[FR] Glitch free 256 color title screen

Okay so first off I would like to say the existing 256 color title screen tutorial is great! It allows you to do exactly as it says. But that was never good enough for me. I despised having to have a single layer title screen, it just didnt feel right. It also forced you to remove the cool Pokemon Logo shine that we all know and love. It also caused issues on some hardware(from my experience) and it caused a weird glitchy pre-title screen image, eww. So after a little bit of research and much testing. I came up with a new method of making 256 color title screens.

I will say this is pretty odd, in the way that it is done. You may not like it. That's just a heads up. Also this method is kinda obvious once you do it. I'm not sure why the original title screen tutorial was done with this method, but oh well what cha gonna do about it? Now lets get started! And as always backup your ROM before doing anything! I am not responsible for anything you do to it.

Tools needed:
Photoshop or some alternative that supports laying files.(Gimp is a nice free alternative)
Infranview
Sphere 1.5
Paint (doesnt really matter what version I've never had an issue regarding the win 7/8 versions)
Unlz GBA
GBA Graphics Editor
Advanced Pallet Editor
Emulator for testing.
NTME
Freespace finder

Step 1: Prepping your images


Step 2: Making raw files


Step 3: Insertion!


Step 4: Palette


Step 5 Flames:


Notes:


Thanks to Black Charizard for the original 256 color tutorial!
And sorry guys if some of this doesn't make sense, I'm not the best at explaining things!

examples of hacks that use this method:
Team 3's Dark Destiny--Team hack off--

Nice tutorial! I am going to use it for sure!

Not really difficult from what you said, it just have more steps to do. Patience, I see. Good work!! C:

I've followed all the tutorial but still got a glitchy title screen... I'm gonna try it again, maybe I did something wrong when importing the files or editing the palettes. If I'm not asking too much, would you add a more detailed guide on what I should do when editing the palettes on each offset? Am I supposed to copy each index to a different offset or all indexes to all offsets?

Sniper said:

Not really difficult from what you said, it just have more steps to do. Patience, I see. Good work!! C:

Click to expand...

Yea well I'm not the most patient so its difficult for me.:)

juliannom said:

I've followed all the tutorial but still got a glitchy title screen... I'm gonna try it again, maybe I did something wrong when importing the files or editing the palettes. If I'm not asking too much, would you add a more detailed guide on what I should do when editing the palettes on each offset? Am I supposed to copy each index to a different offset or all indexes to all offsets?

Click to expand...

How is it glitchy? Are the colors off? And for the index its an index per offset. I'll specify it a little more in the op.
Sorry if its not the most descriptive, I suck at teaching stuff.

joexv said:

How is it glitchy? Are the colors off? And for the index its an index per offset. I'll specify it a little more in the op.
Sorry if its not the most descriptive, I suck at teaching stuff.

Click to expand...

After I've done everything, it became a mess... First I added the sprites to make sure my tilemaps were right, they worked perfectly, then I added the background and the title. After that I followed the instructions about the palettes and when I tried to test it I had a total mess in my title screen, with blocks on the wrong place and crazy colors.

The problem is on the background. When I add the sprites and the logo, they work fine (at least with wrong colors, I couldn't see the result after editing the palette because of the background glitch), but when I insert the background I get this glitchy screen. This picture was before I changed the palettes, but it's already messy.


And this is what I'm trying to do...


EDIT: BTW, there are 16 index for only 15 offsets, am I supposed to ignore the 16th index?

juliannom said:

After I've done everything, it became a mess... First I added the sprites to make sure my tilemaps were right, they worked perfectly, then I added the background and the title. After that I followed the instructions about the palettes and when I tried to test it I had a total mess in my title screen, with blocks on the wrong place and crazy colors.

The problem is on the background. When I add the sprites and the logo, they work fine (at least with wrong colors, I couldn't see the result after editing the palette because of the background glitch), but when I insert the background I get this glitchy screen. This picture was before I changed the palettes, but it's already messy.

EDIT: BTW, there are 16 index for only 15 offsets, am I supposed to ignore the 16th index?

Click to expand...

Well that is most definately a tilemap error. Make sure when you make your raw files that you select the FR/LF TS preset in NTME otherwise things like that happen. Also make sure that you arent overwriting anything when you're inserting your images. The hacked UNLZ GBA has the "abort if bigger" option always enabled, if you arent using this version then you willhave to make sure that it is checked.
And AFAIK there isn't a 16th offset. Odd though. If you don't need those last colors and it wont make too much of a difference, then when decreasing your colors set it to custom, and type 240. that'll fix that until I find out for sure if there's an offset missing. And guys there will be a new step added to the op regarding flames! Completely forgot about thems.

I have litteraly a white screen when I try my rom