Glitch After Transferring Portraits from One Game to Another with FEditor

[TheDarion]

Hello again.

I've been using FEditor to put portraits from FE6/8 into FE7. I did a total of about 30, but 5 of the portraits show the following crazy glitches when viewed in-game:

Rennac (Replaced Raven)

Joshua (Replaced Priscilla)

Gale (Replaced Heath)

Klein (Replaced Erk)

The fifth error was the result of me swapping Marcus's Portrait with Harken. This makes the game return to the title screen when I try to open his menu. All chibis work fine.

I inserted them the same way I did every other one: Save the portrait I want from the other game, then load from file into FE7. I've tried switching the portraits around, but it still happens regardless of who's put there (I tried making Raven Neimi, for example, and the same glitch happened.)

Edited March 27, 2014 by TheDarion

[Aleph]

isn't there a topic somewhere for issues that are specific to this application

[Book of Ereshkigal]

How are you inserting the portraits? Are you ripping them from FE6/8 and inserting, or using just the image to insert? If you done it one way, try the other. (I honestly am not sure what is screwing up XD) The 5th error confuses me, as moving a FE7 mug to another slot wouldn't make it explode, I hope.

What else have you changed? (I see you redid some names)

isn't there a topic somewhere for issues that are specific to this application

Link? I've only ever seen the events topic, and there are a few things from a long time ago I'd like to get sorted out. A quick search didn't show me a feditor specific help thread but I could be missing it, or interpreting the topic titles wrong. :c

(EDIT: Some of these topics are pretty funny lol)

Edited March 27, 2014 by L95

[TheDarion]

How are you inserting the portraits? ... What else have you changed?

I Open fe6/8 in FEditor, go to the portrait editor and find the portrait I want. I Click "Save to file" and save the file as that character's name. I don't save it as a bmp or anything, I just save it as a "file" and that always worked. Maybe that's the issue. Anyway, I then open up the FE7 ROM in FEditor, go to the portrait editor and find who I want to replace. Click "Load from file" and choose who I want. Fix the eye and/or mouth frames and that's it.

As for what I've changed, well, a lot. I actually already had some portraits inserted in the game from a few years ago, but wanted to switch them around. I was also using the codebreaker codes to change Lyn's portrait to test them all, I doubt that's the issue though. And if I say, open up the menu while she's Rennac and it's super glitchy, I can change her to someone who works and then it's fine.

It's funny because the ultimate tutorial pretty much just says portraits rarely cause gamebreaking glitches. Figures I'm the lucky one haha.

[Agro]

The fact that you used codebreaker codes to change the portrait no less is probably the exact issue.

[CT075]

i would put money on it being the codebreaker codes

[TheDarion]

Orly? So that is to say that, if i were to progress through the game and get these characters to whom the portraits are assigned, you think they'd work fine? I'll have to try it, I'll let you know what happens.

[Aleph]

Why would you use the codebreaker codes for that when you can just open the memory viewer and edit the value (possibly more correctly, as well as) more easily?

[TheDarion]

Alas, that wasn't the problem. I turned the codebreaker codes off and played legit up to the first character I get who's afflicted with the issue (Erk) and still got the same issue. Also the whole chapter, along with many chapters after (Including each chapter that has the characters in question), looked like this:

King Lyn wrecks all

Well, I always back up my stuff so I opened up the rom from before I inserted the portraits, and the chapter still looked like that. Bummer.

So eventually I found the most recent backup where everything was in working order. So I went ahead and inserted the portraits... and got the same portrait issue. On the same characters (except Heath). So I'm thinking that the issue is definitely the changing of the portraits. Why, exactly, I (obviously) do not know.

Maybe I'll just switch the portraits on a vanilla FE and patch it to this one. Not sure if that'd work tho.

[Agro]

I feel like simply turning them off wouldn't do. I think codebreaker codes edit the save or something, though? Have you still got the save from waaaaay back when? See what happens if you delete and then play legit up to that point?

Edited March 27, 2014 by Agro

[Aleph]

any code will edit the memory at the address specified, which is typically in the work RAM

if it's persisted then the save will be corrupted if the RAM that is stored was

Edited March 27, 2014 by Izayoi

[TheDarion]

I'm sorry but I'm not 100% sure what you mean. I didn't like, hack the game up with a ton of codes, I just used one, the code for changing the portrait for slot one (Lyn) and just changed it to the values for the characters I wanted to check.

Also "way back when" wasn't too long ago, I just started with these portraits yesterday. (Don't mean to sound passive aggressive or anything I just couldn't think of any better way to phrase it)

In response to Agro of course, lzayoi's post wasn't there when I typed this

Edited March 27, 2014 by TheDarion

[Agro]

You said this:

As for what I've changed, well, a lot. I actually already had some portraits inserted in the game from a few years ago, but wanted to switch them around. I was also using the codebreaker codes to change Lyn's portrait to test them all, I doubt that's the issue though. And if I say, open up the menu while she's Rennac and it's super glitchy, I can change her to someone who works and then it's fine.

Which leads me to think you're still using the same ROM and save from years ago. Anyway, as Hextator confirmed for me, the codebreaker codes effectively work on the save of the file, which means that reversing them or not your save file is probably borked. Therefore, I think it might be an idea to delete the save file (as in, the .sav, not just the in-game save file) and start from a fresh save and play up to that point.

Edited March 27, 2014 by Agro

[CT075]

why would you use a codebreaker when you can just set the portraits in nightmare

[TheDarion]

Alas, deleting the .sav did nothing. I have one ROM where I'm on Ch. 5. Everything works, and it has my old portraits in it (not original FE7 ones). I copied that ROM, changed Erk (and only Erk), started a new .sav, and when I got to Ch. 5 Erk's portrait was all messed up still.

While I'm sure I would have had the common sense to check back then, I suppose I'll test and confirm that all of my old inserts work perfectly.

why would you use a codebreaker when you can just set the portraits in nightmare

Because it's faster to just change Lyn's portrait with a codebreaker code, take a look to see that it works and then enter a new one as opposed to opening up nightmare, changing her portrait, saving the rom then closing and reopening it for each.

Edit: So I "fixed" it, but not in the most elegant of ways. I changed all the portraits that actually worked, then replaced portraits I'm not gonna use (Eleanora and such) with the ones I wanted. Then I just changed what portrait the 5 culprits use in nightmare, and no glitches. Seems like it'll work. (I'll probably find an issue down the line tho)

Edited March 28, 2014 by TheDarion

[Aleph]

Because it's faster to just change Lyn's portrait with a codebreaker code

and editing the memory manually is faster and safer than that, which is why I asked what I asked

The codes (which are like, not even Codebreaker codes...I think VBA mislabeled its code engines), assuming you're using the ones posted all over the internet, only edit the bottom 16 bits of what is actually a 32 bit reference. The top 16 bits of that reference pretty much never change, but you should edit a pointer as a pointer, not as a pair of arbitrary 16 bit ints.

As for your actual problem...maybe study how portraits are stored, perhaps by reading some source code of utilities like GBAGE and cough FEditor cough, then use a diff to determine what you've changed between your problem ROM and the stock ROM...and what those changes mean.

[Chocolate Kitty]

Because it's faster to just change Lyn's portrait with a codebreaker code, take a look to see that it works and then enter a new one as opposed to opening up nightmare, changing her portrait, saving the rom then closing and reopening it for each.

See the code doesn't actually change a portrait, it actually changes the character slot that is in use; meaning that if you, say, replace lyn with hector, and you're playing lyn mode, the game would crash as soon as the next chapter loads because it's trying to find lyn and can't. You can also notice this because the palette will change as well.

//old information I figured out when I used these things in '05/'06

tl; dr

don't use codebreaker codes for much of anything

[Aleph]

Characters in WRAM are literally distinguishable by their portrait (i.e. a difference of portrait is a guarantee that it's a different character in all other respects). The portrait is determined by dereferencing the character reference that is at +0x0000 (+0x0004 for the class reference, might have those two in reverse order from how it is but you get the idea) in the struct. So you're not just changing the portrait, but you're also not "changing the character slot that is in use" because any slot can be for any character. When selecting units at the battle prep screen it actually sorts the array of units to put in use units at the top, with lords at the very top, but this sorting is a visual aid for the player only and there are no character slots reserved for specific characters.

In my experience, if you don't have a unit that you need it usually generates the unit and then you have a tacky clone or something (after which it's a nightmare to figure out which one is actually considered to be a lord). I don't really remember the criteria for that occurrence.

Editing the WRAM to spawn characters and such is what the game actually does (duh), so if it's not working correctly then that just means you did it wrong.