Development: Creating New Battle Animations

[Chaos Rush]

So I've managed to figure out enough to make decent custom battle animations. So far, I've managed to splice multiple animations together, and to add backgrounds to an animation action.


From what I've figured out so far, there are at least two types of actions:
1) a background
2) a movement of a graphic (requires loading correct graphics)

Note: Everything in this document/tutorial is designed with FireRed in mind. There are pointers within the animation scripts, meaning that unfortunately, these have to be ROM-specific. These will work with FireRed, and only FireRed.

Here's what I've got of the scripting language so far: (credits at bottom of post for people who found these)
------------------------------------------------------------------
00 XX 27 = loads image data, XX is an argument
00 XX 28 = same thing as above, but loads from a different bank of graphics

02 = executes current animation segment
05 = waits for current animation segment to finish
06 = does absolutely nothing
07 = does absolutely nothing
08 = ends the animation script (DO NOT CONFUSE WITH POINTER!!!)

0E XX XX XX 08 = jumps to another animation, continues execution of original script when finished (can be used to combine multiple animations to play right after another)
11 XX XX XX 08 = same as above, haven't figured out the difference yet

19 XX XX = plays a sound

Display a non-scrolling, static background: (note: if you change 17 to 16, then transparency effects will be deactivated)

14 [B]WW[/B] 17

Display a scrolling background: (note: if you change 17 to 16, then transparency effects will be deactivated)

14 [B]WW[/B] 17 03 2D B8 0B 08 05 04 00 [B]XX[/B] 00 [B]YY ZZ[/B] 00 FF FF

-WW = selects which background graphics to display

Choose one of these for the WW byte:

Spoiler:

00 = Dark-type BG, example: Faint Attack
01 = same as 00
02 = Ghost-type BG, can scroll horizontally, example: Shadow Punch
03 = Psychic-type BG, example: Psychic (EXCEPT IT DOESN'T ANIMATE)
04 = high-impact BG, light coming from top right, example: Focus Punch
05 = high-impact BG, light coming from bottom left
06 = high-impact BG, light coming from top left
07 = Horn Drill BG, can scroll horizontally and vertically, example: Horn Drill
08 = same as 07, but image is mirrored horizontally
09 = high-speed BG, can scroll horizontally, example: Mach Punch
0A = same as 09, but image is mirrored horizontally
0B = Thunder BG, can scroll horizontally, example: Thunder
0C = Guillotine BG, light coming from top right, example: Guillotine
0D = Guillotine BG, light coming from bottom left
0E = Guillotine BG, light coming from top left
0F = Ice-type BG, can scroll horizontally, example: Sheer Cold
10 = Space-oriented BG, can scroll horizontally and vertically, example: Cosmic Power
11 = Seismic Toss/Sky Uppercut BG, can scroll horizontally and vertically, example: Sky Uppercut
12 = Flying-type BG, can scroll horizontally and vertically, example: Sky Attack
13 = same as 12, but image is mirrored horizontally
14 = Aurora Beam BG, can scroll horizontally, example: Aurora Beam
15 = Fissure BG, can scroll horizontally (but it artistically makes no sense to do so), example: Fissure
16 = Silver Wind BG, can scroll horizontally, example: Silver Wind
17 = same as 16, but image is mirrored horizontally
18 = SolarBeam BG, light coming from top right, example: SolarBeam
19 = SolarBeam BG, light coming from bottom left
1A = SolarBeam BG, light coming from top left

-XX = how fast background scrolls horizontally
-YY = how fast background scrolls vertically
-ZZ = not sure but its either 00 or 01

Here is what each background looks like:

Spoiler:

00:

01:

02:

03:

04:

05:

06:

07:

08:

09:

0A:

0B:

0C:

0D:

0E:

0F:

10:

11:

12:

13:

14:

15:

16:

17:

18:

19:

1A:

Judging by unLZ, these backgrounds are simply tilesets+tilemaps. If we could find the table(s), we could theoretically expand them and have custom backgrounds.

To display the Psychic-background correctly, do not use the scrolling background command, instead use the 0E command, using it like this:

0E BB 59 1D 08

This will display the Psychic-type BG, while also animating it correctly.

To end any scrolling background (also works with the Psychic-BG animation):

0E C7 59 1D 08

Usually this is placed at the end of the script. If you're going to place it at the end of the script, make sure you add an extra 08 byte to the end of it, otherwise the game will freeze.

The table for the battle backgrounds starts at 0x3ADE18, and ends at 0x3ADF5B. The format goes like:
[XX XX XX 08] [YY YY YY 08] [ZZ ZZ ZZ 08] XX = pointer to graphics, YY = pointer to palette, ZZ = pointer to tilemap
Repoint and extend it, and you can create custom backgrounds:

Some other info (remember, these are FireRed offsets):
0x247094 = Attack names
0x250C04 = Attack data
0x4886E8 = Attack description pointers
0x1D65A8 = Battle script pointers
0x1C68F4 = Attack Animation pointers

To find the offset of an animation, follow these instructions:

Spoiler:

1. Open up this link: https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/List_of_moves
2. Find the move you want (for the sake of this example, we'll be using Surf)
3. According to the list, Surf is #57 in the game index
4. Open up Windows Calculator, switch to Programmer mode
5. (make sure the option on the left tab is set to, "Dec") type in 57 (or whatever number your attack is)
6. Click on "Hex"
7. Multiply it by 4
8. Add it by 1C68F4
9. Whatever the sum is, that offset contains the pointer to your animation. Open up a Hex editor, and go to that offset
10. The sum I got was 1C69D8. The bytes there are 01 FA 1C 08. The 08 indicates its a pointer.
11. If you know how to calculate pointers manually, good for you. If you don't, go find a Pointer Calculator on Google or something, or figure out how. With that said, the bytes 01 FA 1C 08 means its pointing to offset 0x1CFA01.
12. 0x1CFA01 is the Surf animation. Congratulations, you found the offset of your animation!

(To figure out when the animation starts and ends, simply make a new attack (assuming you've already looked at Jambo51's thread on adding new moves), and expand the attack animation table, and then paste the data of the Surf animation (or whatever attack) into free space and point one of the new attacks to that data. Then open up VBA, open up its Memory Viewer, and go to that data. Then replace the bytes and the end with FF, and keep testing it until the animation crashes (it should only crash when you change an 08 byte) Once it crashes, open up your hex editor, and go to the offset of the data, then make it look like how it does in VBA's memory viewer, then add an 08 at the end with the hex editor.

Eventually I will post a list of all the animation offsets, I haven't finished typing them all out yet.

Step-by-step example at creating a custom animation:
Example 1: Adding a background to an existing animation

Spoiler:

So let's say we wanted to create a 4th Gen move. How about... Night Slash. We'll use Slash with the Dark-type background.

1. Using the steps I showed earlier in this thread, find the offset of whatever animation you want to base it by. The Slash animation is at 0x1caf7b. Insert the Slash animation data into free space, and then go to Night Slash's (or whatever your move is called) slot in the animation table and point to the animation data you just inserted.

2. For anyone else using it off of Slash's animation, this is the hex data for the Slash animation:

00 C7 27 02 A4 35 3E 08 82 03 01 00 F8 FF 00 00 19 81 00 3F 04 04 02 A4 35 3E 08 82 03 01 00 08 00 00 00 03 1D 8B 09 08 02 05 01 00 04 00 00 00 12 00 01 00 19 81 00 3F 05 08

Right now, our animation looks exactly like Slash:

3. Now earlier in this thread, I mentioned the scrolling background animation command. Use it, and set WW as the Dark-BG. Place it at the beginning of the animation, and the Slash animation right afterwords. Our animation data should now look like this:

14 00 16 03 2D B8 0B 08 05 04 00 00 00 00 00 00 FF FF 00 C7 27 02 A4 35 3E 08 82 03 01 00 F8 FF 00 00 19 81 00 3F 04 04 02 A4 35 3E 08 82 03 01 00 08 00 00 00 03 1D 8B 09 08 02 05 01 00 04 00 00 00 12 00 01 00 19 81 00 3F 05 08

Now we got the Dark-background! ...except that it doesn't disappear after the attack is done. That's because we need to add the BG-clear command.

4. As I mentioned earlier, the BG clear command is: 0E C7 59 1D 08. Remove the 08 byte from our current animation (NOT THE BG COMMAND!!!), then add the BG clear command at the end, and add an extra 08 byte to end the animation, otherwise the game will crash. Our script should now look like this:

14 00 16 03 2D B8 0B 08 05 04 00 00 00 00 00 00 FF FF 00 C7 27 02 A4 35 3E 08 82 03 01 00 F8 FF 00 00 19 81 00 3F 04 04 02 A4 35 3E 08 82 03 01 00 08 00 00 00 03 1D 8B 09 08 02 05 01 00 04 00 00 00 12 00 01 00 19 81 00 3F 05 0E C7 59 1D 08 08

Now we have a flawless Night Slash animation! And yes, the background will return to normal after execution of the attack.

Just for giggles, you can alter the second byte of the BG command (which also happens to be the second byte of our entire Night Slash animation) to change the background (I referred to it as the WW byte):

(lol Aurora Slash)

(lol Twinkle Slash)

And that, is essentially how you take a non-BG animation and add a BG to it.

Example 2: Merging two animations to play right after another

Spoiler:

Just find two separate animation hex data, and then remove the 08 byte from the end of one of them (except if its a pointer), then place the data of the second animation right after it. Alternatively, you can use the 0E or 11 command and point directly to it, but this will limit you to merging only 2 animations. By manually placing the data, you can have as many as you want, meaning you can create a move like, "Ridiculous Tackle", and have an animation that has the player Tackling the opponent 6 times.

If there's an 05 byte before the 08 byte, remove it, and then they'll play at the same time (perhaps with a slight delay)

Some info on the 02 command (thanks to DoesntKnowHowToPlay):

The first two bytes indicate what image data to use, while the next two bytes indicate the palette. The enumeration for this is the same as that of the 00 command- in order for an effect to work properly, the 00 command must have been called for both of these- otherwise the palette and/or image will not be loaded. While the existing animations appear to always have these be the same, they don't have to be- you can for instance give the Stun Spore seeds Fire Blast's palette this way. For some animations both of these are 00- I believe these are effects that don't use images, such as Earthquake's screen-shaking.

Doing colored backgrounds:

02 24 7B 3E 08 02 05 01 00 SS 00 00 00 YY 00 XX XX 05

Where XX XX is the color you want, YY is the intensity (0C for Giga Drain- 10 replaces the background entirely with the given color), and SS is the speed of the transition (01 for Giga Drain, but I imagine Hyper Beam and other attacks use the same logic with a higher value). To revert the background to normal, place the following:

02 24 7B 3E 08 02 05 01 00 SS 00 YY 00 00 00 XX XX 05 0B 03 0D

The values here do not have to be the same, but I'd advise making the color and intensity the same or it will abruptly change at the start of the transition back.

Getting the background to change depending on what side you're on:

21 07 XX 00 YY YY YY YY branches to YY YY YY YY if the side the attacker is on matches XX. Mega Punch's custom background operates by placing two of these in a row (with XX = 00 and 01) to branch to subroutines that set the background to the correct one and then return.

0F appears to return to where the initial script left off after a branch.

Credits:
-Jambo51 for explaining how to add new attacks, and the offset of several tables, which helped me test animations
-DoestKnowHowToPlay for already documenting some of the commands
-Darthatron for finding the table containing all the animation command routines, hopefully these can be used to find out what each command does


EDIT: Some useful information found by Doesn'tKnowHowToPlay and dreamengine:
https://www.pokecommunity.com/posts/7481054/
https://www.pokecommunity.com/posts/7485231/
https://www.pokecommunity.com/posts/7485560/

 

[Gamer2020]

I added animation repointing to the attack editor in PGE weeks ago but just haven't released the update. There is no need for such complex instructions on repointing :P

 

[Full Metal]

Congrats on working things out! (:
Hopefully somebody with more talent than me will figure out the last two abilities. o:

 

[Darthatron]

Very nice. :D We could almost make an animation editor with this data. *ponders*

 

[Chaos Rush]

I added animation repointing to the attack editor in PGE weeks ago but just haven't released the update. There is no need for such complex instructions on repointing :P

Haha, but because you haven't released it yet, I didn't exactly have a choice. It's the only way I can find the animation offsets, as I have no knowledge of tool making. But I'm glad you're still improving PGE.

Congrats on working things out! (:
Hopefully somebody with more talent than me will figure out the last two abilities. o:

From what I know, particle movement is controlled by the 0E XX XX XX 08 command, so its simply a matter of loading correct graphics and correct movement to match. But I don't even know where to start for custom particle movement :/


I also apologize for the poor quality of the second attack example, I will fix it soon. Also I realized that you can use either the 11 command or the 0E command, and place a pointer right after it to any existing attack animation, allowing you to sequentially do attacks. For instance, if you take the animation data of Tackle, remove the 08 byte at the end of it, then place 0E XX XX XX 08, and say we place the pointer to Earthquake's animation in the XX spots, then Tackle's animation will play the Earthquake animation right after it. This saves a lot of space, since it means you don't have to manually place Earthquake's animation data, it just means you can use the 0E or 11 command and point directly to it.

 

[Gamer2020]

Very nice. :D We could almost make an animation editor with this data. *ponders*

I think it would have to be some sort of script editor, that's the only way I see it working.

 

[Darthatron]

I think it would have to be some sort of script editor, that's the only way I see it working.

Yes, but with some kind of real-time loading of it would be cool.

 

[Chaos Rush]

I'm pretty sure I just found the table containing the Battle BG's at: 0x3ADE18.

The format goes like:
[XX XX XX 08] [YY YY YY 08] [ZZ ZZ ZZ 08]
XX = pointer to graphics
YY = pointer to palette
ZZ = pointer to tilemap

I haven't tried expanding it, but I will tomorrow (or whenever). This means we can use custom backgrounds, that's actually pretty big.

 

[Darthatron]

The routines for each of the "commands" for these animations are located in a table at 0x083ADF5C in the ROM. From this, I can say for sure that there are 0x30 commands (0x00-0x2F) and that commands 0x6 and 0x7 do nothing.

With this we can at least see how many parameters each command has.

EDIT1: I here-by name command 0x6 "nop" and command 0x7 "darthnop".

EDIT2:

00:
01:
02:
03: something <word> <byte> <byte2> (<hword> * byte2) 
04:
05: waitstate
06: nop
07: nop2
08:
09: playsound <hword ID>
0A:
0B:
0C:
0D:
0F:
10:
11:
12:
13:
14:
15:
16:
17:
18:
19:
1A:
1B:
1C:
1D:
1E:
1F:
20:
21:
22:
23:
24:
25:
26:
27:
28:
29:
2A:
2B:
2C:
2D:
2E:
2F:

Edit3: I think when Gamefreak coded this, they set the compiler to "annoy hackers" mode.

 

[NintendoBoyDX]

There's probably couple of tables for these image data. Most likely one for backgrounds, and one for "particles". If we can find these we'll be able to expand them and put our own tilemaps and images in...

As far as manipulating them, that'd take some assembly work, unless we could find values like how far data moves across the screen, how many times, etc. That way we could reuse the animation, but with slight alterations.

Edit:
I've found the table of the "particles" / image data. Darth helped me find with researching a bit.
It's at 0x083ACC08, and is arranged in 8 byte entries, like so:
4: word - pointer to image data
2: hword - something to do with size?
2: hword - index number

For example, the first entry...
0x080D02520 - pointer to the bone image, used in bone rush
0x0002 - hword that may have something to do with size? not sure needs more research
0x2710 - hword thats the index number, when calculating, 0x2710 is subtracted from it, no idea why, but 0x2710 is the first one

083AD510 - seems to have the palette entries that each image uses:
4: [pointer to palette]
2: [index number in same format as above]
2: [unknown]

 

[Chaos Rush]

I can now confirm that it is possible to create custom battle backgrounds by expanding the battle background table:

This custom battle background takes up slot 0x1B (which does not exist in the original FireRed rom)

The table starts at 0x3ADE18, and ends at 0x3ADF5B. There's another table right after it, which I mistook as part of the same table, so just remember that it ends at 0x3ADF5B, even though it looks like it doesn't.

I inserted my tileset, palette, and tilemap all with unLZ (I made the tilemap with NTME). Simply insert into free space, then manually point to the offsets you used in your new table with a hex editor.


For anyone that wants to experiment, here is my tileset and tilemap (the palette is included within the tileset because it's indexed). To test it, insert these with unLZ, keep track of the offsets you inserted the tileset, palette, and tilemap, then repoint and expand the table (make sure you don't mistake the table right after it as part of the original table!!! just look at the start and end offsets I gave earlier in this post), then have the new entries in the table point to your tileset, palette, and tilemap, then make a custom battle animation (or edit an existing one) and use the background slot 0x1B. And yes, I designed the graphics so that it can scroll horizontally.

 

[Fahreza]

Ruby Version Please. I make Hack with Ruby Not Fire Red

 

[FRANKTANK]

Ruby Version Please. I make Hack with Ruby Not Fire Red

He's not making it specifically for you. Besides, do you know how much work it would take for him to redo all of it for Ruby?

 

[timson733333]

I'd like to know if it's possible to make a tool to do all of this editing.

 

[Darthatron]

I'd like to know if it's possible to make a tool to do all of this editing.

Yes it's possible. Just a matter of someone finding the time to do it.

 

[Jambo51]

Ruby Version Please. I make Hack with Ruby Not Fire Red

He's not making it specifically for you. Besides, do you know how much work it would take for him to redo all of it for Ruby?

Actually, because it's a scripting language, it may well work for Ruby (and Emerald) without any modifications, apart from ROM pointers.

 

[timson733333]

it may well work for Ruby (and Emerald) without any modifications, apart from ROM pointers.

yay Emerald

But for now, time to pull up the hex editor and try adding some new moves/animations manually. :P

 

[ShadowTails]

Am I on to something here?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRguM5EI09o
I basically just copied and pasted Super Fang over Slash without changing any pointers to see if I had actually found the animation data.

Yeah, embed isn't working...

I'll see if I can play around more with this later and repoint the data. Slash is at 2CD3DB. (or atleast, the data I was playing around with, attempting to copy Substitute over Slash made the game crash, so I just tried the one before it and it worked other than not loading the correct graphics, which obviously it wouldn't since I didn't change any pointers)

 

[timson733333]

I compared Slash's code from FireRed with Slash's code from Emerald, and this is what I got:

FireRed:

00 C7 27 02 A4 35 3E 08 82 03 01 00 F8 FF 00 00 19 81 00 3F 04 04 02 A4 35 3E 08 82 03 01 00 08 00 00 00 03 1D 8B 09 08 02 05 01 00 04 00 00 00 12 00 01 00 19 81 00 3F 05 08

Emerald:

00 C7 27 02 2C 2D 59 08 82 03 01 00 F8 FF 00 00 19 88 00 3F 04 04 02 2C 2D 59 08 82 03 01 00 08 00 00 00 03 D1 52 0D 08 02 05 01 00 04 00 00 00 12 00 01 00 19 88 00 3F 05 08

Since the codes are different, would using the scrolling animation code not work? Or would it have to be tweaked? Problem is, I don't know how to tweak it.

 

[Chaos Rush]

I compared Slash's code from FireRed with Slash's code from Emerald, and this is what I got:

FireRed:

00 C7 27 02 A4 35 3E 08 82 03 01 00 F8 FF 00 00 19 81 00 3F 04 04 02 A4 35 3E 08 82 03 01 00 08 00 00 00 03 1D 8B 09 08 02 05 01 00 04 00 00 00 12 00 01 00 19 81 00 3F 05 08

Emerald:

00 C7 27 02 2C 2D 59 08 82 03 01 00 F8 FF 00 00 19 88 00 3F 04 04 02 2C 2D 59 08 82 03 01 00 08 00 00 00 03 D1 52 0D 08 02 05 01 00 04 00 00 00 12 00 01 00 19 88 00 3F 05 08

Since the codes are different, would using the scrolling animation code not work? Or would it have to be tweaked? Problem is, I don't know how to tweak it.

The codes are exactly the same, except for the pointers. The scrolling animation code I had in the first post is for FireRed, so you would need to find the corresponding Emerald pointers and then replace it, then it should work.