right.

Sadly, some aspects of the gameplay make it a pain to play.

If these were to be addressed, this could be an excellent and very original platformer.

Namely the problems and some solutions may be :

- Kitaro's projectiles are way too weak, enemies come continuously and you can hardly kill them all before they come to contact, even though you keep mashing the button.
> buff the strenght of Kitaro's projectiles and add an autofire.

- Kitaro has two main types of attacks mapped on the same button : 1) shooting his hair, 2) shooting a sandal. If you keep the button pressed he moves freely and stops shooting hair to charge the sandal attack, megaman style.
The sandal attack is a homing attack that goes after every enemy and most projectiles on screen, but Kitaro can't move anymore while waiting for his sandal to come back. This is a real pain.
> change the button mapping and add an autofire to the hair attack
> Let Kitaro move while the sandal is away and map the sandal charge to a shoulder button

- Kitaro's jump is terrible. If you jump forward and let go of the controller he keeps gliding down forward. There are some cool platforming moments that are a bit tedious because of this and because you get through some platforms since the jumps are so tight.
> fix his jump controls, and maybe increase it a bit. Also, a solution could be to add a double jump to Kitaro, using his crouching animation as a link, like Oro is Street Fighter III 3rd Strike :
https://youtu.be/YOpH54eMg8c?t=220.

- Kitaro has a repelling move but the animation is too slow, so it is a bit hard to time, thus making it useless.
> make this animation faster

- Kitaro has a few other special attacks that all depend on the sandal charge, it's very tedious and keeps you from fighting if you want to use it.
> remap these attacks (they both use some shoulder button)

- there is an overworld to select your stage like in Super Mario world.
Once you've beaten a stage, you have to beat it again to go through, and the revisits don't add anything.

- after a while Kitaro can choose some yokai friends with special abilities and summon them in game.
Sounds cool but they are not that useful.
> no idea what to do there...

- Kitaro's mobility could be improved reusing his falling down animations to let him slide under projectiles, megaman style.

- you can shoot in many different directions, but Kitaro can't shoot in diagonals without moving.
> again some different button mapping could allow him to stay in the same spot to aim.

I think that's about it.

Also, the game could be translated
Hope somebody takes interest in this game as it is worth testing.

Improvements could go further and make it a great game if levels were to be edited/extended to take advantage of an increased mobility.

[Spoiler:]

13

ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: PalMod: color hacking for fighting games

« on: October 16, 2020, 04:32:43 pm »

Thanks for your reply, actually, after writing, I had a look into your version 1.66 and it's great !
Congratulations and big thanks to all the people who ported all our old rips, it must have been e huge work.
It's nice to see it's been useful for others

I must have missed tons of things you've added since there is so much to look at now, but I noticed a few things that may not be on ESN's that I had found and gave up on adding to the site because I lacked the time.

Here is what I found in my files (sorry if I double some of your entries, sometimes you have the palette and not the art so, I'm not sure we're describing the same thing :

Code: [Select]

Gouki - Fireball + Impact
0x00706A02
0x00706A3C

Gouki - Triple Fireball + Impact
0x00706B02
0x00706B3C

Gouki - Air fireball and Air SA1
0x00706A7E
0x00706ABA

Gouki - SA1 (ground)
0x00706A84
0x00706AFC

Urien - Player 2 Intro suit
0x00706882
0x00706976

Urien - Fireball and Impact
0x00706780
0x00706800

Urien - SA3 Player 1
0x00706700
0x00706780

Urien - SA3 Player 2
0x00706980
0x00706A00

Gouki - SA animation colors part 1 (first 64 colors are also parry colors)
0x00769080
0x00769200

Gouki - SA animation colors part 2
0x00707900
0x00707980

Shin Gouki stage - Entire stage
0x0074D280
0x0074DB00

Shin Gouki stage - tinted
0x0074DB00
0x0074E380

VS Screen - VS LOGO State 1 (grey)
0x0070C780
0x0070C800

Select Screen - Blue Arrows
0x00709AC8
0x00709B00

Select Background - Tinted
0x0070EB80
0x0070EC00

Character Select Screen - 1P and 2P selector cursor rings
0x00709A20
0x00709A30

In Game Misc - Versus Screen
0x0070A680
0x0070B280

Not sure about this one : Versus animation (logo ?)
0x0070A600
0x0070B300
Also, here is a pack with extra graphics in one form or another. It's .png images that I put together in Photoshop and screenshots :

http://www.mediafire.com/file/3c4mee3qorv1yha/3S_extra_rips.zip/file

Btw, sorry about the first pack I posted, I was so happy to see an updated version that I missed some stuff.
This time I was careful to really dig things you missed

About the characters, actually you did a great job !
Each char has many sprites, and the combined Alex+chop is great.
But it's not what I meant.
Some colours are really tricky to trigger and show only in a couple frames.
Still if you did something extreme, it pops.
I think you got it all, but I'll try to check.

Sorry for the following wall of text that could sound like ungrateful criticism.
It is not, I really can barely imagine the sum of efforts that went into this and it seems you really strive to make Palmod the ultimate editing program.
It's just things I noticed as I know the game really well if you want to improve even further your program. Not big things by any mean :

Spoiler:

From the top of my head, I may be mistaken, but :

- Ryu and all the shotos have two extra light skin colours showing up a couple frames while throwing forward. I's row 6, column 2 & 3. I think you missed it. So it would be useful to add one of these specific frames.
(There also may be two extra colours on his gi that are tricky to trigger, I think you got them for Ryu at least. Row 2, column 2 & 3 + Row 4, Column 2 & 3.)

- Remy's lightest hair colour : Row 2 , column 3 shows as the white of his eyes during Forward+MK move, this limits what you can do with his hair and it would be nice to have this sprite as well.

- Oro is a very tricky dude.
I think you missed the lightest colour from the top of his head that shows up at the peak of his dragon punch. Row 5, Column 4.

Here it is in action :
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zdbliR-i8Z16N8p-bj--d7Twz5VbcPaL/view?usp=sharing

I'm also pretty sure you're missing big chunks of his eyes colour cycle.
This part of the pal is also used, visibly in the startup frames of his regular SA2.
One good addition may be the one frame where his whole silhouette flashes.
Also, his hands preceding that move use the same pal as well. Sorry, I don't remember all of it that well.
Check the two spritesheets I posted in the pack with Oro if you want to check it out.
I'm almost sure you could cut out some heads/hands from there, paste it in Palmod and call it a day.

- Ken's backdash triggers a couple leftover pixels from Ryu's headband. It's located above his shoulder (two entries Row 8, column 6 & 7).

- (It's not like anyone will care with the glow effect, but Gill has 7 sets of colours (doubled, eft/right of course). You can see this briefly during Sean's intro on his stage if he shoots a ball. I remember that then Gill would not glow immediately, making it visible. I added screenshots in the pack)

That's all I remember now !
I could ask L_E_T who did tons of edits with me and researched addresses as well if you want to get thorough.
Anyway he'll probably be very glad to see you've done this much.

And here is an idea that I've been thinking of, years ago.
It's about the real hassle taht can be XCopy.
In the pack I linked, three of the images are of Twelve.
It's a big spritesheet, not usable as is, but at the bottom you'll notice I pasted a frame of every char he copies on XCOPY's startup.

This is the very first frame when he uses during this SA, it's pretty quick, but it's there, at the end of his transformation.

Surprisingly, on the original pal, the developers left big chunks of these sprites a flashy green.

Twelve's whole move set uses only the two top rows of his palette.
The Xcopy sprites use the same rows, plus the 6 extra rows left in green at the bottom of the pal.

With some blind guessing, I completed this part of the palette and replaced every green entry with a valid one copy/pasted from the two first rows used by Twelve's body.

All that for one single sprite (well, one for each char he will copy) ?

Maybe not...

I always found editing Twelve's LP palette and not editing, say, Ryu's XCopied LP pal was a throw off.
And taking the time to create 7 new Xcopy palettes for each char when you update Twelve is just nonsense.

I thought a programmer could make an easy workaround.

Maybe you could use the data that I provide (the 3 Twelve spritesheets+the 2 palmod screenshot) at your advantage to automate the process of creating every character's XCopied pal from Twelve's.

To be clear.
You could create a custom LP pal for Twelve using all 64 colours, like I did on one of these spritesheets.
And then a bit of code could probably remap the used colours from Twelve's pal to every other char's corresponding XCopied pal.

My test was just a blind guess game, I did it without the sprites, it could be vastly improved upon with these sprites added to Palmod.

The 7x20 characters Xcopied palettes generated automatically and accurately would be a leap towards accuracy and years stupid work saved.

Well, it's just a thought.

Cheers mate

PS, the unknown game feature would mean I could edit Super Metroid with it ? yeah !

14

ROM Hacking Discussion / Re: PalMod: color hacking for fighting games

« on: October 15, 2020, 03:14:39 pm »

Hey Preppy,

I'm very glad I checked the Rom Hacking Discussion tab today (this is the first time I do that in about two years) as I could discover your post.

I'm impressed by the number of games you've added !
Palmod is simply the best user/artist friendly tool there is...

For those who don't know Palmod, here are the little things that make it great :

- You can open two palmod windows independently, keeping one as visual reference, or to temporarily stock colors or a variant palette to copy/paste from.

- you can select several colours at once with CTRL + Click, copy/paste numerous colours all at once, just using the every days shortcuts : CTRL+C > CTRL+V

- the interface lets you switch from Photoshop-like Hue, Saturation, Light controls, to Individual RGB sliders.

- You can modify several colours at once

- the sliders recognize the mouse sroll wheel !

After many years editing 3S, dabbing at MVC2, modding Bare Knuckles III, I finally came across the tools to edit Super Metroid (I wanted to play Hyper Metroid but can't stand the palettes).
Man, these are effective, but they are incredibly cumbersome.

I really missed Palmod.   

I haven't checked your latest version as of now, so don't mind me if it's already done, or if it's not your plan, here are a couple ideas :

- have you added 3S's portraits, icons, and various bars/interfaces ?
All the addresses, along with graphic content is on ESN's site. Some content has been deleted by clumsy visitors, but I'm sure ESN has a backup for everything else.
Or I may have some more resources on my HDD.

Here :

http://ensabahnur.free.fr/ROM_51_SearchColor/updatePalette.php

- have you already, or do you plan on extending a bit the spritesheet for each character (3S), so that you could see every colour on the palette in use at once ?
Back in the days, ESN proposed me to make some full sprite sheets but I really got overboard with the number of sprites displayed for his own site...
Just a full sprite + Cropped bits for specific colours could do it as that game is pretty complex and an annoying number of hues don't show on the idle stance.
I think I still remember many of them correspond to what move.

- Some suggestions for games (and these are just suggestions, I already have enough games to keep me busy for years) :

- Final Fight 30th anniversary edition
- The Last Blade 2
- Matrimelee

Anyway, thanks for your work on Palmod, I really had a great time playing around with it.

EDIT:
Wow.
You've been adding lots of stuff !
I'm not sure I saw these... if it can be of any use (noticed the "rerip" on the rom name):

http://www.mediafire.com/file/5cbqqlagpsk0ela/3S_extras.zip/file

15

Personal Projects / Re: Dr. Mario DX

« on: July 26, 2020, 06:23:41 am »

Beautiful.
Didn't notice anything wrong when playing yesterday !
Thanks and bravo 

16

Personal Projects / Re: Dr. Mario DX

« on: July 20, 2020, 04:58:12 am »

I will test it again, actually I played a bit, but had no time to check things closer.
I play on emulator, I own only one GB with no means of playing a rom.
I'll post when I come back. It all looks really good.
The different blacks are interesting but, in  my opinion, it looks a bit weird as for the looser and the winner, the light black squares are not on the same level.
I would either use one or the other, but for the full bottle maybe.
The ending looks nice too ! (I'll check the lvl 5 one as well, but the lvl 20 is out of my league).
cheers

17

Personal Projects / Re: Dr. Mario DX

« on: July 18, 2020, 07:46:06 pm »

Hey I just saw your message, too bad I haven't seen it earlier, I just spent some time play testing the alpha 4 version in 2P and took screenshots for you

I'll try the beta 1 when I come back and let you know if I find anything else.

Just in case, on the alpha 4, I found this ;
- there are different black colors, a full black and a lighter black, on the 2P win/loose screens
- when the music speeds up, Mario moves his hand in the back and it turns yellow. I also think there are a couple pixels that probably shouldn't be here on this sprite between his hip and yellow hand.

I also don't think the music issue is important, I just wanted to inform you
Thanks again, it's great !

18

Personal Projects / Re: Dr. Mario DX

« on: July 18, 2020, 10:27:50 am »

Yeah !
Downloaded and installed, I hope I'll have time to test it with my gf this weekend, we're leaving for a while on monday.
Otherwise, I'll tell you if I find anything when I get back.
I found the "ending" for levl:10 on High speed to have some palettes trouble and the music didn't loop correctly, but that was with alpah3.
I'll check if it still happens with alpha 4 and send you pics as soon as I have time.

Thanks for the time you took it looks really great !

19

Personal Projects / Re: Dr. Mario DX

« on: July 14, 2020, 07:48:13 am »

Great !
thank you for your work !

20

Personal Projects / Re: Metroid: Space Complex (Metroid 1 NES Hack WIP)

« on: June 16, 2020, 01:04:38 pm »

very beautiful, I'm amazed you're pulling this on NES !