Final Fantasy IV Graphics Update (SNES)

[Granville]

Hm, I tried some downsampling and color reductions of my own on the PSP portrait of Adult Rydia (kind of like what I did with the battle BG's earlier in this thread). Reduced to 32x32 pixels, I wasn't sure what specific colors you need them to be so I just automated the color reduction process. I'm not exactly a very good artist, but I don't personally see a problem. I used Irfanview to do this-



I'll try the other portraits and see what they look like using the same process. Let me know if the above is something that can work for you.

EDIT- Here's my attempt with Paladin Cecil's portrait (i'll continue to add the other characters to this post as I make them):

Dark Knight Cecil:

Kain:

[SunGodPortal]

I used Irfanview to do this-

Man, I'm glad you mentioned this. I have some stuff I need to do and this would be perfect for it, but I couldn't remember the name. Thanks.

[Granville]

Rosa's portrait is giving me some trouble, the automated color process is giving me issues with maintaining her green eye color. I'll see what I can do for her but will come back to her later. I'll check the others first.

Here's Edge, i used a hopefully obvious color for the background transparency (rethinking my method of reducing colors to see if i can get some better quality on the faces)-

Fusoya-

Cid-

Tella-

Child Rydia-

Edward-

Yang-

Palom-

Porom-

Golbez-


It's not perfect, but here are my attempts with Rosa's portrait (with a few personal edits of my own)-


The "dead" versions of the character portraits are just exact color inversions of the normal ones.

[chillyfeez]

Reduced to 32x32 pixels, I wasn't sure what specific colors you need them to be so I just automated the color reduction process. I'm not exactly a very good artist, but I don't personally see a problem.

Assuming Gedankenschild didn't change this (and I don't know why he would), the portraits each have their own dedicated palette, so the color selection doesn't have to jive with anything else at all, actually.
I think those look great.
Of course, it's not my project, so that's just some dude's opinion.

[Grimoire LD]

Any portraits are better than the trash they used for the GBA version. These downscaled PSP ones look quite fantastic! I'd love to see if they would actually work on the SNES though.

[azidahaka]

Rosa's portrait is giving me some trouble, the automated color process is giving me issues with maintaining her green eye color. I'll see what I can do for her but will come back to her later. I'll check the others first.

Here's Edge, i used a hopefully obvious color for the background transparency (rethinking my method of reducing colors to see if i can get some better quality on the faces)-

Fusoya-

Cid-

Tella-

Child Rydia-

Edward-

Yang-

Palom-

Porom-

Golbez-


It's not perfect, but here are my attempts with Rosa's portrait (with a few personal edits of my own)-


The "dead" versions of the character portraits are just exact color inversions of the normal ones.

Looking good. How many colors are you planning for these portraits? I Rosa's ones the only problematic one at the moment?

[Granville]

Looking good. How many colors are you planning for these portraits? I Rosa's ones the only problematic one at the moment?

I'm not actually part of the project or anything, i'm done with what I was doing. They're all 32x32 pixels and use a max of 16 colors.

Gedankenschild mentioned he only uses MSPaint and wasn't happy with how his converted portraits look, I gave it a try. Irfanview has some decent automated tools built in for resizing and decreasing the colors. He mentioned 32x32 pixels and 16 colors, so I adhered to those parameters. Most of the portraits ended up looking pretty good IMO. I don't know if the actual color values will work, but maybe he can make use of them in some way and build on them from there.

The problem with Rosa was her eye color, she's supposed to have green eyes but Irfanview's automatic color reduction tool made it look really bad and creepy. I ended up editing her eyes by hand. I'm again not really much of an artist, but I personally think the results look okay. If anyone else wants to make further alterations then feel free-

[Gedankenschild]

Those look so much better than what I attempted, Granville. Thanks once more!
I think I'll provide alternatives, so everyone can choose what they like best and the PSP ones should definitely be part of that.

And chillyfeez is right. The only limitations are a resolution of 32x32 and 16 colors of your choice each. I should have mentioned that one of these colors is used for the transparent background, I'm glad that was taken into account (looking at the green backgrounds).

[azidahaka]

Yup very good looking!

I'm available if there's other needs.

Btw How does this process of "remaking" work? Would it be possible on other games? Any tutorial?

I find this a very interesting project and would like to understand the inner tricks of it!

[Vanya]

Those portraits look fantastic! Well done. Those would definitely be my choice.
About the inverted palette for the dead state, I think I'd rather they just use a grey or sepia palette.

[Gedankenschild]

Yup very good looking!

I'm available if there's other needs.

Btw How does this process of "remaking" work? Would it be possible on other games? Any tutorial?

I find this a very interesting project and would like to understand the inner tricks of it!

What I'm doing involves a few steps. The first is the conversion from 8 color graphics to 16 color graphics. You need to locate the loading code and tweak it to load the 4th bit. Then you need to tweak the palette loading code to load twice as many colors. And since both 4bpp graphics and palettes take up more space, nothing will fit where it used to. You will have to expand the ROM and put the new graphics and palettes in the new area. As a result nothing is where the game expects it to be and you need to find out how and where the game determines from where to load what. Sometimes you just have to overwrite a particular address. Other times you'll be rewriting entire tables and such to make it work.
I can give a few examples of code changes and explanations as I go along if there's interest...

[Grimoire LD]

More documentation is never a bad thing, I'd say go for it.

[Gemini]

So, about field tilesets, does the Snes version allocate enough VRAM for you to store full GBA/WSC tiles? I guess character sheets shouldn't be a problem, at least in that case you have 1:1 copies.

[Gedankenschild]

So, about field tilesets, does the Snes version allocate enough VRAM for you to store full GBA/WSC tiles? I guess character sheets shouldn't be a problem, at least in that case you have 1:1 copies.

It doesn't. The WSC/GBA tilesets are up to 512 tiles in size. The SNES version allocates VRAM for 384 tiles. Now, that's not going to be a problem with most sets, since they don't use anywhere near the maximum available space. The town tileset, however, does.

I have a solution, though: I spent some time recently looking at various tables and their loading codes. It is possible to move those tables elsewhere and expand them. If I want to, I can give each town its own tileset and/or tile arrangement maps. Since no town uses everything (some don't have paved streets, others don't have water) the limitations can be worked around.

The character sheets will present a bit of a challenge. While the SNES version simply mirrors the lower parts when walking, the remake has tiles for everything and is a bit larger as a result. It's even worse when it comes to townspeople. They are NOT actually palette swaps anymore. You can't use the blue shirt man's palette with the red shirt man. Someone will have to do some pixel art here (and I fear it's gonna be me)...

[Vanya]

Editing those sprites for use as palette swaps should be easy.
I've actually been recovering from a nasty cold so I have a couple of days of free time.
Send me the images you need worked on with instructions and I'll have them for you in no time.

[azidahaka]

What I'm doing involves a few steps. The first is the conversion from 8 color graphics to 16 color graphics. You need to locate the loading code and tweak it to load the 4th bit. Then you need to tweak the palette loading code to load twice as many colors. And since both 4bpp graphics and palettes take up more space, nothing will fit where it used to. You will have to expand the ROM and put the new graphics and palettes in the new area. As a result nothing is where the game expects it to be and you need to find out how and where the game determines from where to load what. Sometimes you just have to overwrite a particular address. Other times you'll be rewriting entire tables and such to make it work.
I can give a few examples of code changes and explanations as I go along if there's interest...

Sounds pretty complicated, but fascinating! You are doubling the color on screen.

So you have 16 colors per sprite/palette correct?
What is the usable limit of colors on screen after this "trick" you have applied?

[Gedankenschild]

Editing those sprites for use as palette swaps should be easy.
I've actually been recovering from a nasty cold so I have a couple of days of free time.
Send me the images you need worked on with instructions and I'll have them for you in no time.

OK, I ripped the Townspeople from the WSC ROM some time ago. There are three palettes used for them. In the original it's the same. However: In the original these are all designed to work with the same graphics. In the remake each palette has its own dedicated tileset, so they are not structurally compatible.







What we need are three palettes that work with the same tileset. As in color 1 is the darkest clothing color. Color 13 is the brightest hair color and so on. These are just examples. You could structure these palettes as you please. Sprites that only appear on one set don't need to be compatible with the others, like Big Chocobo, Anna or Rydia's mother.



The blue and purple clothing palettes are already highly similar, so it makes sense to use them as a starting point. You might also decide to invest more in hair color, as the red clothing palette does. It's up to you.
I can provide you with TileLayerPro palettes for these as well. That way you could load the bitmaps and compare how they look with each palette applied.

Sounds pretty complicated, but fascinating! You are doubling the color on screen.

So you have 16 colors per sprite/palette correct?
What is the usable limit of colors on screen after this "trick" you have applied?

Yes, we get a 16 color palette per graphic tile. The SNES can display 256 colors at once, or 16 palettes.

[chillyfeez]

Hmm... Why does the Mysidian Elder have all three palettes?

[azidahaka]

OK, I ripped the Townspeople from the WSC ROM some time ago. There are three palettes used for them. In the original it's the same. However: In the original these are all designed to work with the same graphics. In the remake each palette has its own dedicated tileset, so they are not structurally compatible.




What we need are three palettes that work with the same tileset. As in color 1 is the darkest clothing color. Color 13 is the brightest hair color and so on. These are just examples. You could structure these palettes as you please. Sprites that only appear on one set don't need to be compatible with the others, like Big Chocobo, Anna or Rydia's mother.



The blue and purple clothing palettes are already highly similar, so it makes sense to use them as a starting point. You might also decide to invest more in hair color, as the red clothing palette does. It's up to you.
I can provide you with TileLayerPro palettes for these as well. That way you could load the bitmaps and compare how they look with each palette applied.

Yes, we get a 16 color palette per graphic tile. The SNES can display 256 colors at once, or 16 palettes.

I tried to work a tiny little bit on the sprites some manually and used a bit of dithering on some others; i need to find a software that allows for palette changes without doing a mess manually

Let me know it it looks any little bit better


the little changes are easily seen on the bomb and some of the mantles. Mostly negligible effect, but it might get a bit better on a palette change.

EDIT: I misread what you needed silly me

[Gedankenschild]

Hmm... Why does the Mysidian Elder have all three palettes?

Interestingly enough he is never used in the Wonderswan version. He does make an appearance in one of the added missions of the GBA version. It makes me wonder whether there were plans to add additional content to the WSC remake at first. Romancing Saga had stuff added.

EDIT: I misread what you needed silly me

Oh my, should I have been more clear? Let's use an example:



Look at the above row. That's how the young man is supposed to look like.
For the second row I took the man in blue tileset and applied the three palettes to him. Purple is almost right. Only the green on his right leg turned grey. The blond man, on the other hand, is totally different. That's because the colors are arranged completely differently for that palette in particular. And since the SNES version uses only one set of graphics, the colors need to be rearranged to be interchangeable.