Map Exits in the Event Editor

The map exits can now be loaded and displayed in the event editor.

The following screenshot shows the different options for a map exit in the event editor:

By changing the X and Y position where the player is teleported, Will can reach an area of South Cape you normally can't reach:

Map Exits

I found a data set containing the map exits for all maps. They are now displayed on every map as red squares (blue squares are map objects). The data set contains the x and y location of the exits and several other informations. I also found the map index of the destination map there.

Here you can see the map of the City of Freejia with its objects and exits:

I will examine the other map exit data bytes and try to make them editable.

Edit Text Profiles

You can now edit the text profiles. I changed the text color for Will and exported it back to the ROM:

This is the result in the game:

This might be a small thing to edit but at least it's something which is already fully working :)

Text Profiles

I found a data set that contains the text color and the sound effect that is played when the text is shown.Since there are several data sets for the different characters I call them text profiles.
I will make the text colors colors editable as a next step.

GaiaTheCreator v.0.0.1.3

Here is a new version of the editor:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hlutxfue7agdw1o/GaiaTheCreator%20%280.0.1.3%29.zip?dl=0

Improvements in version 0.0.1.3:
- Improved the LZSS decompression routine. Decompression will now be much faster now.
- The XML data file is now automatically created and doesn't need to be copied in the
  project directory anymore.
- Save and display the project name in the editor.
- Support of US roms with header.
- Scroll and zoom in the map view.
- Filter option for the display of the map events.
- Display several event commands (Some events might still crash the editor).

Note that the event editor is still in a very early state so the editor will crash on several events.

Important: You have to start the editor from the .exe file in the directory \GaiaTheCreator (0.0.1.3)\GaiaTheCreator (0.0.1.3)\Application Files\GaiaTheCreator_0_0_1_3. Otherwise you won't be able to create a new project..
Have fun :)

The Event Editor advances..

I discovered some new event commands:

• Add Item (0xD4): Adds a specific item to the player's inventory. Checks also if the inventroy is full and initiates an action if this is the case.
• Play Music and Wait (0x19): Plays a specific song. The event handler will wait for the song to complete until the next action is performed.
• Player Position Condition (0x45): Observes the position of the player and initiates an action if the player is in the specified position range.
• Switch Condition (0xD0): Actions often depend on the states of switches (ON, OFF) to handle them in the desired order.
• Talk Button Condition (0xC0): Defines an action that takes playe after the talk button is pressed on the event.

My next subgoal is to understand the way an event (e.g. an NPC) moves. I already discovered the commands but couldn't figure out yet how the actual movement is decrypted.

Vacation is over!

Vacation time is finally over so I got back to work on the editor again :)

Here are some results:

I enhanced the event editor. At the moment there are four commands that have been decoded yet. These four commands are shown in the following screenshot:

Commands that haven't been decoded yet just show their command code at the moment. There's still a huge amount of event data that remains hieroglyphics for me. Not for a long time I hope.

The map view has also been improved:

- You can zoom in and out of the map view and scroll the map

- A filter can be applied to enable or disable the event layer which is lying on top of the map layer.

- A function to display a specific map tile on the desired position of the map. This function is necessary when the map arrangement data is decoded.

The following screenshot shows the map view with the enabled event layer. The event in the middle is lying on top of the map tile which is shown for test purposes.

On the next screen the event layer is disabled:

Some miscellaneous improvements:

- Tileset decompression is improved and is much faster now (few seconds compared to > 1 minute)

- Display the project name in the editor

- Support of US ROMs with a header

The big big goal for the future will be the decompression of the map tileset and map arrangement data. If this step is done it won't be a problem to show the maps in the editor.