Help Wanted

[PlaneFreak]

Okay. So I've started another thread before, but all that has gone wrong. This time, though, it'll be a better thread.
Here's the airplane sprite I want to replace.

  planeoriginal.bmp (Size: 29.3 KB / Downloads: 14)

Here's the new airplane sprite to be used as a replacement to the one above.

  plane.bmp (Size: 29.3 KB / Downloads: 16)

The origin of the first airliner sprite is the Nintendo DS game Super Scribblenauts. It's ripped by Barubary. By the way, you can give me tips, or even a full tutorial on how to do it.

Nitro Explorer 2b files in the ROM:
1i
1p
audio.sdat
audio.sdal
utility.bin

The graphics are in utility.bin, Kat said, but how do I replace sprites there?

Thanks! Hope to see your answers soon!

-PlaneFreak

[PlaneFreak]

Hmm. Maybe no one wants to help. Bump, by the way.

[Lexou Duck]

it's probably some strange nitro compression image format.
The best person to ask this about would probably be Barubary himself. Send him a PM, he knows quite a bit about ds formats.

[PlaneFreak]

(09-02-2011 11:13 PM)LexouDuck Wrote:  it's probably some strange nitro compression image format.
The best person to ask this about would probably be Barubary himself. Send him a PM, he knows quite a bit about ds formats.

I highly doubt that Barubary will be able to give me advice on resolving this situation, since he`s probably too busy at the moment.

[Mighty Jetters]

He's not THAT busy. He usually gets back to you within the next the day or so at most (he did for me).

Here, just send him a PM and he'll get back to you when he can.

[Asther]

i took a look at it myself since 5th Cell's games usually have the same type of organization, but this looks way different. The most I can tell you is that Taxahan can open .bin files.

[PlaneFreak]

(09-03-2011 02:38 AM)Arkinea Wrote:  i took a look at it myself since 5th Cell's games usually have the same type of organization, but this looks way different. The most I can tell you is that Taxahan can open .bin files.

So yeah. I'm onto the utility.bin file, and I see a folder named char. I bet there are the graphics. And I wonder what I should do next.

[Asther]

I've never actually done any rom hacking, but GBATemp has a general guide that includes DS. http://gbatemp.net/t73394-gbatemp-rom-ha...roject-wip

Try searching for super scribblenauts romhacks, if you're lucky someone might have done it already and can tell you how.

in the bin, the graphics files are the ones that have a g in the filename. i couldnt get them in a clear picture in tahaxan but try extracting them and messing around with them in tile molester or tiledGGD.

you'll probably need to download a hex editor, once you finally get around to actually putting your own file in.

[PlaneFreak]

(09-03-2011 03:31 AM)Arkinea Wrote:  in the bin, the graphics files are the ones that have a g in the filename. i couldnt get them in a clear picture in tahaxan but try extracting them and messing around with them in tile molester or tiledGGD.

Do you mean "g" by ".ncg.l"?

[Barubary]

(09-03-2011 01:06 AM)Mighty Jetters Wrote:  He's not THAT busy. He usually gets back to you within the next the day or so at most (he did for me).

I actually am pretty busy, but I get easily distracted by things that sound more interesting. =P
(and there's no easy way to keep the PM notification displayed, so I must either reply immediately or not reply, otherwise I'll forget)


utility.bin only contains graphics related to wireless stuff, and is the same file for every game that has some form of wireless communication feature.

All the data is actually stored in 1i and 1p. 1i contains the file allocation table (or rather the offsets to all files, and the total size of the pack file at the end), 1p the actual data.
Most, if not all of the 23058 file are compressed, which you can decompress (and recompress I suppose) with DSDecmp.

Of all the files, 'only' 6902 are sprite files. There is no way to tell which is which from their extension, or even file header, but their format is always the same;

Code:

u8 paletteSize;
u16[paletteSize] palette; // default bgr555 format
{
  u8 width;
  u8 height;
  ----------- or, if width = 0:
  u8 zero;
  u16 width;
  u16 height;
}
u8[width*height/2] data;

All sprite files use 4bpp image format. If you give a sprite file the extension 'snim', you can use TiledGGD to view it when you apply these plugins with the following bindings (in Bindings.xml):

Code:

    <Binding type="GRAPHICS">
       <Name>Scribblenauts image</Name>
       <FilterSet method="AND">
           <Filter type="FILENAME">.snim$</Filter>
        </FilterSet>
        <Target type="LUA">Graphics_Scribble.lua</Target>
    </Binding>
    <Binding type="PALETTE">
       <Name>Scribblenauts image</Name>
       <FilterSet method="AND">
           <Filter type="FILENAME">.snim$</Filter>
        </FilterSet>
        <Target type="LUA">Palette_Scribble.lua</Target>
    </Binding>

EDIT: actually, finding the proper file is a bit easier than I described. This archive contains all sprites files as PNGs, of which the file numbers match with the original files (where 00000 is the first file). So you can look up the proper file relatively easily in there, without having to check every file if its a sprite file, and if so if it is the one you want.

[PlaneFreak]

Sprite numbers to remember:
Airplane - 10818
Gamer - 27639 (assembled), 8797 (disassembled)
Enemy - 08786
Plasma Rifle - 11255
Death - 08910
Thanks, Barubary. I had been planning to revise other sprites, too.

---

Okay. How do I reinsert the sprites into the 1p file?