Graphic Hacks in Tile Layer Pro

I hope to teach in easy-to-follow steps how to use Tile Layer Pro, the basics of hacking roms in TLP, and a couple of examples you can try out yourself.

Tile Layer Pro made by Kent Hansen is probably the most powerful, yet simplistic in design, rom graphics editor out now. As of writing this article, version 1.1 is the most up-to-date and is the version used for the following steps. You can download TLP here: tlp11.zip.

Tile Layer Pro

When you first open TLP, you'll see for yourself how simple the program looks. Choose the open folder icon or go into >File >Open. This is how you open rom images to view all graphics used in the game.

Our first victim is Trolls on Treasure Island. Locate the rom file on your hard drive and press OK after selecting it. You should see:

Here's a breakdown of the different elements that just appeared on screen:

Trolls_on_Treasure.nes

All of the sprites/graphics/text is displayed here. Most of the time the graphics are in a jumbled mess. Fortunately Trolls on Treasure Island isn't as bad to decode sprites (which is why I picked the game for this beginner's tutorial).

Tile Arranger

Clicking on a pixel (one square) and dragging it onto this window will help to put together a whole sprite to then copy and paste into the rom file. Very helpful to put sprites together just like a jigsaw puzzle (since sprites are not arranged in order).

Tile Editor

Tile editor is where you will "paint" or edit sprites. Only one pixel can be edited at a time, which makes the tile arranger great to help not get lost or mess up a whole character.

Palette Editor

A palette of colors used in the game can be choosen to change colors of sprites or edited graphics.

Fun Edit

Now that you know your way around a little better, let's try a very simple edit. Scroll down the graphics to the very bottom. You should see, in order, 'Michael & Camcrick Copyright M.Crick & American Video Entertainment. 1992'. If you're familiar at all with the game, you should recognize this is the copyright text from the bottom of title screen.

Since this is your first edit, and it's laid out perfectly in order, let's have some fun with this text.

It's true! Oh, so true. Now that we have edited the text graphic of the title screen, go up to the disk icon to save or >File >Save. The changes made will be saved over the original rom file. Open up the rom with an emulator to see the newly 'enhanced' title screen.

Homework

Now try working with the tile arranger. Your next simple project you should try on your own is opening up Jaws and changing the diver sprite to that of a crab. Remember to form the crab pixels together on the arranger, locate the diver pixels, and drag and drop the appropriate crab pixels onto the diver pixels to give a whole new meaning to Jaws!

 

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