[Bahamut ZERO]

Lately I've been playing around with random SNES roms in WindHex/YYchr to take a small break from FF4 hacking, and I think I finally found a fun side project of sorts: Starfox for SNES.

So far I've done some dialogue, some of the scoring screen after levels, and redid the stage names to be offensive for my entertainment (If you've seen the Republic Space Rangers show while playing Grand Theft Auto 4-5, you have a good idea of the new text  ).

If anyone reading this is interested on editing Starfox text, it's setup in ASCII so Stage names and the score screen are ALL CAPS while dialogue itself is lowercase.


Anyway, my problem is... the graphics are compressed.  I was expecting this given how it's one of the only SNES I've come across that uses polygons, though I was hoping things like the character portraits and the "SCRAMBLE" message (appears at the start of Leve 1) wouldn't be compressed (which isn't the case)


Is there a method to Decompressing SNES graphics? Since Starfox came out in 1993, I'm hoping it used a compression method used by other games of the time, and not it's own special compression (not that I have a clue of what I'm talking about on this, as this is new territory for me).

[dougeff]

I thought the graphics aren't so much compressed as they are a series of flat polygons that the 3d chip renders each frame. To change them would be to redifine their polygon coordinates. Unless you're talking about title screens and such.

[Bahamut ZERO]

What I'm looking for in terms of graphics are more along the lines of:

The characters bust on the title screen

The "Starfox"  graphic used on the title screen

The character portraits for characters speaking during levels

"SCRAMBLE"  graphic used during the intro before level 1


I've yet to come across any of these while scouring through the rom in YYCHR in 3BPP and 4BPP, which led me to think those particular ones are compressed.

[Chpexo]

.

[Zoinkity]

The characters pics are interleaved, so the high 4(?) bits belong to one image and the low bits to another.  It's similar to how ni-he fonts are done if that makes any sense.

[Bahamut ZERO]

I couldn't find most the graphics you were specifying, but there are definitely graphics from 0x90000 to 0x9FFFF that are apparent in the 8BPP format. While they are jumbled, they do look like graphics from the game, I see some character portraits as well. Have fun reverse engineering!

8BPP? I didn't know it could go above 4BPP... that's awesome! Time to hunt  around for a plugin to view it in the correct format then. 

The characters pics are interleaved, so the high 4(?) bits belong to one image and the low bits to another.  It's similar to how ni-he fonts are done if that makes any sense.

I... think I understand you to a degree.

[Chpexo]

.

[Bahamut ZERO]

A quick seach hints at it's existance.  Apparently YYCHHR 0.99 BETA Russian Edition comes with a plugin for 8BPP SNES graphics. 

[KingMike]

Wouldn't SNES 8BPP be Mode 7 (it sounds like it, but I've never done mode 7 graphics hacking)?

[SunGodPortal]

A quick seach hints at it's existance.  Apparently YYCHHR 0.99 BETA Russian Edition comes with a plugin for 8BPP SNES graphics.

Can these be added/removed by the user? Plugins usually can be but I have yet to find a way with YY-CHR.

[Bahamut ZERO]

I think it's for YYCHR.NET edition, which is slightly different from normal YYCHR. With Google Translate I managed to view the page for the Russian editon that includes the 8BPP plugin, but I couldn't for the life of me see a download link. Oddly enough, this version of YYCHR's never been uploaded to RHDN, which it ought to be just for that lovely plugin I keep reading about lol.


Since I resolved a problem with another project I'm working on, I'm going to try tracking down YYCHR.NET Russian Edition again.

[dougeff]

Is this it?
http://chief-net.ru/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=426&Itemid=55

[Bahamut ZERO]

It sure is! You're a live saver!