FEditor Adv, Current version: 20100731.1; READ THE FIRST POST Options

[Blazer]

Yay does the spell animationz work nowz?

I guess I'll never know unless I try! Or you tell me!

[Obviam]

Zahlman has to nominate himself first.

Also, I haven't tested it, so yes, you will need to try it yourself, Blazer (or anyone else).

I've decided you poor FE 6 hackers will just have to move the data that's been inappropriately corrupted by the autopatches and updated references to it yourselves. There's a memory manager that provides editing of the raw binary data in the ROM as it is and you can identify what to move by simple knowledge of hacking that you should have anyway. It's just a block of uncompressed graphics of numbers that needs moving and that should be it.

[Zahlman]

I NOMINATE ZAHLMAN!

Zahlman has to nominate himself first.

Thanks for the show of support, expected as it is.

As it happens, I've been thinking about it a fair bit and tossing around a few ideas about how all this editing stuff should really work. I got some inspiration when I was working on my song importing/converting tools* and thought a little bit about the data formats. More ideas came when I thought about patterns in what keeps breaking in FEditor, what users keep screwing up, etc.

I've come to the conclusion that we've basically been doing it wrong, and that FEditor has about reached the end of its useful life. However, I still intend to produce something useful. FEditor and Nightmare 2 will burn, and from the ashes will rise... (behold my incredibly creative naming) Nightmare 3.

Basically, the idea is to separate the tasks of creating, inserting and managing the resources.

Instead of messing around with footers and checksums and relocated tables, the changes get tracked in separate files. That way, at any point you can hit the big shiny red button with your change-set and a clean ROM, and get a fresh, un-corrupted version. It'll be easier to make changes play nice with each other, and you can make an "open-source patch" by just zipping up the change files (although if you prefer, you could also create the final version yourself and then make a .ups). The files would be text (with hex dumps where necessary) so they can be edited manually, and easily diffed (read: stored in a version-control system without wasting huge amounts of space. Not using one of those? You should. I'll do a tutorial for it at some point.). Want two peoples' changes? Just put the change-sets together. It might require some editing, but it should work a heck of a lot better than trying to use IPS or UPS.

There would be a common format for describing changes in general, which would let you describe changes to any of the sorts of data we have - pointer (really structure) tables; graphic data chunks; sound bytecode; animation bytecode etc. Even ASM patches, if I get it right. (I've already talked a fair bit with Hex about ways to make it so that the patches don't have to go in a specific place in the ROM.) This would have to be either based off of .nmm (which basically is already what I want, except only for
tables, and only describes how the data is structured instead of the actual changes, which are made in-place) or else I'd need to offer a converter.

I'm thinking of doing this either in C# or Python using IronPython (the .NET version), so that (a) once you're set up to use NL's tools, you're set up for this as well and (b) I can bug NL to make the event assembler plug into this framework. ;)

Sorry I didn't discuss this earlier with you Hex. I've had a lot of disorganized thoughts about it and this is the first time I've attempted to write it all down.

* BTW, I am going to polish those up and they should be available within a few days, but I'm not going to maintain them as such - instead they are going to get folded into the new project. So for now it will be something usable, but be prepared to re-do the work from scratch on a clean ROM, just in case.

[H3X/AntiStyle]

That sounds... Positively awesome.
Crazy how I've been around for more or less the entire GBAFE hacking scene to grow, from way back in the day of using TLPand a hex editor to change mugs.... To this, where we have multi-purpose hacking tools developed within a relatively small (compared to other) hacking community.

I hope your project goes well! The multi-patch system sounds like it'll be pretty nifty.
*And if you integrate the EA you should totally make a graphical frontend for making levels. XD)

[ダークデュランダル]

I've decided you poor FE 6 hackers will just have to move the data...yourselves.

Yippee.

Ah, well. Shouldn't be too difficult.

[Zahlman]

I hope your project goes well! The multi-patch system sounds like it'll be pretty nifty.
*And if you integrate the EA you should totally make a graphical frontend for making levels. XD)

This is a good idea, but I can't do everything. By "integrate" I meant something like "get NL to modify his stuff so that it outputs files in the common change-set format". Maybe NL and Bwd can figure out something together for maps.

[H3X/AntiStyle]

I was only thinking insofar as a tool that would come up with the .txt document that the EA needs. If nothing else, I'm thinking of learning a programming language, and Python from what I hear is a tad more beginner oriented than others. A .txt generator -sounds- simple enough, so maybe it will be my learning project? XD

[Obviam]

I'd had the idea for generating "project files" with FEditor which would be a humanly modifiable record of changes to apply to a ROM for a while and as you've seen, I was too busy with actual features and bugs to get around to that. Zahlman's implementation will solve resource management as well and get Nightmare 3 and FEditor's sequel to play nice (but I'm hoping NM 3 still works for files in general because really, it's just supposed to be a glorified hex editor, and you're not really committing to the original intent of Nightmare despite calling an application such if it doesn't work for files in general).

But this all assumes poor Zahlman has the time for this. Who knows, maybe I can try to help him, but eh...

In any case, FEditor's sequel will probably have music editing support included now that he's figured that out, and there should be plenty of documentation and code written for him to add CG and perhaps even battle background editing support as well (provided he decides what to do with the fact that battle backgrounds can't use as many tiles as there are on the screen; I was going to include mirroring options personally).

Edit: I just want to blatantly state, since it's only been implied so far, these are open source projects. Feel free to contribute.

[Zahlman]

I was only thinking insofar as a tool that would come up with the .txt document that the EA needs. If nothing else, I'm thinking of learning a programming language, and Python from what I hear is a tad more beginner oriented than others. A .txt generator -sounds- simple enough, so maybe it will be my learning project? XD

Not exactly sure what you have in mind. If you want to discuss it further, you can get me on GTalk or AIM: zahlman at gmail dot com (edited appropriately into an email address). But maybe you'd better wait until I at least have a prototype of the insertion system? :)

Zahlman's implementation will solve resource management as well and get Nightmare 3 and FEditor's sequel to play nice (but I'm hoping NM 3 still works for files in general because really, it's just supposed to be a glorified hex editor, and you're not really committing to the original intent of Nightmare despite calling an application such if it doesn't work for files in general).

That is the goal, except there isn't really a planned, specific sequel to FEditor - it will probably instead be a collection of separate tools that create resources. The NM3 side is definitely intended for use with all files - or at least, all ROMs.

and there should be plenty of documentation and code written for him to add CG and perhaps even battle background editing support as well

Maybe later.

Edit: I just want to blatantly state, since it's only been implied so far, these are open source projects. Feel free to contribute.

The problem is that there don't seem to be very many people around here with the ability. Maybe try on RHDN?

[H3X/AntiStyle]

Well, I guess I'll just get with you on that later. I'll be available online in about 2 hours or so.

[Obviam]

They ARE on RHDN. But anyway, maybe you can get more interest since you have more ability. And patience.

FEditor has been updated to version 20100601.1 (yes, that means I just released another update). The application itself hasn't been modified. I just updated some documentation stuff, like "Release Info.txt", a file in the /doc/ folder and...actually, that's probably it. It explains what to do with the FE 6 auto patch issue.

[Sai]

Fuck Sai.

Um... What?

And as for your "idea", as I'll call it for now, sounds incredibly epic. Definitely can't wait for what it has in store.

[Obviam]

you're making me wish I still had that signature!

[Sai]

Not too hard to change.

[bonestorm99]

Raise your hand if you still use the old Nightmare. XP

[Obviam]

Raise your hand if your post is off topic and somewhat ludicrous (both in being insulting and not really something to brag about).

small update; i just realized the paths in the batch files were wrong so i fixed them. now using the batch files should actually DO something!

[H3X/AntiStyle]

Wow. Good job.

[Obviam]

don't you sass me

DO NOT GET YOUR GOD DAMN PANTIES IN A KNOT, BUT

I've updated this.

20100731.1 plays nicer with free space range un/marking and allows exporting and importing of free space via intuitively formatted text files, which means the output logging done by the JFP patch application I wrote can be modified just a teensy bit to be compatible, potentially saving you all from many headaches.

So that's a bugfix and the addition of a feature that was supposed to be done like, half a year ago.

This is not progress; the application is still dead, leave me alone.

[H3X/AntiStyle]

I've never seen someone kill his own application so brutally and then update it with a feature. >_>

[PwnageKirby]

You just did.