Getting closer.

This map looked like complete ass yesterday.

Lalala

Been very busy, but yes, I am still working on this thing. Release when I get maps working perfectly, because I don't want to bother having map editing if some of them still look like shit. It's getting close, though. I'd say maybe 70% of them look like they're supposed to, or very close. The others suffer from some remaining problems with decompression, a couple palettes being wrong, and layer-ordering/transparency settings not being processed properly.

Currently editable:
- Audio samples
- Music (sort of; interface is still shit)
- Events/Dialogue
- Maps
- Tilesets
- World map
- Palettes
- Tiles

How much of this will be exportable to a rom for the first release I'm not sure. But at least you'll be able to screw around. Getting it all read-in correctly is the hard part anyway, dumping it back out to the rom shouldn't be too bad.

Here's a picture of gaia's navel in the newest map editor, with the collision layer turned on.

The white squares are object locations.. mostly (if not all) Buzz Bees on this map. Dark squares are door/walk-over event/sign locations.

Here are some maps that still do not look right (with zsnes screencaps for reference):

Palette issues in Tasnica. This happens on every map with this tileset, and a few others.


Map decompression issues. These still pop up here and there. A lot of the code in this game really makes no sense whatsoever, particularly some of the stuff they do with map "compression." Music was the same way. Also in this screenshot, the transparency on the red clouds (which otherwise look correct, unlike the background layer) is supposed to be additive; it's not, so they look rather stupid.


Tasnica interior; shadows shown with additive transparency rather than averaged transparency.

Map decompression

Map decompression is now 100% working as far as I can tell. There were a few stray cases I wasn't covering that were causing some maps to not look right. It was my second or third "Why the fuck would they code it this way?" moment so far. More to come, I'm sure.

I've also been changing how I read in background tiles. Some tiles that didn't show up at all on maps before now show up. There are issues with the palettes that still need to be worked out. Also, there are some flags on the "composite maps" that are not being interpreted correctly yet.. these determine the rendering order of the BG layers, transparency settings, layer movement effects, etc.

Bottom line: Maps still have issues, but they're being worked on.

Release Plans

Okay, so here's the deal. I've changed the way ROM file handling works - when you load a ROM now, it creates a project file that stores the original file plus all the shit you modified. You can then export these into a new ROM whenever you want, or just keep them around in the project file package.

I've been working on the project file handling lately.. the nice thing about it is I can read and write in whatever format I want, so the development goes a little faster. The current plan is to have an initial release that allows various things to be edited and saved to the project, but not exported to the ROM yet. As I finish up some ROM write routines, I'll release revisions that allow certain pieces of project data to be exported to ROM. In the mean time, you'll be able to work on whatever projects you had in mind, you just won't be able to write them to a ROM yet. Later releases will allow your project data to be saved as a ROM.

To the few people who actually still follow this project, what do you think of this?

Published with Blogger-droid v1.4.9

donations

At the request of someone who commented a while back, I've added a paypal donate button.

Map compression is still being worked on. I've almost got the "waterfall" map compressing down as small as the original copy now. Since somedit expands the rom to make extra space for maps, the recompression doesn't have to be perfect, but i'd like it to be as good as I can get it. After that I have some bugs and assorted map details to work out still.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.4.9

Map Editor

I've been busy lately, but here are the beginnings of a working map editor.

Layer 1 map piece:


Layer 2 map piece:


Combined:


Running in ZSNES:


The compression routines need work, but the basic stuff is working.

For those wondering, email address is umokumok@gmail.com (should be visible now anyway)

Event editing

Stuff is sort of working.








Event editor is still sort of ugly but capable of modifying a few things now and the re-write code seems to work.

In this example, the text was obviously modified (from "... (BOY)...") and the palette flash was changed from yellow to blue.