Looking for complete tile maps

[1965917]

I'm currently working on a complete rebuild of shining force 2 for unity. Its coming along rather well and I'm just finishing up map creation atm.

I need the original sprites and tiles from SF2 but I've not had much luck finding complete tile maps online. Theres plenty for the characters but almost nothing for background sprites such as tables and carpets.

Can anyone help me track down the complete tile maps? Or failing that does anyone have a good guide for ripping them from the game?

Many thanks

[Wiz]

Hello

Here is a possible solution if you're patient enough to do it yourself :
You can extract graphics directly from the game with the SF2 Disassembly Tool Suite.

Here is the main thread with a quick start guide :
https://forums.shiningforcecentral.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=41303

You can put the original ROM to split data into individual binary files.

Then you can use SF2DISASM\disasm\data\graphics\SF2GraphicsManager-1.1.0.jar to open map palettes and map tilesets which can be found here :
SF2DISASM\disasm\data\graphics\maps\

Beware though, as each map entry relies on the following :
- one map palette
- five map tilesets

So the actual map tilesets can be any combination of map palette + map tileset, with sometimes the same tileset being used in maps with a different palette.
I don't know if this is something you can manage in Unity to apply any palette dynamically, or if you'll have to create all "pre-rendered" map tilesets for each map, with more data redundancy.

In any case, you can find each map's palette/tileset definition at this path :
SF2DISASM\disasm\data\maps\entries\mapXX\00-tilesets.bin

Code: Select all

******* 0. Map Tilesets Declaration *********

6 byte values :
[Map Palette][Map Tileset 0][Map Tileset 1][Map Tileset 2][Map Tileset 3][Map Tileset 4]

So in SF2GraphicsManager you can open each tileset with the palette you want.
Select Stack compression, and the best tile width should be 16.
Then you can export them in PNG or GIF.

The tools are all available on GitHub if you'd like to make a program which reads map entry tileset definitions and automatically exports them properly, for instance.
https://github.com/ShiningForceCentral

If you want to extract other graphics, you can take a look at the other more specific tools along with the graphic assets. Most of them can be extracted the same way.

Hope this can help.

[1965917]

I was a little daunted by all the steps but that was actually surprisingly easy! I've managed to rip some of the tiles already so I guess its just a slow process of going through and pulling out all the tiles I need.

Thanks for your help, this is going to save me so much time going forward!

I'm also not sure about pallet swapping with unity, I'm sure there's a plug in for it on the asset store but for now I'm just doing things quick and sloppy.