Making a James Pond 3 level editor

Small update. I now have project files (largely) supported. Here are two Amiga-exclusive levels that I loaded straight from a project generated from that version of the game:


Penguin Hideout (PENGBON1.LVL):



Penguin Hideaway (PENGBON2.LVL):



Anyone who followed my early work with this game may remember this video where I made an attempt to bring Penguin Hideout over to the Genesis version. Making projects cross-platform (i.e. Genesis and Amiga) should allow me to pull it off. But there is a bit of work to do on that yet. But definitely possible.

Earliest release will be late December, after Christmas sometime. But I still see January as being more realistic at this time.

 

Moment of truth...





... not *quite* there. This is the very first time I've saved and imported a modified level into the game.

By the way, Pond Packer 1.02 is available on romhacking.net, though I found YET ANOTHER bug after I released it. But the good news is, I think I finally have figured out all the problems with it.

As for the level editor, I'm still thinking January. We'll see how quickly I can fix the issues pictured above.

 

While testing my level editor for bugs, I created a brand new level for the game. I have attached the ZIP file to this post. It is in IPS format, so you will need the original ROM and an IPS patcher. Here's what I wrote in the included text:

Still working on a few things, but I might be able to get the level editor released within the next couple weeks. Until then, you can enjoy the fruits of my labor!





Edit:
And here's a video of the level being played through in its entirety...

https://rumble.com/v48n6e9-brand-new-james-pond-3-level.html

 

Chedditor - Demo 1
Version 0.50 Alpha

DOWNLOAD --> https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/1806/

Please read the included "Chedditor.txt" file for instructions on how to use it. There's a lot of information. The navigation style is a little unconventional and works best with an actual mouse (track pad is cumbersome). There were mixed opinions about it from the Sonic 2 HD artists, and different artists preferred different settings. Tweak it to your comfort. If you hate it, you can set it up to be keyboard-based navigation only.

Don't rely on the F1 "help" -- a lot of that is leftover from Edit HD and Zone Builder.

Let me know what you think. Let me know about any bugs or suggestions you may have. It's an alpha, so it's incomplete. However, it can successfully be used to create a new level, modify level chunks, generate project files, import the project file data back into the game, and it supports both the Sega Genesis and Amiga AGA versions. The map I released in the previous post was made entirely using this editor, so it's very capable of doing most of what you will need it to do.

Enjoy!

 

No updates to the editor itself to share, but I do have a tutorial video showing the basic flow of creating a level from start to finish. The editor in its Demo 1 state isn't necessarily intuitive as far as how to go about doing it all, so my hope is the video will make it less intimidating to folks using it for the first time:

https://rumble.com/v4cwdfc-build-a-quick-james-pond-3-level-from-start-to-finish-sega-genesis.html

That video is for the Genesis version. I may decide to do one for the Amiga version too at some point.

 

There's a decent chance of that being a feature. I was thinking back on how Stealth did something similar to dump complete maps of Sonic levels. I think it'd be a great feature to have in Chedditor.

Fun fact: there are already maps of most of the levels from the Amiga version over at the Hall of Light website. However, the maps are not 100% the same between the two versions of the game. Some are the same, some are very close, some (like the third level) are cut down in size significantly, and at least one (Kentucky Fried Fiend) is replaced entirely with a new level. So there's still very much a need for a new collection of maps tailored to the Genesis version.

 

I have a couple of small things to share...

~~~~~~~~

1) New version 1.03 of Pond Packer --> Romhacking.net - Utilities - Pond Packer

The new version fixes remaining bugs. It's using the same logic used in Chedditor, so it *should* work flawlessly.

Unfortunately, when the submission was done, or approved, a duplicate version was created. So Romhacking.net has both 1.02 and 1.03, instead of just updating the existing page for 1.02 to 1.03. So don't use older links. Use the one in this post.

~~~~~~~~

2) Blue Lake Woods I from Kid Chameleon given the James Pond 3 treatment --> Romhacking.net - Hacks - Blue Lake Woods I



It's not exactly an elaborate level, but it is yet another example of what you can do with Chedditor. I kept K-E open on one side of the screen, and Chedditor open on the other side. Then, I just matched things based on the coordinates in each tool.

Pond Packer came in handy for this one, because Chedditor doesn't yet allow maps to be resized. So I had to decompress the level file, tweak the dimensions in a hex editor, and then compress it again.

Included is an IPS patch. I also threw in the actual LVL file which can be used with the Amiga version of James Pond 3, or with Chedditor for editing purposes.

~~~~~~~~

3) Just a small thing that I thought was interesting. As I mentioned before, some Amiga maps were modified from the Genesis originals. The third level was cut down significantly. For fun, I used Chedditor to port all the Genesis levels over to the Amiga version. When loading the third level, I was treated to this:



Surprisingly, the Amiga version doesn't allow maps to be quite as big as the Genesis version. You'd think having far for memory than a small amount of 64KB would mean the opposite. As far as I know, level 3 is the only one actually cut down in size. Others received edits for any number of other reasons.

 

Oh my gosh, this is incredible. I knew the game had rocket shoes in prototypes based on magazine descriptions and a screenshot. And I knew the shoes existed (unused) as a pickup:



But for some reason, I was under the impression they didn't do anything. I know I tried this before, and I don't ever remember anything happening. But while playing this test map...



I'm totally blown away right now. And they're fast (about like Sonic hitting a red spring)! The object ID is 090E if you want to use Chedditor to try them out.

Also, it appears they're not quite finished:
* The fuel never depletes
* Although there is a speed cap, there's apparently a counter that continues to increase as you try to push the speed, increasing the amount of time it takes to actually slow down.

But in the right environment, these are actually really awesome. You can even use them to go up walls and on the ceiling at breakneck speed. It's a real shame these never got used in the final game.


EDIT:
Here's a video I've done showing the rocket shoes in action -- Rocket shoes in James Pond 3 (rumble.com)

 

There's a J.A.W.S. ID card (pictures earlier in the thread) that you can collect, but does nothing as far as I can tell. There's also gum you can collect, which also doesn't appear to do anything. I can't think of anything else as far as unused items go.

I've seen in magazines mention of various vehicles. I saw mention of a rocket, and another of a digger. No idea what to make of those as I haven't seen these things among the hidden remains in the game. But who knows, maybe I just haven't found them yet. I would have told you a couple days ago the rocket shoes were removed, but clearly that's not the case.

And beyond those, if you've followed other things I've shown in the past, there's the unused moon-like gravity flag that can be enabled on individual maps, and the big unused 32x32 circular prize block. And there's the strange used-but-rare Angelfish icon collectables that give you a butt-load of points when you collect them, which makes me wonder if she was intended to be playable at one time, given the existence of the icons, how her sprites are placed in the same section in the ROM as Pond and Finnius (both obviously playable), and her being pictured with Pond and Finnius on the "the end" screen when you beat the game.

Chris Sorrell (Pond creator, artist, and lead programmer) has mention in interviews that despite the game's two-year development cycle (which pushed it beyond initial release targets apparently), they still weren't quite able to get everything in that they wanted. So I am guessing the aforementioned pickups and gimmicks are some of those things. The game was originally supposed to be 4Mb, was increased to 8Mb, and then finally 16Mb. Sounds like a game that had an ever-expanding development cycle, to me.

 

It took a good bit of time, but I decided I needed to update TCRF's JP3 (Genesis) page with the stuff mentioned above:

James Pond 3: Operation Starfish (Genesis) - The Cutting Room Floor (tcrf.net)

I realize Sega Retro has its own flavor, but it took me a good while to get TCRF updated, so I'm beat at the moment. If someone else would like to update that to balance things out, feel free to do so. Otherwise, I'll get to it at some point... maybe.

I haven't even touched the TCRF JP3 Amiga page. There's so much to keep track of.

~~~

Current status of Chedditor:

* I am interested in adding a feature to dump a map to a PNG file as was suggested several weeks back. So I'm thinking on that.

* I've started the work of creating a block editor, which will allow you to change the art, mappings (in the case of the Genesis version), and solidity for each block. I'd *love* to see a Sonic level converted to James Pond 3 with graphics and all, so that's something I have in mind as a demonstration. But I have to get the block editing functionality in the editor first.

 

Chedditor has been put on hold for a while. I've been working on a different project for the last couple months. But every now and again, in my spare time, I do a little bit on this:



... because I can!