Extensive Title Screen Hacking

Started by myfavouriteax December 20th, 2008 9:15 PM
  • 31886 views
  • 71 replies
Age 31
Baltimore, Maryland
Seen May 8th, 2019
Posted June 29th, 2009
338 posts
14.6 Years
Needed Programs:
-unLZ-GBA
-Gameboy Advance Emulator
-Hex Editor
-Advance Palette Editor (APE)

Needed unLZ-GBA numbers:
-2011 = the Charizard tilemap
-668-1498 = random pokemon sprites
-2013 = "Gamefreak inc." logo
-2009 = "Pokemon Firered Version" tilemap

Hacking the Title Screen

Open your rom and go to 2011. Select “Use Black/White”, and use the “+/-“ buttons until the picture looks like the one displayed.


Click “Save As”, and save it as a .png file. Click save as a second time, and save the same picture with a different name. Open the file in paint. Extend the workspace to allow yourself more workroom. Arrange the image as so. Save the finished image twice as well.


Next, select the black colour from the image, and clear it, so you’re left with only a black image in the same arrangement.


Now. Go back into unLZ-GBA, and find a pokemon you want to replace the Charizard with. I’m going to use Caterpie, because I’m lame. Make sure it is in Black and White before clicking save as. Open it in paint, and copy/paste it into clear space. Try to make it touch the back of the clear space.



We need to re-arrange the image back to it’s original form. Open the second, unedited Charizard picture you saved in step two, as well as the other second edited Charizard picture. Use both of these images as a reference, and move the blocks back into shape.


Yes, really. It’s supposed to look like this. Open up unLZ-GBA yet again, and go back to 2011. Click “Import”, and select the image you just saved. Click “Write to Rom”, and OK. Very good! It has been indexed into the game. Open up your emulator and check it out! Don’t get your hopes up however, we still need to palette edit!




Palette Editing the Title Screen
So you may notice the Caterpie looks a bit ridiculous. You'd have to be mental not to. The Caterpie is still in the Charizard's palette. Open up Advance Palette Editor and your Hex Editor (I'd recommend Hex Workshop). I think it's much easier to hex edit palettes then to use APE, but you may find differently. Open your rom in the emulator and maneuver to the title screen. Click Tools and Palette Viewer.


Now all you have to do is find the palette. I've circled it for you because I'm bored. Now we need to write down all ten of the the colours in hexadecimal. However, before we write them down, we need to separate and switch them. It sounds more difficult then it actually is. For example, the darkest colour in hex is 0x0004. We remove the "0x", and separate it into two groups of two numbers. 0004 would become 00 04. Then all you do is switch the two sets. 00 04 would now be 0400. It's that simple. If you do that for every colour in the palette, you will get 1F7C 1F7C 1F7C 0400 0600 0800 0B00 8F00 9300 D600 1901 7B01 FC01. Now put it all together and search for 1F7C1F7C1F7C0400060008000B008F009300D60019017B01FC01 in your hex editer.


Open up APE. This obviously is used to edit the palettes, but I much prefer hex editing, as it is MUCH easier. Go to Tools, and Colour Picker. Now, before I hear any remarks about how unprofessional this tutorial is about to become, I'll tell you that this part is rather unprofessional. Open up paint. Open a picture of your sprite in colour. Now, use this as a reference. Right now, I can see on the titlescreen that Caterpie's ... antler(?) is the darkest colour in Carizard's palette (0x0004), therefore, when we look at the sprite of Caterpie, we see that it is a medium tone of red. A lot of this is guessing and checking. We find that tone of red in APE's colour picker, copy down the four digit hex value, and replace the value in the Hex Editor.


Good, good. Now do that with every value (if needed) until your sprite is in its' original palette.


Now. The rest of the screen can be palette edited as well. Just follow the same basic steps. Open up VBA, and go to Palette Viewer. Find the colour of the object you wish to change (for example, the red bar at the top), search for the string of values, find a colour you want it to be, and replace. Here's the screen after I palette edited.



Yeah, I know this is hard to understand, but it's even harder to explain. If you have any specific questions, just PM me.


Coming Soon!
-Editing “Pokemon Firered Version” text
-Editing "2004 Gamefreak inc" Text
-Editing the fire

Zeikku™

Johto remaker

Age 31
Male
London, England
Seen November 25th, 2015
Posted July 27th, 2015
1,119 posts
15.7 Years
This isn't very "extensive". It would be good to include how to edit the tilemaps, and stuff. Then you could call it "extensive". :D
You don't need to edit the tilemap in this method, because you're arranging the tiles, exactly like the FR image. But I agree with you, I wouldn't call this extensive. Me personally...would just use a tilemap editor, cos I'm lazy :P

Great tutorial though, not many people still use this method because it can be tricky. At least you have the skill to do it though ;)

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Age 31
Baltimore, Maryland
Seen May 8th, 2019
Posted June 29th, 2009
338 posts
14.6 Years
This isn't very "extensive". It would be good to include how to edit the tilemaps, and stuff. Then you could call it "extensive". :D
Yeah, right now, I'd agree with you, but eventually, I'm going to get around to showing how to edit the fire and text to whatever you want. I was going to just call it "Title Screen Hacking" until I got the entire tutorial up, but I would have been too lazy to get it changed! :)


Full Metal

C(++) Developer.

Age 27
Male
In my mind.
Seen August 19th, 2018
Posted May 27th, 2017
810 posts
15.4 Years
Should I add the fire editing section first, before the text changing section?
Also, is this difficult to understand, or did I do a somewhat descent job?
The hex viewer thing (can't remember the name atm) actually isn't all that nescesary. There are only 16 colors on the caterpie (and all other pokemon) most of which are in contrast to eachother. I guess if you like speed though.. go ahead! Or you could just export caterpies pallete and import it through APE :) just a thought (and my personal prefferred choice) also if you don know how to edit the fires please post it! For whatever reason It just won't work idk why it try it and i see a bunch of messed up pixels for whatever reason :/

★ full metal.

I like to push it,
and push it,
until my luck is over.
Age 31
Baltimore, Maryland
Seen May 8th, 2019
Posted June 29th, 2009
338 posts
14.6 Years
Oh yeah. I forgot about this thread. Thank god for email notifications...

hi do u know a site with a hex editor if u can thanx
Well, if you can get Hex Workshop, that program is amazing. However, it costs money, but you can get a free trial for a bit. The program I use is called HexEdit. It kind of sucks, but it's free. Just google search for whatever.

I may try to write up some quick tutorials to finish this, but I think I've decided to quit hacking, so don't expect any updates in the near future.


Male
Seen July 24th, 2010
Posted July 21st, 2010
220 posts
15.1 Years
Oh, well that's your problem. Just use this tutorial to palette edit it, or use a better tutorial! I'd strongly suggest the latter.
Well, I can't. If I do, the big Pokemon logo will get affected because the images exchanged palettes... Am I supposed to export the palette in unLZ?
Male
Seen July 24th, 2010
Posted July 21st, 2010
220 posts
15.1 Years
Ah, ok. Now I understand. I still can't really help you out though unless I know step by step exactly what you did.
All I did was put Mew's battle picture in the Charizard image, and restructure the tilemap. That was all I did. Somehow, the Mew image stole the pokemon logo's palette...
Seen July 19th, 2022
Posted May 6th, 2018
918 posts
15.8 Years
All I did was put Mew's battle picture in the Charizard image, and restructure the tilemap. That was all I did. Somehow, the Mew image stole the pokemon logo's palette...
In your tilemap editor it automatically reassigns your tilemap to use pal 1 which in this case is the text pal. You will have to keep switching that pal until you find the charizard pal.
Hey
Male
Seen July 24th, 2010
Posted July 21st, 2010
220 posts
15.1 Years
In your tilemap editor it automatically reassigns your tilemap to use pal 1 which in this case is the text pal. You will have to keep switching that pal until you find the charizard pal.
Ahhh, Thanks. Going to test right now. I will be back.

Edit: Yup, it worked.