Basic Tile Molester Tutorial

I've looked around and couldn't see a tutorial for Tile Molester so I thought I might write one.

In this tutorial I am going to open up the Sonic spites from Sonic 1 and get them ready for editing which I've noticed some people don't know how to do.

(I'll be using a disassembled Sonic 1 rom)

Ok the most obvious step would be to open up Tile Molester.



Now you want to click 'File' then 'Open' and find your disassembly folder and open 'artunc'.



You're going to need to set the file type to 'All Files' so it will display '.bin files'.



Open 'sonic.bin'.



Now it's going to look all jumbled but this is normal and easy to sort out.



Click 'View' then 'Codec' and select 4 bpp linear (this the one normally used on the 16bit Sonic games).



Looking better but still the colour is all wrong...



You're going to need to change the palette; one way of doing this is with a 'Save State'.

Open up your emulator (I use Fusion as I am used to it but any emulator with a Save State option should work).



Load up Sonic 1 and press Start at the title screen (Your going to need to have sonic's sprite visible on the screen).



Your going to want to save state now, so use the 'Save State As' option which is usually under 'File'.



Save it in a place that is easily assessable.



Go back to Tile Molester, click 'Palette' then 'Import From' and select 'Another File'.



Find and open the saved save slate.



Now the sprites should be in the correct Palette and ready for editing.



If you want to add more sprites you'll need to expand 'Sonic.bin' which can be done in a hex editor such as Hex Workshop by inserting more bytes at the bottom, when I did it I added about 24000 bytes (about 24kb) which is more than enough. (thanks to Ollie for telling me how to do this).

Now when you open it in Tile Molester there will be more space to play with.