Metroid Advance Game Editor (MAGE) Thread

[personitis]

Finally downloaded Mage to see what it's all about. Turns out I found a minor error/bug in the Animation Editor while trying to uncheck the "Grayscale" box. Error message box pops up, hit ok, box unchecks, nothing happens/preview is still grayed. Rechecking doesn't do anything except allow me to repeat the process. :P

The offset entered was not valid.

System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException
Index was out of range. Must be non-negative and less than the size of the collection.
Parameter name: startIndex

[biospark]

Finally downloaded Mage to see what it's all about. Turns out I found a minor error/bug in the Animation Editor while trying to uncheck the "Grayscale" box. Error message box pops up, hit ok, box unchecks, nothing happens/preview is still grayed. Rechecking doesn't do anything except allow me to repeat the process. :P

Someone has brought this up before, and it's not a bug. It does that when there's nothing entered for the palette offset. I might change it to do nothing if there's not a valid offset entered.

[personitis]

I started reading through the rest of the thread, saw someone mention that, and came back to the last page to quickly edit my post only to see that you've beaten me to acknowledging it. :P

Okay. Now I've read and skimmed through the topic have a question and a suggestion.

• Does the GBAtroid engine support tile flipping, or is that something which I'm spoiled on because of the Super Metroid engine?
• Since I skimmed the thread, only reading Q&A posts, I didn't realize it would have been a good idea to read the notes provided with each update post, as I learned about moving through doors with the G key that way. May I suggest a simple changelog text file updated per-release with MAGE?

I have two other questions (due to curiosity) that may fall just outside of the "Can MAGE do x" range, so I'm not really sure if you'd like those here or elsewhere, biospark. They pertain to Crocomire and the unused areas in Zero Mission.

[biospark]

Does the GBAtroid engine support tile flipping, or is that something which I'm spoiled on because of the Super Metroid engine?

It supports flipping 8x8 tiles, but not 16x16 tiles.

May I suggest a simple changelog text file updated per-release with MAGE?

The included documentation is updated for each release: http://arkarian.org/tdk/mage/doc.html#version-history

I have two other questions (due to curiosity) that may fall just outside of the "Can MAGE do x" range, so I'm not really sure if you'd like those here or elsewhere, biospark. They pertain to Crocomire and the unused areas in Zero Mission.

Probably not relevant to MAGE. There's nothing MAGE can do to fix Crocomire. Also, Zero Mission doesn't have unused areas, just unused rooms. If it's something you don't think warrants a new thread, you can just PM me your questions.

[personitis]

Also, Zero Mission doesn't have unused areas, just unused rooms.

In that case, what's up with the "Extra 1, Extra 2, Extra 3, Extra 4" areas in the dropdown menu for areas on the map editor?

[biospark]

In that case, what's up with the "Extra 1, Extra 2, Extra 3, Extra 4" areas in the dropdown menu for areas on the map editor?

They used to be separate areas, like how Fusion has three debug areas. Not sure why there's a duplicate map of Brinstar though. I'm pretty sure there's some special code to determine which minimap to display, rather than just choosing from a table based on the area number. I haven't looked into it.

[personitis]

Actual bug report this time: right click -> "Test Room Here" while in object editing mode is doing nothing. Click said option and the right click menu simply closes. Literally no effect. T key still works fine.

[biospark]

Actual bug report this time: right click -> "Test Room Here" while in object editing mode is doing nothing. Click said option and the right click menu simply closes. Literally no effect. T key still works fine.

Thanks. I forgot to add that back in after I overhauled the main window.

[MBT808]

I created a seperate room, how do you make the ground solid though(samus can't more where I set the spawn in the room I built)?

[personitis]

In the top left area, there is a section called "Edit" with 4 check boxes under it. You'll want to check "Clip" in order to edit the clipdata and start applying the proper values to tiles (10 for solid). You can go to 'Tools > Clipdata Shortcuts' to view a window of quick selection for various values for clipdata.

[MBT808]

thanks, unfortunately room got corrupted about 10 minutes after I posted my question.

[biospark]

New version:

Download
0.8.1 - 2016-11-03
  - Fixed bug where palettes were incorrectly imported/exported
  - Added two palette import/export formats (YY-CHR and raw)
  - Added option to toggle room's animated palette (under "View")
  - Added option to disable tooltips
  - Fixed bug where manually toggling edit mode behaved differently than middle-clicking
  - Fixed bug where selecting "Test Room Here" didn't work

[Kazuto]

I created a seperate room, how do you make the ground solid though(samus can't more where I set the spawn in the room I built)?

Looks like a tile editing guide could be a useful thing...

So!  Some of you may remember me from earlier in the Summer.  I posted in the Talk of the Day thread explaining my absence, but what's relevant in this thread is that my hacking computer is currently inoperable...

My nephew has a custom build that stopped working, seemed to be a power issue.  So I took the PSU out of my system and tested it in his with no success.  Now I believe it's a motherboard problem, because when I put the PSU back in my system, it won't power on correctly.  I get an odd, wavering whirring of the fans, meaning it's not getting a stable flow of power.  The motherboard in his might have killed the PSU from mine, so....  For the time being, I'm still not doing anything with MAGE.  I still intend to write more guides besides the one I have posted, but now it's gonna be a little while longer because of computer issues.

But I'm glad to see progress being made with it over the past few months.  You're doing awesome work, biospark!

[Kiteguy666]

For some reason, when I edit a Gadora's Health, it still only takes 3 missiles in the eye. Is there any way to edit a Gadora's health in a way that the Gadora would take more missiles to the eye?

[biospark]

For some reason, when I edit a Gadora's Health, it still only takes 3 missiles in the eye. Is there any way to edit a Gadora's health in a way that the Gadora would take more missiles to the eye?

Yes, you have to edit secondary sprite 0x47.

You can view a sprite list here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Tcem3usNfxDFJp_uoe79GgJyWZabJaLW8uKzQjwZsD8/edit?usp=sharing

[Kiteguy666]

Thanks

[Juice]

I would just like to say: "This editor looks AWESOME!!!". Back to creating a hack I guess :yay:

[Kiteguy666]

Is there any particular reason why you didn't implement Lava editing in MAGE?

[Blade]

What do you mean by that?
Any room with the right bg0 data and animation (which you can change) can have lava inside.
You just have to choose the correct effect settings

[Kiteguy666]

Oh..... I see now. Thanks Blade

[MBT808]

Hey bio,

where can I find the files for the tracks(music) within ZM via mage? can it be accessed or not in this build?

[biospark]

Music and audio editing won't be a feature for a while. I still have to disassemble most of it and there's a lot of stuff I want to do before then (check the first post).

[Hawntah]

Hey bio,

where can I find the files for the tracks(music) within ZM via mage? can it be accessed or not in this build?

The songtable starts at 0x8F2C0 in the ROM. The tracks are in "sappy" sound engine format and can be edited/imported using tools which support the format, such as this one.

[MBT808]

Hey bio,

where can I find the files for the tracks(music) within ZM via mage? can it be accessed or not in this build?

The songtable starts at 0x8F2C8 in the ROM. The tracks are in "sappy" sound engine format and can be edited/imported using tools which support the format, such as this one.

thanks, what about the beam sounds? Also, sappy doesn't work at all.

[Hawntah]

thanks, what about the beam sounds? Also, sappy doesn't work at all.

Beam sounds are from track 200 onwards. Try this version then.