Step 9: width of the new characters

As I said before, the width of the dialog characters are stored in the SLUS file.
In order to change them we need a tool called ARMIPS.

Thanks to the assembler programming language, we are allowed to modify certain things in the SLUS. So let me show you how it's done. CUE developed a little tool which allow us to modify the width of our new characters, because their default width is always 12 pixels and that's too much:

In the picture above you can see what I'm talking about. The letter "é" has a 12 pixel width where it should be 7, and the letter "ó" also has a 12 pixel width where it should be 7 as well, so let's change that.


First of all, download this: armips (slus width).zip

Unzip those files and keep them in the same folder.

Now open the file "width.asm" with any text editor, I recommend you Notepad++.

Go to the end of the file, where you will see this:

After "db" you have to insert the width of your new characters. For your information they are expressed in pixels, so the Á has 8 pixels, É has 7 pixels, and so on and so on. Obviously each character has its own width, so add them very carefully. You can see the original width of each character in the same document, just above the new ones. On the last column you can add the new characters after their corresponding hex code, just as I have done in the picture above.


When you are done save this document. Now double click the Magic.bat file. Congratulations, now you have added the new characters width into the SLUS file.

What we have done allowed us to change the width of our new characters regarding ingame dialogs, but not the texts that appear in the menu. We will see that in the next episode.