Animation Request: Eliwood with a Lance

[MarkyJoe1990]

So yesterday, I spent one hour trying to make an Eliwood lance animation from scratch. Then I realized I suck ass at drawing.

Then I tried for about four hours to make an Eliwood with lance animation by recoloring Ephraim's frames and splicing in an Eliwood head.

... And then the FEditor Adv didn't accept it.

I didn't do it the "normal" way, which is, making 248x160 dimension images for each frame, and making a script for each. I dumped Ephraim's animation, recolored it, put in an eliwood head, and tried to re-insert the animation, and it told me "NOPE. YOU HAVE MORE THAN 16 COLORS" when I didn't appear to.

Then I spent another two hours trying to do things the "normal" way by extracting all of Ephraim's frames, making them 248x160 images, recoloring and putting an Eliwood head on each, and then I realized "Fuck, it's late at night and I wasted my entire day for nothing".

Eventually I just flat out gave up, and I'm really annoyed about it.

Sooooo here's what I'm asking: Could someone make an animation for me? I don't have the artistic talent nor patience to do this any longer.

I'm willing to do almost anything in return. I can do pretty much any aspect of Fire Emblem hacking that isn't graphics related. I can make good maps, create FE7 compatible MIDI music, make good level design, teach you how to do some aspect of Fire Emblem hacking, or some other shit. Either way, I'm REALLY god damn desperate at this point.

Edited June 18, 2012 by MarkyJoe1990

[Crimson Red]

use Usenti to know if an image is truly 16 colors

it's the only program I know that checks properly: humans don't check properly and AFAIK photoshop, GIMP, PSP, and paint.net don't either (or else people just don't know HOW to check properly).

Anyhow do you have the sprite sheet or do the sprites have to be made as well?

[MarkyJoe1990]

use Usenti to know if an image is truly 16 colors

it's the only program I know that checks properly: humans don't check properly and AFAIK photoshop, GIMP, PSP, and paint.net don't either (or else people just don't know HOW to check properly).

Anyhow do you have the sprite sheet or do the sprites have to be made as well?

I used Usenti at least 5 times, and saved it under every combination of settings Usenti had. Didn't work.

Which sprite sheet are you referring to? Ephraim's?

[Crimson Red]

Ouch, I dunno then.

And the actual sprite sheet you want to insert

[MarkyJoe1990]

Ouch, I dunno then.

And the actual sprite sheet you want to insert

The 248x160 frame stuff? Or the compressed graphic sheets?

[deranger]

There's eliwood with a lance instead of a sword at 4:18
No idea how you'd contact the creator of it though. Edited June 18, 2012 by deranger

[Lord Glenn]

use Usenti to know if an image is truly 16 colors

it's the only program I know that checks properly: humans don't check properly and AFAIK photoshop, GIMP, PSP, and paint.net don't either (or else people just don't know HOW to check properly).

Paint Shop Pro (at least the pre-Corel versions, anyway) can easily determine the number of unique colors in an image. You may need to merge all of your layers temporarily to check (since it will only count on the current layer), but that's easily solved by simply undoing the merge afterwards.

Regardless, since Paint Shop Pro costs money, Usenti is still a better option.

Which sprite sheet are you referring to? Ephraim's?

I'm guessing he's meaning any of the ones that you attempted; if there's a base already made, it would save whoever signs on a decent amount of work, since they won't have to edit everything from the beginning.

-----------

Anyway, I had a thought that either might be why one of your attempts failed or might offer an alternative means of doing this, depending on whether this is what you were doing when you used the dumped animation.

Back in the days before FEditor, the only way to change animations was basically to overwrite the existing ones; in doing so, you had to conform to the boundaries of the garbled mess that the game pieced together. As a last resort (since the method is far outdated), you could copy over Ephraim's animation from FE8 and then modify the garbled mess sheet to use Eliwood's head, provided that it stays within the boundaries. That is, unless this is what you were referring to with the "dumped animation" part.

EDIT - Wayyyyyyy ninja'd.

Edited June 18, 2012 by Lord Glenn

[MarkyJoe1990]

Paint Shop Pro (at least the pre-Corel versions, anyway) can easily determine the number of unique colors in an image. You may need to merge all of your layers temporarily to check (since it will only count on the current layer), but that's easily solved by simply undoing the merge afterwards.

Regardless, since Paint Shop Pro costs money, Usenti is still a better option.

Usenti failed me pretty damn hard. Even after I converted every image to 16 colors, FEditor Adv still said it had more than 16 colors.

I'm guessing he's meaning any of the ones that you attempted; if there's a base already made, it would save whoever signs on a decent amount of work, since they won't have to edit everything from the beginning.

I deleted pretty much everything I worked on (Mainly because I felt that there would be no way to make it work)... If it's needed, I'll go through that shit again if it means getting some help.

Anyway, I had a thought that either might be why one of your attempts failed or might offer an alternative means of doing this, depending on whether this is what you were doing when you used the dumped animation.

My method was kind of lazy and roundabout.

Back in the days before FEditor, the only way to change animations was basically to overwrite the existing ones; in doing so, you had to conform to the boundaries of the garbled mess that the game pieced together. As a last resort (since the method is far outdated), you could copy over Ephraim's animation from FE8 and then modify the garbled mess sheet to use Eliwood's head, provided that it stays within the boundaries. That is, unless this is what you were referring to with the "dumped animation" part.

That's similar to what I did. I extracted Ephraim's animation using FEditor Adv, then opened up the resulting images,recolored the armor so that it matched the back of Ephraim's cape (Since both were going to be changed to blue), then spliced Eliwood's head onto it. Then I tried to re-insert the animation using FEditor Adv and it said I used too many colors (Even though I confirmed several times using Usenti that it WASN'T)

Edited June 18, 2012 by MarkyJoe1990

[eclipse]

Blazer, are you talking about the Color -> Info -> Colorcube Analysis in GIMP? I've had good luck with it so far.

[Primefusion]

Usenti failed me pretty damn hard. Even after I converted every image to 16 colors, FEditor Adv still said it had more than 16 colors.

But, were you using the same 16 colors throughout the entire animation? You may have had 16 on each frame, but one of the colors might have been a shade off or something in one of the frames which would push you over the 16 color limit for the whole animation.

[CT075]

If you're just editing the 'sheets' that feditor spits out, I've had issues with that as well. I'd recommend just ripping the frames and converting/reusing the original script (which can be disassembled using my utility here)

[shadowofchaos]

But, were you using the same 16 colors throughout the entire animation? You may have had 16 on each frame, but one of the colors might have been a shade off or something in one of the frames which would push you over the 16 color limit for the whole animation.

This is why if the script says that... you should manually "reset animation" and "insert frame" to test every frame. If you insert the first one and then try to insert ANY OTHER one, then the first frame is your problem... etc. etc.

[Jubby]

oh fail. Yeah, send me the FEditor frames and I can do it for you :P.

Edited June 18, 2012 by eJubs

[MarkyJoe1990]

oh fail. Yeah, send me the FEditor frames and I can do it for you :P.

This?

Or this?

Edited June 18, 2012 by MarkyJoe1990

[Jubby]

Second one :P

[MarkyJoe1990]

Second one :P

Alright. Then I gotta make 11 more...

I seriously hope this doesn't become a repeat of yesterday.

[Jubby]

nah, I can do it :P Just did the same thing with a different animation about 10 minutes ago. :3

[MarkyJoe1990]

nah, I can do it :P Just did the same thing with a different animation about 10 minutes ago. :3

Oh... So you've got it from here?

EDIT: I re-edited it so that Eliwood's head doesn't appear in front of the armor when it isn't supposed to.

Edited June 18, 2012 by MarkyJoe1990

[Jubby]

No, I mean it won't be a repeat of yesterday, as in you won't be wasting your time framing all this shit and then having it not work :P My bad.

[MarkyJoe1990]

No, I mean it won't be a repeat of yesterday, as in you won't be wasting your time framing all this shit and then having it not work :P My bad.

Oh okay.

Alright, gonna get to work on the rest.

[Reganis]

IIRC, when you're editing and reinserting dumped animations, you need to use the same palette as the original animation. Try again with Ephraims hair color instead of red, then recolor it with APE after its been inserted

[Jubby]

That's basically what I was going to do. Kind of. The FEditor palette is ingrained somewhere in the Frame Data or the file, so you can't change the palette. You also can't change the names of the frames... if you still want me to do it (it can be kind of a bitch sometimes; it fucked up on me twice today) I will XP The most I'd ask for is probably a map anyway.

[MarkyJoe1990]

That's basically what I was going to do. Kind of. The FEditor palette is ingrained somewhere in the Frame Data or the file, so you can't change the palette. You also can't change the names of the frames... if you still want me to do it (it can be kind of a bitch sometimes; it fucked up on me twice today) I will XP The most I'd ask for is probably a map anyway.

So that's the problem. I have to use the colors of the original animation... Fuck my life.

Well, I'm almost done with the frames. You'll have to change them back to Ephraim's original colors, but I'll probably give you a color reference so that it's easily. I changed the three shades of Ephraim's hair, the two shades of his cape, and... the other two colors are kind of ambiguous, but you'll have my sheets as reference.

I should be done soon. I'm working much faster than yesterday due to prior knowledge, and having developed a fast technique.

Edited June 18, 2012 by MarkyJoe1990

[Jubby]

Alright, I should be able to work under these conditions. :D Are you intending to use it in conjunction with Eliwood's normal sword animation? cause that could involve actual annoyingly difficult work :( (although I CAN do it)

[MarkyJoe1990]

Alright, I should be able to work under these conditions. :D Are you intending to use it in conjunction with Eliwood's normal sword animation? cause that could involve actual annoyingly difficult work :( (although I CAN do it)

Well... No. Eliwood's going to be locked to Lances only.

That way, the three FE7 lords combined form the weapon triangle.