Changing the worldmap COMPLETELY

Started by Mastermind_X November 6th, 2007 2:19 PM
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Age 36
Male
Argentina
Seen March 15th, 2011
Posted December 24th, 2010
1,955 posts
16.9 Years


These are the examples of what you can achieve if you read Mastermind_X's tutorial (I recommend you all to read it very carefully, don't attempt to do everything on the same day, because that'll surely confuse you, better take things calmly, one step per day, and you'll be succesful)

By the way, those are now SG's official maps! DP-esque theme, Yay! :D

By the way2, I'm currently working on fixing the location and the position of the hero's face when you open up the world map (you can see in both screenshots that the position is a bit off the map, that's the last thing to fix everything)

So, good luck and happy map modifying everyone!

By the way3, I'm gonna try to write a little addition to M_X's guide just in case you get confused on the part of creating the world map without using Cyclone (since it works strangely for FR)


Zeikku™

Johto remaker

Age 31
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London, England
Seen November 25th, 2015
Posted July 27th, 2015
1,119 posts
15.7 Years
im going to attempt this however seeing as im using the sevi islands space in my hack, what island map do i have to hack? seeing as there are 7, but 3 different maps of the sets of the islands

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Age 36
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Argentina
Seen March 15th, 2011
Posted December 24th, 2010
1,955 posts
16.9 Years
Well, FR has 4 maps (1->Kanto, 2->One to Three Islands, 3->Four&Five, 4->Six&Seven), so basically, you can pick any. The problem is finding the offsets for where the stuff is located, as Mastermind_X's tutorial has a few parts where he just touches one specific map (you'll have to work out where the other maps' info is located, usually with VBA-SDL, following M_X's methods) well, I have this info already, but I'd like you to try a bit, before you start asking me or M_X

However, my recommendation is: Stick with Kanto if you'll have a very big region with lots of stuff. If you will have a second region with lots of stuff, I recommend you using Map#2, and avoiding using Map#3, so there's more stuff for the #2 (you can use Map#4 if you need a third region with less stuff)


Zeikku™

Johto remaker

Age 31
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Seen November 25th, 2015
Posted July 27th, 2015
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ahh i see.. il try that thanks! =]

im going to find the offsets in the VBA-SDL

what kind of ASM tools do you recommend? im new to ASM

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Zeikku™

Johto remaker

Age 31
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Seen November 25th, 2015
Posted July 27th, 2015
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ok thanks im now going to attempt it:D

EDIT: none of the programs are working :( they just stop responding when i load the rom, the hex viewer/editor works fine..

can someone help?

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Age 36
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Argentina
Seen March 15th, 2011
Posted December 24th, 2010
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@Cronos: It is possible to do that, but, you'd have to touch the scroll that FR has, because it gets in the way for a little moment (you can find the scroll on unlz, but I haven't modified it, as I wanted to retain it)

@Juan: That's why I said on an earlier post that Cyclone behaves improperly (though I had better results when I used it on a map that turned out wrong... XP), as I said before, hex is the best way to generate the look of the map, I'll try to write a mini guide for that, but I need some time and inspiration.
Besides, it looks as if you messed up with something...


Seen January 7th, 2013
Posted June 24th, 2011
283 posts
16.3 Years
Dang, I going to attemped this when I get some time away from my homwork and social life >_>..

I did glace over the guide though, and I actually susprized that its nor as hard as I thought. Though it can be confusing for n00bs..

Thanks for the Tut Mastermind_X! I cant wait till the Day & Night guide! :P
Canada
Seen September 22nd, 2016
Posted August 22nd, 2016
262 posts
15.7 Years
i am having in making a sinnoh world map in pokemon ruby can anyone help me out please
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Seen October 12th, 2010
Posted September 18th, 2010
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15.9 Years
This isn't a place to request things.

I just looked at the tutorial(A bit late), and as soon as I finish my exams this week, this will be the first thing I'm going to try and do. Hopefully, I can get it to work. My only worry, is changing the actual image the map. Oh well I guess I'll figure it out. I guess, like Zel said, hex is the way to go.
Gone.
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Posted December 24th, 2010
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This is what I managed to write about that part, hope at least this guides you through the somewhat tiring task of creating the worldmap's look with hex (obviously, this is most for people who already have done some things with hex...) Here it goes...

OK, let's start this semi-tutorial for making new maps visually. When I reached the part where Mastermind_X said "change the map using a program called Cyclone. The tool won't work for FRLG", I thought, "but I heard Cyclone really works on FR", so why don't we give it a try?

And so, I went to Cyclone, made a map using the tileset I stored from the emulator (using the Tile Viewer when in the worldmap, and then using the button "Save", I stored the tileset on .bmp format), something like this:


-To the left, the loaded tileset (using File->Load Tileset), to the right, the map I drew

So I saved the tilemap using File->Save TileMap (and I stored it on raw format, as M_X talked something about it)

Once I stored my newly created map, I kept reading Mastermind's tutorial, found free space to store my map, and used UNLZ and repointed the pointer to the map (basically, read his tutorial again to know what I am talking about)

Everything seemed to be perfect, however once I started playing the worldmap was nothing like I drew on Cyclone. Yes, it was using (most) of the tiles I used, but still, there were a lot of errors, and the tiles seemed to be in a wrong order (I'd like to show you how it looked, but I don't want to risk, as I now have everything perfectly on my maps)
In the end, we can say that Cyclone doesn't work perfectly for FR, but, it seems to at least work in some way... (Guess it's something related to sizes' differences between FRLG and RSE)

So, how could I fix that? Well, that's when I remembered about Coolboyman using hex to make the map on rijonAdventures, so I thought, "and what if I take an hex look on that stored tilemap I made with Cyclone?", you'll find something like this:


-That's the tilemap I drew on Cyclone, seeing on an hex editor O.o

As you can see, the tilemap is using hex values for each of the tiles I drew (in my example, 07 00 means dark green and 05 00 means lighter green), so you could basically change every value and get different tiles shown on the map. Pretty simple, just change one of the values to something else, save the tilemap (it'll be stored as raw), then store it again using UNLZ, and, even though the map would still look odd, you should notice that one tile on the worldmap has changed. Cool!
Anyway, keep reading further, as I will try to help you a bit more...

So, that's the way to change the map. But, there are a few aspects to be kept in mind:

*You should remember that 00 00 means the "invisible tile", because the map is basically shown over other stuff (think as if, there are two levels, the map is on the upper level and the other stuff, like the scrolls of the map are on the lower level), so if you do not use the 00 00 where it must when creating the worldmap, then you could step over the stuff on the lower level

*Remember that the tileset can make use of many palettes, if you want to use the palettes other than the "Palette1", according to Cyclone, then you'll have to remember that each tile has a different hex code (and the codes also change with each palette)
For example, if you'd like to use the red dot used on cities, which uses the second palette (Palette2 on Cyclone), as long as you don't move it if you create a new tileset, it has the hex code 01 10. There are not many other tiles using other palettes, but I guess that would depend on how cool you want your map to be...
In the end, whenever you want to experience with different tiles and palettes, just save the tile Map on Cyclone, open it on the hex editor, and see what has changed

Now, let's move onto some tips when creating the new worldmap using hex:

As long as you use the first palette with your tiles, their hex codes will start from 00 00 (the invisible tile) and will increase up to 3F 01 (don't know if the tileset can be longer, ask M_X), so a good idea would be to put your tiles on a kind of grid and put the numbers around so that you can identify them easily for when you start drawing the map on hex, something like this:


-So the first tile (the one dark blue), which is the invisible tile is 00 00, then the next one is 01 00, then the next (the dark green) is 02 00. Following the example, the first tile on the second row would be 20 00, hopefully you get the idea of how I did things (it helped me, you may follow your own way)

So, once I had that "tile guide", I opened the map that I wanted to insert on my images editor...


-That's the map I made using all the tiles available on the tileset (forget about the black dots, that was an example map). I'd recommend you using an images editor that can show you a grid of 8x8 so you can see each tile easily. Mine is Paint Shop Pro

So, you have the map, the "tile guide", and your tileMap that you'll be changing loaded on your hex editor, so you have all the necessary to start putting the proper hex codes to make your own map using hex!

By the way, you should also know that the tiles can also be modified, and the palettes can also be changed (the tiles can be found using UNLZ's Deep Scan function, it will be around the offset M_X found them with his method), so basically, once you find the tiles, changing them is just like changing any other thing using UNLZ (I wouldn't recommend you changing the tiles unless you are a highly skilled rom hacker, though)

And, because I know it'll come in handy, I'll also upload a base tileMap, if you want to insert it, it'll be just one empty green worldmap, but it'll work as a base for your own maps (basically, don't touch anything besides the 06 00), obviously, take it out of the zip -_-


Germany
Seen April 18th, 2013
Posted January 7th, 2010
92 posts
16.2 Years
Great, thanks for the description, zel! I'll add that to the main tutorial.

Btw... it's nice to see somebody but me using the good old Paintshop. ;-) Strange, my first approach to the maps took place pretty similar to the method you were using. (The 8pixel-tile-grid, the bases, the hexdumps, and so on ^^)