FEditor for SNES?

[Katie]

Do you think there will ever be a FEditor-like tool for the SNES FEs? It'd be really convenient, and I'm rather curious if it's possible. If it is, someone should totally make one.

[Lamia]

if I bothered to learn how to program I would have done it already, at least for the jugdral saga (they have the same engine after all)

considering their ripping good popularity for projects (read: none) I doubt we'll see anything fancy like that anytime soon

however if SOMEONE wants to take it up I'd be willing to provide all kinds of help and notes and etc

Edited October 26, 2015 by Lamia

[CT075]

It sounds like the kind of project that I would be willing to contribute to (in a few months when school is done) if someone would be willing to provide the documentation. On the other hand, I don't know if there's enough interest for a real team to be formed (and this is unfortunately not the kind of project I'm willing to shoulder alone, at least at the moment)

Edited October 26, 2015 by CT075

[sirmola]

A text editor will probably get made for bookofholsety's retranslation eventually, but the coder for the resire tool had to quit, so eventually appears to be the operative word. For now any text editing will have to use the easytext patch or the original translation tools (which i hear are really annoying to use). Apparently, there are also some other tools like a map/enemy ai editer that were generally made by the japanese comunity, some of which have translated versions IIRC. Things like animations and portraits generally have to be inserted manually at present iirc. As lamia has proven, there is enough out there to make a unique hack that is more than a reskin (although i have no idea how she edits events).

[Lord Wolfram]

I just now saw this thread.

I am already working on such an editor for FE4-5 Games.

What I am planing to do.

1.Making it possible to export and import mugshot full set just like how Lamia showed us. But easier and like in FEditor Advance.

2.Map sprite editing. You can take out sprites frame by frame and insert back in.

3.Map spell animation editing.

This is practically all I need from it but I can pull myself together and make full FESNES editor for FE4-5 but then I'll need a lot ore help.

My teacher already explained me that there should be ASM lines telling game how sprites are composed and how to uncompose them so we can see nice animations on maps.

So for the beginning I'd like to get some offsets and I would really appreciate if someone would show me how dirrectly ripped from games data map sprites and spell sprites look like.

[Tetragrammaton]

There was an old FE4 Editor from about 10 years ago.

[Lord Wolfram]

Sadly, unless you can show us place where the editor still could be, this info doesn't help.

[Shin]

Sadly, unless you can show us place where the editor still could be, this info doesn't help.

It's not of much use anyway. The editor didn't do anything that Nightmare couldn't. I've trawled through FE4, animations aren't particularly hard to find so it shouldn't be too much trouble.

[Lord Wolfram]

Hmm sounds like a plan.

We find the map animation sprites, uncompose them and see them in action.

What am I thinking to make is something like this...

This is a screenshot from Golden sun Editor.

[Lamia]

There was an old FE4 Editor from about 10 years ago.

that japanese FE4Edit had bugs and modified data it wasn't supposed to, it's not worth using, and besides, nightmare handles everything it can do just fine (except without a convenient and prettier interface)

Hmm sounds like a plan.

We find the map animation sprites, uncompose them and see them in action.

What am I thinking to make is something like this...

This is practically all I need from it but I can pull myself together and make full FESNES editor for FE4-5 but then I'll need a lot ore help.

My teacher already explained me that there should be ASM lines telling game how sprites are composed and how to uncompose them so we can see nice animations on maps.

So for the beginning I'd like to get some offsets and I would really appreciate if someone would show me how dirrectly ripped from games data map sprites and spell sprites look like.

here's a few sample images from the binary stuff

FE5 female sage battle sprites

FE5 female mercenary moving map sprites

FE5 male swordmaster? combat map sprites

to be honest doing map sprite work for more than just moving around is too damn much, there's barely any flipped sprites and they need to account for all eight directions, and besides real animations are pretty much the best in the series and if it bothers people they can use speed throttle on their emulator instead

to go further there has to be a new image and new pointer six different times each for EVERY class, so I don't think it's worth it

I have notes to locate all real battle animation data (pointers to compressed tiles and animation code etc)

but I don't have the know-how to figure out how the actual coding works methinks

modifying the sprites is easy enough (febinary's done plenty of that) but of course that has limitations

as for spells, I dunno where the map ones are but considering how little tiles they use it'd be hard to do anything custom with them unless you can fiddle with coding

once again realtime animations win out on that especially since I have a detailed guide for coding your own

Edited November 1, 2015 by Lamia

[Katie]

It's a shame how little interest/activity there is in SNESFE hacking, especially poor FE3, which doesn't even have chapter editors beyond book 1 4, and lacks the ability to edit weapons without locking them at 1 or infinite range. A least FE4 and FE5 have a complete set of Nightmare modules.

[Lord Wolfram]

Is there any document containing full assembly Script of FE4 or FE5?

That will serve as good start to find the composer algorithm.

to be honest doing map sprite work for more than just moving around is too damn much, there's barely any flipped sprites and they need to account for all eight directions, and besides real animations are pretty much the best in the series and if it bothers people they can use speed throttle on their emulator instead

All map sprites are pretty much the same so all I have to do is completely uncompose one 8 direction animation and after then apply for all others.

to go further there has to be a new image and new pointer six different times each for EVERY class, so I don't think it's worth it

Well different pointers is something new but meh I don't care. That won't stop me so easy.

as for spells, I dunno where the map ones are but considering how little tiles they use it'd be hard to do anything custom with them unless you can fiddle with coding

In Games ASM script there must be lines which contain the algorithm about how to activate the map animation for spell. All I need is full script in document. Because, the hell, using those small line editors is painful. I need full script together. And then I can start to read it through and figure out what is what.

I have notes to locate all real battle animation data (pointers to compressed tiles and animation code etc)

That would be a good start to find the battle script.

but I don't have the know-how to figure out how the actual coding works methinks

You don't have to worry about that. Tomorrow me and my teacher will take a look at all that if by that time any potential info will be gathered.

[Lamia]

well here's some stuff you might be interested in, but keep in mind it's not translated (I just use google or try to make it out)

and sorry I have no idea how assembly works or what it even looks like so I probably won't be much help

real animation graphics: verylonglink.txt

for each animation entry, this lists off the addresses of pointers to the tiles, the addresses of the tiles, designated number (for use in the battle sprite editor) and the header (I forget what this is for)

at the bottom it details sub-parts which are mainly for mounted classes (they use a separate sprite)

map sprite walking graphics: https://www.dropbox.com/s/u6rp2sai4u1r2gi/mapspriteanim.txt?dl=1

addresses for the walking sprites for all entries, in order showing the class, start address, end address, and length in hex

instruction table (unfinished): anotherlonglink.txt

this details... programming stuff I think? I actually recognize a few things I've had to deal with before (like for the statscreen and skill coding) but dunno if it's what you're looking for, I think there's textfiles that have more appropriate-looking codestuff for various things though...

battle animation coding (at least I think it is): https://www.dropbox.com/s/jtdfmsnzzxu5cjs/battleanimation.rar?dl=1

I ran across this while delving into binary stuff, I'm pretty sure it has to do with animation coding, but I never tried playing with it much

there's probably more laying around but I'm sick and my head spins enough right now

Edited November 1, 2015 by Lamia

[Tetragrammaton]

I upload the old FE4 Editor here

I think you should start with a portrait editor first.

You can find the fe4enc source code here, which is Twilkitri used to compress the menu font, the output file size is larger than the tool Lamia uses to compress her portraits, but they share the similar functions.

You can write an uncompressor tool once you know how the graphic is compressed, right?

I think these documents might come in handy

SNES and GB sprite storage formats

Compression of SNES Roms

Decompression of SNES fonts

[Lamia]

I upload the old FE4 Editor here

I think you should start with a portrait editor first.

You can find the fe4enc source code here, which is Twilkitri used to compress the menu font, the output file size is larger than the tool Lamia uses to compress her portraits, but they share the similar functions.

I'll reiterate that noone should use the FE4Edit for a serious patch because it may overwrite data it's not supposed to

as a side note, menu text is at $C2B and can be decompressed, modified, and compressed again by the same program pair in my portrait tutorial, but unfortunately I don't think any proper documentation came with them...

Edited November 2, 2015 by Lamia

[Lord Wolfram]

You can write an uncompressor tool once you know how the graphic is compressed, right?

My teacher and I are gonna try to figure the algorithm out today.

This is useful info I'll take a look at it all with my teacher and then we'll see.

So uh... I shall start with portraits then.

EDIT:Don't you expect fast progress. I'll have to study C++ and when I've learned enough of it then I'll start working on the editor itself. My teacher provided good and valuable info about how data is being handled. And reading through the translated docs I understood thing or two about what I am gonna face.

The portrait tutorial contained valuable doc. Those face offsets. It would be nice to have it translated but it doesn't really matter right now.

I have a question though... FE5 has the same face offsets?

And if I understand it all correctly...

顔No.00　　　　　/0A67B5/0CAA00Character number  /Face offset /Palette offset

Did I get it right?

Edited November 2, 2015 by Lord Wolfram

[Tetragrammaton]

顔No.00 is Face/Portrait Number, not Character number.

Remember, there are many enemy bosses with the same face and recolor palette

Each game stores its data in difference location, so I don't expect FE5 face portraits will be at the same place.

[Lamia]

something about FE5 also bugs the crap out of me in that pointers are handled strangely, but it's probably just a case of me not understanding the method

for example when I was ripping some sprites from it in a headered ROM:

the master lance battle sprite is located at $28B938, but the pointer at $4967E reads 0xD1B738, a difference of $A8FE00 as opposed to the usual $7FFE00 as with pointing to stuff in FE4

then there's two map sprite walking animation pointers I looked at which had differences of $99FE00 and $9C7E00

maybe the pointers just add different amounts based on where they're at in the ROM... it's really confusing to deal with when trying to rip stuff out of the game to put into FE4, lemme tell you

there's a couple places in FE4 where the difference in pointing is $BFFE00 instead (battle sprites and portraits and probably more), but that's easier to deal with

Edited November 3, 2015 by Lamia

[Tetragrammaton]

If you've never heard of HiRom and LoRom, I suggest you should download Lunar Address and use it to calculate pointers.

[Lamia]

If you've never heard of HiRom and LoRom, I suggest you should download Lunar Address and use it to calculate pointers.

I think I heard of it sorta? but it's nice to know there's a tool for that, strangely never heard of lunar address though

[Robert Stewart]

Yeah FE4 uses HirOM mapping while FE3/5 use LoROM mapping. No idea why they switched back and forth.

[Lord Wolfram]

Hello everyone.

It's been a while....

Anyways. I have comed here to ask for your thoughts.

Should I apply the editor for FE4 English pacthed ROM?

Or rather for original FE4 Jap. ROM?

Why I am asking this? Because I am planing to use Nightmare modules for editor to make the whole process a bit easier.

But the ones I can get are for Jap. ROM.

Ether we make new modules or what's your advice?

For those who wander about the progress of Editor... I am sorry but I couldn't do too much as I have school and similar issues.

However I can show you a screenshot or two about the tool.

[Lamia]

that's pretty tough

what are all of the changeable things and whatnot you plan to have available? I haven't actually used the current english patch, so I'm not sure what's moved around...

[Lord Wolfram]

I talked things over with my teacher and friend.

There won't be support for FE4 English ROM.

Deal with that, if you want to change some sprites and release a reskin of translated game, nothing interesting will come out.

I had to restart the whole thing(Like windows, finally it's win 7), and I got Visual studio 2010 professional as Christmas gift, so I am studying that out and then I'll make first editor to see how it all goes.

what are all of the changeable things and whatnot you plan to have available?

I have planed to take out all graphics and make them editable (portraits, map sprites, battle sprites, Battle BG, etc.)

Text editor and all that sort of stuff.

But first of all I'll make Portraits editable.

Edited December 26, 2015 by Lord Wolfram

[Shin]

I'd start small personally, a lot of those features are wishful thinking. I wouldn't worry about Nightmare modules not working with the translation patch, I've been using them with a translated rom for years and it hasn't caused any issues.