Golden Sun TLA: Editor

This deserves it's own topic, right?

[Download & Guide Link]

The first version is only capable of editing items & enemies, but also features Sprite & Text viewers. It requires an English ROM of Golden Sun: The Lost Age. (Note: As of version 0.2 there is some support for all language versions of Golden Sun, and The Lost Age)

There are screen shots of the program at the link above.


Talk about the program, what you make with it, or random, previously undiscovered things found with it. For example, a look at my screen shots of the Sprite & Text viewers show some interesting things.

This post has been edited by Atrius on Oct 23 2009, 08:01 PM

I must say, that looks really awesome and allows one to see for themselves exactly how each enemy is. You got a great thing going there. O_O;

For palette swaps that don't actually appear in the game like "Crazy Gorilla" and "Fell Raptor", I'm guessing these are "official" palette swap enemies that are in the actual Lost Age game cart/Rom but were not used in the actual game, and that almost all of the enemies from the first Golden Sun are present in the second game's code but a lot of them were not put anywhere...

What I'm most hoping for is a feature somewhere down the line that allows you to at least see the effects of each individual ability and effect in the game (so that you can see just how much power Cruel Ruin has, for example). =)

It's amazing how much of the original Golden Sun's data is in The Lost Age that doesn't need to be. Heck, I've even found Golden Sun sprites in Mario Golf: Advance Tour which, although you're probably already aware, was also made by Camelot.


Be careful about some of the values from the program. For example Dullahan's HP regen. It's stored as 20, which everyone knows is 1/10 of what it should be. I checked it to be sure, even once he's been read into memory it's 20. At some point before he actually regenerates his HP during battle it gets multiplied by 10, but I can't figure out why. What makes it seem all the more odd is that Sentinel's HP regen is correctly stored as 200.


Ability effects will come later, hopefully. I've been working on a few other things, so I haven't really had the opportunity to study them yet, but I do already have an address for where at least part of their data is stored.

Are you going to be distributing animated gifs of the unused monster sprites for everyone to look at? Revealing that really surprising, freakish-looking red Chinese lion enemy and that cyclops crustacean everywhere in addition to all the new named palette swaps would definitely cause some ripples in the community.

And what's this about GS sprites in Mario Golf!? O_O;

I thought they looked odd, but it hadn't occurred to me that they were actually unused. I spend so much time working on the tools that I don't bother checking sometimes. Oh well, it's good that other people have a chance to find things I missed, good catch.





Yes, Mario Golf has some Golden Sun NPC sprites in it. A couple Vendors, The balding man that you can make row the ship to Tolbi, the Old Man & Lady, Dog, Young Boy & Girl, as well as a couple others including the Mimic Treasure Chest.

Mario Tennis doesn't have so many, though it does have a couple too. No NPC's except the Mimic, and maybe some animals from TLA though.

I feel sad, for I cannot use it on my mac.

>_< Sorry Grim, yeah you need Windows to run the program.

If you look at some of them closely, Dullahan in particular, it becomes apparent that these extra copies of them are sometimes used to overcome the 8 ability limit that enemies have in the game. Some other bosses use the same trick as well.

Would it be possible to add Mac support in a future update?

Haha, I think that chinese-looking thing is a prototype Manticore. Goat hind legs, lion front, serpent tail... lolz.
Nice finds. ^__^ And zomg post the palette-swapped bosses plz. =O

Mac support is highly unlikely, sorry.


I'll try to get images of all the unused palette swapped enemies later, there aren't any bosses though just regular random encounters.

Man, why hasn't IPO come in here and demanded your babies yet Atrius?

He has, actually. >.> He was Templesurfing and was gushing to me over msn how awesome this was. I think he wants to recruit you for Project Iris, if he hasn't already, so heads up. >_>

Yeah, he's already contacted me actually.

Hmm... guess I'm just gonna have to find a free Windows emulator, then.

I don't know if it'll work or not, but you can try Wine.

Oh my... two robots working together? this is going to get good.

I'm in the same boat dude.

I'm guessing that when a monster has an attack list coded as

Attack | Attack
Flash Punch | Flash Punch
Attack | Attack
Attack | Attack

it means that two times out of eight it will use Flash Punch and the other six times it will attack...

I think it's more complicated than that, and involves the second unknown value in the enemy editor somehow. I just need to take the time to look through the code that uses that value... I'll work on it some time during the weekend, and tell you what I find out.

Right, it did seem that the first few attacks at the top of each list are more "common" sometimes... Maybe it has to do with how the RNG goes down the list in a cycle each time, and that player's attacks tend to affect the RNG in just the right way that it's like the cycle always lands back on the special attacks while skipping the normal attacks. Enemy actions are affected by the RNG, after all...