Syn's Easy Way Of Inserting Tiles

[Near~]

Syn's Easy Way Of Inserting Tiles
Well Not much of a noob, huh?

Tools you will need:

• Character Maker Pro
• Infran View
• ROM
• A-map
• MS Paint

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Before you even start the tutorial:

Spoiler:

Hmm What the Hell is a tile? Well I don't know the really smart way of saying this so here I go, A tile is a 16x16 pixels Graphic, I believe it is called a tile because it is square?
Okay now what?
Well You also have to understand that GBA has a limit of colors and guess what it is? 16 colors... I know dull right? But hey its GBA what did you expect? Well this should tell you NOT to try to insert Some huge building with tons of colors... It is possible but it requires to edit the entire tile and as well as inserting it can be a huge pain.

Now that you have a bit of knowledge we can begin the tutorial.

Step One: Selecting the "Right" Tile...

Spoiler:

Now You may be like I already have tiles to insert and go all crazy but Remember that each palette you can only have 16 colors. There are 12 Palettes: 1-6 Are used for stuff that is needed in every map & 7-12 are tiles that are for a specific map,Now back to selecting the tile... I have allways tried selecting a bunch of tiles that seem to have the same palette and are just under 16 colors in this case I will be using FM tiles!
Part 1 of One: Open the tile on MS Paint.
Pt.2 Select the tiles you want and copy them
Pt.3 Open another paint and paste the tiles there
Pt.4 Now You need a transparent color (meaning that you must add a background color that does not appear in the tile, I recommend using the pink since very small amount of tiles use pink)
Pt.5 Make sure the background color is all over the background.
Okay that's it here is what you should have as your result:

Spoiler:

Then Save your tile somewhere you can access with ease.

Step Two: The InfranView

Spoiler:

Part1 of Step Two: You will now open up your Image you saved earlier with InfranView.
Pt2. You will now go to Image>Decrease Color Depth> 16 colors( and check the options I have checked as well.
It should look like this:

Spoiler:

Pt3. Save the tile as *BMP again save it somewhere you can access it with ease.
Thats It for Step Two If your curious on what you should have by now this is what is should look like:

Spoiler:

Step Three: The CMP

Spoiler:

Okay so now you might have trouble with this part because CMP or Character Maker Pro is in spanish luckily I know spanish but maybe you don't? SO I am here to help you!
Okay Open Up CMP and it should look like this:

Spoiler:

Okay so To save you time from using google translate and seeing what means what I will simply tell you the shortcuts to make life easier.
Alright now we need to open the tile(The one in format BMP because CMP only reads BMP files for some reason.
Part1 of Step3:Shortcut: CTRL+O and you should now be able to go thru your pc and open the tile.
Pt.2 Now you will need to edit the Palette Shortcut: Shift+ E
Pt.3 Look to see if your selected background color is the first color on the palette:

Spoiler:

Luckily Mine is... If Yours is too skip Pt.4
Pt.4 Well If your background color ended up not being in the front you will just need to replace the front color with the background color:

Spoiler:

Note: To select a Color you have to click the color and drag a bit over it.
Okay to do this you will do what I just said ^ there, So once you select the background color you will see that some new options are available:

Spoiler:

Select "Copiar" and then go on to the row underneath it and select the black color and then select "Pegar Copia"
You should have this:

Spoiler:

Now select the first color on the pal and copy it, then past it over the background color:

Spoiler:

Now you still have the background color underneath the row but you will select it but now instead of hitting "Copiar" you will hit "Cortar" and then past it as the first color:

Spoiler:

Pt.5 Saving the Pal& Tile... To save the pal after you edited it (or not) use the shortcut:Shift+S and save it anywhere then press F12 and save the new tile and a *PNG and anywhere you want! Thats the CMP part... If you made it this far the rest will be easy!

Step Four: Actually Inserting The Tile(A-map)

Spoiler:

Part One Of Step Four: Open A-map
Pt.2 Open block editor
Pt.3Go to Palettes and Load Current Palette from...
Pt.4 Instead of *AM Pal select *Act and you should now see yours and load it up

Spoiler:

Pt.5 Save Tileset1 and exit block editor...
don't worry if it looks like this!

Spoiler:

Pt.6 Panick Beacuse your tiles are messed up... JK Open up the tileset 1 you just saved with Paint.
Pt.7 Open your Tiles.PNG that you saved from CMP
Pt.8 select the Tiles & copy them to the tile set
It should look something Like this once you finish:

Spoiler:

Okay now open up Block editor and Load tileset1 and now edit the blocks into place( I cannot explain this because its too easy?)
Here is the final result:

Spoiler:

Credits: Shawn for the original tutorial, FM for his amazing tiles

​

 

[CosmicBlazer]

This might actually help. It is more easier to understand than the old one. Thank you my friend. If you even want to be D:

 

[Near~]

This might actually help. It is more easier to understand than the old one. Thank you my friend. If you even want to be D:

Thanks! Im glad you like it better than the old one :D, And surexP! But the fact That I did not make a map still bothers me xD!

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Here is an explanation of the Pal's:

Spoiler:

Each PAL is different for each tile now lets say you change PAL0 In a regular ROM that will be used as trees grass tall grass etc... But it does not have to be this way you can make pal4 Trees and grass what ever you want but if you do not want to replace tiles I suggest you know what Pals use which tiles. I won't explain each PAL but just Open Block editor select the Pal you want and go thru the tiles you should clearly see which ones are affected by that pal:

 

[CosmicBlazer]

Thanks! Im glad you like it better than the old one :D, And surexP! But the fact That I did not make a map still bothers me xD!

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Here is an explanation of the Pal's:

Spoiler:

Each PAL is different for each tile now lets say you change PAL0 In a regular ROM that will be used as trees grass tall grass etc... But it does not have to be this way you can make pal4 Trees and grass what ever you want but if you do not want to replace tiles I suggest you know what Pals use which tiles. I won't explain each PAL but just Open Block editor select the Pal you want and go thru the tiles you should clearly see which ones are affected by that pal:

Ok thank you for the tip. Once again great tutorial. Alright I forgot to ask this question earlier. Irfanview has a edit palette choice so couldn't we just switch the transparent color from there instead of CMP or do we need to use CMP in order to get the tiles in

 

[Banjora Marxvile]

Good start to a tile inserting tutorial, all you need to add now is to add completely new tiles without replacing old ones (which is also simple, so I'm surprised it wasn't added for those that will go "but what if I want to add completely new tiles etc), and perhaps (this isn't tile inserting as such) animated tiles. Easy to read, and would help me if I was new to tile inserting.

 

[~Anbuja]

The tutorial is really nice, so congratulations for making it.

Idk how long you are actually tile inserting but personally I think that this methode is actually the best and for the most advanced tile inserters (since I use this way for years).

There is a way to skip the part with irfanview entirely with which you wont need irfanview at all, because irfanview sucks, it always gives the colors a bad look after you index it. Also that part where you have to change the transparent color and all that is annoying after a while.
But you have to be pretty good at the MSpaint part, since you have to keep the number of colors below 16 by yourself.

Everytime you load a .png file to CMP there is a table to shows the palette used by it, if you only used tiles that are below 16 colors in paint, the brightest will be in CMP the first in that table (The transparent one). Thats why I always use white as transparent in paint.
After that you can just go to Palette>Save palette, then it'll be saved as an .act file.

Just open A-map and go to the palette you were going to edit, then go to Block editor>Palettes>load current Palette from file, click on files of type from the bos that poped up and select Adobe color table .act, then you can select the .act file you saved with CMP.

With this you will have the same palette that the tiles had in paint, and arent duller from irfanview.

 

[Near~]

The tutorial is really nice, so congratulations for making it.

Idk how long you are actually tile inserting but personally I think that this methode is actually the best and for the most advanced tile inserters (since I use this way for years).

There is a way to skip the part with irfanview entirely with which you wont need irfanview at all, because irfanview sucks, it always gives the colors a bad look after you index it. Also that part where you have to change the transparent color and all that is annoying after a while.
But you have to be pretty good at the MSpaint part, since you have to keep the number of colors below 16 by yourself.

Everytime you load a .png file to CMP there is a table to shows the palette used by it, if you only used tiles that are below 16 colors in paint, the brightest will be in CMP the first in that table (The transparent one). Thats why I always use white as transparent in paint.
After that you can just go to Palette>Save palette, then it'll be saved as an .act file.

Just open A-map and go to the palette you were going to edit, then go to Block editor>Palettes>load current Palette from file, click on files of type from the bos that poped up and select Adobe color table .act, then you can select the .act file you saved with CMP.

With this you will have the same palette that the tiles had in paint, and arent duller from irfanview.

I noticed this too, but I perfer Infranview and as far as I use it with those 2 boxes checked I have no problem :) But either way it works thanks for adding that ;)

 

[Near~]

Fk you and your sockpuppet-
Hey I need this thread to be alive :D I get sh*tloads of pms for people to insert tiles :) I really enjoy these pm's NOT Is it that hard? I can re-edit this thread for more user friendly

 

[CosmicBlazer]

Fk you and your sockpuppet-
Hey I need this thread to be alive :D I get sh*tloads of pms for people to insert tiles :) I really enjoy these pm's NOT Is it that hard? I can re-edit this thread for more user friendly

You might as well re-edit and make it easier if you keep getting so many messages. You should send them to the rom hackign resources and just get a rom base from there. Make them use those palettes to make it a little easier. Anyway, I just thought of this, but couldn't we export the palette from infranview and import it to AdvanceMap and just insert the tiles we need. Or no, i'm still a noob at this stuff but it's something I thought of.

 

[Near~]

You can't it has to be in act. file nice try i did this once it did not work :P By the way you can do what anbuja said just use white as the background color and save it as bmp then load on CMP and your all good from there no need for infran view

 

[CosmicBlazer]

I just tried it didn't work and I'll try that way when I get a chance right now I'm trying to figure out which rom base to use for my hack. Shows my laziness:p

 

[qaz015393]

hey man. I listened to what u said & then followed the end if the tut. I didn't work for me. here is what im talking about. No matter what I always get this. just out attachment.

 

[Near~]

Okay I get this error not often lol First load the palette then save the tileset1 and open it on paint, Open your tiles .PNG that you saved from CMP and paste the tiles on tileset1 then save it and load it on A-map it should work if not tell me;)

 

[qaz015393]

it still didn't work. It said the .pal file is missing every time I loaded it the way you said to do it. It's driving me crazy. It's so dang buggy.

 

[Crocky]

Whenever I copy my tiles onto the tileset from advancemap, the tiles I copy turn gray. Why does that happen?

 

[Near~]

Are you guys saving the tileset as .BMP? And the tiles you cut and paste on the .BMP must be the .PNG from CMP

 

[qaz015393]

Yep. I did & re did it a few times and gave up [since it became too late]. But I did at least ask someone to use your tut & they managed to do it :) [why does my laptop hate me lol].

 

[Near~]

Hmm, Thats strange are you using a-map1.95? I use that (Its not buggy one me ;P ) Yeah, So you can VM me all the steps you do? I could probably find out whats wrong

 

[qaz015393]

thanks. but since I got someone doing the inserting for me I'm just not going to do it.

I did what u vmed me the other night, when we were teaching me. I must have dled a buggy version. Im sure if I got it from the same link u did it would work. It also could be my virus protection deleting something in it making it bug out on me.

But hey, Im sending your tut to others who say they don't know how to tile :)
I don't have the time to.

 

[cyndathrill]

I seem to have a problem. I have my own custom tiles which I made myself and I followed your tutorial down to a T and it did what it was intended to do. Well, for the most part.. For some reason all of my blocks were still all kinds of messed up (much like the picture you posted in the last step of the tutorial) and it altered my map a bit. Also, for some reason only half of the tiles that I pasted in the tileset were actually there when I opened the block editor. But the good part was the ones that were there were usable and put on the map perfectly fine! But please help explain what I might be doing wrong if you would.