My character’s portrait is getting cut off at the edges when I import it.
Your portrait is likely getting cut off by what’s known as the hackbox, an area of the portrait image that isn’t actually usable normally. Here’s some standard templates that show it:
Those areas in the upper-left and upper-right of the portrait box can’t actually be used in vanilla. But if needed, there is a patch to allow you to exceed the hackbox by a bit:
Patch Name:Exceed The Portrait Hackbox By 4 Tiles @FE8U
Author / Source:tiki [FE7] Exceed the Portrait Hackbox Compatability:aera
How does the Exceed Portrait Hackbox patch work?
The exceed hackbox patch doesn’t fully eliminate the hackbox, but it allows you to go a bit outside of it. Specifically, it gives you two extra 16x16 squares you can position outside its bounds. Here’s how you set it up, using an example from my hack.
(Note: installing this patch does not have any negative effects on preexisting portraits, nor does it require making any changes to their settings. There is a field you have to enable on a given portrait for it to use the exceed tiles in the first place, which defaults to off.)
You have to break the area that clips out of the hackbox into two 16x16 tiles aligning to an 8x8 grid, much like how mouth and eye frames do. You know how there’s an unused space in the bottom-right of a portrait image? You put those two tiles there.
Once you import the portrait, set “mug_exceed” to 1 to make them appear and access the settings to move them around. Set the coordinates so they align as needed.
And there you go! Your portrait now fits where it previously couldn’t.
Worth noting: you can extend a portrait to the right with this! It won’t show in Builder’s preview, but you can place the tiles out of bounds to extend a portrait to the right of the hackbox.
Also, an exciting piece of tech: the coordinates the patch uses are actually read as signed values in 2’s complement. What that means is 255 is -1, 254 is -2, 253 is -3, and so on. This means you can actually extend up and left too!
Hair extension added with two tiles at Y=254, aka Y=-2