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Character Swapping Play as anyone

#1   Atrius 

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    Posted 14 March 2008 - 10:12 AM

    I was tinkering around with Golden Sun's memory trying to find something to make ripping sprites a bit easier, and came up with a way to replace the player's sprites with a different characters.

    Check out the video, the more entertaining stuff is in the second half.

    #2   Jenna 

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      Posted 14 March 2008 - 02:04 PM

      You have accomplished my dream. o_o

      Please, please, please, if you do anything else in your life, tell me how to do this.

      #3   Split Infinity 

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        Posted 14 March 2008 - 05:46 PM

        LOL, some of those are hilarious. You turned into a freaking boulder. XD

        #4   Atrius 

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          Posted 14 March 2008 - 06:12 PM

          :(

          It doesn't change your sprites on the status screen, world map, or in battles unfortunately. It actually causes minor graphical glitches on the map (A broken line of pixels), and in battles (stray stuck pixels during attack animations). Also the location in memory for your sprite data is often used during level loading, so problems could arise from that. The only crashes I've noticed though are soon after switching to a character with less animations (The boulder is most notable for this), it's usually fairly stable after it gets adjusted though.

          Here are the codes for Jenna, they're VisualBoy Advance codes, to load them go to Cheats > Cheat list... and click on the "Code..." button, you can paste them all in at the same time.

          Golden Sun
          03002E00:05
          03002E08:081B0448
          03002E0C:08187E40

          Golden Sun: The Lost Age
          Works similarly enough to GS that it was easy to reproduce the effect.
          03002100:05
          03002107:03
          03002108:08307EEC
          0300210C:08303ADC

          It didn't happen often, but sometimes TLA would shift the players sprite data forward 24 bytes for no apparent reason, making it so the codes didn't work. I tried a code that would have prevented this from happening, but it also completely stopped levels from loading. You can usually fix it by just entering a different area anyway.

          #5   Jenna 

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            Posted 15 March 2008 - 09:58 AM

            Waaaaaah, my hero. :( XP

            What numbers do you change for other sprites? For the sake of experimentation...

            #6   Platinum Sun 

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                Posted 15 March 2008 - 10:24 AM

              My favorites were the ice skating Alex, the puppy, and Dora doing the Dora-Dora dance.

              #7   Someone Else 

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                Posted 15 March 2008 - 11:27 AM

                It was oh-so entertaining when you turned into a boulder.

                #8   Toasty 

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                  Posted 15 March 2008 - 07:35 PM

                  I lol'd when I saw the boulder moving around. XD

                  The Adventures of Boulder Guy!

                  #9   Atrius 

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                    Posted 15 March 2008 - 07:59 PM

                    Dora dancing is my favorite one ^_^

                    Most of the weird stuff happens as a result of holding down the button to run, probably since most characters don't have running animations.


                    Quote

                    What numbers do you change for other sprites? For the sake of experimentation...

                    If you have any requests for specific characters, I'd be glad to give you them. It can be kinda complicated to get them though, the values have to be pretty precise, and there's really no telling what they could be. If you just start putting in random values it'll most likely just crash the game. The best way to find them is to go to an area where the character you want appears, and check the exact values they're using in memory.

                    The parts after the colon are the values that change for each character.

                    03002E00:xx - Not entirely sure what this value is, but the game crashes pretty often for some characters when it isn't set properly.
                    03002E08:08xxxxxx - Pointer to a collection of pointers to the character's sprites.
                    03002E0C:08xxxxxx - Pointer to a collection of pointers to the character's animations data, mismatching sprite and animation data can result in crashing.


                    I've been working on figuring out the sprites data format so I can rip sprites easily, I've got it partially figured out. I've actually already managed to write a custom animation that cycles through all of a characters sprites though.



                    In other news, I also found the location in memory used for your sprite on the world map ^_^
                    Unfortunately it's also used a lot for text boxes, so the game locked up nearly every other time I talked to someone :(

                    #10   Jenna 

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                      Posted 16 March 2008 - 11:01 PM

                      Amazing! You are amazing. The only problem I've found with this is I can't get into the secret basement thing in Bilibin where the djinni is... ther than that, you have made this game for me. =] Thank you~~~

                      Um... Do you know the sprite for Sheba, or the little girl, and could you give me Alex's as well? (For Golden Sun 1, but Alex's on GS2 would be awesome as well~~ :)

                      These are amazing, thank you for telling us. =]

                      #11   Atrius 

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                        Posted 17 March 2008 - 01:26 AM

                        --Golden Sun--
                        I can't be bothered to go all the way to where Sheba appears right now, so besides the second code they're just educated guesses.

                        Sheba
                        03002E00:06
                        03002E08:081B2754
                        03002E0C:08187F10

                        Little Girl (You mean the really young one, right?)
                        03002E00:66
                        03002E08:082200D8
                        03002E0C:08189120

                        Alex
                        03002E00:2B
                        03002E08:081DC598
                        03002E0C:0818868C


                        --The Lost Age--

                        I hadn't noticed before, but these codes also change your voice, and mugshot in the beginning when you normally play as Jenna.

                        Sheba
                        lol... Seems to have trouble standing up when she's not walking.
                        Briefly turns into Piers after entering a new area.

                        03002100:06
                        03002107:03
                        03002108:083080F8
                        0300210C:08303B58


                        Little Girl
                        Briefly turns into a dog after entering a new area :)

                        03002100:BA
                        03002107:03
                        03002108:0830D8DC
                        0300210C:08304CC8


                        Alex
                        Same 'skating' problem as in GS, and now he looks like he's coughing when standing still :blink:
                        Briefly turns into some random brown-haired guy after entering a new area.

                        03002100:39
                        03002107:03
                        03002108:08309FEC
                        0300210C:083041C0



                        I finally accomplished my mission, and figured out the sprites data format too ^_^
                        I'm working on a program to rip a sprite sheet for every character it can find right now.

                        For now here's an interesting looking character... I think it's Jenna's Mom. Odd she has so many sprites since her role in the game is so small. From the looks of things though, nearly all characters at least have walking animations even though you never see some of them walk.
                        http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v698/AtriusV/Random%20Screens/JennasMom.gif

                        #12   Split Infinity 

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                          Posted 17 March 2008 - 01:55 AM

                          You might want to send a few of those over to Max, he could really use them for GSW.

                          #13   Atrius 

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                            Posted 17 March 2008 - 02:01 AM

                            View PostSplit Infinity, on Mar 17 2008, 03:55 AM, said:

                            You might want to send a few of those over to Max, he could really use them for GSW.



                            I'll definitely be making him aware of them.



                            :) Holy Zelda homage, look who I found amongst the other character sprites in The Lost Age!

                            http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v698/AtriusV/Random%20Screens/LinkGoldenSun.gif

                            Trying to figure out codes to play as him now, it's gonna be a pain to match animation data to the sprites.

                            Edit:
                            Success!

                            03002100:DC
                            03002107:03
                            03002108:0830E920
                            0300210C:08304FE4

                            He, like most characters in TLA it seems, changes into someone else briefly when you enter a new area >_<

                            #14   Folcon 

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                              Posted 21 March 2008 - 03:35 PM

                              But none of these can be done on the GBA verson, right?

                              #15   Atrius 

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                                Posted 21 March 2008 - 04:01 PM

                                The codes could be converted for Code Breaker, Action Replay, or some device like that.

                                I can convert them to Action Replay codes myself, but thats it. I could probably manage to find a way to convert to other formats if you really want.

                                #16   Atrius 

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                                  Posted 25 March 2008 - 08:12 PM

                                  I'm going out of town for the next few days, but before I do I'll leave you guys the list of VBA character codes, and all of the sprites I got so far. I can convert specific codes to Action Replay codes by request when I get back.

                                  You can match the sprite sheets to the character numbers on the codes to get who you want.

                                  The code lists only include codes for sprites that are 32x32 since anything else wouldn't really work properly anyway.
                                  There are some sprites missing from the sprite packs because Golden Sun uses 4 different formats for storing it's sprites, and I've only figured out the 2 most commonly used ones so far.


                                  Golden Sun
                                  Code list
                                  Sprite pack (1.4MB ZIP)

                                  The Lost Age
                                  Code list
                                  Sprite pack (2.79MB ZIP)

                                  (Yes, I've already sent Max the sprite packs)

                                  For the fun of it here's a new video of me hacking random stuff at the beginning of GS:TLA.

                                  #17   Jenna 

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                                    Posted 26 March 2008 - 12:53 PM

                                    Waaah, I've encountered a problem! Two, actually. When going down the stairs, my game freezes. Any stairs, from what I see. Going down to the underground place in Bilibin- Both ways. And I beat Tret, and when I try to leave the tree, the game goes nuts as if I removed the game.

                                    Oh well, don't worry about it. It was a fun play. =]

                                    #18   Someone Else 

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                                      Posted 26 March 2008 - 01:10 PM

                                      View PostAtrius, on Mar 17 2008, 01:01 AM, said:

                                      :P Holy Zelda homage, look who I found amongst the other character sprites in The Lost Age!

                                      http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v698/AtriusV/Random%20Screens/LinkGoldenSun.gif

                                      Haha, that does look like Link. I don't remember this dude anywhere in TLA...

                                      #19   Toasty 

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                                        Posted 29 March 2008 - 12:29 AM

                                        Maybe he was in a place that wouldn't easily been seen? Like, there's only one square in the entire gam you could see him from? I dunno.

                                        That's an awesome find though. I'm going to have to tell this to some of my friends.

                                        #20   Atrius 

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                                          Posted 01 April 2008 - 01:53 AM

                                          View PostJenna, on Mar 26 2008, 02:53 PM, said:

                                          Waaah, I've encountered a problem! Two, actually. When going down the stairs, my game freezes. Any stairs, from what I see. Going down to the underground place in Bilibin- Both ways. And I beat Tret, and when I try to leave the tree, the game goes nuts as if I removed the game.

                                          Oh well, don't worry about it. It was a fun play. =]


                                          Hmm... I think I mentioned that the location in memory being edited to change your sprite is also used for loading levels, so that could be why, though the game could also crash if it tried to use a sprite that didn't exist for the character. I'd bet that happens when you go down stairs.


                                          I've figured out the sprite & animation formats well enough that I could possibly edit the actual data in the rom to make it work better, maybe even put the rest of Jenna's sprites from TLA into the first GS.

                                          #21   Jenna 

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                                            Posted 09 April 2008 - 11:13 AM

                                            Wow, really? I'd love that. *___*


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