VNDragon's ZT1 Projects

[Fern]

From Jay: Since Jm_OstrichDimorph_Hack.ztd has f.pal and y.pal, most likely ZT Studio was used. It is also possible to use a hex/binary editor, which is how it was done before ZT Studio existed, but it is a lot of work. It involves renaming the new f pal file to have the same number of letters as ZT's pal file, copying the m animations to a f folder, changing all ani files in the f folder to use f instead of m, using a hex/binary editor to change all animations in the f folder to use the new pal file, and having the uca file use "f = animals/.../f" instead of "f = animals/.../m". As for having a volcano use ZT's animations but with different characteristics, using a new internal name isn't much more than a hack. That would be renaming volcano.ai to volcavnd.ucb, changing "idle = idle" to "idle = objects/volcano/idle/idle.ani", changing "used = used" to "used = objects/volcano/used/used.ani", and changing the cPurchaseCost setting to make it obvious which is which in the purchase menu.

 

From me: I can do all the underwater stuff easily without making it a hack same as I did all the foliage so it is not dead on land.

I have been thinking of recolouring some of the vents anyway.

[VND]

Ah it makes sense if a dedicated program is used. I do have ZT Studio, but aside from recoloring I have no idea how to perform other (potential) functions of the program.

 

I tried replacing the paths in the animation files manually using a hex editor. However, the challenge with doing it manually is that bisons don't have sexual dimorphism. So the palette path is "animals/bison/bison.pal". 

 

At first, I replaced it with "animals/bison/f/f.pal" but the difference in the number of characters resulted in a crash. ZT Studio also could not open the file after the path change. Notice how "\" is flipped to "/" after going through the hex editor.

  

 

 

I then switched to renaming the palette files while keeping the same parent folder structure (and character number), so the female uses "bison/fison.pal" while the young uses "bison/yison.pal". This method worked for the young sprites, but the female continues to use the same colour as the male. 

I am attaching the bison file here for debugging if you or Jay are interested.

femalebison - debug.ztd