They are encoded i the levels and reference the SPRITES.xxx files [and the MAINCHAR.000 file] I think he has the sprite format figured out, and even I can fiddle them manually.

The animations for the tileset are done by animating the palette. I forget the ranges.. take a couple of screenshots in JJ1 (backspace+F2) and look at where the palette changes...

I don't remember if they are the same for all tilesets though..

I think DoubleGJ meant how to make animations in custom tilesets.

I believe the ranges are constant, and only by knowing those ranges can you do anything about it. It's not like JJ2 where you can make an animation from a series of arbitrary tiles, each animation is a single tile, made with special colors that animate/loop..

Unless you're talking about sprites like enemies and pickups etc... which aren't in the tileset..

The 128th palette color is transparent in a tileset.

No, it does not. An injector with a GUI would be needed.

The palette animation ranges aren't the same for every tileset. I don't know where they are stored, so OpenJazz has the ranges from Diamondus hardcoded in. If you look the lavafalls in Medivo or the fans in Fanolint, for example, you'll see that they are static.

looking at some old code, were diamondus'
112-115
116-123
124-126
?

And fanolint's fans appear to be 192-207 maybe (just trying to tell from a single screenshot)? (Side note: I wish there was paint shop pro (and palette suite ;)) and other similar tools for OSX.. My current DOSBox based workflow sucks)

Medivo's lavafalls are in another range that's also pretty high...

Is it possible all of these ranges are animating all the time, it's just in say, diamondus they are filled up by the fc80fc (ugly purple/pink) color replaced by the background or filled with black in the case of medivo? I'll look into it later myself if no one else has time to fill me in beforehand..

I'll probably make a commandline thing.. this tileset compiler is also going to be commandline. I figure if people could handle mod2j2b back in the day they can handle this.

Ok, i tried the OpenJazz in another computer (yes, still with shareware :() and it worked! However, the unlimited jumping is weird, enemies dont hurt you, events dont work... otherwise, its cool.

Medivo's lavafalls are 32 colors and use colors from the range generally dedicated to the background.
If you'd like, I could make you some lists of all the animation ranges for the tilesets. Tonight or something.

I thought that backgrounds' palette was independent of the tilesets'?

OK.. I was just working on this a bit, but if you would be willing to do that, that'd be awesome.

These are the ranges I think there are (found by useing diamondus in general + fanolints fans + medivo lavafall)

112-115 (4)
116-123 (8)
124-126 (3)
160-191 (32)
192-207 (16)

Just as important as finding the ranges though, is makeing sure that anything useing these ranges DO in fact animate (or are otherwise unused)..

I suppose I could make a tileset with the palette effectively filled and see if everything changes according to the theory.. I'll do it and report on it if I get the chance..

It is, kinda. You can't use the full 256 colors in the tileset, some are left "blank", where the colors for the background is swapped in as needed (based on the part of the background presently showing, I think..). This will need to be looked into for like the minimum number of entries blank, etc...

I seem to recall that if you have enough colors on-screen, usually from having a lot of the background visible, screenshots won't be viewable in some programs.

So I lied... I won't have the compiler up today.. Just too lazy to go to a computer lab (plus it's really cold out ;))..

If it's not out tomorrow, I'll just release the source and let someone else take care of it ;p

hopefully accurate
 

112-115:

Generally Used
Unused:

Exoticus

Seemingly Unused:

Raneforus, Ceramicus

116-123:

Generally Used
Unused:

Holidaius Day, Holidaius Evening

Seemingly Unused:

Sluggion, Pezrox, Muckamok, Stonar, Lagunicus

124-126:

Generally Used
Unused:

Diamondus, Medivo, Megairbase, Sluggion, Exoticus, Industrius, Muckamok, Raneforus, Holidaius, Bloxonius

Seemingly Unused:

Turtemple, Ceramicus

132-139:

Seemingly Unused:

Jungrock

160-191:

Used:

Orbitus, Battleships

192-223:

Used:

Tubelectric, Letni, Orbitus, Fanolint, Crysilis, Battleships

224-239:

Seemingly Unused:

Crysilis

NOTES:

• "Seemingly Unused" entries contain color gradients, but do not appear in the tileset.
• In Scraparap, color 124 appears white in the image but red in JJ1.

I didn't ment the JJ2 spaz sprites. ;-)
I think it should be the easyest way, to edit JJ1 Jazz sprites into spaz. That's some work, but if this project is finished, I can help with/make the spriteing work, but I can't promise. ;-)

W00t! Tried it out. Its pretty sweet if I do say so myself. :) :) :)

EDIT2: If you're comeing here by means of the J2O front page post, read the rest of the topic as well. There are still a couple issues..

http://www.princeton.edu/~mspear/jj/...r/bmp2blox.exe

(may have to wait for me to zip it or something.. not sure if executable downloads are OK on the students' sites on the princeton webserver) It's ok now... silly permissions problem.

It's a commandline thingy:

1st argument: bitmap source file (e.g. blocks000.bmp )
2nd arg: 1st background (eg blocks000bg.bmp )
3rd arg: 2nd background (eg blocks000bg2.bmp )
4th arg: output (eg BLOCKS.000 )

Typeing out the paths to your files can be tedious, so a little trick is to have the command prompt open, and like a windows explorer view with your files listed... You drag the program from windows explorer to command prompt, press space, drag your source bitmap, press space, 1st bg, space, 2nd bg, space, probably type the output since you don't want to overwrite something...

I tried it with 000,001,002,003,004 and they all produce correct results.

Give me a heads up if you have something that you think the program should be able to compile but fails to do so. Feel free to email examples to mspear (at) gmail (dot) com .. The only error checking it does is to make sure it has the right number of arguments.

Have fun.

A nicer/GUI version will come eventually once all bugs (if any) are worked out and some basic error handleing is implemented..

EDIT: And my apologies to TB for hijacking his thread.. in an effort to get more on topic, anyone who plays around with the program see if the custom tilesets work in both JJ1 and OpenJazz

Could you give examples of 1st background and 2nd background? I assume it relates to tilesets like Tubelectric or Medivo, but my understanding of those is not perfect.

I just checked 33 official tilesets and they're all identical. Perhaps there is a switch in the level so that you can have night/day backgrounds or something.. Dunno.. perhaps it was never finished.. I just left it in because it IS stored twice in the BLOCKS file, so this way someone has the option to experiement if they so choose.

Also something to experiment re: backgrounds: look at the examples http://www.princeton.edu/~mspear/jj/ ... If you look closely the last color isn't part of the gradient (usually).. perhaps only 255 colors are used for the background and it's some kind of control for how vertically stretched the background is or if it wraps around
A
B
C
A
B
C
A
B
C

or mirrors
A
B
C
C
B
A
A
B
C

dunno.. I'm throwing out random ideas. I haven't played around with this stuff since pre-JCS94..

I *really* encourage anyone that figures anything out to share... but anyway..

I'll document everything I know and release the source sometimes in the near future. But for now, back to the university grind..

Please, share. I don't think enough people can see your big important contribution if it's kept in this topic. This could quite possibly spread the community to places it has never touched.

Or at least when you get a GUI finished for it.

I was planning on waiting until I hear of some people having some kind of success with it... Next time I update it or release the source or whatever there'll probably be a bit more fanfare or whatever...
EDIT: and really, if people had their priorities straight, they'd want to look into the OpenJazz project before a JJ1 tileset compiler anyway.. can't wait for it to actually be "open".. :) props to TB again...

Hmmm, it seems to screw the tileset up a lot for me.

Also, it doesn't seem to like me using custom backgrounds.

That's what I get just compiling the existing Diamondus images. Palette issues and transparency aside, why does it read images upsidedown?

Oh yes.. a property of bitmaps is that the height can be stored either positive or negative and the bitmap builds from the bottom up, or top down.. I guess I assumed one or the other and whatever program you're useing saves the other way (there may be an option).. (Note: I probably assumed the top down way, but have you ever noticed when people link to a bitmap on a webpage when it loads you see the bottom first and it works upwards...? that's the conflict..)

or were you useing the bitmaps that I had on my site and it's upside down? because that would be weird.

It's easy enough to fix.. I'll get it by tonight at least...

As for custom backgrounds: looking at the old code: I just read in the palette, the actual image is for your own preview, so redrawing it with the same palette but different locations in the picture makes no difference. The palette has to be changed. Plus that last "color" is something I haven't played around with.

(Also, Unknown, if you could email me that so I can test it out on +/- height values on Mac/Windows , that'd be great .. mspear (at) gmail (dot) com ) Try out the new version (same location) http://www.princeton.edu/~mspear/jj/...r/bmp2blox.exe .. haven't tested it much though

I read the first post and I still don't get it... could anybody finally explain me what this program is supposed to do?

Oh, my mistake, I was using the Diamondus file from that time in #JCSTalk, and the palettes for those don't seem quite as accurate. I tried it with the online file and it compiled perfectly... however, it did turn upside down the moment I made any sort of change, and I couldn't find any setting to change that. No biggie.
Everything works now!

Thanks for the heads up. Glad to hear. :)

Also, since I had to actually read the BITMAPINFOHEADER instead of skip over it to see if the height was positive or negative, I also added in checks for valid width (320) height (multiple of 192) and bit depth (8)... nothing big, but a start ;p


By the way: speaking of palettes, the JJ1 colors aren't as accurate as one might think. They're stored in 0-63 instead of 0-255, so when makeing a tileset (especially a gradient), subtle changes in RGB values won't be as apparant.. just something to watch out for.

BTW, That time in #jcstalk? Were they ones I made? If so, by any chance could you email those to me.. mspear (at) gmail (dot) com .. I'd like to look at something...

"Thanks for answering my question.."

What's so hard to get, rep? It's rewritten jj1 and a tilesetcreator... ;S

Back on the topic of OpenJazz... what would be a Spaz character useful for?

For playing with? Especially in multi-player.

Devastating the storyline. =P

What would be the advantage of having a Spaz if he couldn't do his double jump or the sidekick?

Maybe that can be fixed? ^^

If it can then =D.

Say this ever will be finished. Wouldn't it be interesting to fork the project? I mean, we could have one version of the project that's focusses on building an exact clone of the original. And one version focusing on expanding it.

You know, if we had a person who was good at drawing, we could implement the pictures (I think) to have Spaz (or even Razz) running around the screen.

No way. We should have at least ONE game where you can't make Spaz biased levels. :|

Well, more characters = more choice = more fun :p


And I still don't get it.. why was it re-written and stuff?