So I've had a good hack idea in mind for ages, but certain skills are just out of my skillset and I've tried over and over and just can't seem to get it. I need help, and I'm even willing to pay for the time and trouble.
What I need help with:
- Adding overworld sprites for lots of Pokémon, similar to the ones in HGSS, with stationary and walking animations like the ones in-game already (like Ratatta)
- Adding all of the overworld sprites from Emerald, so all of the random npcs, trainers, etc are available.
In my rom I have already installed MrDS, JPAN Hacked engine and Squeetz music hack.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
You're in luck. Not only does JPAN's engine have built-in support for over 60000 possible overworld sprites, there's a handy tool that completely automates the insertion process! Grab yourself a copy of
Overworld Manager. That allows you to insert and edit OW sprites, with JPAN engine support. I will cover the second question (getting Emerald sprites) first since that's the easiest and will help you understand the first question in a moment. Open a clean emerald ROM with OWM. It may take a while (about a minute or two) the first time you open it since it's busy repointing stuff on the inside. Don't attempt to click on it as Windows will say it's not responding. After that's done, you will see a single table with all of the Overworld sprites. Click on one and
note the number of frames and OW type. Then press Actions > Frame sheet > Export. Do this for every OW you wish to import (some are duplicates of what's already in FireRed).
Then open your FireRed ROM (always make a backup) and make sure on the bottom left the Profile has "JPAN" selected. You are able to add extra tables for more OWs than the default 256 you're usually stuck with. This will take up space in the ROM but it's all automatic so don't worry. Go ahead and click "Add" under the tables section. Then select "Table 1" on the left screen. Now finally under sprites press "Add." Select the number of frames and OW type you remembered from before. Now a blank OW is created. Press Action > Frame Sheet > Import and import the frame sheet from before. Do this for every frame sheet. Congrats you have new OWs!
As for the HGSS pokemon, you will need to make the frame sheets yourself. Take a look at the format of the exported frame sheets from Emerald and you will see how they are formatted - they're just grids of the same person from every angle! So you can just take pokemon sprites from
here and import your custom frame sheets! Hint: pokemon OWs are sized 32x32
How do I use this in-game?
Okay great now you have OWs but they're in Table 1! AdvanceMap only lets you go up to picture no 255, how are you supposed to access your custom sprites? Well on the person event you will notice some of the blanks say unknown. The SECOND unknown blank is JPAN's table value. Put 01 there and 00 as the picture number and it will load the zeroth OW from
table 1 (table 0 is default)
AdvanceMap will not show the correct picture but it will be fine in-game!
All my colors are messed up! Why?
Unfortunately that's how FireRed loads palettes, but
this patch will magically make your problems go away! Just make sure you're not using 0xF00000 before applying.
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Hope this helps. Feel free to respond with questions, and good luck!
