GBA FE movement/attack/staff tile assets?

queen · November 12, 2024, 6:47am

Does anyone have a link to those red/blue/green tile assets? I’m referring to the 16x16 (well, 15x15 if you look closely) tiles that appear when you select a unit and the pathfinding algorithm shows you their movement/attack/staff ranges. And possibly the correct timing/transparency specifics for these tiles.

Currently writing a GBA FE clone in C++ and I thought I could just make my own tiles here since they’re just squares, right? But on closer inspection the animation and blending is actually pretty unique, which is how the GBA games get that classic “glowing” effect on those tiles.

Did a bit of searching but I haven’t been able to find these resources so far. Any help is appreciated!

Alice · November 12, 2024, 10:12am

Animation of the squares

Animation for the squares popping up

And these 4 are the palettes

As for the transparency, I have no idea. I would suggest you try 50% or 30% oppacity. Or just trial and error.

Also keep in mind, transparent graphics may behave differently in GBA than in a more modern engine, as the GBA had more limitations on the colors it could display. So maybe the effect you want won’t be 100% accurate.

Shuusuke · November 12, 2024, 4:53pm

Just a correction to the above post, the palette for the squares are editable in these patches.

The patches shown in the above post are for the display of the unit portrait, name and HP when you hover over them.

cb1052 · November 12, 2024, 5:23pm

github.com

FireEmblemUniverse/fireemblem8u/blob/master/src/playerphase.c#L1268


      
          
              if (proc->unk_4C == 8)
              {
                  Proc_Break(proc);
              }
          
              return;
          }
          
          //! FE8U = 0x0801D92C
          void MoveLimitView_OnInit(ProcPtr proc)
          {
              int ix;
              int iy;
          
              SetWinEnable(0, 0, 0);
          
              gBmSt.gameStateBits |= BM_FLAG_0;
              RenderBmMap();
          
              for (iy = 9; iy >= 0; --iy)

github.com

FireEmblemUniverse/fireemblem8u/blob/master/src/playerphase.c#L1268


      
          
              if (proc->unk_4C == 8)
              {
                  Proc_Break(proc);
              }
          
              return;
          }
          
          //! FE8U = 0x0801D92C
          void MoveLimitView_OnInit(ProcPtr proc)
          {
              int ix;
              int iy;
          
              SetWinEnable(0, 0, 0);
          
              gBmSt.gameStateBits |= BM_FLAG_0;
              RenderBmMap();
          
              for (iy = 9; iy >= 0; --iy)

These are the decompiled functions that controls the blend effect, it goes through palette cycling

queen · November 12, 2024, 6:42pm

Thanks all for these replies. My machine only runs Linux and I haven’t gotten FEBuilder to work to extract the tiles myself, but I appreciate the screenshots @Alice , they’ll be useful for reference as I recreate them in Aseprite.

It’s my understanding that the GBA hardware has support for 8x8 background tiles but not 16x16 - possibly the original games abstracted away from this limitation by treating a grid of 4 hardware-level tiles as a single “object,” which is why FEBuilder is able to show the full 16x16 square in those screenshots.

edit: took a look at the screenshot more closely and checked against the decompiled source, it looks like there’s no abstraction used here. Example from DisplayMovementViewTile():

if (gMapMovementSigned[yBmMap][xBmMap] >= 0) {
        bg[0x00 + 0] = 0x4280;
        bg[0x00 + 1] = 0x4281;
        bg[0x20 + 0] = 0x4282;
        bg[0x20 + 1] = 0x4283;

        return;
    }

So in addition to everything else it does, FEBuilder even had to piece together 8x8 tiles to make 16x16 tiles show up in the GUI in the second screenshot. I can’t imagine the work that went into that tool.

queen · November 12, 2024, 6:50pm

Thanks for this, wasn’t aware there was a decompiled version available online. This will be very helpful. I had a hunch the red/green/blue squares were palette swaps.

Parsing through the C source and jumping around in the codebase will be a chore but this is invaluable, if only to see the numbers they’re using for blending.

Alice · November 13, 2024, 4:42am

Ah. Thanks. My bad.

Vesly · November 13, 2024, 8:04am

no$gba with break points can help find things quickly a lot of the time

function/ram/data addresses using decomp names:
https://fireemblemuniverse.github.io/fireemblem8u/symbols.txt

The above link is updated automatically based on the decomp

queen · November 13, 2024, 11:23am

Thanks, this is really nice and I’ll bookmark it. Have heard that the no$gba debugger is powerful, will try it out and play with it.

Ivera · November 3, 2025, 5:53pm

Hello, I’m an artist who is looking for the exact colour palette used for the player range tiles, I have no idea how to mod or program anything. I made an account on here just to find the hex code for the orange tiles specifically. Do you have them on hand? Thank you so much

Shuusuke · November 4, 2025, 2:22am

It cycles through 48 colors, so I’ll just copy the whole thing and explain how you get the hex for each individual color.

All 48 colors

3C 09 5D 09 7D 0D 9D 11 BD 15 DD 19 FE 1D FE 21 1E 26 3E 2A 5E 2E 7F 32 9F 36 BF 3A DF 3E FF 42 FF 42 DF 3E BF 3A 9F 36 7F 32 5E 2E 3E 2A 1E 26 FE 21 FE 1D DD 19 BD 15 9D 11 7D 0D 5D 09 3C 09 3C 09 5D 09 7D 0D 9D 11 BD 15 DD 19 FE 1D FE 21 1E 26 3E 2A 5E 2E 7F 32 9F 36 BF 3A DF 3E FF 42

Each color is 2 bytes and flipped. In other words, the first color is 093C, the second is 095D, the third is 0D7D, and so on. If you have FEBuilder and go into the patches I mentioned, it already lists each color individually.