I wanted to make Sabin more beefy and his costume more like the shirtless hobo version.

https://i.imgur.com/NCvcA3x.gif

I noticed that your standing sprites for Sabin and Edgar are 48 pixels tall, which would be a problem were animations to be made. The walking sprites and the jumping sprites need some extra room for the sprite to shift up and down. The tallest original sprites are 47 pixels for this reason.

I shrunk my remix of Sabin by moving his head down, but leaving his shoulders where they were. It preserved the appearance of kind of looking down on him.

Originally posted by Siethasay:

6.) For consistency, you will also notice that depending on the characters height, their hand will always end at the same spot.

This would be absolutely vital for combat animations. Weapons wouldn't look like they were being held if the hands in those specific frames were moved.

Umaro looks super like the Amano art.

Originally posted by Siethasay:

I thought I would share what exactly I was working on.

Those are great. Kefka's face is incredibly evil looking. I love it. You really captured Locke's incredibly busy head scarf whithin those few pixels.

Yeah, the sketches that Amano did give the characters all kinds of different appearances. Every drawing of Terra seems to have a different hair style. I interpret Amano's art for Celes as her having very straight hair except for a little bit of untamed bangs. The chibi drawings he did of the cast seem to be at the point he had settled more on their appearances.

As far as these sprites working in the game, the indexed colors matter most for the skin and the outline. Those color entries need to be in the proper address in the index so the game can swap those colors out for buff and debuff effects. For example: making the skin purple when poisoned. There doesn't seem to be any reason the colors can't be changed or added to as long as those colors have the correct addresses.

The big noticeable bits of asymmetrical design in the sprites are going to flip during certain animations and be distracting. At least it is to me. The original Kefka sprite was already one that very noticeably flipped. Having the two different boots is going to make his boots flash colors. Celes' hair will probably noticeably flip as well with the off center part. I'd worry about Locke's headscarf flipping, but it might be busy enough and contained within his silhouette enough to not be overly noticeable. It's the very limited animations that are the biggest hurdle to adding more detail. There are acting moments that rely heavily on the sprites being somewhat ambiguous to sell different actions using poses for multiple meanings. Not a problem with standing sprites, but becomes a big issue with any desire to make the poses look less robotic.

Originally posted by Siethasay:

Thanks for all this info. So, from what I can tell, as long as all the colors are part of the indexed library then I should be fine? I don't mind just using the colors that are already in the game's sprite sheets to be honest. I also don't mind asymmetrical hair sprite flipping as I feel like art style/direction would make up for the distaste for something like that.

I really just want to go about replacing all the field sprites for the main characters and NPC, if that is possible knowing that colors are indexed and we have to deal with asymmetrical sprites not coordinating then that is fine with me.

Another question I had was about battle sprites. I wanted to adjust those and create new poses. Are there any limitations or problems with creating new poses for the battle sprites?

And just to clarify, Is it a deal breaker to have a sprite being 2-3 pixels taller or wider?

The sprites can not be bigger than 48 x 48.

The battle sprites are not entirely unique. There are some unique elements but they mix with non-unique elements for animation.

Originally posted by sylardean:

Well.. to me that sounds like you've given up.. with NO news, posts, new pictures or regular updates about your sprite work Plucky it seems that this attempt to make FF6 any better has now been shelved, am I wrong? I realise it takes time to do this kind of thing but.. well, I dunno, this has disappointed my morning :( was looking forward to your sprite work materialising into possibly one of the greatest sprite hacks FF6 has ever seen.

The tools to fully edit the art in the game were never made. Only select portions of the art can be changed. Unless someone else decides they want to crack open the file types that make up the different bits of art, the game can only be partially modded.

I'm not giving up making new art for Final Fantasy VI, but doing it using the exe that comes with this version of the game is working under a lot of limitations.

Originally posted by Siethasay:

Originally posted by pluckylump:

You can make Amano-inspired sprites if you want. The interest in pulling this port apart seems to have died out, so the tools to really get in there and change everything around haven't materialized.

I'm interested in taking a different approach that relies less heavily on cracking apart this very limited port and am working on some concepts. I'd rather not discuss it as openly as this thread was intended to be. Don't want to get anyone's hopes up again, or anger the Square Enix gods prematurely.

Thanks for the reply, it is much appreciated. I am not too entirely sure what the limits are for modding FFVI since I am new to it. But if you can help me understand more about modding it through chat or something then that would help clarify some questions I have before starting a project.

I started on one or two sprites just to see what I can do. I like them, but I am not entirely sure what the limits are in terms of height/width or adding/replacing colors in the sprites. The sprites I did stay withing the color palettes and general concepts that are already in the game. So I am hoping that would be okay.

And I noticed that work on this port is not as strong as could be, but I hope there is SOME type of possibility of replacing all the main character and NPC sprites with new ones.

The ability to change colors or add colors is limited for the character sprites. They are all indexed color and the game swaps colors for specific index entries for status effects and buffs. The game also flips a lot of the acting sprites, so the sprite has to be mostly symmetrical. Some of the sprites in the game now aren't and it's very noticable when asymmetrical hair designs get flipped when a character raises their left, then right hand.

The only art that seems editable at this time is enemy sprites, field sprites, and some backgrounds. Other things are locked away behind file types that no one has cracked open. The UI can't be changed in any meaningful way. The spell effects and the over world are all locked behind 3d model files that aren't standard editable file types.

Originally posted by Siethasay:

Hi, pluckylump, I just sent you a friend request. I wanted to know more about this project and talk to you about possibly taking over. I am not a professional or anything but I would like to see what is and isn't possible.

Also, get some advice or help with creating sprites since I don't think I am the best at it yet. I made a couple of examples that I would like to share and discuss with you. So whenever you get the chance then please get back tome.

You can make Amano-inspired sprites if you want. The interest in pulling this port apart seems to have died out, so the tools to really get in there and change everything around haven't materialized.

I'm interested in taking a different approach that relies less heavily on cracking apart this very limited port and am working on some concepts. I'd rather not discuss it as openly as this thread was intended to be. Don't want to get anyone's hopes up again, or anger the Square Enix gods prematurely.

I'm working on some art samples of what I want to make the game look like to maybe drum up some interest in potential programming partners. Who knows where it will go, but I'm working on something.

I've been thinking about making some HD sprites and a UI design to maybe drum up some new excitement and maybe someone else will take up the mantle of unscrambling the proprietary formats and how the game loads graphics. I've still got the will, I just need the way.