----------------- MrClick's TilEd ------------ Version 0.54 This text file is not a full manual for TilEd. It is only a document in which I put information about TilEd's functions which I consider useful for the user and which can not be explained by the tool tips boxes which show up above buttons and other elements of the GUI when leaving the mouse pointer on them. Still I hope that this document makes it easier for some people to adapt to TilEd cause it became a quite complex program. Index 1. Introduction and features 1.01 Supported tile formats 1.02 Supported savestate color palettes 1.03 Files 1.1 Basic functions 1.2 Browser 1.3 Editor 1.4 Color Palette 1.5 Tile Control 1.6 Key Commands 2. Advanced tools 2.1 Color Set tool 2.2 Bookmark tool 2.3 Editor Pattern tool 2.4 File Information tool 2.5 BMP Import/Export tools 2.6 Tile and Palette C/C++ Converter 3. Additional Info 3.1 ROM Hacking Oddities 3.2 Credits 1.0 Introduction and features MrClick's TilEd is an multiconsole tile editor with quite a lot of different tile modes supported including Gameboy Advanced tiles. It is written in Visual Basic and is therefore not very fast but - as I hope - easy to handle and quite flexible. The main intention of TilEd was to make it an alternative for Snowbro's Tile Layer which was and still is the ROM hacking communities' prefered tile editor. TilEd was supposed to enable the Windows 95 generation of ROM hackers to work with an utility that 'fits' into the whole Windows user interface making it part of one big set of Windows ROM hacking tools including emulators, hexeditors and graphic utilities. I'm not sure if I got this far but in my opinion TilEd became an impressive piece of work and is quite accepted in ROM hacking circles so I am happy with it. 1.01 Supported tile formats: - 1 bit per pixel used by many games for many different systems mainly for fonts - Gameboy used in Gameboy Monochrome/Color ROMs; some SNES ROMs might also use this format to save space; Wonderswan Monochrome tiles are also in this format - NES - Virtua Boy used in Virtua Boy exclusively - GBA 4 bpp GBA 16 GBA tile; I read rumors about some Amiga games using this format and about the PC Engine storing VRAM sprites in this format - GBA 8 bpp - SNES 4 bpp used in SNES and some PC Engine ROMs - SNES 3 bpp used in Zelda 3 to save some space - SNES 8 bpp - Neo Geo Pocket - Sega Genesis only for ROMs in BIN format; SMD files must be converted first; some Wonderswan Color games like Final Fantasy 2 uses this format too - GG, MS, WSC used in both Sega Game Gear, Sega Master System and Bandai Wonderswan Color ROMs 1.02 Supported savestate color palettes: - NESticle NES emulator - VGBA 1.0 Gameboy Advance emulator; not VGBA 1.1 - No$Gmb Gameboy Monochrome/Color emulator - ZSnes SNES emulator - Boycott Advance Gameboy Advance emulator; savestates are gzipped - Cygne Wonderswan Color emulator 1.03 Files Tiled.exe TilEd (*) Tiledp.exe TilEd Pentium Pro-optimized version Comdlg32.ocx Needed to run TilEd (*) TilEd.tep Sample palette file with standart color palettes TilEd.cfg Sample configuration file zlib.dll Library needed for gzipped savestate files (*) readme.txt The thing your just reading whatsnew.txt File containing information about changes in the TilEd All files marked with (*) are essential to run TilEd. So if one of these files is missing or damaged there is a high risk that TilEd might not work at all. 1.1 Basic functions To start using TilEd you need to understand that the Controls bar at the left of the TilEd main window is used to activate or deactivate elements of TilEd. For example the upper three switches turn the Browser, Editor and Tile Control on and off. 1.2 Browser One major part of TilEd is the Browser consisting of the Browser Control window and the Browser window itself. The Browser Control window is used for opening files, selecting the tile mode for loading and saving,tweaking the address and of course for configuring the appereance of the Browser. The Browser window displays the tiles in the opened file. The scroll bar at the right can be used to scroll up and down the file. You can also use the cursors keys to scroll through the file or to tweak the address for a correct displaying of the tiles. Double- clicking on a tile in the Browser will copy that tile to the Editor. Draging and droping a tile into a specific position in the Editor is also possible. 1.3 Editor The Editor is also parted into two windows. The first window is the Editor Controls window where the apperance is configured and the Editor Mode is selected. The Editor Control allows reloading, saving and deleting of the whole Editor's contens. Depending on the Editor Mode clicking on the Editor window will either draw one pixel using the selected color or fill the whole tile with that color or the tile is selected as the one to be manipulated using the Tile Control tool. 1.4 Color Palette Here the color palette entries can be edited and the drawing color can be selected. The buttons beneath the palette are used to shift the palette around. Use the arrow buttons to shift the colors, click on the middle button to selected how many colors to shift. Click on the 256/16/4 switch button to select how may colors should be displayed. 1.5 Tile Control The Tile Control tool is used to manipulate a selected tile. Using this tool you can flip and rotate that tile or save it to file. 1.6 Key Commands Browser: Arrows Up/Down : Scroll up/down the file Arrows Left/right : 'Tweak' the address Return : Copy selected tile to the editor Spacebar : Switch to the browser controls Page Up/Page Down : Fastly scroll up/down the file Numpad + : Zoom in Numpad - : Zoom out CTRL + E : Switch to the editor CTRL + G : Browser grid on/off CTRL + O : Open a file CTRL + C : Close file Editor: Arrows Up/Down/Right/Left : Move selection Return : Save tile S : Save to selected position A : Save to address R : Reload tile C : Clear tile Delete : X-flip tile End : Y-flip tile Page down: Rotate tile Spacebar : Switch to the editor controls Numpad + : Zoom in Numpad - : Zoom out CTRL + G : Editor grid on/off CTRL + B : Switch to the browser CTRL + N : Show/hide noncopied tiles 2. Advanced tools TilEd is equiped with a large number of useful tools for easier and advanced ROM hacking. To be honest some are quite useless but maybe someone will need them once or twice and I therefore keep them a part of TilEd. 2.1 Color Set tool One of the most important tools. Here you can add, modify and save color palettes in different formats. TilEd's own palette format with the TEP extension supports up to 256 palettes with 256 color entries and has descriptions for each palette stored as well to make it easier to distinguish mutiple palettes. The other supported formats are Microsoft RIFF palettes of 256 colors which are commonly used by most graphic programs such as Paint Shop, Photo Shop and Corel Draw and the old Tile Layer DOS palette format for those who have already a library of color palettes for Tile Layer and want to convert these to TEP or RIFF format. You can also load color palettes right from emulator savestates. Just make a savestate when the sprite you want to load is on screen (or at least in VRAM). Then load the savestate just as you would load a RIFF or TEP palette into TilEd and there you have all palettes stored in VRAM when the savestate was made. Since palettes in TilEd always have 256 colors and most console palettes have less colors (e.g. NES and Gameboy have 4, Genesis and Game Gear have 16), you have to 'scroll' through the 256 color palettes to find the right palette for the right tile. You can use the Color Palette to do so. On the bottom of the Color Set tool you find the relocated color palette import/export tool. Just enter the address of a palette in the open file and press the import button to load the palette to the list. Choose the right palette format and select the number of files to load or save correctly or else you might damage the file. The export button saves the selected palette into the file. 2.2 Bookmark tool In case you make an extensive document about hacking an specific ROM and want to add some exclusiv stuff to it you can create a set of bookmarks in the Browser using this tool. Saving and loading to file is possible. 2.3 Editor Pattern tool Even more posh than a Bookmark set is the Editor Pattern tool. This tool saves and loads the addresses of the tiles in the Editor to file. This way you can make complete sets of sprites to enable easier access to them for others or yourself. Like the Color Set tool the limit of Editor Patterns is also 256 entries per file. Descriptions included. 2.4 File Information tool Displays the full name, size and attributes of the opened file. For Gameboy ROMs there is also the possibility to repair the checksum. This featrue will damage the file if used with a ROM other than Gameboy or Gameboy Color. 2.5 BMP Import/Export tools In case TilEd's simple graphic editing capabilities are not fitting your needs you can export the Editor's contens to an 128x128x256 Windows BMP which can be used in every graphic utility I used. Load the BMP back into the Editor using the BMP Import tool. 2.6 Tile and Palette C/C++ Converter Nice tool for those who program the GBA in C/C++ as I try for sometime. I needed a graphic editor which creates C header file with consts containing sprite and palette binary data, but I only found converters for BMP and PCX files (I wasn't looking very hard though). So I created this tool. It can be found in the Editor Controls and converts tiles from the editor and the editor's color palette. Different tile sizes (8,16,32,64) and shapes (spuare,wide,high) are supported. Use the scrollbars to decide how many rows and lines of tiles to convert. Select the right tilemode (GBA 16 or 256 colors), hit the 'C' button and select the header file to save in. Palette ripping is even easier. Select the right palette format (only BRG makes sense for GBA, just included RGB for possible extension to Gameboy Color tile format convertion) and the number of colors to convert (16 or 256) and hit the 'C' button. Use the edit fields in the Names section to decide which names the consts should have. Of course there is only one palette consts in a palette header file but up to 128 tiles can be found in one sprite header file. So every sprite consts' name is combined of the given name and an index number. 3. Additional Info 3.1 Tips and Tricks Take notes of every thing that you find. Especially in big files such as GBA ones it takes a lot of time to find tiles again when you once forget where they are located. I suggest you keep a log of every thing that you find. 3.2 ROM Hacking Oddities Originally started by Snowbro on his Tile Layer page I continue collecting ROM Hacking Oddities because basically it's fun. Something that has to be said because it is bugging me since version 1.2. This part of the readme is trivial yet amusing. Most Gameboy fans know Squaresoft's SaGa trilogie which was renamed Final Fantasy Legend in the US and never made it to Europe. These games were continued on the Snes under the name Romancing SaGa and Final Fanatsy NES got three Snes Sequels as well. Another game which seemed to have spawned from the SaGa series was Seiken Densetsu or Final Fanatsy Adventure in the US. This made me think that Mystic Quest - as Seiken Densetsu was called in Europe - was part of the Final Fantasy series even though it was continued on the SNES as Seiken Densetsu 2 and 3 in Japan and Secret of Mana in the US and Europe. It lies beyond my understanding why Squaresoft melted together these three series in the US and Europe and kept them seperated in Japan but taking a look at the Final Fantasy Adventure and the Final Fantasy Legend 2 ROM shows that those two different gaming series with different names in Japan have the same origin. Taking a look at the address 98144 we see some tiles of two walking mushrooms (!!!) in the Final Fanatsy Legend 2 ROM. If we now look at the same address in the Final Fantasy Adventure ROM we find the same tiles there. They are never used in the game and the image of the mushrooms is incomplete but they are there. Spacefillers? An insider joke? Who knows? I give you some time now so you think about it. Thanks for listening. 3.3 Credits Programmer of TilEd and author of this readme: MrClick (MrClick@gmx.de) Find the new TilEd at http://mrclick.zophar.net Thanks go out to: Zophar's Domain (http://www.zophar.net) (in no ROM Hacking dot org (http://www.romhacking.org) particullar Klarth (for his document on console tiles) order) Snowbro (for Tyle Layer and the ZSnes savestate info) Gollum (for the Boycott Advanced savestate format) Dox (for the Wonderswan color and tile info) Greetings to the people from Darkwater TilEd was written by MrClick. TilEd is provided as is. There is no warranty that it will work and no warranty that it will not cause any damage. Yet the idea that TilEd might crash your harddrive, make your display implode or eat your pet hamster is very unlikely. (c) by MrClick 010830