Golden Sun TLA: Editor

Oh man, those screenshots are made of God and win.

Aw man, soon as it becomes possible, I'm totally making a crack version of Lost Age. And possibly turn Piers into Alex, and vice versa. I dunno.

Where all the lighthouses are dancing old men, and Summon Rushing isn't an instant win anymore. AND IT SHALL BE HENCEFORTH KNOWN AS LEGACY OF BACON!

I have some important news concerning the development of the editor, read here.

Well, I was certainly relieved to look closer at your announcement after the initial reaction of "He's flying planes in wartime!?"

Good luck nonetheless.

Hahah, no no, people with the job I signed for don't get sent into combat zones. They're more like enlisted scientists.

Someone hack Dully's luck down to a valid number... then make a video of them killing him with Condemn after like 50 turns of trying.

XD.

Happy 1 year anniversary, GS TLA Editor!

Exactly 1 year ago today the first version of the editor was released. To celebrate, I'm revealing a big new feature I've been working on for version 0.3.

The way some of GS TLA's data is arranged is very peculiar, yet very helpful at the same time. At the end of the ROM file there is a large array containing various types of data ranging from graphics, to the games code itself. The new feature of the editor will allow you to browse through all of this data.

It's still in very early stages of development, so it will likely be improved before version 0.3 is released.


Viewing a palette for a map


A tileset, eventually you'll be able to load palettes with them so they aren't just black & white.


A menu graphic


A graphic for one of the Pierrot classes attacks. Despite not knowing what this was the data browser managed to identify at as being compressed, and decompressed it for us, how nice of it. Using the image viewing mode we can see the actual graphic.


Using the Hex option (which will eventually be a full fledged hex editor) on the data browser we see some unidentified data here. To the untrained eye it just looks like a bunch of gibberish, but to me this looks a lot like map data, and that makes sense considering what it's surrounded by. The interesting thing though, is that the editor couldn't identify it as map data which means it isn't actually used in the game at all. Mmm... I do believe the unidentified data below it looks a lot like palette, and tileset data that isn't used at all either. Looks like despite having a map viewer, we still haven't seen all of the maps hidden away in TLA's data.



Also you may notice a value on the top bar of the editor, "1159.57Kb" or something around there. You may have also noticed that this was present in v0.2, but always read "0Kb" Well, now that the automatic repointing system (which assists in the editing of compressed data, ensuring it doesn't accidentally overwrite other data in the game) is finished and working, it keeps track of the amount of empty space in the ROM it has to work with. Golden Sun TLA in fact has 1159.57Kb of detectable empty space to work with, in contrast the original Golden Sun only has 67.36Kb.

I understood maybe one word in twenty of that, but I'm still impressed. This is a very cool thing you've got here, Atrius. Congratulations on one year of hard work and the great results you've come up with.

Did you ever figure out how to make the editor program fully compatible with ROMs of the original GS (so that the monster data there can be properly edited, and that the Weakness and Resistance ratings of the monsters will now properly display)? I'd have to say that's the feature I've most been looking forward to.

Good thing the recent "happenings" were a few days ago instead of now, because you would have found an offline board then.

All of these developments are very exciting! Keep up the noble work, Atrius.

Mwa ha ha ha!!! I slapped a compression algorithm together and decided to do some testing on the script data for a map. Soon nothing in this game will be safe from my meddling!

Sorry, Eric, I've been more focused on adding features for hacking TLA than improving compatibility with other game versions (It is a GS TLA editor, and not just GS editor after all) I can't imagine it'll be too difficult when I do decide to get around to it though, I'll make sure to do it before releasing v0.3.

Eventually you will make a Golden Sun hack catching pokemons and everything, huh?

Amazing stuff Atrius! Really stunning!

Mwa ha ha ha, summon graphics are no longer beyond my grasp. I did a palette edit, and sprite swap on Flora (which for testing purposes I replaced the animation of Growth with)

Atrius you genius, you are indeed worthy of a name similar to that of the greatest character I have ever created, Arius. As soon as the next update is released I will have to get it and mess around. First thing to do is put Kraden in as a playable person so if you read this you couldn't send me the battle sprite you used for your video with him in could you?

Keep up the good work.

Oh my god. When you make the next release, we can actually make a video of the Wheat Sword.

No... This is just more experimental work, to show that I've figured out the basics of doing it. It more than likely won't make it into the version 0.3 of the editor.

Also replacing a sprite used in a summon animation is different than actually editing the animation. That's still a little ways off.

Will the final version allow you to edit the actual number of texts displayed in a cut scene, or change around the cues for sprite actions (or even make your own cut scene triggers with all new content?)

I realize I'm not using the right lingo for that, but I don't have a handy wakizashi to commit seppuku for it, sorry.

Man... I'd so totally install a dual-boot with Linux and WiNE this if I knew how and had the software. Looks so awesome.

Just wish it would run on a mac.