Editroid Thread

[The Monster of Surrealton]

In certain vertical rooms, it won't let me go up/down. I check "vertical scrolling" in Test Room, and have tried punching in a password and playing the area without Test Room, but when I jump down/up into the next screen of the room, it acts like I'm standing on lava, and won't let me advance.

I've circled some spots in Tourian where this happens.

[spoiler]



[spoiler]

Sometimes, the room going into that room with lava works when it feels like it.

[snarfblam]

Are you using the right type of doorway object? Each level has two. By default, one doorway type switches between horizontal scrolling and vertical scrolling (connects a horizontal room to a vertical room), and the other always sets scrolling to horizontal (connects two horizontally scrolling rooms).

I've written up a more detailed explanation here: http://snarfblam.com/words/?p=183

[Odb718]

I just wanted to say thank you, snarfblam. Editroid is awesome.
The Monster of Surrealton, change your door from 3 to 4 if you want it to stay horizontal. Remember it switches from horizontal to vertical, back to horizontal every time you go through a door. 4 will keep it horizontal. It is possible to use the exact same room as a vertical and horizontal room.

[Entroper]

Agreed! I created an account just to express my appreciation for this fantastic editor. Even though I've spent decades crawling through the edges of this game, I'd never considered making my own hack, but these tools are so good I can't resist. I've started cooking one up in my head. It will focus on making a new map with some depth and well hidden secrets, and not much on graphical changes. I hope it will eventually be worthy of sharing with you all.

Snarfblam, have you ever considered keeping the Brinstar | Norfair | Tourian | Kraid | Ridley toggle buttons available for rooms that already exist, and not just blank ones, such that you could quickly flip a room from one area to another while keeping the room number the same? Not only would this be a useful building tool, it occurs to me it would be absolutely perfect for mapping secret worlds quickly and easily.

[snarfblam]

Snarfblam, have you ever considered keeping the Brinstar | Norfair | Tourian | Kraid | Ridley toggle buttons available for rooms that already exist, and not just blank ones

The keyboard shortcuts (numbers on the number pad) will work even on occupied screens.

The only problem you might run into is if, for example, you're looking at screen 2E in Brinstar, and you switch to Norfair, which only goes up to screen 2D, Editroid will change the screen number from 2E to 2D to keep it in range, whereas in-game if you visit screen 2E in a Norfair secret world, you'll get horrible, awful glitchiness.

[Entroper]

Snarfblam, have you ever considered keeping the Brinstar | Norfair | Tourian | Kraid | Ridley toggle buttons available for rooms that already exist, and not just blank ones

The keyboard shortcuts (numbers on the number pad) will work even on occupied screens.

Awesome. I didn't know about those. That will help a lot.

The only problem you might run into is if, for example, you're looking at screen 2E in Brinstar, and you switch to Norfair, which only goes up to screen 2D, Editroid will change the screen number from 2E to 2D to keep it in range, whereas in-game if you visit screen 2E in a Norfair secret world, you'll get horrible, awful glitchiness.

I'm actually disappointed to hear that--I was hoping I'd be able to model the glitchiness :lol: There's at least one such Secret World that is easy to reach: the rooms right above Tourian (if you take the elevator down and then climb back up the shaft) are pretty messy.

[mrrichard999]

Is there a way to use the font for level designing in Tourian? I see its in the PPV viewer on FCEUX but not sure if there is a way to maybe add it in with the structure editor. Wondering if its possible seeing how the text pops up after killing mother brain. Would be a nice feature to use for labeling some of the rooms :)

N/m Figured it out by holding shift when clicking on a tile :).

Not sure if this would be something that could be added in the future for Editroid but would there be a way to edit the time on the escape timer in Metroid?

[Grimlock]

Snarfblam, do you have any plans to further expand the available memory for level creation?  I don't know if it's even possible to further expand than you already have but if it is I'd say 25% to 50% greater memory per area would really make a huge difference.

I maxed out the memory in Norfair and Kraid, I'll probably max out all of the other areas also.  I'm able to work with the current limits but as an artist I'm always envisioning push things further (more passageways, details and such).

[snarfblam]

Snarfblam, do you have any plans to further expand the available memory for level creation?

I have no such plans, unfortunately.

[Grimlock]

I don't want to give anyone reading this the wrong impression, the expanded ROM has a pretty substantial amount of memory for each area.  I tend to use a lot of small structures in my rooms so it's mainly my style of editing to blame for eating up the memory.

I didn't have to make any major sacrifices in Kraid or Ridley to work within the available memory.  My ideas for Norfair were initially too vast, I ended up scaling it back to a reasonable size to meet the limit.

[snarfblam]

Hopefully you're already aware of this but I better point it out to be safe. Screen load routines are stored with the screen data. If you don't have enough free space when you build the ROM, you'll get errors. Screen load routines aren't generally that big, but if you use them a lot, they can add up.

[snarfblam]

Update time. Editroid 3.7.

Changes include:

• Support for multiple ASM files.
• Option to cycle CHR (graphics) to display different background animation frames in the editor.
• Editor now identifies "door bubble tiles" in the structure editor and highlights them in blue when "display physics" is enabled.
• "Test room" files are now saved in application data folder instead of temporary files so Editroid can clean up emulator-generated files.
• "Test room" feature can now use a custom command instead of running the default emulator associated with NES ROMs
• Editor settings are no longer stored in the registry

Bug fixes:

• Disabled DPI scaling. (Interface was not designed with DPI scaling in mind. Proper high DPI scaling is a goal for future versions.)
• Updated assembler to newer version to fix some bugs.
• If the last screen in a level is completely empty, the screen no longer becomes corrupted upon saving and loading, and the assembler no longer returns an error stating there is not enough free memory.
• 16-block-wide structures are no longer corrupted upon saving and loading
• Editor no longer crashes when you edit an item in-screen, then add items to the same screen using the advanced item editor, and then try to select the new items in-screen
• Removed buggy tile re-arranger from menu (can still be accessed by holding shift when opening tools menu)
• "Create project" option is no longer available for unexpanded ROMs (projects were never intended to work with unexpanded ROMs)
• When a file is modified outside the editor and reloaded, the window caption is now properly updated if the reloaded ROM is a different format ("standard"/"expanded")

[Grimlock]

Very cool!  Thanks for fixing the DPI issue, I've been struggling with it when cycling which structure palette has priority.

Off for a test run!   :grin:

EDIT:  I see you identified tile 4E as well!  The CHR cycling is a great addition, I'm looking forward to putting that to good use.

[Odb718]

Wow. I came in this thread thinking of an option for an update and it's in it. NICE.
the CHR animation [  &  ]
It'd be nice to have an option in the Structure Editor to turn on a loop so you could see it happen in there.
This will do for sure though!


-----
Knocked together an idea for the Structure Editor.


The weird grid pattern was hidden in it when I did Alt+Prnt Scrn. I was actually planning on drawing it out..
How can I get it visible? Right now all I see is pure black.
When I'm trying to edit new animations, a lot of my structures are pure black. When I try to find out which block is what, I'm never sure which one I'm highlighting in the 3rd chunk. The Grid would help out immensely.

One last thing. When you press ] while having the structure editor open, but focus is on Editroid's main program window, the first "22 Solid" area doesnt animate. You can't have focus on the Structure Editor and use [ or ] to animate it. Not a big deal, just something I noticed.

[ThatSpoiler]

Is there a way to edit Samus' suit palette in Editroid or can that only be done in a Hex Editor? Also would it be possible to change Samus' sprite graphics mid game (such as going from Justin Bailey to PowerSuit)?

[Odb718]

I used Editroid to edit my second play through's palette. I'm sure you can use it to edit the original palette(s). I think each area can have it's own palette too.
But use Advanced Palette Editor, and I think lines 0 & 5 have the Samus palette.
I edited lines 24 -> 27 to adjust the 2nd play through palette.

----
Each section has it's own sprites. So Samus can look totally different in each area. But once you go back up the elevator she reverts back to that area's look. There's no way to change the suit in the area.

[snarfblam]

This should more or less explain things.

[Flower]

This should more or less explain things.

This overview is great

[Odb718]

Oh what the heck! My version doesn't have that. I call hax!! :colonrightv:

[ThatSpoiler]

Thanks for all the help! Now Samus is in her fusion suit. But  every time I get a question answered I find new ones. Is it possible to start the game in an area other that Brinstar? Could I start in Norfair for example? I'm trying to make a hack where Samus starts out without her suit but I want her to have it for the majority of the game(which is usually in Brinstar). If I could make it so she was Justin Bailey in Norfair and Power Suit in Brinstar that would be awesome! I tried selecting a room in Editroid for a new start area but nothing seemed to happen. Am I making a noob mistake? Or do I just need to rework my map?

[Odb718]

This really isnt a post for Editroid. Start a thread and you'll probably get more responses. 

[snarfblam]

Update: There is at least one show-stopping bug that needs to be fixed. I'd recommend against doing any serious hack work until I get it sorted out.

I hope that those that were asking for Editroid 4.0 are willing to be guinea pigs. I've fixed all the major bugs I'm aware of. I couldn't crash it in 30 seconds, so I'm sure it's good, right?

Ask questions, report bugs, make suggestions, and for the love of God, make lots of backups. I'll go over the biggest changes real quick-like.

• Structure Pane: It's the new pane on the left. In the view menu, there are two modes: Insert Objects and Select Objects. With Insert Objects, clicking an object in the pane adds it to the screen. With Select Objects, clicking an object in the pane modifies the selected object in the screen. In either case, right-click the structure pane to cycle palettes.
• CHR Animation Editor: Edit background animations. Background is divided into four sections, each of which can be animated separately. You can have multiple animations/tilesets per area but it requires some (very simple) screen load ASM to change between animations (and requires you create a project for your ROM). You can keep all your animated tiles in one section to make more efficient use of graphic memory.
• Tile Physics Editor: Change which tiles are air/solid/door tiles. Messing with breakable blocks is not recommended. Allows you to have different tile types in the same section of tiles, which is handy for the CHR animation editor.

http://snarfblam.com/files/Editroid%204.0a.zip

[Flower]

I hope that those that were asking for Editroid 4.0 are willing to be guinea pigs. I've fixed all the major bugs I'm aware of. I couldn't crash it in 30 seconds, so I'm sure it's good, right?

Ask questions, report bugs, make suggestions, and for the love of God, make lots of backups. I'll go over the biggest changes real quick-like.

• Structure Pane: It's the new pane on the left. In the view menu, there are two modes: Insert Objects and Select Objects. With Insert Objects, clicking an object in the pane adds it to the screen. With Select Objects, clicking an object in the pane modifies the selected object in the screen. In either case, right-click the structure pane to cycle palettes.
• CHR Animation Editor: Edit background animations. Background is divided into four sections, each of which can be animated separately. You can have multiple animations/tilesets per area but it requires some (very simple) screen load ASM to change between animations (and requires you create a project for your ROM). You can keep all your animated tiles in one section to make more efficient use of graphic memory.
• Tile Physics Editor: Change which tiles are air/solid/door tiles. Messing with breakable blocks is not recommended. Allows you to have different tile types in the same section of tiles, which is handy for the CHR animation editor.

http://snarfblam.com/files/Editroid%204.0a.zip

Man, was i waiting for this! Glad to have some spare free time next week, i will fiddle around with that till my head explodes! Yay

[Grimlock]

Very cool Snarf!  Did you include expanding to MMC3 in this version of Editroid?  If this version is close enough to the Rogue Dawn 4.0 beta editor I could put together some tutorials for some of the techniques I used while working on RD.

EDIT:  Actually that should have been obvious to me given the CHR Animation Editor is part of this release (so yes, it's MMC3 for those who are wondering) 

[Flower]

Very cool Snarf!  Did you include expanding to MMC3 in this version of Editroid?  If this version is close enough to the Rogue Dawn 4.0 beta editor I could put together some tutorials for some of the techniques I used while working on RD.

This would be gorgeous! I already wrote snarfblam and requested for help, but you writing a tutorial sounds perfect!
Great would be something about animations, switching between tilesets and so on.
Cheers!