Rom editor

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.

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...)

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?

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...

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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. 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.

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.

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. ^-^

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

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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.

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.

:D lol

thanks

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