don't click here

Tales: Tails Adventures Level Editor Suite

Discussion in 'Engineering & Reverse Engineering' started by SupperTails66, Jan 16, 2016.

  1. SupperTails66

    SupperTails66

    Tech Member
    1,109
    7
    18
    Current version: release 8
    Windows binary (32-bit): Github Mediafire
    Get the source on Github

    [​IMG]

    Tails Adventures Level Editor Suite (Tales) is a more-or-less comprehensive editing program for Tails Adventures. It can fully edit most aspects of the game, such as levels, graphics, and power-ups, to create a completely different experience from the original.

    Why create such an involved editor for one of the most obscure Sonic(-related) games to grace a Sega console? Because it's a decent but woefully overlooked title that I think has lots of potential for some fun hacks. I'm not exactly expecting people to be champing at the bit for the chance to modify the game, but I hope someone out there (besides me) will at least give it a try. If you do, I'd appreciate getting your feedback, even if it's just to complain that the interface sucks or the program doesn't run (actually, I'm especially interested in those problems).

    Enjoy!

    List of features:
    * Level editing (level layout, object layout, pretty much everything you can think of)
    * VRAM layout editing, so different objects can be placed in levels
    * Metatile structure and behavior editing
    * Graphics editing, with import/export support
    * Tilemap editing
    * Palette and palette cycle editing
    * Music assignment editing (different music for levels)
    * Chaos Emerald power-up editing
    * Some miscellaneous hacks and enhancements, like an improved inventory system
    * A really long manual that hopefully explains most of the quirks in the editor and the game.

    Things the program doesn't do that I'd like to add, in approximate order of priority:
    * Hack to save the game to SRAM instead of using passwords
    * World map editor
    * Importing of replacement music/sound data
    * PCM data importer (for the Sega sound)
    * Proper support for exporting ROMs at original size (see below)

    Known issues:
    * Although I tried to avoid this, currently, ROMs exported by the program are automatically expanded from 512 KB to 1 MB. The problem is a maddening 1-byte inconsistency in how the game compresses graphics, as well as an oddity with level layout compression I haven't fully figured out.
    * On Windows 7 and probably other versions, the metatile structure editor looks bad if the program window is too small. Until it's fixed, just expand the window so it's not a problem.
    * For some obscure Qt-related reason, on at least some OSes, loading area 9-2 followed by area 9-3 in the level editor causes the program to crash if the window is too small.
     
  2. Mr Lange

    Mr Lange

    A wise guy eh. I know how to DEAL with wise guys. Member
    1,286
    11
    18
    The Land of Waldos
    Sonic Utopia, Sonic Overture
    Well this came out of left field. I hope a significant hack is made because this looks really capable.
     
  3. shilz

    shilz

    Member
    960
    262
    63
    getting my daily allowance of vitamin kk
    Nice, now I can make the game a bit simpler.
    Although I guess that would take away the charm of a Metroidvania?
    Anyways I'll give it a download and report back with simplicity cause I'm and idito.
    if I find a good idea I'll probably make a small hack.

    Nice, now I can make the game a bit simpler.
    Although I guess that would take away the charm of a Metroidvania?
    Anyways I'll give it a download and report back with simplicity cause I'm and idito.
    if I find a good idea I'll probably make a small hack.
     
  4. Shadow Hog

    Shadow Hog

    "I'm a superdog!" Member
    "This application failed to start because it could not find or load the Qt platform plugin "windows".

    Reinstalling the application may fix this problem."

    From a cursory Google search, you may have forgotten to include libEGL.dll.

    EDIT: Actually, copying qwindows.dll to a new subfolder titled "platforms" seems to have fixed it.
     
  5. Shoemanbundy

    Shoemanbundy

    Researcher
    1,094
    30
    28
    Chicago, Illinois
    selling shoes
    If you can get graphics importing going then this will be golden. Drawing everything one pixel at a time is too time consuming. Still, this is amazing for what it's already capable of.
     
  6. Jeffery Mewtamer

    Jeffery Mewtamer

    Blind Bookworm Member
    1,878
    81
    28
    Considering that Tails' Adventures is my favorite of the Game Gear 12, I'm glad someone has finally done something with it on the hacking side of things.
     
  7. SupperTails66

    SupperTails66

    Tech Member
    1,109
    7
    18
    Ugh, stupid Qt DLLs, I might as well have linked statically. I've uploaded a new binary package that fixes the problem. Thanks for letting me know about it.

    Yeah, the graphics editor was kind of a last-minute "I went to all the trouble of writing a backend for this so I guess I'd better support it somehow" thing. Importing from external files is a bit tricky, but it's definitely on the radar.

    Everyone else, thanks for the kind words. If nobody else, I'm certainly going to be working on a hack, which will probably help with getting the rough edges of the editor smoothed out.
     
  8. SupperTails66

    SupperTails66

    Tech Member
    1,109
    7
    18
    Sorry for the double post, but new "emergency" release. A seemingly minor last-minute layout change was causing Qt to crash when the VRAM editor was clicked. Frankly I still have no idea why, but get the fixed binary here: http://www.mediafire.com/download/xm4m3nfn4rn2rs2/libtales-bin-r1-win32.zip
     
  9. Ravenfreak

    Ravenfreak

    2 Edgy 4 U Tech Member
    3,077
    176
    43
    O'Fallon Mo
    Sonic 1 Game Gear Disassembly
    It's nice to see other 8-bit Sonic hackers, can't say I've ever played this game let alone attempted to hack it but now I think I'll fiddle around with this sometime in the future. :) Wonderful work SupperTails66!
     
  10. SupperTails66

    SupperTails66

    Tech Member
    1,109
    7
    18
    Sorry, one more release. Turns out another last-minute change broke the save system in just such a way that my testing didn't catch it. Fixed binary: http://www.mediafire.com/download/8f30kypindo3hfv/libtales-bin-r2-win32.zip

    Hopefully that's an end to the bugs introduced in the last 3 days of coding.

    Thank you! Personally, I consider it the best of the 8-bit games overall (although you could probably have guessed that, considering the effort I poured into this). I'd say it's least worth a playthrough if you haven't tried it.
     
  11. Shoemanbundy

    Shoemanbundy

    Researcher
    1,094
    30
    28
    Chicago, Illinois
    selling shoes
    Can't seem to open the program, no dialog window for initiation shows at all. Anyone else got this issue?
     
  12. Lostgame

    Lostgame

    producer/turnablist. homebrew dev. cosplayer. Oldbie
    4,134
    58
    28
    Toronto, ON
    The O.I.C.
    Tails' Adventure has the nicest sprites of Tails out of any Sonic game for sure. I absolutely love the colour selections...
     
  13. SupperTails66

    SupperTails66

    Tech Member
    1,109
    7
    18
    What OS are you running? I assume from your earlier post that the program was working before -- is the problem only with the latest binary or the earlier ones as well? You could also try deleting tales.cfg if it exists, although I doubt that's the issue.

    Also, fixed a couple of moderate bugs last night. One was screwing up default settings for palette 2 in the metatile structure editor, the other caused altered graphics to get corrupted after multiple exports. I'll put up a new build after I've done some more testing.
     
  14. BinBowie

    BinBowie

    Na Zdrowie! Member
    73
    24
    8
    USA
    I seem to have a big issue. I cannot open up a saved project file. Instead of loading up, the whole program crashes and closes. I am using the latest release.

    I'm using Windows 7 Home edition by the way if that information helps. Is anybody else having this issue?
     
  15. SupperTails66

    SupperTails66

    Tech Member
    1,109
    7
    18
    I've finally done what I should have ages ago and put the source on Github. This probably only really matters to me, but it's there if anyone's interested.

    Make sure you're not trying to load a project file made by an earlier version -- the crash fix in r2 broke compatibility with earlier versions. That was exceptional and shouldn't happen again (I went to some trouble to make the save format robust against format changes, but I didn't bother adding a special check in this case because I was hoping no one had used the program long enough for the fix to cause trouble).

    If starting a new project and loading it doesn't work, or you actually are trying to load a project made with r2, then you've found a more serious problem. Send me your project file and I'll take a look. (If you've slaved night and day to edit the entire game and don't want to lose your work, I can probably fix your project file too.)
     
  16. SupperTails66

    SupperTails66

    Tech Member
    1,109
    7
    18
    r3 out: http://www.mediafire.com/download/71gbazg46393a9v/libtales-bin-r3-win32.zip

    This fixes the bugs I mentioned previously, as well as the save file issue Bakayote reported. Thanks to everyone for your help working the kinks out of this.
     
  17. Shoemanbundy

    Shoemanbundy

    Researcher
    1,094
    30
    28
    Chicago, Illinois
    selling shoes
    Windows 7. It's my first time using the program. Never creates a .cfg file since it never even starts. Right now I've got 4 instances of the tales.exe open in my task manager that have remained there all day. Trying to force it to close does nothing. Very odd behavior. I've tried the most recent release btw.
     
  18. Feature request: Undo button?
     
  19. SupperTails66

    SupperTails66

    Tech Member
    1,109
    7
    18
    Since things seem to be working fine for other people, this sounds like it might be a Qt issue rather than a specific problem with my code. I've recompiled the program with the latest version of Qt -- give this version a try. Note that it's built in debug mode, so if it works it will be very slow. If it doesn't work, hopefully you'll at least get an error message; if you don't, send me the contents of "log.txt" in the root directory.

    Man, I wish. Undo is kind of a trick to add if you didn't specifically plan for it, which I didn't. This was my first time coding a project of this scale, so I was mainly focused on getting the basic functionality in place.

    Although now that I think about it, it probably wouldn't be too hard to add a minimal system for at least undoing level structure changes, which I'm guessing is what you want. I might look into that after I've added some of the more immediate stuff I have planned.
     
  20. Shoemanbundy

    Shoemanbundy

    Researcher
    1,094
    30
    28
    Chicago, Illinois
    selling shoes
    Unfortunately it seems to be the same result. No log file is even generated since nothing starts. More instances stuck in task manager that won't close.

    I can't imagine what I have done to my PC that has caused a conflict, if there is one.