Blaster Master Editor

[snarfblam]

This is 100% unrelated to Metroid. I'm wondering if anyone else is as big a fan of the original Blaster Master as I am. With it's platformy goodness and pseudo-non-linear game play I thought it might appeal to the same crowd as Metroid.

I'm cooking up something new. I know there's already a Blaster Master editor, BCK, but the interface is minimal and it's hard to see the bigger picture when your editing each level of the game's building blocks. I'm grafting the Editroid interface into a new Blaster Master editor where everything is edit-in-place.

See?
Blaster Master Editing
Thoughts?

[personitis]

Is there a problem if I've never played blaster master?

[MelanyKoura]

Probably not. A lot of NES games slip under peoples' radars. Especially so if you've never seen an NES (not saying you haven't, but it's a possibility).

I've at least seen the game (a friend streamed it once) and it looked sorta neat. Someone I know might enjoy toying around with the editor given that it's complete; he has a thing about not liking beta versions too much.

[Lunaria]

DO WANT! :D

Send me a copy of this later!

[-DC-]

Hell yeah... I've barely played this game, even though I know it's a classic. Too many games on my list and too little interest to play any at the moment, but I'd get this editor.

[snarfblam]

Is there a problem if I've never played blaster master?

I think that this in one of those games that tends to get overlooked. I'd say that it ranks among the best though.



I should point out that the editor is far from done. As-is it's fully capable of editing all tank sections of the game. Sprite editing in the overhead sections isn't done yet. And it needs a whole lot of polish.

I might be able to release a functional version in a couple of days, but it will still be far removed from beta. This is part of a larger project I'm working on. I'm making a level-editor-framework that the Blaster Master editor is built on top of, and things like undo, backups, and an IPS feature all need to be worked in before I even have a proper alpha build.

Also, if anyone has any ideas for the name, I'm open to suggestions. I've thought of nothing and I'm all out of ideas.

[Lunaria]

Well I would love to beta test the editor! ^^

[snarfblam]

[spoiler=<REDACTED>]
Ahemm... I'll just drop this here...


Keep in mind this requires .Net Framework 2.0 to run.

[/spoiler]


(Look below for an updated link.)

[Lunaria]

Tried it out some.

It's sweeeeeet! <3


oh, and it does not support the (E) ROM... not that anyone cares! <_< >_>


Edit:

Blaster master editor testing


mmmm yeah....

[Zhs2]

I'mma move this to Misc. Hacks and Fangames because it seems cooler there.

[Mittensmacks]

Im finally glad to see someone realized Blaster Master needed a better interface for its editor.  Would like a copy to test.

Thanks

[snarfblam]

I posted a link to it here, but it's worth mentioning that I'm probably somewhat close to an update with some tweaks, bug fixes, and the ability to undo/redo.

[Prime Hunter]

Oh wow... I didn't even know such a thing existed for this game. Blaster Master is in my top 5 favorite NES games, partially because it reminds me of Metroid so much, and one I've played to death over the years even though I only managed to get to the final boss within the last few months. (Still haven't beaten him yet.) This is definitely something I'd be interested in playing around with once it's further along.

[Hiroshi Mishima]

Oh man, Blaster Master was an awesome game (that I could never beat as a kid ;_; ) but it's still one of my favourites. I'd love to see some people making kick-ass hacks for it using your Blaster Master Editor (when it's done).

[Lunaria]

Just you clear things up, this, not even beta version, editor that I have is more then enough to set up new tank levels with ease. :P

[snarfblam]

You should be able to edit the overhead levels just fine as well.

[snarfblam]

I did something! :awesome:



The is the hopefully-ready-to-release version 1.0. It doesn't look a whole lot different from the earlier version I posted, but it has some extra goodies:

• Undo/Redo.
• Changes to grid. You can toggle the grid on and off. There is also hot-tracking so you can see which square you are over in the map (seen in the green background in the screenshot).
• Stats box. Gives useful info on building blocks. For example, for a given combo, it will tell you how many structures and blocks the combo is used in, as well as the total number of times the combo appears on the map. This is great for identifying unused data.
• Block/structure/combo sorting. You can move these around in the editor, allowing you to group similar or related objects. This makes it easy to find what you are looking for later.
• Combo editor. This somewhat basic feature was missing from the earlier version. Edit the tiles, palette, and physics of a combo.
• Ability to place/edit "undefined" data. This means, for example, if a level defines 100 blocks, and you want to place (or open a ROM containing) block #150, you can now do this and it will show up in the editor as it would appear in-game (even though it is technically invalid).

I'd like to get some testing done before it's released publicly. Even if you only see whether it runs and opens a ROM, I'd appreciate it. I want to avoid the sort of situation where I release a program that is, for all intents and purposes, useless or severely broken. Somehow it seems to happen, even when I think I've tested a program pretty well.

Here's the goods. (Please only share the link for the sake of testing.)

[Prime Hunter]

Edit: Ok, so now that I have had a good amount of time to play around with the ReMaster editor, I think I can give a better summary.

Using the editor, once you figure out how to do things, is very simple and I expect areas can be built pretty fast after someone gets good with it. I think I've figured out how to use most of the editor's features at this point, but some of them require some unorthodox procedures to use them unless you know what to look for. I still think having a guide of some sort would be the best option, because figuring out how to move and re-point the doors for instance took me ages to discover on my own, and it's one of the most important aspects of keeping things fresh in a quality hack in my opinion.

However, when I tried to make my own custom door the first time, they didn't want to work for me for some reason. (So either I did something wrong, which is entirely possible, or else the game doesn't recognize the fact that they are in a different place than normal.) From what I remember this is the only real bug I found when taking my test hack and trying to play it in an emulator, but it's a pretty big issue from where I'm sitting. Still, based on the things I've been testing out all of the other features of the editor appear to be functioning properly and are recognized when you go to play, which is something you were looking to check by having people test it out.

Overall the editor is awesome in my book! Once that one issue I found is fixed, and unless there's something else that crops up that I either overlooked or never tested out, the editor itself seems to be solid.


Edit 2: OK, that's odd. All of the doors are working again as they should. Don't know what I did, but by loading an older version of my hack and moving a tank door up to my starting area, it was working properly. Guess you can ignore my comments about the door issue, although I wish I knew what had caused the bug in the first place because that would help you prevent it from happening again.

Guess this is just another reminder to backup files frequently.

[snarfblam]

Thanks! Glad to get some feedback. I guess there are some minor usability issues, probably best solved by a decent manual.

I'll agree the doors can be a bit confusing. It's an aspect of the editor that should probably be redone (but if it does get redone, it'll probably wait for a later version). It's usable, but it's not that simple to figure out. The yellow doorway rectangle must be placed precisely and will only work over combos that have the proper "doorway" physics type. I could have the program try to detect problematic doors.

To answer your question, you can make any pair of doors go from anywhere in any level to anywhere in any level. (I consider the tank and overhead sections of the same area to be different levels. So "Area 1's" tank section and "Area 1's" overhead section would be two distinct levels.)

• Find a pair of doors you want to re-purpose in the door list. Select the first door of the pair.
• Use one of the level menus (tank or overhead) to pick the level where you would like the door to go to (not necessary if you are moving the door within the same level).
• Scroll to the location you would like to place the door, and right-click.
• Repeat for the other door in the pair.

In other words, when moving a door, you can pick a different level before placing the door. The catch is that any doors that go from tank to overhead or overhead to overhead should not go to a different area. Odd things can happen if you die or continue in the wrong area.