I decided to redo one of my boss's graphics to take advantage of the custom tile setup feature of the BigEnemyDX script, and give it some more fluid animation. Unfortunately, because that boss was originally made before my previous computer broke, I didn't have the original spritesheets to go off of. I couldn't find the sheets online anymore (I remember it took forever the first time around as well), so I had to download the ROM and rip the graphics by hand. (Thank God that the enemy I wanted was immediately after the first dungeon, so I didn't have to play very far to find it.) However, the emulator doesn't have a true 1-1 aspect ratio, so no matter how the window is shaped or sized, it will always distort and apply anti-aliasing to the game.
Basically, I had to apply a sharpen filter to the emulator to try and negate the anti-aliasing, copy the screen contents into Paint once the frame I wanted came up, manually re-shape the stretched lines in the sprite until it looked correct, and then copy it pixel-by-pixel into ZC with the correct palette. The new tile setup also required rearranging every other boss sprite on the tile page to make room. It took hours, but I finally have it finished. It's a 32x32 enemy with 4 frames of animation in each of 4 walking directions. I haven't actually tested it out yet, since it's a quarter past three in the morning and I desperately need a break from this thing. I'll wait until morning, then finish the screen where the boss goes, connect the warps between all of the maps I've rebuilt, apply the script to the appropriate screens, and test everything out to see if it works, or if I broke something. I even took the time to make a couple extra tiles to explain why the boss happens to be there. (Just recolored the standing frame of the boss into a statue. I'll put a couple there so the player sees that they're supposed to be a pair of statues come to life to defend the entrance of the ruins.)
I've got three more maps to rebuild, two more bosses to fix as well as all of my enemies, and I should be done rebuilding everything that I had finished before so that it all works correctly with the new palette system and the new map script. After all that, I'm free to start building new content and try to get a new demo ready for the Expo. Worst case scenario, the Expo demo will have only the same locations as the previous Expo had, but with a ton of new features, better graphics and palettes, new and more fitting music for various areas and boss battles, and all the bugs and collision detection ironed out. Best case scenario, I'll have all of the above, and enough new content to fill about two-fifths of the finished quest. (a very rough estimate. The final quest may have more content than that.)
