Techokami, on 15 December 2013 - 04:15 PM, said:
I played with his tool, and it kinda supports extracting maps. It crunches them down to half size which is rather silly. Also, it doesn't allow you to render tile priorities, which is also dumb, and I have the feeling they DO exist in the format. Finally it inherits a dumb thing from Java Swingset in which the file select dialog keeps resetting its location to the Documents folder, when all my stuff is properly organized elsewhere, so I have to re-navigate every time I want to open a different file or save something.
It's a shame he doesn't have a presence here, because it's difficult to tell what he does and doesn't know. Yes, VisualPlane is one of the properties on a 16x16 tile that he's not using. I'm guessing he's been reading this forum though, since he updated his site again with "instructions" how to play Egg Gauntlet on a rooted Android device with GBD installed. Most of the swing problems are fixable with a single line of code to use the Native OS GUI controls... UIManager.SetLookAndFeel(UIManager.GetSystemLookAndFeelClassName()) (That's from memory, so my memory might be off).
He will be able to glean some information from the code I posted, which will help if he looks at it. There are some things I've provided that he has listed as ?? in his documentation. (Which I didn't use, because I didn't know it existed until today.) It's good that he's going to take the time to write something though, although I wonder if it would be possible to adapt MainMemory's SonLvl to support the format instead.
MainMemory, on 15 December 2013 - 04:41 PM, said:
Just because someone already made one doesn't mean you can't make one too. Yours might even end up better.
Time is a big factor. I work on a number of projects, some of which require more time than others. It was just lucky coincidence that I have several vacation days this month, so I had a bit of time to throw together what I released. To be honest, editing was not the primary goal at this point but I structured it in code and UI such that it would make a great editor when the time comes to start that phase. (128x128 chunk viewer allowing you to see them all at once as opposed to what the other guy did, breaking the data up into objects with the actual properties separated out even the ones I'm not using yet instead of just throwing the data in, etc.) I think at least for Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 that it's too early to be modding them yet. I was surprised that Taxman didn't bother changing the encryption again for Sonic 2. (Or at least the very least the keys) Someone could wreck havoc in online mode for Sonic 2 by having the ability to modify the game. Giving people that kind of power now would just make it harder for us to hack future retro engine titles because then they'd need to put even more effort into stopping it.
Sonic CD is a bit better candidate for modification at this point since it's running an older version of the engine and is unlikely to see any major updates other than compatibility. The level layout format is slightly different, the bytecode has less functionality, (I noticed that there appears to be an additional argument for the PlaySong opcode in Sonic 2 that wasn't there in Sonic CD) and files are organized slightly differently. That and it has an official PC port, which doesn't seem like it's going to be updated.
I wouldn't definitively say I'll never touch it again (and posted the source in case someone else wants to) but the fact that someone else is working on one makes it easier for me to make the decision to not spend any more time on it right now. If there was some kind of better organized project (like what you've done with yours) I'd love to contribute occasionally. I have a good repository of knowledge regarding how the engine worked in Sonic CD and could at least provide information that would help with things that are unclear.
This post has been edited by sonicblur: 15 December 2013 - 08:39 PM
02
