Board Thread:Back to the BASIC/@comment-24723457-20140522132628

I see a lot of people taking time to make MML and draw sprites in CHRED that've already been made, and there's a MUCH faster way.

MML
Probably the best way to get MML in your games is making your songs as MIDI, there are also MIDI verions lying around everywhere on the internet of practically every song. Actually making MML in Petit Computer is really tedious, and honestly I wouldn't do that to yourself.

1) Download Qmidi Studio

http://www.smotion3d.com/forum/index.php?topic=3.0

2) You can either load any MIDI you found on the internet or make your own here. There are midi versions of practically every song just lying around the internet.

Ex. Search for "Final Fantasy VI MIDI".

3) Under tools, choose Export Petit Computer MML

4) It'll save the MML as a .txt, copy all the text and paste it here

http://www2.u-netsurf.ne.jp/~ozawa/petitcom/petiteditor.html

This will make QR codes for your MML.

5) You can use the APPEND command to add the mml to the end of your program. (load your program first, then type APPEND "nameofyourmml" and press enter.)

6) Some of the notes might sound off actually, you can fix this easily, using the blue magnifying glass search for @, after every one of these there's a number, play with this and change the number after it to change instruments, after the right ones it should sound fine. Note, since Petit Computer's soundfont is different, it won't sound exactly the same,

Sprites/BG
(Note that sprites and background tiles work the same way)

1) Google & save whatever sprite you need.

2) Download PTCUtilities

http://micutil.com/ptcutilities/top_e.html

3) After you open PTCUtilities, click on the "CHR Editor" button.

4) The character editor will open (looks like --->)

5) Click on "Make palette and load"

It will make a palette to go with your sprite.

You can pick which row at the Color Table to put the palette. You're going to want to take advantage of this if want a lot of sprites at once. Doing this, Petit Computer can display anything that a GBA (SNES too maybe?) can display.

There's another way for EXACT colors on GBA/SNES sprites, see the last section for that.

6) Find your sprite

7) You might not be able to get the full view of your sprite, open paint and use zoom to move whatever you want in the first 256*64 pixels.

8) Click "Make QRCode" and scan the QRs.

9) You can't do anything with it without it's palette, click on "Save as COL PTC" and save your palette. Then, click on Make QRCode again, this time drag and drop your palette.ptc file. It should give you a (small) QR.

IMPORTANT: If you have more than 16 colors in one picture, the colors will get watercolored, which you don't want. So if you have a bunch of Sonic sprites & a bunch of Knuckles sprites, don't load them both together. Make palette and load the Sonic ones first, read the QRs, then click on the next row of the color table, make palette and load the knuckles ones, then scan those. Do this for as many sprites as you need, up to 16. This way you won't waste space and use 16 palettes when you only need one.

10) Load both the CHR and the COL file you scanned at once, and you have the sprites on Petit Computer, if you did what the paragraph above said, you'll have to change knuckles' color to 1, sonic to 0.

Other Pictures
You can also move pretty much and picture you want to petit with practically perfect color. Warning, photos will probably be a lot of QRs.

1) Google & save whatever picture you need.

2) Download PTCUtilities (might need Quicktime)

http://micutil.com/ptcutilities/top_e.html

3) After you open PTCUtilities, click on the "GRP Editor" button. (--->)

4) Click on "make palette and load".

5) Find your picture

6) Align your picture, you might have to edit it in paint to get it the way you want first.

7) Click "Make QRCode" and scan the QRs.

8) You can't do anything with it without it's palette, click on "Save as COL PTC" and save your palette. Then, click on Make QRCode again, this time drag and drop your palette.ptc file. It should give you a (small) QR.

9) Load both the scanned GRP and the COL file you scanned at once, and you have the picture on Petit Computer.

NOTICE:  When you load the COL file, it is loaded as COL2. An example would be LOAD"COL2:Nameofthefile"

See this if you're wanting to get sprites and tiles from a game (GBA/SNES level)
(Note, this is confirmed to work on GBA games, I assume it works on SNES too but I don't know for sure.)

This is definitally the best way for big projects that use lots of sprites and tiles, it's actually pretty easy. If you're wanting to move sprites ripped straight from a GBA/SNES(I assume SNES works like a gba, I don't know for sure) game to get  exact colors, you'll probably need an emulator that can rip sprites. (For GBA I know Visual Boy Advance is the best for this) and you'll also need the palette from the game (again, VBA can do this)

Make sure you have the .pal and the sprites you need before you continue

You're going to need the .pal file from your game that goes with the sprites/bg tiles. Drag and drop the .pal file to turn it into a .ptc file using this converter:

http://rapidshare.com/files/4122637139/MakeCOLPTR.exe

(CREDIT TO DISCOSTEW FOR THIS CONVERTER!!!)

'''EDIT: The instructions I wrote below were wrong, I fixed it. Make sure you load your palette.ptc file before you click on load with current palette.'''

To move your ripped sprites/bg tiles, all you have to do is >(load your palette first)< click  "load with current palette",  NOT  "Make palette and load" and load your sprites in the CHR Editor part of PTCUtilities. Click "Make QRCode" and scan them.

Once you do that, turn that ptc file into QRs using Smileboom, ptcutilities whatever, and loading your sprites should be as easy as loading your palette, your sprites/bg and changing their palette colors. 