NES Tile/Sprite Editing Questions

[RetroNuva10]

So, after looking at several NES ROM's, I've found it rather difficult to edit sprites and tiles, since they all look rather similar when 8x8. I've tried using multiple programs to attempt to arrange them (such as YY-CHR, with the 16x16 arrangement view), but this doesn't always help. For example, editing Zelda (NES)'s title screen is rather tedious from my experience, since many of the tiles look nearly identical. Additionally, other tiles/sprites from this game have an odd line on the bottom-most pixel row.

My question: is there any emulator out there that allows you to identify exact locations (in the ROM) of sprites/tiles currently displayed. If not, what is the very best way of going about doing this? FCEUX tells you ID's of tiles/sprites, but only in the PPU, not the ROM (where you, from my understanding, have to actually edit them).

[Disch]

I've tried using multiple programs to attempt to arrange them (such as YY-CHR, with the 16x16 arrangement view), but this doesn't always help. For example, editing Zelda (NES)'s title screen is rather tedious from my experience, since many of the tiles look nearly identical.

YY-CHR has the best auto-arrangement functionality of any tile editor I've used, and even though it's UI is pretty much garbage, it's less garbage than most of the other tile editors (seriously, if someone has a recommendation for a tile editor that isn't garbage, I'm all ears).

Additionally, other tiles/sprites from this game have an odd line on the bottom-most pixel row.

You're at the wrong offset.  Tile editors will assume the graphics start at a 16-byte boundary, but this isn't the case with all games.  In YY-CHR you can adjust the offset by individual bytes with the + and - buttons.  Try hitting those until the graphics look right.

My question: is there any emulator out there that allows you to identify exact locations (in the ROM) of sprites/tiles currently displayed

No.

While technically possible to trace where tiles come from in ROM [in some cases], putting that in an emu would be extremely clunky, would fail in many cases (like if the graphics are compressed or in any way processed prior to transferring to CHR-RAM), and would be of extremely limited use.  Also a lot of the time it isn't necessary as a ton of games use CHR-ROM.

[RetroNuva10]

Thank you! At last I can modify sprites and tiles.

[nesrocks]

YY-CHR has the best auto-arrangement functionality of any tile editor I've used, and even though it's UI is pretty much garbage, it's less garbage than most of the other tile editors (seriously, if someone has a recommendation for a tile editor that isn't garbage, I'm all ears).

What is this auto arrangement you're talking about? Is it the Pattern drop down menu?

What I do for backgrounds is I open fceux, go to the level/screen containing the tileset I want to edit, pause, go to the hex editor, file, dump PPU. Then I use a tool called PPUSPLIT to open that dumped file. It will generate a few files, but the important one is the nam file. Then you go to yy-chr, open the rom, browse to the tileset, go to bg editor and open that NAM file. Now you have a pretty good reference of how the tiles are arranged, and you can right click a tile on the bg editor screen and it will highlight which tile it is on the tileset.

Get PPU SPLIT here:
https://chipmusic.org/forums/topic/2080/glitchnes-02/

For sprites I don't know of any way other than doing it manually or seeing if the Pattern drop down has a compatible display mode.

[PolishedTurd]

What I do for backgrounds is I open fceux, go to the level/screen containing the tileset I want to edit, pause, go to the hex editor, file, dump PPU. Then I use a tool called PPUSPLIT to open that dumped file. It will generate a few files, but the important one is the nam file. Then you go to yy-chr, open the rom, browse to the tileset, go to bg editor and open that NAM file. Now you have a pretty good reference of how the tiles are arranged, and you can right click a tile on the bg editor screen and it will highlight which tile it is on the tileset.

Get PPU SPLIT here:
https://chipmusic.org/forums/topic/2080/glitchnes-02/

This was a big help to me! Would you be willing to post it as a tutorial Document? And would it be allowed for RHDN to host the PPU SPLIT program in Utilities? Fantastic stuff, thank you.