Rom editor

[JAMLive]

Does anyone know where I can find an editor for my ff2 rom where I can change the characters(like keeping dark knight cecil in my party etc)

[DJZen]

Zophar's Domain. You could also check google.

[Zyrthofar]

I created a ROM Hacker and a Savegame Hacker... I believe what you want is the Savegame editor, right?

With a few modifications, I could release a beta version for you... just reply if you are interrested...

[JAMLive]

I checked Zophars. It didnt work with my emulator. my emulator is a program called sneese. The snes one didnt work on my comp so I used that one.

EDIT: I downloaded zsnes. It is SO much better. The sound is perfect and everything shows up on it. Now if I could only get my savegame editor to work.

Sure you can release the beta.

[waterotterunder]

I created a ROM Hacker and a Savegame Hacker

excellent, zyrtho! i haven't seen any other rom editors for this game.

i don't suppose yours can edit the overworld map...?

[Zyrthofar]

Edit the worldmap? I kinda know how I could do that, but it only displays the 3 maps in the game (for now), and a beta-test of the location maps. I started to work full-time, plus 3hrs of transport (bus and subway), which gives me not much time to continue it.

I use my editor to edit enemies, items and magic (among others (like enemy combinations and positions), but those three are the most useful)...

If you want to edit the overworld map, there is that FF4Edit program (written by Yousei, the guy who brought us the popular FF3Edit ^-^).

It takes 600KB... I found it easily a couple of years ago... It still should be.

Hope it helps...

[waterotterunder]

plus 3hrs of transport

Oof. I hope you can at least bring along a good book. (Or a laptop....) I've got about an hour each way by car, myself. It's not the full-time work that kills free time; it's that commute. :P`

there is that FF4Edit program

Yes. Perfect for cosmetic edits, but mostly just a tease. (...unless he ever released a version past 1.0.) It really broke my heart back when I first met it. ;_;

Actually...

Would you happen to know how to find/edit the triggers that take you from the world map to a town/dungeon?

Right now, if you use FF4Ed to, say, place a copy of the mist cave entrance 3 squares from Baron, walking onto the new cave entrance will send you not to the mist cave but instead to the (normally impossible to reach) NW corner of Baron town. Fixing that would be a huge step toward what i was hoping to do with the game.

[Zyrthofar]

If you want to edit the savegame, it can be easily done... My second (and most often used (by myself)) program lets you edit most of what is in the savegame, including the current world, map and coordinates.

If you want it, I could ask zophars to host it, or maybe this site allows an attachment of 1MB? I wonder...

Anyway, just ask, and I will se what I can do.

Btw, I prefer 3hrs (1.5hrs each way) of bus/subway than 1hr of car. It's just because I really like to read forgotten realms books, and I am subscribed to Scientific American and PC World. The work, transport and my kung fu courses leave me with the week ends off. :D

[waterotterunder]

hey, i used to read those. moonshae, harpers, dark elf with an unpronounceable name... yeah. that was a long time ago though; are they still publishing new ones?

anyway, you bet i'd be interested! ^__^ either or both of your editors would be great. (and if they went up at zophar's i'm sure they'd find their way to other appreciative otakus as well.) please do.

[Zyrthofar]

Allright...
although I'll not have any time for that tomorrow evening (kung fu), i'll check for quick fixes wednesday and friday. Nothing really big... things like an About menu, last-minute checks, stuff...

If you can wait until this weekend, hopefully I'll have found a way to contact and send my prog to zophar by then...

See you until then!

-----------------------

Oh http://forums.eyesonff.com/images/smilies/rpg_009.gifhttp://forums.eyesonff.com/images/smilies/rpg_009.gifhttp://forums.eyesonff.com/images/smilies/rpg_009.gifhttp://forums.eyesonff.com/images/smilies/rpg_009.gif... btw, since its written in vb.net (still studying C++), you guys will need the .NET framework... Available free on Microsoft.com's page, of course... Should be included with XP SP2, if I remember right...

anyway, I hope this doesn't bother anyone that much...

[waterotterunder]

awesome. .NET's no problem. and take your time with the tweaks. i mean, the game came out over a decade ago, and bugs seem to be a bigger turnoff for new users than any actual lack of functionality.

gong fu's pretty tough to learn, isn't it? (or is that just my friend's chinese superiority complex talking...?)

[Zyrthofar]

Ok... edited it a bit so that I could release a prototype. There are still a few possible bugs, and some areas are not implemented, but it is the prototype, so I'll leave all the fun for the real version, which will be better coded.

Please read, at least, the main page from the offline HTML Help included with the program. It's good to know.

I really hope you enjoy it (not just waterotterunder, but everyone)! Please send me your impressions and feelings, but keep in mind the real program will not look like that.

Eh... I almost forgot to put the link... You can find the program on the main page of my web site. Zyrthofar's woah! page (http://pages.videotron.com/zyrthofr).

Enjoy, and keep me informed if it helped you!

-----

Kung fu's not *that* hard to learn... you just have to memorize the movements and not mess up. I've been doing Shaolin White Crane Kung Fu (http://www.shaolinwhitecranekungfu.com/) for a bit more than a year (starting Jan. 2004)... It's a traditional style dating from a long time ago, so I cannot talk about if the other kung fu styles are tough to learn or not.
I wish more people would learn martial arts.... :)

[Xalioniaf]

I got it, but I don't really understand it. Maybe I got the wrong one? All it does is display the Overworld, Underworld, and Moon maps. Infact, since I never got too far on the game, I didn't even know tehre was and underworld and moon. Anyway, what can it do?

[Zyrthofar]

I have another program I made for map tests that does exactly what you describe, so you got me a bit scared that I had both mixed... I double-checked, and everything seems fine...

Can you please give me the link to the program? it should be something like http://pages.videotron.com/zyrthofr/ff4sge.rar... If you didn't have that, please tell me what you did wrong, so that I can check if it was my fault (and if it's *my* program that somehow got on my site)...

If the link you have is good, check if you have the FF4SGE folder in the rar file, and if it contains the file "FF4 Savegame Editor.exe", along with 4 other file and a folder named "HTMLHelp". If it's not that, please tell me which file are in it.

Thank you for brining that to my attention. I hope I can solve the problem.
Maybe you didn't use the link I provided in my preceding post (post #12). Its the same one that I use in the footer of my messages. If you searched for it using a web seach engine, it's normal you got the wrong program - I didn't list my site yet.

Please msg if you got it or not.

[Xalioniaf]

I tihnk it's my fault. One of the downloads I was...downloading canceled itself, and it must've been that one. A mixup on my part, sorry :P.

[waterotterunder]

heya! funny how one week can be so slow that you're picking up old hobbies & the next so hectic that you're fighting just to get some sleep each night... :P

your editor seems to work very nicely. ^_^ much thanks for making it available, and hopefully i'll get a chance sooner rather than later to give it more tinker time.

i think i'm still primarily interested in editing the rom itself, eventually. but savestate editing opens plenty of opportunities to go back and replay the game in strange new ways. kinda fun.

will your new editor allow individual characters (& while we're at it, entire item inventories) to be copied from one save state into another? that's one thing i couldn't seem to do with the current one.

[Zyrthofar]

That's an interresting idea I haven't thought of... Thanks :)

I have made a ROM editor that works ok. It can edit Enemies, Magics and Items, as well as Enemy Combinations, Enemy Positions. It can view (not edit yet) dialogues, battle dialogues, world maps and character sprites (even town people)...

Of course, as with the Savegame Editor, it's kinda far from completed, but *shrugs* if you want to try it... I'd need a bit more time to check it, and it wouldn't look as finished as the Savegame Editor, but since it works ok if you use it right....

I'll start tweaking it this weekend. Tell me if you'd be interrested (it doesn't do anything else than what I mentioned, and i've been blocked by some boss pictures i can't decode... i'll just skip that...)

[Xalioniaf]

Do you have just a text editor? Or, if you put it in, that'll be nice. Also, will this work on both FF2US and FF4 translated roms?

[Zyrthofar]

It doesn't have a text editor, at least not in this early prototype version...
In the real version, a text-mode program (albeit not as powerful as the real one), would be interresting for the basic edits. I also intend on creating a script editor, which would give the ability of quickly execute a set of edits you would previously choose. Ie, you could create a .txt file (or .scr or whatever) that would tell the program to maximize the current hit points and magic points of every characters.

Also, this works on every ff2 and ff4 versions, with a few limitations. The savegame has to be created just like the ff2us savegame is, though I never saw a version of ff4 that created the savegame in any other manner. You basically could convert your FF4J savegame to FF4US, but you would lose your character names (ff4us doesn't have hiragana/katakana, of course)...

Anyway... until I get enough time to put my ideas together to finish the real version (and I want to wait for VB.NET 2005, and anyway, I'm trying to learn C++ and c++.NET to make the prog more powerful..... lost my line of thoughts...

*shrugs*

Enjoy the prototype version... I'll put the FF4US ROM editor in my site in a few days...

----------------

Took less time than I expected... (1 day)

I released a [prototype] version of my ROM Editor on my site. The link is still Zyrthofar's FF4 Hacking Zone (http://pages.videotron.com/zyrthofr/). You might need to refresh the page. Anyway, now the programs have their own place, which can be reached with Zyrthofar's FF4 Hacking Programs (http://pages.videotron.com/zyrthofr/progs.html).

Please read what's on the page before using the programs. And don't forget to use the programs responsively! ;)

Please tell me what you think of them... I still haven't done much yet, but it's comeing along nicely, I think.

[waterotterunder]

ooooh. rom editor! that's the stuff, yeah! another nice interface, too.

couple (well, 3) quick comments on crashes / errors (just some things that aren't listed on the download page.)

1. the "combination editor" and "position editor" crash you if the ROM you're editing isn't in the same directory as BattleBackground.bmp. (it can be any directory, but both files have to be in the same place.)

2. no matter what i try (using a good-checksum ff2us rom named FF4.smc) the enemy editor gives me a:
System.IndexOutOfRangeException: Index was outside the bounds of the array.
at SMCHack.EnemyEditor_Form.FillLists()
at SMCHack.EnemyEditor_Form..ctor()
at SMCHack.Main.Open_EnemyEditor(Object sender, EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.OnClick(EventArgs e)
(etc.)

3. the EnemyEditor html set is missing "EnemyEditor_Intro.html". (...not that it causes problems or anything.)

and some misc. comments:
- i like the zoom on the map viewers, complete with scroll-wheel interface. it would be neat if you could drag the map image with your mouse (like, say, the default mouse interaction for .pdf files.)
- i love the sprite & dialogue viewers with swappable palettes, etc. it'll be fun when/if they let you insert your own images/text.
- kinda wish you didn't have to cycle through the location viewer one location at a time, but it sounds like that one was a work in progress anyway. (i keep trying to click the tileset on the right as if it were a palette for editing the map....) adding animation was a nice touch.

*yaaaawn* time for sleep.

"...but it's comeing along nicely, I think."

me too. ^-^

[Zyrthofar]

You see, that's the kind of reply I like :)

I'm surprised about #1, and wasn't expecting #2 (hell, the enemy editor is the best thing you can play with to make fun of the game)... I'll get on this as soon as I can.

I'll soon add a mouse scroller for the world map viewer, and a textbox for entering the location#.


"- i love the sprite & dialogue viewers with swappable palettes, etc. it'll be fun when/if they let you insert your own images/text."

That's where I stopped making the program and decided to redesign it from scratch. I realized I totally had to implement the SNES graphic engine (hmm... well, not totally ;)) to correctly show images from the rom. A good example is the picture of the BlackLiz: one of its color is the same as its transparent color... my program can't tell the two apart... The real version won't have that problem, of course ;).
Another GFX problem would have clearly showed if I would have drawn the sprites on the location maps... The fire, for example, has its top *under* the top tile...

Heh... next version...

Thanks for your reply

------------------------

I quickly fixed the BattleBackground.bmp" error. As for the Enemy Editor error, I managed to get it only one single time... I deleted a few lines of code, and it didn't do it again... if it does, please tell me.

I didn't create an intro html, but instead redirected to the Enemy List html... I also noticed (or rather, "I was dismayed to learn") that since I have created this html help when I was using Internet Explorer, it doesn't work with my beloved Firefox :S... *sigh* A lot of things only work with IE, but then again, that's exactly why it is so crippled.

Send me a message if you find anything else that can be easily fixed (no major change, of course, since I don't really continue this version).

btw, I added a textbox in the LocationMapViewer just for you. Just don't put letters in it, as it only checks for empty strings.

[waterotterunder]

just for you

S.B.'s a sweetie. ^_^

I can finally make an intelligent guess at why sticking a location entrance anywhere unexpected on the world map always sent me to the top left corner of Baron town, i.e. (0,0) of location 0....

And let's see... (5 PinkPuffs) x (5% each) x (4/256) = 1/256 chance of winning a Pink tail from a puffbattle? Hmm, that's too low. Let's change it to 25% each, with a 44/256 chance. And give them boss music. And make it so it's not game over when you die, because now they look like Balnab, and have 10x52 magicdefense, and 89 to 89 speed, and cause Pig and Berserk with every attack, and use Dark Elf's spell sequence. Except, instead of turning into a dragon, they get on burning flying sharks. And shoot lasers at you. And angry bears. ...which are also on fire. Like the burning flying sharks.

And everything works now. Today is indeed an excellent day.

[Zyrthofar]

:D lol

thanks

Hopefully, the large version will be more powerful...