[Tutorial] Custom Lifebars

Tutorial updated on 2025/01/28 to fix grammatical mistakes.

It is possible to customize the bars; you can change the visuals to suit your preferences. Here are some examples:



How to do this?

First you need three programs. Download and install them:

• Lifebar Cutter
  
• Smart FPG Editor
  
• Irfan VIew
  

Download these SorR default fpg files too: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GUMXIHfT_io582G8KZvicWyQyeQ-DXkc/view?usp=sharing

Let's start!
Open LBCutter folder and you'll see four image files: "lifebar.png", "extrabar.png", "emptybar.png", "playerbar.png". You can edit them to create your own bars using any image editor. Use your creativity!
In the example below I used MS Paint to draw bars inspired on Mugen lifebar:



Now open LBCutter and click on all the buttons. This will create some folders and files.



Go to your IrfanView folder and copy the directory with the executable name.



In LBCutter folder do a right-click on "apply palette.bat" and select "Edit".
Then paste your directory on the indicated place.



Save the file, close the window, and do a double-click on it.
You will see a black cmd window,. Wait for a confirmation message and then close the window or press any key.



Now we'll start to edit fpg files.
Using Smart FPG Editor, open any FPG file with a name that starts with "barra" In this example, I opened "barra.fpg". After that, choose the option called "View/Edit Palette".



You will see the FPG palette representing all the possible colors that the images can have.
Click on "Import colors from file" and choose any BMP file in "lifebar", "extrabar" or "emptybar" folders.



The palette will be changed:



Close the palette window.
Now we'll start the boring part of the process: adding images.
Choose the following option and select a maximum of 30 files from the respective folder:

• barra.fpg -> emptybar folder
  
• barra_amarilla.fpg -> lifebar folder
  
• barra_azul.fpg -> extrabar folder
  

On the selected text box, you need to write the same number of the current bmp file. Press "Enter".
Repeat this more times. When the window closes, add more files. Repeat this until all pictures are replaced.



Click on "Save" and repeat the same process on the other two FPG files.



Now it's time to add player empty bars. Players use individual bars, look:



You need to add images from "playerbar" folder to each respective character FPG file.
The emptybar picture code is 301. Note: Roo/Victy and Skate/Sammy have 2 bars, because they have two names, so they use the additional code 302 for japanese version names.
When you add the sprite, you may see some different colors in the preview. This occurs because the bar colors are not in the FPG palette. At this moment, I don't know of a way to fix it.



After you add all player bars to repective fpg files, move them to your sorr "data" folder and it is done!
Play SORR with your custom bars!



I hope you enjoyed it and start to make your own custom bars.

Lifebar created in this tutorial: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hFl6EbNXxg66IcavcznDkVSRScY3sF5-/view?usp=sharing

Great tutorial
Thanks.

How did I miss this? As always, pretty awesome, Dan!

This is Looking good

Ayo.

For anyone that only wants to change the colors of the bar, just:

- open the bar fpg files up with the smart fpg editor (one file at a time, of course)
- go to view/edit palette
- find out which palette color/colors is/are universal on all the fpg images within the file
 mess around with it for a little. I changed mine pretty quickly.
- Change the color(s) to whatever you'd like.
- Save.

Now, you can do this with each character and give them their own unique damage bar color, if you wish.
It uses a very specific palette for the health damage bar color. For Rudra, I chose blue.