ROM Hack Chessmaster

[ACQ]

If anyone has played Chessmaster: The Art of Learning (starring Chessmaster Josh Waitzkin, not the usual wizard dude), then you know why I'd want to hack the profile pictures. They've got these stock mug shots of folks that look nothing like me. I prefer the Kenny Rogers one, but would much rather see my own hairy face staring back at me, as well as intimidating my opponent.

Also, if it's at all possible I'd like to fire the Mr. Waitzkin for annoying me to no end. All that head scratching and karate chopping is unbecoming of an International Chessmaster and he should be erased from the game for it.

 

[FAST6191]

I have never played the title and am in no position to help with hacking beyond a theoretical/concept level). The pictures suggest it is all 2d (which is nice as 3d is no fun to play with unless you have a lot of time).

Animation can be a bit more tricky to deal with as there are many ways it can be pulled off, two of the most common are sector where an arm or something might move with a static image behind. The best place to start with this is probably some of deufeufeu's threads hacking phoenix wright/gyakuten saiban.

The other main way is standard images played quickly a la normal video (I doubt it would be normal video but you never know).
This means standard GBA format images will likely be used, probably paletted but bitmap could appear. I wrote about GBA images here in depth (bitmap means no palette as each value is a colour)

http://gbatemp.net/index.php?showtopic=45360&hl=assure

Of course a standard GBA graphics editor will do (can I suggest you do a forum search for crystaltile2 as it also has DS file system capabilities), if you need other DS file system stuff there were a few threads a few months back and the rom ripping and enhancements link in my signature should also help.

Here compression is probably the only thing to go against you, LZ is most likely and will have a name with LZ somewhere in it, in the first few bytes in ASCII or it will be split into equal length chunks. LZSStool over at GBAdev should work:
http://www.gbadev.org/tools.php?showinfo=56 (demo subdirectory has a nice command line tool).
romhacking.net also has some GBA stuff.
http://www.romhacking.net/

 

[ACQ]

Thanks FAST6191, I'll do some research as I have the time. I appreciate the reply!