Zeikku’s Graphical Hacking Tutorial for Fire Red

[Zeikku™]

Introduction:-
Yo dudes, dudettes and in-betweenies! This thread that will contain all my graphical based guides, I'll try and cover everything graphical eventually. I get a lot of request for doing pretty simple stuff. So hopefully I'll teach you a few things.
If you would like to make suggestions for other tutorials that I could write, then feel free. OK... We should really get started...!

The index Key:
Done
Undone

The index –
Back-sprite insertion.
Making a hack original with "simple" tile editing.
Standard Boot Screen Editing D/P/P style.
The Boot Screen Tutorial Revised (The Liquid Crystal Boot screen explained).
Inserting multiple trees into tilesets/ making the most out of palettes.
Intro Sprite
Basic Title screens.
Advanced Title screens.
Trainer card changing.
Searching palettes using hex.

The Backsprites:-

Spoiler:

Ok, So Heres how to edit the Fire red backsprite I've been doing this for like a year and a half. So I'm pretty sure it works.

You'll need:-
A Fire Red ROM
Tile Molester Alternate
A five frame set of sprites, with each frame being one image.
VBA (Visual Boy Advance)

Firstly, Open your Fire Red ROM in VBA, Go to a battle scene where you see the backsprite. Go to the palette viewer and "Save OBJ".
Like this:-

Secondly, Close VBA and open your ROM in Tile Molester Alternate.
Go to View> block size> custom, it should say 16x16, but we'll make it 8x8
And set the whole thing to block grid.
Here are 2 screens to help.

Thirdly, We Click on "Navigate" > Go to and type in E69F00.
Now the image looks a little screwed up. Click the "<" button twice.
And the "÷" button 4 times. It should now look like this:-

Now, notice the colors are hard to work with? Click on "Palette"> import from> then another file and select the Palette OBJ from VBA we saved earlier. Now it should look like this:-

Lastly, go to "Edit" and click "Paste from" and select individual sprite frames you should have prepared. Keep doing then till you have 5 new frames.
When you're done, you'll notice the images index into the colours in game. Just edit the sprite if necessary. Then Go to file, and save.

In game it should look like this:-

Have fun! 

Making a hack original with "simple" tile editing(works with R/S/E/LG).

Spoiler:

Ok this is pretty easy, Things you need to know are, when to use light and dark colors. Another thing is to use colors from in the ROM. I'll explain a little deeper.

What you'll need:-
A Pokemon Advance ROM
Advance map
Paint
Visual Boy Advance (VBA)

I'm going to show you basic mountain tile editing.

So firstly, Open your ROM in Advance Map.
I'm using fire red so I'll go to Header 3 and I'll select Viridian City. Just to show you the result after. Ok so viridians open now we go to "Tools">block editor. Select palette 1, because that is the mountain palette. Go to "Picture" and Save tileset 1.

Secondly, Open that tileset in paint, zoom in. and have your eye-dropper tool ready.
Eye-drop a colour and choose the pencil tool to edit the tile.

Thirdly Re-import, the tileset. Go to the Block editor again, go to "Picture" and load the tileset click Save. Close Advance map and Open the ROM in VBA and try it out. Enjoy the result. This is a good way of being creative. (This isn't a test of my tiling do not judge it)
Result:-
Before

> After

Enjoy! 

The Boot Screen Editing Tutorial

Spoiler:

OK well, this idea came from thex4s titlescreen tutorial on PHO, and thought I could try getting the platinum boot screen on my hack!

But here it is, my tutorial!

What you will need:-
FR/ LG Rom
Un-LZ GBA
PAINT
PTC (Found attached on this thread or at WAH)
HEX EDITOR ( you won't need because I'll give you the offset)
APE
Advance map (I used it to get the right pallette)

Ok, so now pay attention!
Keep all the programs above open and ready
this can be confusing if your reading..

Step one
Open your ROM with UnLZ GBA, use 16 color and use black and white
look around 207 and export this image (click save as..):

Step 2
Now on paint open the image and add your tiles, I used the default pallettes that the image had... be sure to add the tiles at the end of the image, it's to keep good measure of the tiles being 8x8.

Step 3
now Import that new image back in,
Write to ROM it and press next, now click raw dump.

Step 4
Now open PTC, and go to file "Apri tileset", it means open, open your image from earlier, so this :-

Now Go to file and click "Apri tilemap"
and select the raw dump from earlier.
The black on the right is NOT to be overwritten
Now, draw the tiles on the Tilemap.
and you should have something which looks like this when your done..

Step 5
Now, go to file, "Salva tilemap" (save tilemap)
and go to un-lz gba where you found the raw
Now go to file load RAW, Your new Tilemap should look different from the one thats in already.
Now write to ROM and re-point the image offset to a free one, so 800000 if thats free.

In game it should look like this....

Step 6
Now load your ROM on APE and go to offset 0040226A
Copy and change the necessary pallettes

Finally it should look something like this:-

:D

I'll make the thread pretty when I have time.​

 

[Surf]

Nice Zekkiu this should help me in my hack

 

[Hiche..]

Very nice, Jake. This is very useful for a lot of hackers. Nice one.

 

[Pokepal17]

Yeah thanks, this is really helpful.

 

[Liquid Shadow]

Zeikku do you know the offsets for the boot screen in Ruby AXVE and the offsets for the backsprites for Ruby AXVE? I'm pretty sure these tuts would work on Ruby too.

Anyways really nice tutorial, the backsprite editing part was really helpful. Thanks.

 

[Vrai]

Thanks, Zeikku. This should help out quite a few people (including myself ^^).

 

[cooley]

Excellent thread Zeikku!
Really looking forward to that Intro sprite tutorial ;)

 

[Chimchar 9]

wow this really helped thanks !
iv just done the boot screen and it worked perfectly.
thanks again !

 

[zatch325]

When I import from another file and try to find the obj file, it won't let me choose the obj file

 

[Zeikku™]

Zeikku do you know the offsets for the boot screen in Ruby AXVE and the offsets for the backsprites for Ruby AXVE? I'm pretty sure these tuts would work on Ruby too.

Anyways really nice tutorial, the backsprite editing part was really helpful. Thanks.

It should work on Ruby, i need to find the offsets and make a tut for it, but this is for FR...I'll make a R/S/E version of this soon.

Thanks, Zeikku. This should help out quite a few people (including myself ^^).

Hopefully, it should help people quite a bit. :)

Excellent thread Zeikku!
Really looking forward to that Intro sprite tutorial ;)

Thanks man. I'm feeling lazy to do the intro sprite thing, Because it takes forever :P
But it has to be done :)

wow this really helped thanks !
iv just done the boot screen and it worked perfectly.
thanks again !

yeah, wait till you see the next part of the boot screen tut ;)

When I import from another file and try to find the obj file, it won't let me choose the obj file

sure you have tile molester alternate?
not just Tile molester? :P

 

[Darthatron]

Rather than messing with the "<" and divide buttons, you could just put this offset: E69EBC

That'll save a step. :D

EDIT: This is regarding the back sprites, by the way.

 

[Pokepal17]

For some reason my boot screen went white after I edited it

Edit: Never mind, it worked. Thanks for this tutorial Zeikku :)

Edit2: Now when I edit the palettes, the boot screen is messed up. tbh, I don't know how to use APE, I just copied the palettes that Zeikku used, but I replaced the red ones with blue. Someone please help me.

Edit3: I'm using a hex editor wich is 10x easier.

 

[Jcat4]

hey my image offset is 004024E4 and i did everythign you said but it doesnt look anything like it should. I noticed your image offset was different at first. Howd you get the offset to change? Im sorry, im a little new to rom hacking and im clueless on a lotta stuff.

 

[Visible Light]

Nice tutorials, they should be helpful (especially the last one, even though I could change the image on the title screen, I never get the credits section done), I'm glad you didn't end up leaving PC.

 

[Zeikku™]

hey my image offset is 004024E4 and i did everythign you said but it doesnt look anything like it should. I noticed your image offset was different at first. Howd you get the offset to change? Im sorry, im a little new to rom hacking and im clueless on a lotta stuff.

All Image offsets are different depending on roms, you change it by writing a free offset. Something like 00750000/ 00800000/ 008500000, would work.
use a hex editor if you need free offsets and find a line of just FFs.

Nice tutorials, they should be helpful (especially the last one, even though I could change the image on the title screen, I never get the credits section done), I'm glad you didn't end up leaving PC.

thanks, I should be posting a new tutorial soon, I recently, re-formatted my PC. So things are going a little slow.

 

[Liquid Shadow]

Do you think you could add textbox editing to this thread? I tried following textbox editing tuts but they all didn't work and were very vague.

 

[Zeikku™]

Do you think you could add textbox editing to this thread? I tried following textbox editing tuts but they all didn't work and were very vague.

probably. I haven't done it in a bout a year. So I'll ned to search for my offsets.

 

[Pokepal17]

I can't wait for the trainer card changing :)

 

[.Seth]

Hey, Zeikku, I get some error message from both NTME and PTC, they both (probably PTC as well) say that they can't find the raw's (tilemap's) size. Any help?

 

[D-Trogh]

Hey, Zeikku, I get some error message from both NTME and PTC, they both (probably PTC as well) say that they can't find the raw's (tilemap's) size. Any help?

You should tell such things to the one who made the program.. and that's me :P
That error isn't really an error.. It just can't guess the size..
And that's because it only checks some dimmensions.. should update that.. ASAP!
Happy New Year everyone!