bobrocks95 wrote:Well, it's mainly for future purposes, so I'm sure that won't be a problem.Completely off-topic, but does anyone know of a good guide for ripping tiles from a picture? Or at least some technique so that using the grab function doesn't make the color all garbagey?
EDIT: Or how to do a palette rip?
...Must... Resist... Getting... Egotistical...
Ah hell with it. I'm Revfan, your resident ripping expert.
If you want to rip into Zelda Classic, the first program that you're going to need is GraphicsGale. It's shareware though, so you'll have to either pay for it, or use the totally naughty method of cracking the shareware to get the full version, which I, Revfan9, totally do not support in any way. <.<
Now, there are programs that you can use other than GraphicsGale, but I like it the best, and it's also the program I'm going to use to write this little mini-tutorial.
For this little mini-tutorial, we're going to go ahead and rip the big tree from ALttP into the BS palette. Whee! This method will work for just about any graphic that you want to rip into ZC, and it will work for almost any palette setup. This won't really work for super-complex jobs, but almost every rip I do uses this method, so it's a very nice skill to learn.
Now, let's start off with an image of the big trees from LttP:
Wow! That's a lot there. The first thing to remember is to never be overwhelmed. This method is exactly the same whether you're trying to rip in 2 tiles or 20,000. To actually rip the tiles, the first thing you have to look at is the palette.
Looking at that palette from that very shot up there, there's quite a lot to try to manage. Click that arrow right there, and click "Remove Unused Colors". Ta-da! That's quite a lot less colors to deal with, isn't it? Hold down Shift and click on a color, then drag it to have those 2 colors switch places on the palette. It also switches the indexing on all of those colors switched in the image. What does this mean? If you don't hold down shift, it just switches the colors on the palette. If you switch a red and a green, then all the green in the image changes to red, and all the red changes to green. Sometimes you may actually want this however, so remember that. After reducing the colors and re-organizing everything, you get this:
Well that's a lot easier to work with, isn't it? Now, to convert it so it becomes compatible with the BS palette. Click the arrow again, and click "Load Palette", and open up an image with the OW palette from BS Zelda in it (If you don't know what this means, take a screenshot of an OW screen in your quest and open that). It should look something like this:
Now, highlight the colors you want to copy, and put them over the colors in the image. Make sure that "Match Pixels with Colors" is unchecked for this step, or you'll get messed-up results. Remember that every row of colors is 1 Cset in ZC.
But for this particular job, we have a bit of a conundrum. In the BS-Overworld palette, there is no Cset that has both 3 greens and 4 browns. We have 2 options here, we can either make the tile 8-bit, or we can compromise by making the 3rd-brightest shade of brown a dark grey instead. I personally prefer to keep the graphic quality at it's optimum, so let's make the tiles 8-bit instead, as it'll also be good excercise. Copy the colors in and such...
Now here's the part that's a bit more complex. Use the Shift-Drag way to move the palette colors around to fit the Csets from the palette you ripped from. This is easy enough once you get enough experience, but it can be difficult if you're new to the process. Just remember that the first row of colors is Cset0, the second row is Cset1, etc. After you're all done, the palette will look like this:
Now, note that I changed the black outline color to a bright grey, for the sole reason that the outline color in the BS palette is black, as is the transparency color. This is more of a change to make it easier on you than it is to actually enhance the quality of your rip. The next step will fix whatever distortion it gave to your image, so don't worry about that. Finally, click "Load Palette" again and open up your BS palette image again, unchecking "Match Pixels with Colors" one more time, copying all the colors this time. You should get this as the end result:
And... done! Try it. It'll rip into the BS-Zelda tileset in 8-bit. Go ahead, I dare you.
This method is actually EXTREMELY powerful and useful for so many things, I really wish I had the space, the time, or the willingness to do a really big job with this method right now and show you what it can REALLY do, but you'll just have to take my word for it. Maybe some other time ;p
Hope whoever reads this finds it helpful. Ciao!
EDIT: Never use ZC's "R". Ever. It makes everything just lose so much quality and look so bad.
bobrocks95 wrote:Thanks, though before you posted I found out how to do a palette rip, which works well because BS has so little palettes- plenty of room.
I imported this, then had to combo the whole thing. I'm planning on making this the title screen, but I need to find a good Legend of Zelda title overlay, yet generic so that I can just insert some text underneath it to make my full title.
I think I'm done with ZC for the night.
Meh... I'd suggest using something different than that image. It's not even that impressive, and everyone and their mother uses it. I would suggest using something that matches your quest, as well as something that will make it stand out. Take my project's title screen for instance:
