Graphics Help

[Fire Blazer]

Hello,

I'm hacking Fire Emblem 12 ~Heroes of Light and Shadow~ and am having some problems. I encountered some files with the extensions .ma, .ca, and .md, related to graphics, and am unable to edit them the way I want to.

I need to know if anyone knows anything about these files, even if I already know what you tell me. I'm lost--I need to edit these graphics but just can't. if you even know anyone who might know someone who might know something about this, let me know, please.

Here's one post in our translation team's private work area of me ranting on my research:

EDIT: Weeeell, you guys won't be happy to hear or see this, but...

These graphics are the title screen graphics, but not the right size, or anything else... and why are there multiple versions? :\ These files contain effects too I think and other... coding, that affects how it is displayed. In other words, it's going to be hell trying to edit these unless we get some breakthrough, and I think said breakthrough is going to have to come from someone else. I've contacted an acquaintance regarding the matter but I'm not sure how much he can help if at all. These .md files and their associates (.ca, .ma) are a pain in the ass, since they aren't still graphics. Aye, anything that isn't still graphics are going to be harder than we thought.

Notice the weird shape and how it's empty and crap? Well, look at the loading of the title screen very slowly. You'll notice the Shield starts out big but shrinks smaller. The "Fire Emblem" part in Japanese starts as a shadow and then turns into the text. The weird circular thing is this flash of light that appears on the title screen if you wait a few seconds. Check it out and lemme know what you think.

EDIT2: I also found this little note:

Basically, you will either see

NCGR = your tiles (picture)
NCLR = your pallette
NSCR = your map

Interestingly enough I found this out on my own; it's the same with FE12 (and FE11, not that it's relevant) except no 'N' or 'R' in extensions; CG is graphics, CL is palette, SC is "map", or tile data, formerly referred to as TSA (I still call it TSA out of a habit that I don't feel like changing since "map" can be confusing to some people anyhow as can "tiles" while when I say "TSA" it's obvious what I'm talking about).

EDIT3: I've been doing more research and found this:

http://llref.emutalk.net/docs/?file=xml/bmd0.xml#xml-doc

Looks like what we might be looking for: model data. Remember the extension? .md. Makes sense. The graphics are models that are altered by codes I can't comprehend to make the title screen opening and the final version of the screen. Or something. >_>

http://llref.emutalk.net/docs/?file=xml/bca0.xml#xml-doc That's the .ca file documentation, I think. Couldn't find anything on .ma...

Here's the main page if you're interested: http://llref.emutalk.net/docs/

Somehow I arrived back at GBATEK, which just scared me. That being said, I've reached my limit for tonight at 3AM... At least I did enough to get Zak started, I think. And at least most of the graphics are easy--the still ones. Good luck with the rest -___-

Here is another post with more information (although this post actually came before the previous post I just quoted... lol)

Okay, progress is not going so well... >_>

Here's what the opening looks like and what I want to get into GBAGE:

Here's what I have and the associated data:

So I went into the Opening12 folder and found TDA_TEXT which has several files. the files with the extensions .ca and .ma I don't know much of anything about... 'ma' reminds me of TSA and 'ca' reminds me of music data but due to the fact that it's an Indexed bitmap I don't think either of those apply... >_>

So I tried out the .md file and found graphics using GBAGE under the Indexed bitmap option. I checked around and the beginning part is weird data that I can't make much sense out of. The format definitely has more than your average graphics, that's for sure.

See? Text... not sure what it does and it might not prove useful but it's intriguing regardless.

Then, when I searched the end, I saw what looked like palette data. However some lines seem to have 48 colors or else this isn't the typical palette format I'm used to. You can check it out yourself:

So back up to the GBAGE screen above, on the left is the best-looking version I got, using grey scale. Since the file ends at 1D540 and palettes tend to be 0x200 bytes I tried putting a ROMPalette Offset of 0x1D340, but with no luck--you can see what it looks like to the right. I tried various other offsets close to it thinking that the size might be different or something, but with no luck. And using TSA is hopeless since indexed bitmaps don't support it (I'm no good at graphics though so I don't even know if it's a thing with the image format or if GBAGE itself just doesn't support indexed bitmaps with TSA... I'm guessing it's the former).

In the middle at the top of the GBAGE screen you can see the Image Control screen which has a decent width and height and an odd offset, but that's because I tried to center the Japanese text. I tried playing around with all that but without much luck. The graphics were decompressed using Puyo Tools. They use LZ11 compression originally, I can't say if the game supports LZ10 so it's probably best to stick to what the original used just to be safe.

One thing that bothers me is that this is all from one file set. As a result I randomly tested TDA_TEXT5's .md file (the only file I know how to work) and with some playing around, came up with this:

I found something that looked like palette data again near the end of the file in a hex editor so I scrolled through every possible palette offset within like 0x250 of the end couldn't find anything that looked right... so I stuck to grey scale. What does this mean? I dunno, it might mean we have to replace graphics multiple times. Honestly, I can't say...

That's my limit, for now. I just kind of spat out information, I haven't made any real conclusions yet, except that it's going to be a pain in the butt to edit these graphics.

Thanks for your time and understanding

~ Blazer

 

[giradialkia]

Approved, because it doesn't seem to fit in the Simple Questions thread, lol.
I'm not quite sure we have many, if any, Fire Emblem DS hackers here, though :(

At any rate, good luck finding help.