Board of Slick
Library of the Ancients => Final Fantasy IV Research & Development => Topic started by: Entroper on August 13, 2016, 11:41:20 PM
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https://github.com/Entroper/FF4MapEdit/releases/download/0.1/FF4MapEdit.zip
Open a 1.1 US ROM. 1.0 works too, it will just complain. Headered or not, doesn't matter.
You can't do anything yet except scroll around.
It's pretty slow, takes about 30s to load and scrolls slowly. I'll work on that tomorrow. :)
Source code is available (https://github.com/Entroper/FF4MapEdit).
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Oh, cool, Entroper.
I'm not in a position to actually check it out today, but will tomorrow.
I presume this is, to some extent, based in the code from FF4ed?
Any ideas about the functionality it will eventually include? If you're interested in requests on that front:
- some sort of confirmation before automatic ROM expansion (this would be useful for anyone who also uses FF4kster)
... I thought this might be a list, but that's the only thing I can think of now.
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It's all-new code, but obviously the FF4Ed code was a very useful reference to see how things worked.
My goal was to have something I could be comfortable working on as far as the UI goes... WPF is way easier than MFC. :) Honestly, the code that edits the ROM is the easy part.
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Alright, I fixed the performance: https://github.com/Entroper/FF4MapEdit/releases/download/0.1.1/FF4MapEdit.zip
Now to see if I can make it edit the map. :)
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.... I fucking love you. :omg:
Alright, I fixed the performance: https://github.com/Entroper/FF4MapEdit/releases/download/0.1.1/FF4MapEdit.zip
Now to see if I can make it edit the map. :)
YOO CAIN DOO EET!!
- some sort of confirmation before automatic ROM expansion (this would be useful for anyone who also uses FF4kster)
That would be GREAT to have at some point down the line. :happy:
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Order of priorities is as follows:
- Edit the map.
- Save the map to the ROM file.
- Edit the tile properties (walkable, etc.)
- Edit the other world maps (Underworld, Moon)
After those are done, we can start getting fancy.
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Check #1 off the list: https://github.com/Entroper/FF4MapEdit/releases/tag/0.2.1
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Aaaaaaaaaaand holycrapitworks. :omg:
https://github.com/Entroper/FF4MapEdit/releases/tag/0.3
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Order of priorities is as follows:
- Edit the map.
- Save the map to the ROM file.
- Edit the tile properties (walkable, etc.)
- Edit the other world maps (Underworld, Moon)
After those are done, we can start getting fancy.
Aaaaaaaaaaand holycrapitworks. :omg:
https://github.com/Entroper/FF4MapEdit/releases/tag/0.3
All of that works now? Or 1 and 2?
Either way, good stuff. I'm off tomorrow, so I definitely will be messing around with this a bit.
:cookie:
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All of that works now? Or 1 and 2?
Just 1 and 2. Getting to #4 should be reasonably easy, after that it gets trickier.
It was pretty amusing when I got save working. I edited a little piece of the map near Baron, expecting to see it after leaving the castle. But then it showed up in the opening cutscene when the airships landed. "Oh there it is! It worked!" :laugh:
I didn't realize how little space there is for the overworld, it's almost right up against the 16k space that it sits in. You're pretty likely to overflow that if you add much detail.
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Because of the way map data is stored, I've found that the trick to adding detail in one place is to remove detail in another. There are some little peninsulas that the player would never walk on that can be oceaned over, which could free up a fair amount of space if done right. Likewise with snow-capped mountains, etc. An entire row of ocean can be written with only two bytes; but a row of ocean, then west bank, then piece of land, then east bank, then more ocean takes seven bytes. That kind of thing adds up.
But also, that's why yousei's editor would just automatically expand the ROM. If you're not constantly paying attention to space, you can go over pretty easily.
Pinkpuff put a pretty ingenious device into the location map editor: a "space remaining" window. In my project I've never even come close to filling location map space up (I think I have around 5700 free bytes, it says), but I know others have had problems getting enough map space for their projects. That would certainly be helpful in a world map editor, though, if it were possible.
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The "space remaining" thing is something I wanted to add, but it's harder to calculate that on the fly for world maps that are compressed. Not impossible, though. It just now occurs to be that since it's row-based, I could just re-compress a single row when it's modified, that should be about as fast as copying the pixels.
I'll look into things like ROM expansion post-1.0, after the editor is basically complete. I'm still trying to decide how to model the changeover between maps, and a few other things like the snow-capped mountains. Right now you can draw those incorrectly, and it will just pretend you drew them correctly. Or crash if you put them too near the right border. :eek:
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Location maps are compressed the same way as the world maps, actually, the only difference between the way the data is arranged between the two is the termination of rows with an FF (I think the world map does it but location maps don't?).
:edit:
the snow-capped mountains.
Oh, right, and that. That's another difference.
There's definitely a bit of a lag on my relatively weak computer when I use the location map editor in FF4kster, which might be at least in part due to the on-the-fly recompression, but it's not intrusive enough to complain about.
I just tried it out, by the way. Replaced the desert next to baron castle with a lake. Worked like a charm. This is already more useful than yousei's editor (no offense to The Father of FF4 Hacking).
Nice work!
:cookie:
:edit: 2
By the way, how does your editor handle overflow currently? Does it just move into the Underworld's territory? Or does it do something crash-y?
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If you overflow, you just can't save. It tells you how big your data is so you know about how much you need to cut.
Interesting that the location maps are also compressed, I think I must have been remembering the FF1 maps not being compressed.
The snow-capped mountains are only an overworld thing, not even applicable to the underworld or moon maps, since they don't have oft-repeated 4x4 regions, I guess. So many special cases to handle with these old games. :finger:
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I fixed the map area not resizing with the window.
I think we'll do #3, and then the row-compression thing, since that will simplify my save routine anyway. And I think I'll add an encounter-area grid, and maybe try and make a "snowcaps brush" before starting on #4. #4 requires some refactoring if I want to avoid turning the code into an awful mess. #5 will probably be town/dungeon maps.
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Are you reading the graphic tiles from the rom dynamically or using static built in images?
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Woah, you're making progress on this at mach speed it seems! Keep it up! If I have some free time tonight I'll give it a go.
Are you reading the graphic tiles from the rom dynamically or using static built in images?
That's a good question. Would be AWESOME if it were dynamic, as it would give me an incentive to go more in depth with edits to world map graphics than I have so far. :happy:
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I'm reading the tileset from the ROM. Here's the code: https://github.com/Entroper/FF4MapEdit/blob/0.3.1/FF4MapEdit/MainWindow.xaml.cs#L176
I have no idea how I would design a UI for tileset editing, but if you've already modified the tiles, the editor will read them just fine.
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I'm reading the tileset from the ROM.
Hell Yeah!
I have no idea how I would design a UI for tileset editing, but if you've already modified the tiles, the editor will read them just fine.
As far as the graphics-side goes YYCHR is easy enough for tileset editing, plus has that nifty savestate option for viewing palettes so that part can be done without you having to make a UI for the editor to accommodate it. :cycle:
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I'm reading the tileset from the ROM. Here's the code: https://github.com/Entroper/FF4MapEdit/blob/0.3.1/FF4MapEdit/MainWindow.xaml.cs#L176
Thanks! This was the only real thing holding me back from implementing world map editing in FF4kster. Hopefully I can make sense of the code ^_^
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This is kind of
:offtopic:
But I gotta say, I love it when this forum creates an avenue for mutual inspiration!
This is when this @#$% gets really fun!
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I'm reading the tileset from the ROM. Here's the code: https://github.com/Entroper/FF4MapEdit/blob/0.3.1/FF4MapEdit/MainWindow.xaml.cs#L176 (https://github.com/Entroper/FF4MapEdit/blob/0.3.1/FF4MapEdit/MainWindow.xaml.cs#L176)
Thanks! This was the only real thing holding me back from implementing world map editing in FF4kster. Hopefully I can make sense of the code ^_^
Feel free to ask if something doesn't make sense. :)
I've learned a ton from reading the source code to various ROM tools, so part of the reason for doing this project was to let other people read my code and do the same. The license (https://github.com/Entroper/FF4MapEdit/blob/0.3.1/LICENSE) file will back you up. :)
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Wow, I got a crapton of refactoring done tonight, and I'm really pleased with how it turned out. After all that, I was able to add a real-time compressed map size label in just a few minutes.
https://github.com/Entroper/FF4MapEdit/releases/tag/0.3.2
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I'm reading the tileset from the ROM. Here's the code: https://github.com/Entroper/FF4MapEdit/blob/0.3.1/FF4MapEdit/MainWindow.xaml.cs#L176 (https://github.com/Entroper/FF4MapEdit/blob/0.3.1/FF4MapEdit/MainWindow.xaml.cs#L176)
Thanks! This was the only real thing holding me back from implementing world map editing in FF4kster. Hopefully I can make sense of the code ^_^
Feel free to ask if something doesn't make sense. :)
I've learned a ton from reading the source code to various ROM tools, so part of the reason for doing this project was to let other people read my code and do the same. The license (https://github.com/Entroper/FF4MapEdit/blob/0.3.1/LICENSE) file will back you up. :)
Thanks!
Mainly what I was confused about is detailed here:
http://slickproductions.org/forum/index.php?topic=1866.msg25002#msg25002
Perhaps you can confirm if I was on the right track?
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Thanks!
Mainly what I was confused about is detailed here:
http://slickproductions.org/forum/index.php?topic=1866.msg25002#msg25002 (http://slickproductions.org/forum/index.php?topic=1866.msg25002#msg25002)
Perhaps you can confirm if I was on the right track?
Yeah, it looks like it. The data at A0800 (headered) is what I call "subtile palette offsets" since they're offsets into the world map palette for each subtile. Seems an inefficient way to store this, actually, because there are only 4 possible values, but each one consumes an entire byte. Oh well.
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If I had to guess, I'd say that has to do with indexing efficiency - the X value is already set by the tile selection. So while you could store as many as four palette assignments in one byte, it would take a lot more assembly to extract the relevant information when you needed it.
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Sure, it's more convenient in the ASM. It's just funny sometimes to see where they chose to make things as compact as possible and where they didn't. Like the snow-capped mountains thing, versus this.
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private void CopySubTileToTile(byte[] subTiles, int subTilesOffset, ushort[] tile, int tileOffset, ushort[] palette, int paletteOffset)
{
for (int y = 0; y < 8; y++)
{
for (int x = 0; x < 4; x++)
{
byte twoPixels = subTiles[subTilesOffset + 4 * y + x];
byte pixel = (byte)(twoPixels & 0x0F);
tile[tileOffset + 16 * y + 2 * x] = palette[paletteOffset + pixel];
pixel = (byte)((twoPixels & 0xF0) >> 4);
tile[tileOffset + 16 * y + 2 * x + 1] = palette[paletteOffset + pixel];
}
}
}
Hmmm does not FF4 use bitlanes to internally store tiles? That code looks like for GBA :D
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Yeah, just straight 4bpp linear pixels.
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So, I have the following details about tile properties from FF4Ed:
#define LDF_WALK 0x0001
#define LDF_UNKNOWN1 0x0006
#define LDF_SAVEPOINT 0x0008
#define LDF_UNKNOWN2 0x00F0
#define LDF_WALKDAMAGE 0x0100
#define LDF_UNKNOWN3 0x0200
#define LDF_HIDECHARACTER 0x0400
#define LDF_TOPHALFCHARACTER 0x0800
#define LDF_EXIT 0x1000
#define LDF_UNKNOWN4 0x6000
#define LDF_ENTRANCE 0x8000
#define WDF_CHARAWALK 0x0001
#define WDF_CHOCOWALK 0x0002
#define WDF_BLACKCHOCOFLY 0x0004
#define WDF_BLACKCHOCOLAND 0x0008
#define WDF_HOVERCRAFTMOVE 0x0010
#define WDF_AIRSHIPFLY 0x0020
#define WDF_CHARAWALK2 0x0040
#define WDF_BIGWHALEFLY 0x0080
#define WDF_BATTLEBACKGROUND 0x0700
#define WDF_SHOWCHARATOPHALF 0x0800
#define WDF_AIRSHIPLAND 0x1000
#define WDF_UNKNOWN2 0x2000
#define WDF_ENEMYENCOUNTERS 0x4000
#define WDF_ENTRANCE 0x8000
That's for area maps and world maps, respectively.
Do we know if the flags labeled UNKNOWN are used at all?
:edit: Wait, and what the hell is CHARAWALK2?!
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I studied them pretty extensively over a fairly protracted period of time a while ago. Don't know if all the details are in one place...
FF4kster, I think, does have all the location tile properties right. If you look at the list there in the Tileset editor, it goes down the line from least to most significant bit.
As for world map tiles...
Well, charwalk2 is plateaus (walkable tiles that have a different "z-axis value" from the rest). That leaves only 0x2000 unknown. Let's see if it's on the forum somewhere...
Nah, doesn't look like it is...
Looking at the rest of the properties, though, I would guess that that bit would indicate Big Whale landing spots. But that's an untested guess.
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Is Charwalk2 only on the Moon then? And does it even do anything?
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Underworld and moon. It makes it so you can't walk from the north side of a plateau onto the non-plateau tile above it, essentially. Also, the transitional tiles on the moon (I don't wanna call them steps, because there's no steps, but... Those tiles) have both bits set, so you can walk from level 1 to level 2.
The same system exists in location tilesets. Think of the multilevel terrain that is abundant in Agart, as well as the land/water in the watery pass.
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It makes it so you can't walk from the north side of a plateau onto the non-plateau tile above it, essentially.
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. That makes sense now. :)
I found another bug with the tileset, apparently I was never clicking on border tiles. The tileset image tries to resize itself because the outline goes one pixel past the edge of the tileset when you click on a border tile, and it looks all screwy. I woke up this morning with a few ideas I can try for that.
Tile properties seem to be working. Hopefully I'll have an 0.4 tonight.
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https://github.com/Entroper/FF4MapEdit/releases/tag/0.4
Next up is underworld/moon maps. May or may not happen this weekend -- I have a lot of stuff to do since I spent all of last weekend getting this project off the ground. :)
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Yeah, just straight 4bpp linear pixels.
Interesting ... Is it the same with all FF4 graphics or just maps?
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Just downloaded the editor. Now, once I update my .NET Framework I'll put it through it's paces and give some feedback!
I have a feeling I'll be able get more work done with this in a fraction of the time it'd take me to fight the old FF4ed from '99. And seeing that I'm trying to make a drastically different world map for my project this'll speed things up immensely! :happy:
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I might not do much to this for a while. I'm kind of in crunch time at work for the next two weeks, then I'm on vacation for 3 weeks. And I've gotta get FF1 Randomizer 1.0 out the door, then I'll circle back to this and get the underworld and moon working, and then take a look at how the area maps work.
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Finally had enough free time to give this a whirl, and I gotta say, this editor's pretty badass! The fact one is able to toy with tile properties and the like has some great potential.
One thing I noticed while using the editor is that if you're holding left click to place tiles and scroll off the left side (where the tile properties column is) and let go the editor will think you're still holding the mouse button down when you move your arrow back to the map.
Outside of that editing's a breeze compared to the editor from '99! If there were some option to use right click as an eye dropper-like tool to quick select tiles I'd be entirely spoiled by this thing. :happy:
I might not do much to this for a while. I'm kind of in crunch time at work for the next two weeks, then I'm on vacation for 3 weeks. And I've gotta get FF1 Randomizer 1.0 out the door, then I'll circle back to this and get the underworld and moon working, and then take a look at how the area maps work.
Hope it all goes well for ya! Until you return to work on this I'll play around with getting an Overworld map overhaul. Hell I might sit down tomorrow and whip some replacement graphics for things (especially after seeing firsthand how much space those snow capped mountains use O_O).
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One thing I noticed that would be great to see implemented into the editor at some point: being able to the see the X/Y coordinates of a tile that the cursor is over.
That would make figuring out where to place Overworld triggers a breeze!
EDIT:just thought of a neat workaround for the time being:
1) edit world map to the way I like using your editor
2) After saving changes, use the info from the document included with FF4ed to port the pointer/map data from my 1.1 Rom to a 1.0 rom (which only takes me a moment of copy n pasting code using HxD)
3) open said 1.0 rom in FFed to see the X/Y coordinates for the various towns/dungeon entrances on my new world map so that I can properly set up the x/y positions of the triggers using FF4kster and the 1.1 rom.
Booyah. :cycle:
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Showing the coordinates is a great idea. It'll also get a little easier to see where you are when I overlay an encounter grid.
And yeah, eye dropper is good too. I haven't thought too much about advanced features yet, like area selection, copy/paste, flood fill, etc. Eye dropper is one that's super easy to do, though, and requires no new UI to enable. I've been putting UI features off until after I can edit all the game's maps, but these two are quick enough to do, and useful enough that they might come sooner. :)
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Showing the coordinates is a great idea. It'll also get a little easier to see where you are when I overlay an encounter grid.
And yeah, eye dropper is good too. I haven't thought too much about advanced features yet, like area selection, copy/paste, flood fill, etc. Eye dropper is one that's super easy to do, though, and requires no new UI to enable. I've been putting UI features off until after I can edit all the game's maps, but these two are quick enough to do, and useful enough that they might come sooner. :)
Hell yeah! :D
Another thing I noticed is that you can turn off the grid overlay on the map by scrolling to the very top or very bottom of the map using the mousewheel. Best glitch ever imo, as I was wondering if that grid was togglable (which ironically enough it is in a sense - using the scrollbars instead of the mousewheel immediately pops the grid back on).
Throwing a couple screens of world map edits I've been playing around with - 1 being an island where Baron used to be, the other's just me seeing what Kaipo Desert would look like as a forest. Your map editor makes this a very enjoyable experience, especially compared to FFed!
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Fun Fact: FF4 really, really doesn't like it when you try to add a north/south pole by placing long, continuous landmasses along the top and bottom of the world map. :laugh: The map turns black and crashes the game when the map loops. It also causes the rom to be unable to be recognized by the editor for some reason lmfao.
Hurray for backups!
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Fun Fact: FF4 really, really doesn't like it when you try to add a north/south pole by placing long, continuous landmasses along the top and bottom of the world map. :laugh: The map turns black and crashes the game when the map loops. It also causes the rom to be unable to be recognized by the editor for some reason lmfao.
Hurray for backups!
Hm, I wonder if that isn't a bug with the editor, rather than FF4.
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Hmm, that could be the case, and could explain why it wouldn't open the rom afterwards. I'm about to head to the store, but when I get back home I'll try doing those same edits with the old FF4ed and see what happens. If things work correctly, then it's a probably a bug from FF4MapEdit. If it crashes, then 90% likely it was just the game committing suicide! :happy:
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On a whim, I put a solid row of grass on rows 0 and 255, and a solid row of ocean border next to it. It seemed to be okay with that. If you get it to break again, it would be awesome if you could send a screenshot. :)
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Entroper, you are an amazing person. I was planning to work on my overworld tonight, what great timing!
That's all I had to say. I'll report any bugs I find. Just, wow, thank you!
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On a whim, I put a solid row of grass on rows 0 and 255, and a solid row of ocean border next to it. It seemed to be okay with that. If you get it to break again, it would be awesome if you could send a screenshot. :)
Will do! Meant to reply to this weeks ago, but between lack of time at some points and jumping between projects I've been working on I seem to have completely forgotten to. :lame:
Glad to hear adding a single row to the top and bottom doesn't break anything! Perhaps I broke it by going overboard and having like, 4-5 rows on the top and bottom, plus a shit ton of jagged points haha.
I'll redo my edits here in a little bit, and I'll post screenshots of what it looks like in the editor before testing, and what happens in game. :D
EDIT: Well, seems the "shitload of jagged points" must've been what caused my rom to shit itself. I've got 7 solid rows of grass tile on the top n bottom of the world map with no crashing!
Granted, that's not a very big landmass height-wise, but it's looking like my idea to have a small continent on the outer edges of the world map is more plausible than I originally thought!
Also, THANK YOU for having the tile properties in your editor. I recently changed the hovercraft in my project to a ship, and between Chillyfeez's vehicle knowledge and your editor it was absurdly easy to set up!