Topic: Since people dislike DoS and PoR art...

[Lelygax]

... How a hack that changes portraits doesn't exist yet? It came to my mind now, it is impossible because of the color count or what? Someone already thought about that or tried to do one?

[VladCT]

I think it's mostly because you'd have to go the whole mile and redraw every single portrait, which would be quite the workload to take.

[theplottwist]

I think it's mostly because you'd have to go the whole mile and redraw every single portrait, which would be quite the workload to take.

To be honest, I think this is an easy issue, even. Sure, it's somewhat of a big task, but it all boils down to money. Suppose the Dungeon does a collaborative effort on the money issue, we could get an artist to do it. No problem.

The true issue are the technical aspects. I, at least, have no idea how many tiles does each portrait occupy, nor the palettes used. One has to know how to extract the files (both portraits and palette) so the artist knows what colors and what area he's allowed to use, and has to know how to insert them back.

In the optimal case, the artist could simply draw to their heart's content (provided the portraits are somewhat proportional to the ones in the game), and someone else would reduce the drawing and the colors using the palette inside the game (I know how to do that, but I have no idea how to extract the palette).

[X]

I personally don't have any issues with the two games' current art styles. Maybe the execution of the characters' comedy images could have been handled better, but that's about it. But I don't mind as it gives the whole obsessive use of pretty boys a long and overdue rest    I would be interested in seeing another art style used, but only if the guys still looked like guys.

[Lelygax]

I personally don't have any issues with the two games' current art styles. Maybe the execution of the characters' comedy images could have been handled better, but that's about it. But I don't mind as it gives the whole obsessive use of pretty boys a long and overdue rest    I would be interested in seeing another art style used, but only if the guys still looked like guys.

I don't have any complain about the art style too, I was only curious about this. Since there is a lot of different hacks, its strange that no one thought about this before and so I wanted to know if it was fault of some kind of limitation.

[DarkPrinceAlucard]

Well Hacking ingame sprites is a lot easier than hacking portraits, the main thing being that unlike the sprites in a rom the portraits are pretty freaken hard to find and are jumbled up all over the place, there is a tool called Lz77 that is good with getting some of the ingame portraits in the right order to hack and replace in gba roms, but even then the vast majority are not easily accessible.

[Lelygax]

Well Hacking ingame sprites is a lot easier than hacking portraits, the main thing being that unlike the sprites in a rom the portraits are pretty freaken hard to find and are jumbled up all over the place, there is a tool called Lz77 that is good with getting some of the ingame portraits in the right order to hack and replace in gba roms, but even then the vast majority are not easily accessible.

This explains a lot. I imagine it is already hard to exchange sprites, it would be even more if it is a mumbo jumbo like this.

[Lumi Kløvstad]

Honestly, most of the portraits are fine except for ones when there's an outburst of emotion, in which Dawn's character images are singularly simultaneously horrid and hilarious.

In general, the art style for both games is perfectly serviceable if uninspired and I have zero issues with it.

[zangetsu468]

In general, the art style for both games is perfectly serviceable if uninspired and I have zero issues with it.

Except Soma's hair makes him look like Johnny Depp...

I much preferred awakened Soma from AoS who looked like Michael Jackson ;P

[X]

I much preferred awakened Soma from AoS who looked like Michael Jackson ;P

That was a cool portrait. All that was missing was Micheal Jackson's Thriller.

[zangetsu468]

That was a cool portrait. All that was missing was Micheal Jackson's Thriller.

It's that look when they stare straight into your soul and tell you to just "BEAT IT!"

#whowillbeatandwhowillbebeaten!!!

[Inccubus]

Biggest issue with hacking NDS games isn't portrait locations or palettes really. The reason it's a hassle is because of the same reason there are few graphics hacks of SCV4 and CVDX, compression routines. More often than no these large images are compressed. Extracting them and changing them is easy enough. The problem is inserting them back in the same space as the originals. And since we're talking about replacing a simple art style with a more complex one that could spiral into needing ASM hacking to make more space or change the compression routine.
Or maybe we could get lucky and not need to deal with any of it.