Graphics

Graphics source workspace

Open the graphics index. The old graphics/ncd directory is no longer used or present. NCD files exist only as generated build output under build/graphics/ncd.

Sprite sources

The character, effect, and UI categories share the same structure:

Directory	Contents
battle/characters/	CHR.NCD character graphics and animations
battle/effects/	EFFECT.NCD battle effects
ui/	SYSTEM.NCD interface, item art and portrait resources

Inside each category:

Path	What to edit
frames/*.png	Assembled frames; open them through the animation browser
cells/RESOURCE/tile_NNNNN.png	Individual, unflipped sprite-cell images, grouped by original resource name
palettes/NNN.pal	Original 16-color palette banks, in JASC format
source/groups.json	Named resources and their animation ranges
source/animations.json	Frame sequences, expressed as first frame and count
source/frames.json	Cell ranges and durations for every animation frame
source/cells.json	Cell positions, dimensions, flips, palette/tile indices and unknown fields
source/images.json	Cell image paths and their tile-pool placement
source/container.json	Signature, reserved fields, palette/tile counts and fixed ROM allocation

Use indexed PNGs with indices 0–15 and preserve their dimensions. Change colors in the linked .pal files; embedded PNG palettes are viewing aids. Cell tiles may be reused with other palette banks or flips.

The gallery links each frame to its component cell images and these tables. Cell images retain pixels hidden beneath other cells; flattening a frame alone would discard that information. All tile bytes are supplied by the individual images, with exact coverage and no overlapping primary image ranges.

There are 12,062 primary cell images: 5,694 character, 2,842 effect, and 3,526 UI images. They cover all 32,265 cell records through tile reuse. All 9,252 animation-frame records remain present, with 6,627 assembled PNG editing views. Shared frame paths preserve independent animation durations and sequence entries.

Building and previewing

make build/graphics/ncd/CHR.ncd
make build/graphics/ncd/EFFECT.ncd
make build/graphics/ncd/SYSTEM.ncd
make sprite-previews
make compare

Each container has its own Make rule and dependencies. tools/sprite_sources.py constructs it from a zeroed buffer, serializes the JSON tables, calculates their 16-byte alignment and derived header counts, encodes palette files, and packs cell pixels into tiles. It never reads an original NCD, a whole-pool tile sheet, or the base ROM during compilation.

Assembled-frame, portrait and icon edits are applied to the reconstructed cells. An unchanged view does not mask cell edits. Pixel hashes identify edited views; they do not contain replacement pixels or recover original bytes. Conflicting changes to shared pixels fail. If editing a cell and one of its assembled views would disagree, choose one view for that edit. Use cell images to edit hidden pixels or to change artwork that cannot be represented by an assembled frame.

make sprite-previews refreshes unchanged views from current cell/palette/table sources and preserves authored frame edits. Playback FPS remains a viewing control; exact runtime affine/blending behavior and timing are not reproduced. Changing source table counts or image dimensions can exceed the fixed ROM allocation and is rejected. Changing values within the existing layout is supported and deliberately changes ROM bytes.

tools/sprite_sources.py extract is an explicit ROM extraction operation. It recreates tables from the original ROM and is not an ordinary build step.

Other graphics

• portraits and icons: convenient named editing views of SYSTEM sprite cells.
• backgrounds: 77 mapped backgrounds with 101 editable image layers and JSON map layouts, plus a browser for all 104 KCG/TCG resources.
• tilesets: 27 resources awaiting map profiles, named after their archive members; their authoritative palettes live under palettes. Old size-based sprite labels and tilemap guesses have been corrected.
• tilemaps/nfp: editable named TSC screenblocks.
• fonts: editable font image, original NFT header source, and glyph indexes.

HTML, contact sheets, and report previews are derived browsing material. The obsolete reports/graphics/legacy images and streams have been removed. reports/graphics/retired-scan.json retains their classification evidence. Run python3 tools/audit_graphics_sources.py to verify every active PNG has a known source or preview role; the inventory distinguishes source images, extra layers, unused tiles and previews. See the mapped-background guide for image editing.

Retired RLE scan output

assets_rle/ and its build manifest have been removed. The 68 heuristic hits were not verified independent graphics assets. Two former image candidates were inside already decoded CHR.NCD and MAP26_5A.KMP data. The only linked candidate, ROM 0x1B0720..0x1B2BB6, is now preserved honestly as unclassified bytes in data/data_1B0720.bin; its purpose and format remain unresolved. It is not presented as an editable image or as a proven compressed asset.

reports/graphics/rle-retirement.json retains the candidate offsets, sizes, original stream hashes and archive ownership. tools/extract_rle.py baserom.gba now writes only reports/graphics/rle-candidates.json. Decoding successfully does not establish an asset boundary, palette or runtime consumer. The BIOS RLE codec remains available in tools/rle.py for future verified uses.

Sprite cell coordinates

NCD cell table X/Y values are centers. The compositor subtracts half the cell width/height, as the engine does, before placing pixels. Frame PNGs and viewer origins use those corrected bounds. The build uses the same bounds to map edits back to cell tile bytes; do not manually shift cell centers to compensate for an older preview. Unchanged corrected PNGs rebuild the original NCD bytes.

The sprite animation viewers now offer Japanese / English overrides artwork selection. English mode shows the 206 translated UI frames and nine battle-effect frames where overrides exist, retaining original artwork elsewhere. Credit frames use their English-specific layout dimensions and origins. This viewer does not simulate runtime affine effects or blending.