Tools and techniques for replacing graphics?

[earok]

Hi all,

Are there any tools or techniques for inserting graphics into a game? I'm planning to do a basic hack on "Hard N Heavy" to turn it into Giana 2 (which was the original plan for the game, see trivia section at http://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/Hard'n'Heavy).

I managed to find the title screen at $72E3E in the WHDLoad disk image using MapTapper, is there anything that could assist with inserting a replacement title screen? Otherwise, I could have a go at hacking something together.


Cheers,
Erik

[Codetapper]

The basic Amiga formats in Maptapper can be converted from IFF files to RAW pretty easily and then spliced back into the disk image. As long as the replacement file is the same size, it should be pretty simple.

Complexities would arise if you're replacing sprites and they need masks before or after the graphics etc. Then you might need a custom program to do it.

[Retro1234]

i find artpro good . when i tried to replace giana sprite to mario i had big problemjs some kind of shadow sprite and very limted fe size as the game uses trackloader

but tile screens and tiles are probably easier . try grab the title screen with art pro using the same dimensions .i think there might be a cpu bug in art pro

[Codetapper]

Hang on, one minute you said you found the title screen and the next you're replacing sprites? The sprites are usually trickier as they often have a mask near them (before or after) and you must insert the exact same size in or it will not work.

[earok]

Thanks for the advice guys, I'll see what I can whip together.

@BooBoo did you have any success with your Giana to Mario project in the end? I considered looking into something like that myself.

@Codetapper I didn't mention anything about sprites yet though sprites are definitely the next logical step.

Do you ever come to the Auckland game dev meetup btw?

[Lonewolf10]

Originally Posted by Codetapper

Hang on, one minute you said you found the title screen and the next you're replacing sprites? The sprites are usually trickier as they often have a mask near them (before or after) and you must insert the exact same size in or it will not work.

I think you are confused

You were the first person to mention sprites in this thread ... then boo boo suggested a way to do it.

[Codetapper]

Originally Posted by earok

Thanks for the advice guys, I'll see what I can whip together.

@BooBoo did you have any success with your Giana to Mario project in the end? I considered looking into something like that myself.

@Codetapper I didn't mention anything about sprites yet though sprites are definitely the next logical step.

Do you ever come to the Auckland game dev meetup btw?

Sorry, assumed poster #1 was also poster #3!

And no, never been to the Auckland meetup so far, timing is pretty poor for me in the evenings. Work, cycle home, dinner, bedtime stories for my daughter etc. If there was something really interesting I'd try and swing it but so far nothing has really jumped out at me. Do you go regularly?

[earok]

I go to the meetups most of the time. The meetup agenda itself isn't always interesting to everyone (they try to get speakers to cover programming, art, business and marketing) but the community meet-and-greets afterwards are fantastic, occasionally you get to meet someone who worked on a big Spectrum, C64, DOS or Amiga game back in the day.

[turrican3]

Guys, if you find a way to change characters in game, i will gone to change the ssf2 1200 with the amiga cd32 ssft2 turbo graphics.
If the nb of colors can be increase i would do many amiga 500 ecs-> amiga 1200 aga games conversions.
OT:I'm think ing about it, do you think it could be possible for a filter to display more colors. Something like you have 2colours... it could add a third color between the 2 others, a color in middle range between the 2 others.
I think it could be possible in theory but i don't know how it could be done.
The minimum that we could make is with multi colors copper rainbow, it could be possible to increase the numbers of colors by this way.
Do we know the guys who are doing filters for winuae? Is it tony alone ?
Sorry for this long of topic.

[Retro1234]

no luck changing the sprites I had a very blocky mario lol Very . i think you would have to work out the size of every giana sprite and create your own sprite editor for the job maybe.
but codetapper is the man when it comes to ripping stuff .

[earok]

Success! I ended up hacking together an incredibly rough C# command line utility that takes an indexed PNG file, converts it to bitplanes and pastes it into WHDLoad disk image. So that'll be the title screen taken care of.

@CodeTapper I know this is a very noob question but, how does the Mask work? I found the player sprites in the file using the "Sprite" mode in MapTapper, is the Mask before or after or can it vary? Does a "1" in the mask indicat a filled or transparent pixel?

[Codetapper]

Mask currently just ignores the bitplane completely in Maptapper. A future version you will be able to specify whether pixels set are the mask, or pixels not set are the mask. That way some games that share one colour (often black) for the background and pixels (eg. main character hair or an outline) can be extracted. But that's a future build! The default will be to just skip that bitplane to keep compatibility.

If you have found real Amiga sprites (using the Sprite mode in Maptapper), they don't need a mask at all as colour 0 is transparent already.

[earok]

Ah, excellent. Thanks

[earok]

I worked out how to replace the sprites! Codetapper, I was going to ask for more advice but I saw you had posted a detailed explanation of the Amiga graphics modes and got it going from there. Thanks heaps, wouldn't have been able to do it without your help.

[s2325]

A simple hack on the Amiga game "Hard N Heavy" to reskin it as "Giana II: Arther and Martha in Future World", which was the game's original title.

Hard N Heavy was originally intended to be a direct sequel to "The Great Giana Sisters", however pressure from Nintendo over the original game forced the developers to retool the sequel. This was an attempt to bring it back towards the original design.

Replacements include:
- The player sprites in the game have been replaced with that from the Amiga version of the Great Giana Sisters (although some colour adjustments needed to be done to fit the new palette).
- The title screen has been altered to feature the original title, also the character from the original box art has been spliced in.
- String references to "Heavy" and "Metal" have been replaced in a hex editor with "Giana" and "Maria", the names of the original characters, respectively.
- Some text graphics have been altered to reference the original characters.

[ Show youtube player ]

[earok]

Wow, you found that quick O_o I posted the video only a few hours ago, I'll do a post about it here once I've got all of the stuff related to the project online.