Research: Font color depends on overworld sprite

[diegoisawesome]

Exactly what the title says.
There's nothing in the overworld data itself to specify text color, and I was wondering if anybody knows a table or something that tells the sprite which color font to use.

[knizz]

Different sprites have different colors when producing textboxes?! In which game?

[Spherical Ice]

In FireRed, if you apply a simple text script to, say, a Youngster overworld, the text will be blue, and if you apply a simple text script to a Lass overworld, the text will be red by default.

[knizz]

The table you're looking for is at 08464300. It has 4-bit entries. (Firered)

EDIT: How I found this out:
As you probably know the C7-Script-Commands overwrites the color to use for the next textbox. This commands writes its argument to 020370DA. Now I put a writing breakpoint on 020370DA. 0xFF is written to this position in every frame by 080CBDF0 so I turn the writing breakpoint off and replace it with a reading breakpoint. This one triggers at 080CBE04. The code shows: If 080CBDF0 isn't 0xFF it is used as the color. Otherwise a function (0813CD24) is called to read the color out of the table mentioned above.

[diegoisawesome]

Originally Posted by knizz

The table you're looking for is at 08464300. It has 4-bit entries. (Firered)

EDIT: How I found this out:
As you probably know the C7-Script-Commands overwrites the color to use for the next textbox. This commands writes its argument to 020370DA. Now I put a writing breakpoint on 020370DA. 0xFF is written to this position in every frame by 080CBDF0 so I turn the writing breakpoint off and replace it with a reading breakpoint. This one triggers at 080CBE04. The code shows: If 080CBDF0 isn't 0xFF it is used as the color. Otherwise a function (0813CD24) is called to read the color out of the table mentioned above.

Awesome! Exactly what I wanted/needed.
I thought about doing that, but decided it wasn't as MUCH of a priority as other things.
Also, I'm guessing that each 4 bits are flipped? (Ex. Sprite 1= Male; Sprite 2 = Female, = 10)

[Jambo51]

Thanks to knizz's post, I'm gonna try to get rid of this table altogether! What i'm gonna attempt is to place this "sex" byte within the actual sprite data and then rewrite the routine to make it read from the sprite data instead, thus removing the need for a table of values, and making the routine compatible with JPAN's hack or a simple extended table.

EDIT: Here we go! This routine makes the first "alignment" byte in the Overworld data into the male/female byte, getting rid of the need for this space using table altogether.

.text
.align 2
.thumb
.thumb_func
.global OWsexbytechange
main:
 push {lr}
 ldr r2, table
 mov r1, #0x4
 mul r0, r1
 add r0, r0, r2
 ldr r0, [r0, #0x0]
 ldrb r0, [r0, #0xE]
 cmp r0, #0x2
 bge black
back: pop {r1}
 bx r1
black: mov r0, #0x3
 b back
.align
table: .word 0x0839FDB0

So, for the swimmer male sprite:

FFFF0611FF110001100020001501000010373A089C373A0868333A08780D3A08FC1C2308

The byte in bold becomes the male/female byte. 00 - Male, 01 - Female and anything above this is set to neutral (Black).
The main reason I developed this routine was to add support for extended Overworld tables and JPAN's Overworld hack. With the routine as is, it won't work with JPAN's hack, but it'll immediately support any extended table or normal table. It goes without saying that you'll need to modify the bytes to match the given sprite (EG, for Misty, change the relevant byte to 0x01 instead of 0x00), but it won't crash if you don't, just print blue text instead of red.

This code is smaller than the code it replaces, so you can safely overwrite the original routine at 0x0813CD24 without any issues.

I will look to release a patch with all the bytes corrected in the future, and then develop a version which supports JPAN's hack (shouldn't be overly difficult tbh) so that we can have "proper" male and female sprites.

Hopefully, when a newer version of Overworld Editor is released, it will support this option as it will make it much easier to designate which sprites you wish to be male and female.

[knizz]

I'm impressed! In my opinion the table is the better way but now everyone can choose.

[Jambo51]

Originally Posted by knizz

I'm impressed! In my opinion the table is the better way but now everyone can choose.

As I said, it's more built to add compatibility with JPAN's Overworld Hack, as that still uses exactly the same table, but doesn't take into account that it's an entirely different Overworld table. The table is, with this hack, made entirely unrequired, giving us free space to use. However, arguably, the table would be easier to edit from a hex editing point of view.

Thanks for the opinion. I always appreciate comments and such, it's how I improve as a hacker. :D