Excuses Excuses...

[phyco126]

[Alunissage]

*snicker*

Ramus as a Jedi...heh.

(Phyco, it's WAY past your bedtime! Unless you just got up for the day.)

[phyco126]

Nah, was in bed, felt sick, so I was up for a while. Went back to bed when I felt better, got this idea to better organize and rip more sprites from L:L so I can actually work on the first actual episode, then got excited. So excited, I uh, couldn't sleep ^^;. Actually, I take sleeping pills to help me sleep, but they don't work all that well. Doesn't help that I don't exactly do anything physical.

Besides, it's a pain. I have nearly 2000 screens that I have to sift through, with probably hundreds of sprites I'll have to individually rip from the screens to get what I want, and half the first cast isn't until the end of the game. Anyone know of a good sprite ripping system? My emulator does it pretty decent, but sometimes the sprites get cut off by another (like alex covers part of Luna in a scene, etc...) It also helps that I can take out the layers of the game to get just the props, or just the backgrounds, or just the sprites (not always this way) but it helps, but it would be easier to hit a button and have 4 sprites all ready to go.

Plus, I'm rethinking how the story line should go. I've already changed the very very beginning twice, the first couple episodes several times. Just the lack of sprites and the lack of being able to change the sprites to do what you want (hehe, I was able to gank storm troopers from regular people sprites that I resized and recolored, but what about shooting scenes?)

Oh, and yeah, I wanted a bunch of Jedi hijacking the ship, but ran out of sprites (as you can see, haven't gotten too far yet) so I picked Ramus. Besides, I got a kick out of knowing ramus would never be a Jedi

Other things, I did this comic really fast, so there are several errors I can spot right off the back, so it's not even close to my normal best. I have more issues, like I went to take more screens, ended up with a bad save (so I lost about 2 hours of game play.) While I still had the screens, I started taking new screens and the new ones where over writing the current, which was annoying (fortunatly for me the first few I had already shifted through.)

Currently, I have several cast members, but missing who is going to play what. Another problem, lack of useable sprites.

Oh, but for the record, I have easily around 100+ sprites, mostly from Alex and the most from Nash. The rest come from Luna, Laike, Mel, Nall, Ramus, and NPCs. I also have some props, that helps. Oh, and backdrops, I have tons of those, and not even halfway through the game. I figure, if I can get enough coffee in my system (and encouragement), I can rip all 1800+ screens of the game, which should give me Mia and Jessica as well, along with Ghaleon and a couple of other characters. Putting the sprites at around 150-200ish (I expect no more than 400 sprites total, including the fact that I am ripping monsters already.)

Probably one of my downfalls is how througho I am being, if there is a small change (say, one piece of hair moves to show wind, but that's it) then I'll rip that sucker too. I want to make sure that I have everything I possibly can have to make the most of it. Over the course of the week, I'll release never before scene scenes that I showed earlier. Although they may not be funny, maybe it'll hold people off and keep them intrested.

I mean, this takes alot of time and effort to do, so it makes it very difficult to want to do this. It doesn't help when you have over 10 MSPaints open too, gets overwhelming. Plus I'm going through a tough time in life, very tough. *shrugs* I just want to be a Jedi

Say, anyone good in manipulating sprites so that they look professional AND they do what you want them to do? (Hmmmm, I should pain ramus green and make him Yoda )

[localflick]

Anyone know of a good sprite ripping system?

Hmmm... that depends on where you're ripping the sprites from. Zophar's Domain has lots of decompiler progs, but they're usually for specific games. There's a prog called Lunar Magic, but it's a Super Mario World editor.

Assuming you're using Lunar Legend, try the GBA game builder here. It's supposed to be able to rip sprites, but I haven't tried it yet.

Good luck with the comic, I'm really looking forward to it. At the same time you shouldn't feel pressured or rushed to get it done any time sooner than it's ready.

[DevNall]

The issue with ripping them directly like that is that the sprites are palettized (meaning the sprites are just stored as indices into a palette), so you'd have to match them with the appropriate palette for them to be of any use. Plus, games can compress sprite data and things of that sort. As a result, it's (realistically) impossible to do this generally for all GBA games just given the ROM.

However, at runtime, you could peek at sprite memory (which contains all the sprites currently onscreen) and cycle through the 17 possible palettes (if you don't know which the given sprite you're interested in is using already). Note, however, that games can change the palette (and other settings in video hardware) between scanlines, which might seriously complicate this process.

[phyco126]

Yes, I have found out that it's easier to just snap a screen and "cut" the sprite out of the picture myself, the GBA Emu I'm using is good for screens for editing, but for palettes and what not, I don't have a clue where I'm at even. There are plenty of options and pictures from the palettes it gives me, but because I'm just someone who cuts sprites from screenshots doesn't make me an expert on decifering palettes from an emu.

Please note, if what I said above made no sense, I agree, must be the lack of sleep.

[LuNaRtIc]

LOL! That's great Phyco! I can't wait for Lunar Wars! X3