[Preppy]

Howdy excellent peoples!

I've been working on a PALette MODification tool for fighting game ROMs for a while now, and realized I should mention it here in case it was useful.

It's meant to make palette editing these ROMs practical for users.  It adds a straight-forward front-end to the hex editing required, with live previews for most sprites.  The supported arcade ROM game list right now is:

* Art of Fighting 1 (Neo-Geo)
* Art of Fighting 3 (Neo-Geo)
* Battle Master: KnS (SNES)
* Bishojo Senshi Sailor Moon S - JR (SNES)
* Bleach DS (Nintendo DS)
* Breakers Revenge (Neo-Geo)
* Clay Fighter: TE (SNES)
* CVS2 (NAOMI)
* Cyberbots: Fullmetal Madness (Arcade)
* Dan-Ku-Ga (Arcade)
* DBZ: Hyper Dimension (SNES)
* Dengeki Bunko: Fighting Climax IGNITION
* Double Dragon (Neo-Geo)
* Dragon Ball Z: Extreme Butoden (Nintendo 3DS)
* Fatal Fury Special (Neo-Geo)
* Fatal Fury Special (SNES)
* Fatal Fury: King of Fighters (Neo-Geo)
* Garou: MotW (Neo-Geo Prototype)
* Garou: MotW (Neo-Geo)
* Garou: MotW (Steam)
* GGXX:AC+R (PlayStation 3)
* GGXX:AC+R (Steam)
* Guilty Gear #Reload (Steam/Community Port)
* Gundam Wing: Endless Duel (SNES)
* Jojo's (Japan)
* Jojo's Bizarre Adventure (SNES)
* Jojo's Venture (Japan)
* Karnov's Revenge / Fighter's History Dynamite
* Killer Instinct (Rev 1 SNES)
* King of Fighters '94 (Neo-Geo)
* King of Fighters '95 (Neo-Geo)
* King of Fighters '96 (Neo-Geo)
* King of Fighters '97 (Neo-Geo)
* King of Fighters '97 Anniversary Edition (Neo-Geo)
* King of Fighters '98 (Neo-Geo)
* King of Fighters '98AE (2016 Romhack)
* King of Fighters '99AE (Neo-Geo)
* King of Fighters 2000n (Neo-Geo)
* King of Fighters 2001 (Neo-Geo)
* King of Fighters 2002 (Neo-Geo)
* King of Fighters 2002PS2 (Neo-Geo hack)
* King of Fighters 2002UM (Steam)
* King of Fighters 2003: 2004 EX Ultra Plus
* King of Fighters XI (Atomiswave)
* King of the Monsters (Neo-Geo)
* Kizuna Encounter (Neo-Geo)
* The Last Blade (Neo-Geo)
* The Last Blade 2 (Neo-Geo)
* Magical Drop III (Neo-Geo)
* Martial Masters (PGM)
* Marvel Super Heroes: War of the Gems (SNES)
* Matrimelee (Neo-Geo)
* Mega Man X (SNES)
* Mega Man X2 (SNES)
* Mega Man X3 (SNES)
* Melty blood Actress Again Current Code
* Melty Blood: Type Lumina (Steam)
* Million Arthur Arcana Blood (Steam)
* MMPR:TFE (SNES)
* Mortal Kombat (SNES)
* Mortal Kombat II (SNES)
* MSH (CPS2)
* MSHVSF (CPS2)
* MVC (CPS2)
* MvC2 (Dreamcast)
* MvC2 (Dreamcast Palette Expansion)
* MVC2 (NAOMI)
* MVC2 (Playstation 2)
* Neo Bomberman (Neo-Geo)
* NGBC (Atomiswave)
* Ninja Masters (Neo-Geo)
* Persona 4 Arena Ultimax 2.0 (NESICA)
* Rage of the Dragons (Neo-Geo)
* Ranma Nibunnoichi: Chougi Ranbu Hen (SNES)
* Ranma Nibunnoichi: Hard Battle (SNES)
* Real Bout Fatal Fury (Neo-Geo)
* Real Bout Fatal Fury 2 (Neo-Geo)
* Real Bout Fatal Fury Special (Neo-Geo)
* Red Earth (CPS3)
* Ring of Destruction: Slam Master's II
* Samurai Shodown (Neo-Geo)
* Samurai Shodown 3 (Neo-Geo)
* Samurai Shodown 5 (Neo-Geo)
* Samurai Shodown II (Neo-Geo)
* Samurai Shodown IV (Neo-Geo)
* Samurai Shodown V Special (Neo-Geo)
* Savage Reign (Neo-Geo)
* SF2:CE (CPS1)
* SF2:HF (CPS1)
* SFA1 (CPS2)
* SFA2 (CPS2)
* SFA3 (CPS2)
* SFIII:2I (CPS3)
* SFIII:3S (CPS3 Rerip)
* SFIII:3S (Dreamcast)
* SFIII:3S EX
* SFIII:4rd Strike
* SFIII:New Generation (CPS3)
* SFIII3 (CPS3)
* Shaq Fu (SNES)
* SSF2T (CPS2)
* SSF2T:Revival (GBA)
* Street Fighter Zero 3 Upper (NAOMI)
* Super Dodge Ball (Neo-Geo)
* Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix (USA 970904)
* Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo (CPS2)
* Super Variable Geo (SNES)
* SVC Plus A
* TMNT: Tournament Fighters (SNES)
* Top Fighter 2005 (Sega)
* Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (USA SNES)
* Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[cl-r]
* Vampire Hunter 2 (CPS2)
* Vampire Savior (CPS2)
* Vampire Savior 2 (CPS2)
* Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer (Neo-Geo)
* Waku Waku 7
* Windjammers (Neo-Geo)
* X-Men: COTA (CPS2)
* X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse (SNES)
* XVSF (CSP2)

It's pretty easily extensible.  Right now it understands most popular 16/24/43 color formats (usually some form of RGB333, RGB444, RGB555, RGB666, or RGB888).  If you don't see what you want already in PalMod, it can visualize (as colors) areas of any arbitrary ROM using extension files.  Or if you just want to crib hex offsets, those are on github at https://github.com/Preppy/PalMod/tree/master/palmod/Game .  Or if you know hex offsets for palettes that PalMod doesn't support - please let me know and I'm happy to update.

You can find updates/guides at https://zachd.com/palmod .

Cheers,
-Preppy

edits: updated supported games list as of 2021/12/25

[Preppy]

Updated the supported game list as of PalMod 1.65.

One potentially useful thing for people here is that PalMod 1.65 can now generate IPS patch files for your current-to-session changes using Tools : Generate IPS File.  That's meant to help make producing ComROMs easier and the results more portable.

[thehiredgoon]

Hello. I was curious, how does one go about getting a game supported by palmod? What about implementing features? I am a big 5 Special fan but I noticed you can't edit the portraits.

~Thanks

[Preppy]

For a game to be supported by PalMod, the more data that can be presupplied the better.  We've made substantial inroads on the Capcom and SNK fighting game libraries so far, and along with that comes nice reference points that make adding other games easier.  Color format is really the first question, and then after that getting the right offsets and such are the next step.

That's correct: for 5 Special we don't have the portrait offsets yet.  There's a guide on the main website as regards how to explore the ROMs to find that kind of data.  Usually somebody gets excited about a game and helps supply the offsets, which we then in turn add to PalMod.  Sometimes even just having a correct reference sprite can be useful, as while a non-indexed sprite might have the wrong color order relative to ROM, it'd still give strong hints as to what to be looking for amongst memory.

edit: We have a PalMod development discord you're welcome to join as well.  DM me and I'll send you the link if you want: that may or may not be relevant to your interests.

[alien nose job]

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

[Preppy]

Thanks for the kind words!

> - have you added 3S's portraits, icons, and various bars/interfaces ?

Yes, current versions of PalMod support portraits, select icons, and stages for all characters.

> All the addresses, along with graphic content is on ESN's site.

The team I think has done a pretty good of importing all that data: if there's stuff still missing it's pretty easy to add.  ESN is a gold mine.

> - 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 ?

Hm.  I've tried to keep the displayed palettes isolated out to discrete sprites where viable, since I think that makes editing easier.  But it's pretty straight-forward to pair palettes (as seen in the default Alex + Flash Chop display for Alex) where particularly useful.

And you can always use an Extras file to display any arbitrary length of palette data.

>  Final Fight 30th anniversary edition

I don't think anybody has started working on that yet.

> - The Last Blade 2

Hm. I  think somebody wrote a guide on how to use PalMod with that, but I haven't heard from them.

> - Matrimelee

Matrimelee is on track to be added in PalMod version 1.68: I just wanted to finish up 1.67 before adding another new game.

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

Thanks!  It's been fun and I hope it's useful.

One change in very recent 1.67 beta builds is that there's now full "Unknown Game" support: you can load any arbitrary ROM into PalMod, change the expected color format under Settings, and then PalMod will display that ROM for you.  It's pretty useful for ROM exploration, and is pretty easily extensible if people wanted to use PalMod with pretty much any game.

[alien nose job]

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 !

[Preppy]

Thanks for your reply, actually, after writing, I had a look into your version 1.66 and it's great !

Thanks!  It's a fun project.

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.

Thank you for those additions: I've added support for them to the current builds of PalMod.

Sorry for the following wall of text that could sound like ungrateful criticism.

No worries!  I always appreciate insight and feedback.

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.

PalMod does this for MvC2, which has a lot of linked palettes.  But it does not for SF3 currently.  It's an interesting idea at the least.

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

Yep!  We've added support for a number of SNES and DS games since my last update - I think about ~20 games since October...?  It's hopefully straight-forward to figure out.  I think at this point I want my own contributions here to focus on fighting games, but I know people have been working on old Nintendo era games.  We're talking about Genesis color support in the near future. 

Happy holidays!

[Preppy]

1.70 update is now up, adding support for a bunch of games.  More usefully for random ROM hacking, it also adds support for RGB333 (Sega and such) and ARGB"7"888 for Arc Sys games.

[CartmanKusanagi]

I've been using PalMod on and off to edit SFIII colors for years. It's fantastic that it has been getting a lot of support/updates over the last year or so! It essentially gives the Steam version of KOF 2002UM the color editor that was originally exclusive to the PS2 version, which is great to see.

Also, as for requests:

• Since both the CPS2 and NAOMI versions of Street Fighter Alpha 3 are supported, would having that data be helpful with adding support for Alpha 3 Max? (I'm also wondering if already having the palettes for the CvS2 characters would help with that, too?)
  
  
• KOF XIII might be interesting (as a down the line addition, given how detailed the sprites/palettes are compared to other games that PalMod supports). While it already has an in-game color editor, I think the color selection itself is a bit limited (there are not options for brown or orange colors, for example). I did figure out a way to change the custom colors that the game lets you choose from; they're all stored as PNG files per each character's custom slots. I have little to no programming skills, so while I couldn't contribute directly, I'd probably be able to go into more detail about my findings via the Discord.

[Preppy]

Thanks!

The general knowledge gained from and sprites created to be used with the various versions of SFA3 do make it much easier, yes.  But the Alpha 3 Max PSP version uses one file per palette set and embeds those within PAC files.  So you'd first need a PAC extractor.  Once you've done that, you should be able to use PalMod's Unknown Game mode and an Extras file to open up any given extracted palette file.  It should use color format RGB555, No Alpha.  Then you just need to rebuild/repack the PAC file and recreate the ISO.

The KOF support is somewhat limited by the various encryption used: I've generally tried just sidestepping in favor of non-encrypted versions.  Most KOF support has happened because somebody has been passionate enough to help make that happen. I don't think anybody has been passionate about KOF XIII yet.

I've got the process fairly streamlined: the locations and general information discoverable via Unknown Game mode is usually enough to start figuring out the layout for any given game.  After color format, the name of the file(s) containing palettes, and some starting offsets are determined, it's a fairly smooth grind to map out a game and get it added.  If you're serious, DM me and I'll send you an invite to the PalMod Development discord where we should be able to get you up and running.  There's also a "ROM exploration" guide on the PalMod website that should enough to get you started.

[alien nose job]

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 !

[Preppy]

Thanks!  Glad you're enjoying it.

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

It's a modification of SFIII:3S from one of the team members, TVIndustries. I don't know how available it is nor whether TV has finished it yet.  TV and friends have been working on figuring out the polygon system used for for MvC2 recently to allow for updated stages.

> What is the expected format for Street Fighter Zero 3 Upper on NAOMI ?

I have support for the ROMs named StreetFighterZero3Upper.bin and street_fighter_zero_3_upper.dat.  I haven't extracted out the 'newer' CHD you're referring to: I don't remember the steps at this point to get to raw data.  If I had that it's usually pretty quick to adapt PalMod for the new locations.

> you loose your selection as soon as you drag

Ah, yeah: I can fix that.  The next build up will not reset the selected color if you click on the background.

> Also, could any further CTRL+click on a different color add to the selection ?

I'll think about this one.  That's a maybe for now.

> Could the editor's window size be somewhat adjustable, up to the point where everything is as compact as possible ?

I don't plan on doing that: most of the space in the UI is actively used in various scenarios. There's not actually a lot of dead/unused space other than in the Blink/Invert/Revert column. :\

Cheers!
-Preppy

[alien nose job]

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.

[Preppy]

>  came across an old thread where Jedposum ripped apart mvc2, with no luck about the stages.

lol - yeah, Jed is still involved and is helping with the stage project.  He's great.

>  I think I got rid of that version a week ago as it's a bit deprecated now

I didn't realize there was a new version until you mentioned it.  I got the new version, but my old CHD extraction process isn't working here.  It'd probably be pretty easy to support the new version once I figure out how to extract the CHD.

That's cool to hear - I love the ESN site.  I've thought about doing something similar with some of the PalMod data, but that's for a very rainy day when I have way way too much time.

[alien nose job]

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).

[Preppy]

>  that's cool if you manage to add this version as well at some point

If somebody wants to remind me how to extract the files out, I can take look.  My usual steps weren't working for SFZ3Upper. :\

> I noticed something changed in the color format on the newer palmod compared to what ESN's would generate.

Could you clarify?  The old PalMod 1.22 color copy strings were using a very small variable for encoding game/color information, so I was forced to use a new color string format.  I try to make it backwards-compatible as much as possible: if it is possible to have ESN work with the data (or vice versa) and I didn't do that, I can look into fixing that.

> PS : edit : Quick question are the 16 colors hack and the new music hack compatible ?

The options available to you are defined by the 1st_read.bin "version" you are using.  I made a Read Me with basic information about the changes.  I'll update that with clarity about which date revision maps to what extended logic when I get a chance.  If it's not loading the per-alternate-stage music yet and instead using the "core" stage version music, that'd be a question for Jed.

[alien nose job]

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

[Preppy]

Various members of the team have written useful scripts for interacting with and extracting sprites/previews from various platforms/emulators, so it's getting easier to work with most games.  We updated the SF3:3S portrait previews in the new release thanks to Yoshi's CPS3 sprite ripping script.

Suupa Buu/Drew's recent work is very impressive: I believe his team is currently working on injecting SF3:2i stages into SF3:3S, as well as adding characters and updating character animations.  He's looking for people interested in that area on his Discord: don't know if you're already part of that, but that might be interesting.

I've thought about enabling some sort of HTML-friendly export of RAWs from PalMod, since it'd be relatively trivial to stand up an ESN-esque website allowing lightweight manipulation of character previews.  But there's a lot of other fun stuff to do first.
March 21, 2022, 04:18:54 pm - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)OK, PalMod 1.76 release is up now at https://zachd.com/palmod/releases :

PalMod v1.76
* Justice League Task Force (SNES) support.
* King of Fighter '97: Global Match (Steam) support.
* Last Blade (Steam) support.
* Last Blade 2 (Steam) support.
* Persona 4 Arena Ultimate CSEL support.
* Samurai Shodown V (Xbox Hack) support.
* Street Fighter Alpha 2 Palette Expansion support.
* Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 (DS) support.
* Vampire: The Night Warriors (CPS2) support.
* Vampire Hunter: Darkstalkers' Revenge (CPS2) support.
* Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer (Neo-Geo) support.
* MSH, MSHVSF, MVC, and XMVSF: PalMod now will handle updating "connected" secondary palettes for you if you have that box checked in Advanced Settings.
* When PalMod creates a new Extras file for you, you have the option of including known data ranges for that ROM.
* New palettes and previews.
* A bunch of internal changes/improvements.

Genericizing the handling of connected secondary palettes is probably the most interesting general change.  While I've only done it for the Capcom Marvel games, it could be extended to any game now and makes dealing with glimmer/shine palette sets a lot easier.

Cheers, hope people enjoy.

[alien nose job]

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