Street Fighter III - Third Strike Sprite ArtMoney Tutorial

November 06, 2004

It's been nearly 4 months now since I last made a change to this tutorial, and mostly because people stopped caring. But that's ok, I thought it was about time for a change anyway. Thanks to my recent exchanges with the all-knowledgable JJWE, I have learned a few techniques that will eliminate the need for cleaning and resizing as well. These are two of the most annoying chores to do with sprite capturing, and I'd like to share my new techniques for eliminating those processes altogether. Since ArtMoney is a big factor in this process, the tutorial is called the 'Artmoney Tutorial' now. It will be more in-depth regarding this useful tool this time, and my tables should work for everyone now because I have learned how to apply offsets. What does this mean? Read on to find out.

What you will need:

Chankast - the emulator that lets you play Street Fighter III - Third Strike. Please make sure you have a decent PC and graphics card before attempting to use this program - you have been warned!

Animget - a useful tool for capturing images.

ArtMoney - the main tool used for the tutorial. What it does is let you alter values in memory during the running of the emulator, resulting in dynamic changes in your game. Doesn't only work for Chankast, you can use it forever game you want, lots of fun once you get to learn to use it properly.

ImageMagick - image processing and conversion tool. It's command-line, but it gets easier if you use some handy DOS-based batch programs to quicken the tedious tasks.

Animget and Imagemagick are completely optional, they are simply useful programs for me. So if you have your own image capturing and editing tools that suit you better, by all means use those instead. This tutorial will be very step-by-step, making sure everything is plain and easy to use. So forgive me if I seem condescending at all, it's just that not everyone is at the same level regarding computer use. Also, some of these programs are intimidating at first, so don't be afraid! This may laugh, but you wouldn't believe the amount of emails and messages I got saying that some of the above software is too confusing to use. This guide will try to demystify these programs and show you techniques in how to use them effectively. By the way, All these programs are free, so that is another reason to use them instead of more expensive alternatives.

I will not get into the details of installing all the programs, because that should be self-explanatory. Usually it's just a zip or exe file that you need to install like any other Windows program. The focus here will be how to use ArtMoney to manipulate the game to your advantage. So without further ado, start up Chankast with Street Fighter III - Third Strike, and in the words of Brian Fellow, "Let's get going!"

Now before we begin, I admit I didn't use AnimGet to take these pictures, rather I went with SnagIT instead. This program is simply better for taking static shots and resizing and such. It used to be part of my old tutorial, but IMO it's simply no good for taking many snapshots in a row for things such as game sprites. That's why I use AnimGet in this tutorial instead of SnagIT, incase anyone was wondering.

The order you open up the programs doesn't really matter. But open them all up now, because you'll need them all for the capture process. I'll start with ArtMoney in the tutorial. You'll be confronted with the following screen when you start it up:

  -> ->

Just agree to the terms and hit 'OK'. This window might come up quite a bit, actually, don't mind it. The extra features that come with the PRO edition don't really apply to us, they are rather complex search methods that aren't necessary. Ok, so you started it up, you should now see this screen:

The marked areas on the screenshot are of importance and I'll just briefly describe them here:

1 - 'Search' - Search will be used to look for values in memory. This will only be used the first time you search for a new value, every new search for this value will be searched for using the 'Filter' button.

2 - 'Filter' - This is used after 'Search' is used once. It filters the searches down based on certain criteria, which will be expanded on later.

3 - 'Process Selector' - Using the pull-down menu here, select the running Chankast process. This tells ArtMoney which process to search in.

4 - 'Found Addresses Window' - If you tell ArtMoney to do so, it will dump all the found addresses in here. Usually it's not a good idea to do this at the very start of the search, as thousands of unintelligable values will be dumped here on the first search.

5 - 'Address Editor Window' - Here is where you'll be editing the addresses. The arrows between these two areas push all the values to this window. The top one puts the selected values in the left window to the right, while the bottom one puts all of them in.

6 - 'Load' - This loads up an ArtMoney table. I will provide you with some that I have done, with help from JJWE for some addresses.

7 - 'Save' - Save the table once the values have matched up with your PC. This will be explained later.

Now if you want to mess around with options go ahead. I'll highlight the areas of interest for you

In the 'Additional' Tab, The top portion played a great role for me when I was ripping 'non-flashing' Gill way back when I first started using ArtMoney. But after I discovered the animation test method, I sort of disregarded this part. Either way, I found the values above for refresh-time and freeze-time to be good enough to hold the freeze on Gill to prevent him from altering his colour. You see, if these values aren't low enough he would rapidly switch between colours even if I had his colour address frozen! This happened because as the game was feeding him his new palette, ArtMoney wasn't quick enough to turn it back to the value I had frozen. So that's why they have to be low to work. The bottom box I highlighted is useful if you want to see the addresses in Hexadecimal mode. It's just nice sometimes to be able to see how the game works, because this is much closer to actual program code than the Integers we will be using.

If you pick the 'Searching' tab, another valuable option is visible: 'Search in Address Range'. This will DRAMATICALLY reduce search times for you, if you can find the correct address range that Chankast uses. The problem though, is that every PC will have a different address range, so mine might not work for you. Even mine is exaggerated a bit, I could have made it much closer if I wanted to. I simply based it on the lowest and highest (useful) addresses I found for the game. Since all my successful finds were within this range all the time, it was pointless for ArtMoney to search such a large range (within the process of Chankast). So once you have know the range yourself, you can put this in here and tick the 'Search in Address Range' box.

Now, we still haven't really gotten into the program yet. You could go either way with this. You could search for values yourself, or you can simply download my table. I will continue the tutorial assuming you have this table downloaded. So here it is:

Third Strike Table

Once you have the table downloaded, click the 'Load' button and click on my table (Third Strike.amt).

The table that is loaded contains values I have toyed around with for a long time. You'll find lots of useful addresses there that you can change to your liking. Unfortunately, it probably won't work for you right away. This is due to Chankast loading the game in different address ranges depending on your system configuration. To remedy this, we must now offset the values to match your system. The following process will (hopefully) accomplish this. If it doesn't, I have failed miserably. So I will try to make it simple. I came to the conclusion that a very easy value to find on your own is one of the character's frame numbers. Since these are hard-coded values, they are the same for every person. They are not dynamic values that change every time you restart the game. So I randomly chose Ryu for our address-matching. Take a look at the following table:

2593	2594	2595	2596	2597	2598	2599	2600	2601	2602

These will be the numbers to search for. Start a game, preferably a VERSUS or TRAINING game, so that you don't get hit by your oponent, and choose Ryu. It doesn't matter what colour he is or if it's player 1 or player 2. Once the match has started, pause the game and remove the pause window by pressing the button you asigned to Y. This isn't completely necessary now but you'll want that box out of the way while ripping, right? While the game is paused, go back to ArtMoney and click the Search button. You will get the following dialog:

Change the 'Search' value to 'Exact Value', and within the 'Value' field input the number that corresponds to one of the 10 Ryu images above. For Type, pick 'Custom', and pick 'Integer 2 bytes' as in the following screenshot, and hit 'OK'.

Pick OK again in the Search Dialog Box and wait. The box will look similar to this:

You might have to wait a while depending on the speed of your computer. The values found will probably be anywhere from 300-1000 values or so. Don't let this number alarm you, we will whittle the matches down now with the 'Filter' option. Unpause the game and let Ryu bounce around a bit more. When you pause it again, make sure a different frame of his stance is showing than last time, and try to make it an obvious one like 2595 or 2596, because you could accidentally be searching for the wrong value. The subtle ones are a bit harder to spot, just look at his belt or the bottom of his gi. Pick 'Filter' in ArtMoney and input the new value that Ryu is at, and hit OK. The search should be a lot faster now and the values far less. On my search I was already down to 4 values only! You can try again to filter it down even more, but sometimes the number won't get narrowed down to just one, so you might have to live with a small amount to try out. The only way to check which one of the values you found is the 'Real Deal', is to place all the addresses into the table. Do this by clicking the GREEN ARROW. Once you've done this, ZERO the values one by one.

Watch your Chankast window carefully while you are doing this, because the one that makes the Ryu sprite disappear is the value you want! Ok, now look at the address that made Ryu disappear when inputing a 0, and highlight this value on the left side. Also, highlight the value called 'P1 Anim #' or 'P2 Anim #' (depending on what player Ryu is). Your screen should look like this:

Ok, we are almost done 'synching' these values. Only one small step to do, and that is to offset all values by this number! To do this, simply press 'ALT+A'. If this is too hard for you, it also works by right-clicking over the highlighted value on the right side, select 'More', and 'Auto Apply Offset to All'. Lo and Behold, your table is now synched with my values. The Value column should now be filled with meaningful numbers within the 2-byte range (in most cases, anyway). Play around with the numbers if you want, or simply read on for in-depth explanations of everthing in my table! I really hope this worked for you, because I've tried it several times myself with 100% success. For an example of what the screen should look like now, see the screenshot below:

Now before I do a rundown of the values, I must first appologize for the clutter within this table. A lot of 'sets' of values aren't complete, and some values seem a bit useless. The reason for this is because I am too lazy to organize it all. If you want a clean looking table expand on this one yourself, it's really customizable. All the 'Description' values are notes I put in myself, and these can be changed by simple double-clicking on them. Also, remember to SAVE this table now as it is now customized for your PC.

• The first 7 addresses are pretty fun to play with, as they involve zooming in and out of the action before you. BG-Adjust is just a slight adjustment to the zooming, while Zoom1 and Zoom2 are simply two different ends of the 2-byte address that corresponds to zooming. To get a full-sized background with everything at a sprite-scale, input the following numbers into the cells (must be in 1024x768 mode of Chankast):
  • bg adjust: 0
  • zoom1: 159
  • zoom2: 62
  • hor res: 0
  • hor res 2: 64
  • ver res: 0
  • ver res 2: 64
    
  
  
• The next three, Powerbar, L. Char. Portrait, and Countdown are values that didn't quite work out for me as I had hoped. They work sometimes, and other times they don't. They are pretty self-explanatory.
  
  
• Screen X and Screen Y move the whole action left and right, and up and down. If you want to move to the right or down (because these start at zero), try really high numbers starting at 65xxx, such as 65200 for both.

Click the following link to see an example of what you should see if you have used the above values correctly: LINK

• Next up we have bg layer 1, 2, 3. Most stages only use the first 2, but there are the few that do in fact use all three available areas. Ryu's stage I believe is one of them. These numbers I didn't have too much time to play around with, but I found if I set them to 77 the layer usually disappeared. Not very elegant, mind you, but it worked! Except Ibuki's stage, which was, to put it mildly, a pain in the neck to rip. You see, her background sky is done in Capcom's wonderful rowscroll method, and a bit of tinkering was necessary to capture it as a block. Not precise to the game, but at there's something.
  
  
• There are some palette values next that I can't remember how I used, but the next most significant entry is Gill's colour cycling value. When this value is set to 20 and he is facing left, you will be able to capture his most accurate form in a solid colour. I say this because Chankast as of this writing hasn't been able to emulate the game correct enough to display Gill's legs the right colour. Yes, if you manage to pause the game at the split second when he is not flashing, his legs will still be a funky colour. It's a strange thing but that's how it is, but you can see below the first image doesn't look quite right, while the second one does. Go figure.

• The next group of objects are background objects, most of the time. Included among them is the almost always constant storing of the portrait x and y co-ordinates for the character select portraits in 1-player mode. It doesn't matter if you are player 1 or 2. I needed this to get complete screenshots of the character portraits. Those are all in my ../select/ folder on my site, if you care to look at them (portraits 1-20.gif, and 20-1.gif is Gill facing the other way. Make sure you freeze the countdown values (the earlier mentioned Countdown address) so that you can move the portraits around without worrying about the timer going down. A word of warning though: change the x/y values quickly as keeping the mouse on the value causes the countdown timer to go!
  
  
• Following these background objects are around 128 values representing colours on the P2 character. P1 colours are also in there somewhere, probably pretty easy to find because it's just an offset, but I didn't bother because the only reason I need colour changing is to provide a pink background for ripping. This coupled with the following Zoom Factor address for player 2 can provide you with a nice magenta (255 0 255) background without the hassles of tedious cleaning. The way it works is that every character has colour values for when they're facing left and facing right. This was probably implemented because of Gill, whose colour values obviously flip once he's facing the other direction. Of course, the other players all retain their colours as they turn around. Because of this, there are 128 values to change to magenta for our background. Right clicking on the colour values and picking 'select group' will pick all of them at once. Change this value to 64543 will turn the character pink! This number is derived from the 16-bit number: 1 11111 00000 11111, and converted to an integer. The reason I spaced it like that is that you can see how it translates. You see, the first bit is simply there to fill an empty space (because it has to be even), so instead of going from the range 0 to 32768 (which is 15-bit numbers), it goes from 32768 to 65535 instead. So as anyone who has done any spriting knows, the number #FF00FF in hex equels magenta. But we mostly work in 24-bit mode, so each R G B value has 8 bits assigned to it. Since we are in 15(16) bit mode, only the top 5 bits are used while the bottom 3 are chopped off! If this is all confusing to you never mind, I'm probably not explaining it right anyway, it's just the way I understand it as told to me by JJWE. Below is the result of what should happen:

And to think, I used to do this all by hand! My how the times have changed, haven't they? Too bad it's a little too late... Anyway, we'll get back to this later on when we get to the scaling portion of the table.

• This last portion involves the players and their animations. The X and Y values that say 'pause' beside them only work while the game is paused, the other ones work even if it isn't paused. Usually X will be anywhere from around 50 to 800, while Y will be at 0 while on the ground level. Again, use the same principles as for moving the screen to get negative values in, or simply type in a value with the MINUS symbol and that will work too. This is not really the right place to explain signed bits and such, look that up somewhere else because even I haven't completely grasped it yet. Long story short, one of the bits works as a sign (either + or -). Again you'll notice player 2 has more values assigned, and it's simply because I used him the most. All values can be offset and derived for player 1 as well. Anim Duration deals with the length of an individual frame that is played. It's fun to freeze this sometimes to see someone get stuck in a certain pose, but this is the reason why the Shoto-clones all move at different speeds while in their stance, because certain frames are held longer than others, simple as that. Now Anim # is the frame number of each player. Below is a list of all the ranges you will find the players in:

Gill:	1 - 1438
Alex:	1568 - 2568
Ryu:	2592 - 3531
Yun:	3552 - 4990
Dudley:	4992 - 6116
Necro:	6144 - 7374
Hugo:	7392 - 8376
Ibuki:	8384-10180
Elena:	10208 - 11758
Oro:	11776 - 13264
Yang:	13280 - 14583
Ken:	14656 - 15707
Sean:	15712 - 16779
Urien:	16800 - 18247
Akuma:	18272 - 19439
Chun-li:	19456 - 21100
Makoto:	21120 - 22987
Q:	23008 - 24434
Twelve:	24704 - 25851
Remy:	25856 - 27019

• Palette values are also important. Each player usually has 0 or 16 as their regular palette. 1 and 2 (and offsets) are usually colours they change to if frozen or burnt, electrocuted and so on, and there's a bunch of other palettes in there as well for specialized attacks. It would take too long to list all the special palettes here, but I might do it sometime in the future.
  
  
• Last but not least, the zoom value. You must first set this to 1 to enable zooming, while the bottom 2 scale player 2 in the horizonal and vertical directions. I recommend using the very top zoom in the table first, and then zooming player 2 larger. You can use as high numbers as you want, as long as they don't exceed 65535! That is the max you can go but even 5000 is good enough (both ways) to use P2 as a pink background (of course after you've changed him to that using the colour method mentioned above). You'll find the player will move around quite a lot during the resizing, so you'll have to use P2 X and Y pause values for that. Remember to do all this while the game is paused, that is the best way to do it by far, although it works even if the game isn't! Lastly, if you want to use the scaled pink fighter as a background, make sure it is in a lower priority than player 1, or else you'll just get a big pink screen. The best way to assure this is to strike out with player 1 with whatever move you want, and the priority will automatically be changed to higher than player 2. Here are some screenshots to show the progression of scaling up a player. Notice how Hugo is striking out to ensure his higher priority over pink Akuma? Also, the last image I had to change the Y-pause value of to get him to appear behind Hugo, he was floating several thouasand pixels above him in the sky! You'll probably end up doing this while you keep the same X value:

X/Y Scale: 100	X/Y Scale: 500
X/Y Scale: 5000 (notice how P2 is moving away from the target?	X/Y Scale: 60000. Y-pos had to be changed to achieve this

Now is when you can open up AnimGet to prepare for snapshot taking. The program will only take a snapshot when the image has changed, so don't worry about being quick. You'll also want to assign a hotkey value to your keyboard for advancing the number in that memory location. Do this by Right-clicking on the 'Anim #' value and picking 'Edit'. When in Edit Mode, pick the 'Special Hotkeys' tab on the top. This is what you should see::

In the 'Add to the value' box to the right, put the number 1. Click the 'Disable' box to the left of it. The following dialog will pop up:

Input a sequence of keys you want to use to advance the frame. I personally use CTRL-+, but you can use whatever you want. If you don't want to use AnimGet for capturing you can also assign your SnagIT shortcut combo here as well, such as CTRL-P or whatever. That way, not only will you trigger the next frame of the character but also a snapshot from SnagIT. Remember while you are advancing the frames to give the emulator input every so often (every 50 frames or so), to avoid the DC's screensaver from kicking in. Or perhaps you can disable the screensaver in the bios, I can't remember.

Notice how there is a sandbag in the way of Hugo? We can get rid of that by zeroing all the BG-object values in the top portion of the table until it disappears. The little dust clouds are annoying too, so try to avoid those by doing a move that doesn't call up little effect sprites. Put your character's starting value in the memory location we found earlier. Hugo's starts at 7392. Simply make sure you have Chankast in an accessable area and startup Animget by clicking observe->Start.

Now pick Chankast's window and start increasing that value using your hotkey you chose earlier (mine was CTRL-+). Just hold on to to those button while you're doing this, it works much nicer than tapping them over and over. It may be tedious going through 1000+ animations, but at least you'll have a complete sprite set a LOT quicker than going through all your character's moves manually. And remember to press a direction key or else assinged to Chankast's controller to avoid that horrible dreamcast screensaver. Also, don't be alarmed that a lot of the sprites are simply a head placed in a random location. This is Capcom's 'filler block' between frames, it is something you'll have to deal with when cleaning up your sprite set later on. When you're done, go to Animget and pick 'Screenshots ->save'.

When that's done (might take a while), you'll have a complete sprite set in the AnimGet/shots folder!

As an extra note, Ibuki is a bit of a problem because of her hair sprite. Simply move her sprite away from the hair strand or disable it. That would mean advancing her sprite until it EQUALS her hair sprite, searching for that in memory, and so on. The easiest solution her is to simply pause the game when Ibuki is using a frame where her hair is attached to her sprite, such as her tuant, jumping Strong, etc. She is a tough character to deal with in her own right, so good luck constructing her because it will be quite a challenge for you (in M.U.G.E.N. that is).

So that's my updated tutorial. Notice how I didn't even use ImageMagick this time, but I will later on when I separate this tutorial into sections to spare the 56K modem people.

peace!

Joram "Zwei Fuss" Nowak
jnowak@uoguelph.ca
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