Image bpp

[Antidote]

I am working on an editor for an snes game I'm sure you are all familiar with: Zelda A Link To The Past, and it uses 4bpp graphics.

Now is it possible to use this mode? Or does it have to converted to 24bpp?

If it can that removes that headache if not, well myself and my programming partner can make do.

[Laurent]

There's no 4bpp mode. But you can create your images with 4bpp and just save them as 24bpp.

[Disch]

SNES games don't use normal graphics modes anyway.  It's not 4bpp in the same sense that 4bpp bitmaps are.  It's like some custom format that involves bitplanes.

There's no way any graphic lib is going to support emulated graphics out of the box (unless it's a lib specifically geared for emulation purposes).

Besides, I'm not even sure if Zelda uses 4bpp (not as many SNES games as you think do).  Zelda might only have 3bpp to cut down on graphic space.

Here's some docs that might help:

http://www.romhacking.net/docs/26/   <-  explains how bitplanes work

http://www.romhacking.net/docs/21/   <-- describes how the bitplanes are layed out in many SNES games.

[Antidote]

Actually i know for a fact that Zelda in particular uses 4bpp the bit planes are 4bpp.

[Disch]

Alright.

In any event, you'll still have to manually convert it to something a modern computer will recognize.  That is, get rid of the bitplanes, and put it in a normal row-by-row format instead of 8x8 tile format.

[Antidote]

Then that should be pretty easy considering the data is stored 32x32 by default, and read as an 8x8 tile (contradictory I know)

And the de/compression is already taken care of.

[Ashenwraith]

I'm pretty sure the sprites are all over the internet.

Anyways the graphics for that game sucked, there are better sprites to use even for Link in the GBA games. There are already a ton of zelda clones in flash and pc format.