SonMapEd trouble

I am trying to use SonMapEd to construct all of Sonic's sprites and then swap them with new sprites via importing a BMP but I've run into a couple of problems.


First off, I'm not sure whether to say this is the biggest or simply the most important problem but it seems the tiles are all in order for each sprite however there are several that have just Sonic's body and no head such as some of the walking animations. Is just the body a complete sprite or do I need to paste the head from a previous sprite on there as well?


Secondly, some of the tiles that have only 1 pixel are very hard to piece together. Is there any tips or tricks of the trade that can be offered to make this process a little easier or do I just need to keep trying and trying until I get it right?


I did successfully do 2 out of 7 sprite swaps in my project (to put Rouge the Bat in Sonic 1) but the other 5 came out as garbage due to my incorrect sprite building.

 

You have to put everything into that frame. Example: if you draw sonic walking without his head, that's how it will come out. You don't neccessarily have to draw the head again, you can use the same sprite as long as it is showing in the frame. Hope this makes sense

 

Oh my goodness that made things so much easier, Ordos. In fact, that did everything for me except for the new sprite importing. I didn't even know about the dynamic pattern load cues and animation scripts. I was trying to just load the sprite art and put each sprite together bit by bit. I'm learning so much at one time here.


RHS: Thankyou, this was puzzling me, I wasn't sure if it would come out as is or if the game mapped back to the reused tiles.


Thank you both of you got both problems solved quite easily. This should go a lot smoother now as soon as I get some sprites within the color limitations.


EDIT: I'm going to have to get someone to edit, or make from scratch, some sprites that fit with Sonic's sprite mapping thanks to Sonic Battle Rouge's bad tendency to bob her head as she walks and runs.

 

...


But you're using SonMapEd, so you're not restricted to Sonic's mappings.

 

Well, I honestly don't fully know what I'm doing - no where near it, but what I am trying to get around is issues like these:








As you can see in the picture, since Sonic's head is re-used in several sprites, but the body is new, its not forming well with Rouge's tendency to bob her head up and down. I don't know how to get around this and haven't found any guides at all about spriting or using SonMapEd.

 

What you want to do is this. Load up SonMapED and make it load Sonic's art, his mappings and his cues. Then, reload SonMapED (without closing the old one) and do the samething. So you have two SonMapED's open with Sonic. Then, with one of them, unload Sonic's art and load up Rouge the Bat's art. Now, edit the mappings the way you want but make sure the frame is the same. So, if the first frame is Sonic standing, make Rouge stand in the first one.


Basically, you're comparing each Sonic to get Rouge right. Am I making sense?

 

Yeah I understand what you're saying. I think its going to take some tinkering around to get it right. If I got this right, I need 2 SonMapEd open, both with Sonic's art. Then load up Rouge's in one and start putting them together to match Sonic's poses, and when the issue with the head comes up I just need to add some tiles somewhere, probably over Sonic's unused sprites, and then swap the 'new' head with the 'old' head via piece selection, right?


EDIT: Ok, I think I got this. What I did was opened up 2 of SonMapEd. I loaded up Sonic's default art, cues, and all that in both of them and in one of them I started by importing my Rouge sprites. When I get to a sprite that reuses another sprite's tiles, I choose the option to duplicate sprite & tiles and then I delete the old sprite and import the new image onto the new sprite which, because its using brand new tiles, isn't affecting any other sprites. This is what you meant, right?


EDIT 2: Hmmm, that looked better but still not right... Back to the drawing board...

 

This tutorial may help you with what you're trying to achieve. Adding new frames with their own mappings isn't possible without following a certain formula.

 

That's weird... I must have some how over looked those tutorials when I was looking at Sonic Retro's guides... Well this should help, thanks Tweaker!


EDIT: I finally got it now.





Hey look! It's that sexy treasure hunter, Rouge the Bat!





She's getting a little stiff just standing there.





And bored, too.





Nevertheless, things are looking up for Miss Rouge.


Thanks everyone! Now I just need to get to serious work getting all the sprites swapped out and recolored.

 

Yeah that's correct Ordos, Sonik Sprite allowed you to view how the artwork was mapped together but not load/save or edit mappings/loadcues.


SonMapEd is a pretty usefull tool and it took me a a couple of hours to figure out how to create new frames properly mapped.


I have a question myself here, I am trying to edit the Tornado plane but there is no loadcues in the split ASM folders. Does anyone know where they are and those of the invincibility/shield?


Using SonMapEd I'm adding Silver.

 

Just loading the art and mapings should be fine (but with some object, cues too).


And when looking for mappings, go to the object code and it will tell you the mappings there somewhere.

 

Yeah but say I wanted to port the invincibility stars from Sonic 1 and the shields from Sonic 3 then don't I need the cues.

 

I've encountered another blasted problem here. I think I know the solution. So I swapped the palettes so Rouge won't be Sonic-blue and now all the enemies and Eggman's sign are purple-pink. Do I need to just make a separate palette file and do some ASM coding to have it point the character's palette to that and leave Sonic's palette as the default?

 

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think Knuckles in Sonic 2 uses Sonics palette for most of the sprites and then his for Knuckles and a few others. I need to do the same with mine if possible as I don't fancy editing every peice of art to match the new.

 

Probably. I don't know anything about Sonic 1 or Sonic 3 =P

Some objects (like Eggman's sign like you mentioned) shares Sonic's palette. Obviously you need to change Sonic's palette to Rouges palette, but then the sign changes colours. You either:

• live with it if it looks cool.
  
• Edit the sign to make it look better
  
• Change the sign to a different palette line (this will probably make it look worse but interesting =P)
  

I don't think there's a way to avoid that.

 

I was looking around and saw a guide on dynamic palettes. Can't that be used as an alternative?

 

I don't think so, as it will still be using the colours from one of your palette lines. Theoretically, if you only edited Sonic's blue, Eggman sign should be alright as he uses Tails palette mainly.

 

I wonder if it isn't possible to change whatever points the Sonic object to the Sonic palette to its own palette?

 

Only four palette lines can be loaded into the CRAM at a time. All the art on the screen has to use one of these.