Start to developing a game...

riplWhat I'm doing in these days? I'm working on Megaman X editor? I'm die? I'm nerding on facebook or something stupid? I haven't much free time, there is the school or the friends that call me every day :) and I'm not in my room with my pc, but when I'm here one of the few things that I do is... Visual Studio! XD
I'm doing a clone of a card-game of Final Fantasy VIII called Triple Triad... Hey wait, there is also Triple Triad Gold, do you forget it? Nope :P. I don't think that it's a bad porting but I'm prefer to recreating all for fun.

Viewing MMX2 levels with MegaED X

Not a big news. Unfortunately I haven't added already a native support for MMX2 because I can't decompress the tiles with the same way of MMX1 tiles. I added only a menu where you can import tiles from other SNES tiles or GBA and Genesis and with this trick I'm able to see the levels of MMX2 (first I must dump the VRAM during the level). I have to work on background support also.
Here some screens:

MegaED X: Some problems with WinNT 4 and Win9x

I think that an important thing is that a software must be compatible with (almost) all O.S. and must be optimized for speed. The first release is compatible with Windows XP or more but I'm working on compatibility with Windows 95/98/ME, Windows NT4/2K and a x64 version.
With the oldest OSs the editor suffer of some problems or memory leaks:

• Windows 95 miss msimg32.dll, it can be taken from Win98 and it contains TransparentBlt for the transparence on texts. Only Palette and Tileset works.
• Windows 98, memory leak when I use SelectObject(tempDC, objecToUse). Only Palette and Tileset works.
• Windows NT 4.0, miss msimg32.dll (if I take it from Win98 there are memory leaks from TransparentBlt), take A LOT of RAM (about 100MB) but the editor works and it's fast as NT 5.1/6.x

MegaED X 1.0 Halloween release

Finally, after a lot of work, I can release the new version of Megaman X Editor: MegaED X! I planned yhe idea to rewrite entirely the editor in C++ on  May 2010 but there were so much problems that I decided to stop. On September I decided to resume the works in this editor and after a lot of code lines and internal modules writings, I'm going to release that new version this night ( now is midnight in Italy). I have disabled some incomplete features (but they are still present in the editor) like the support of MMX2 and MMX3 because they are half-supported (they miss the decompression of tiles :\ but the other things work) and the import tool. This editor is supposed to be executed on WinNT4 and subsequents but I haven't test them yet (I'm a bit lazy :P and I don't want to create a VM with an old OS). There are features that this editor misses like the object editor, layout editor and the tools that I've disabled.

Collisions on MegaED X

It was easy to do: collision viewer.

Megaman X in... Emerald Hill!

Yes, on last 3 days I worked on this little hack. I have implemented new things on Megaman X editor like Block structure editor (32x32), Scene editor (256x256) and a simple window where you can import/export/convert palettes, tiles and other stuff and this help me to import Emerald Hill on Highway Stage. I'm able to redirect the tiles to have more free space. MegaED X still miss collision and object editor, things very important for an editor. I wanna improve some WinControl elements and clean the code (during some cleans the size of .exe was reduced of 11kb o_O now it's 86kb). I'm planning to support the reallocation of data (expanding the rom and move data) and DirectDraw/Direct3D support (now the editor use GDI that it's a bit slow). An good idea is to implement palette animation on all level but firstly I should study more the rom.

... And the video :D

Decompression and compression on Megaman X

Yes, I've implement the compression on Megaman X! Now if you edit the layout of levels or edit compress tiles, you can save and re-compress them. I think that the big work was done and now I have only tod find a way (this will be easy :P) to reallocate compress data. The compressor of Level Layout work perfectly and the GFX compressor compress the tiles but the result take more space than the original :\ for example the original compressed tiles of Highway Stage is 14.031 bytes and mine is 15.900. I know how to fix this, I need of some minutes only.

YEAH, Blue Highway Stage XD

NEWS: Now my compressed tiles are 14.031, equal to the original size =3

MegaED X now support Megaman X2 ROM!!!

Hey guys, this is a great news!!! I'm able to load palettes, maps, blocks, scenes and layouts of all levels of MMX2!!!

This is the intro stage of MMX2. It miss Tiles support, maybe tomorrow I'll work on :). The best is yet to come...

MegaED X: News about Palette Editor and other stuff

Other changes were done today. I've improved the palette editor that now display dynamics palettes (If you don't know this, the game change the palettes in real-time to show more color stuff in a single level) and hold the addresses to edit them. I want to do also highlight in a level the color that have you selected on Palette Editor to recognize quickly the palette that you want to edit. I've extended the debug infos and make operable the buttons Q, W, A, S, Z, X, O, P, D and B to change various parameters that are used for the dynamics of tiles palette and objects (that are not implemented yet), to change the view between background view and level view or to display/hide debug infos.

I've found also these elements:

• Airship from Highway Stage

• Ship from Launch Octopus stage (that help you to gain an heart tank)

• Bubble sub-boss from Spark Mandrill stage

Sonic 3 and Knuckles Save Editor

The article of today is Sonic 3 and Knuckles Save Editor. Since 2008 I had the idea to write a save editor for S3K and I did it in Visual Basic but without to complete it. After two years the editor return, completely rewritten in C++ and with a full graphic game-similar interface. A save editor is easy to develop but I wanted to improve my programming skill with WinAPIs, GDI stuff etc. I've also released the source code of the library that my save editor use, then everyone can study and work easily on the Save.

You can also edit the settings of the game like enable Vertical Sync (that limit the speed of game for fast processors), enable debug stuffs or disable CD Checking:

You can download all this stuff and more from http://digitalwork.altervista.org/digitalwork/index.php?page=s3kse.

There is also an official discussion here: http://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?showtopic=22392

A powerful save game editor for Sonic 3K can be found here: http://tailsarchive.net/re/skc

News about MegaED X, the Megaman X Editor

Hey guys, today I want to show you some progress on MegaED X. Do you remember the old version of MMXE? Well, I don't know how peoples know this but I'm rewriting the editor in C++. The advantages? Well, the previous platform that I used was .Net Framework 2.0 using C# as language program. I don't think that .Net languages or Java are rubbish, they are good language programs that offer simply ways to do everything in few minutes but NOT if someone search speed, accuracy and flexibility. I think that softwares like ROM hacking tools need to be written to low/mid-level language program like C and this was my choice. I had to study WinAPIs to learn how to work dialogs controls and other stuff and I'm working a lot on rendering engine. After some pauses and some incentives my first rom hacking tool was born in C++ with speed improvements that see more 800%+ than previous version. I've implemented new stuff like level background viewer, tiles and palette dynamics and the detection of game font that is need for print informations during the use of the editor. I've rewritten also the rendering engine on last week, getting other speed improvements (before to load for example Highway Stage was need 1.5 seconds, now 0.2, for Armored Armadillo 3.8 seconds and with the new rendering engine only 0.5 seconds). Now I have to rewrite map/block/scene editor with the new rendering engine (take 15 minutes), more debug info (that I've hide from screens), tile editor (I need to do a thing similar to Sprite Editor of MMXE) and then... Maybe on layout editor, with reallocations of pointers and other stuff that it's required for edit compressed stuff.
Here some screenshots (note the airship on 3th picture o_O):