SNEER (Symphony of the Night Editor and Entity Recompiler) by Nyxojaele

Well, the main feature of a editor for see it like finished is...
It must have undo button!! lol



So this will be released when undo button stay fully working. 

Keep up the good work, Nyxojaele. This editor may be one of the last hopes (along with ground up fan games) for the capability to see new CV-based Metroidvania-style level design in the future if LoS' success has persuaded Konami that they no longer need to make any more Metroidvania-style CVs.

As for an undo button, I was able to subsist in SMILE for the longest time without one, so I'm sure at least I can manage without one That said, if the first release is going to be a strict viewer, an undo button won't be needed for obvious reasons.

Okay folks, pre-alpha release time!

Also, just to be clear, I'm only working on this project in a -very- part-time capacity right now, as my time is largely being tied up elsewhere.
What that means to you is that it may take some time in between releases and bug fixes, but I assure you that I will be keeping track of them!

Currently this only exists as a viewer. The next release will see the viewer capabilities expanded upon.
Readme:
**************************************************

Symphony of the Night Editor and Entity Recompiler

                     SNEER

**************************************************
                 By Nyxojaele


Installation Instructions:
Just run Setup.exe, it should take care of all the prerequisites for you.
If you have troubles with prerequisites, they are as follows:
 * Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Client Profile
 * Microsoft XNA Framework Redistributable 4.0
Prerequisites for the installer are as follows:
 * Windows Installer 3.1


Features:
 * View all tile maps for Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.
  -Normal maps locations: <ISO>/ST/<MAPID>
   -*****DON'T TRY TO OPEN <ISO>/ST/SEL! IT'S NOT A MAP! IT'S THE SAVED GAME SELECTION SCREEN!*****
  -Boss maps locations: <ISO>/BOSS
 * View locations of entities


How to use:
 * The first thing you will need to do is select the locations of your DRA.BIN and F_GAME.BIN files.
  -DRA.BIN can be found in <ISO>/DRA.BIN
  -F_GAME.BIN can be found in <ISO>/BIN/F_GAME.BIN
  -If you can't find these files, it's okay, but you either won't be able to see load/save rooms,
   or they may look corrupted. The rest of the map will still display correctly.
 * Select File | Open and select either of the .BIN files found in the map directory
   (eg. CHI.BIN or F_CHI.BIN) - It doesn't matter which, SNEER is smart enough to figure it out.
 * The first thing you will see is the top left corner of the map, if it were a rectangle.
  -*****YOU MIGHT NOT SEE ANYTHING IMMEDIATELY IF THE MAP DOESN'T HAVE A ROOM IN THE TOP LEFT CORNER!*****
 * Using the mouse, right-click + Drag to pan the map around.
 * Use the mouse wheel to zoom in/out.


Known Issues:
 * Some rooms appear to be cut off [partially]. This can be seen at the top right corner of DAI,
   and near the left side of NZ1. The rooms are still there, but the neighboring rooms are drawing
   on top of them.
 * There are some graphical glitches on my development machine, causing bright green colors to appear
   where they shouldn't. I'm pretty sure this is my video card screwing up, as I've testing it on my
   other machine and it looks fine, but I thought I'd put it out there.


Change Log:

v0.1 2012-02-15
 * First Release!


 Contact:
  * The best way to contact me, report bugs, or generally be a nuisance, is via www.romhacking.net.
  * The forum thread for this project at the time of this writing:
    http://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php/topic,11315.30.html



Download here!

Thank you very much for this. Even as a viewer, I was looking forward to this release.

I just get "error loading map zone" for any .bin in the /ST/ or /BOSS/ directories I try to open.

Hmm, that's unfortunate- I'll have to see what I can do about that.

Oh, I guess I should specify which version of SotN I use, cause that -might- (likely not, but you never know...) matter.
The current ISO that I use is (US) SLUS-00067. If you're using a different version, I make no guarantees about whether it will work. This may be addressed in a later release.

Also, I'm going to put more logging information in so it'll be easier for me to fix these problems.

Alright, I think I found out what the issue was. 00067 is the version I'm using, but the editor perhaps doesn't like that my "iso" is actually a .bin file rather than a .iso and won't let me navigate it unless I mount it with daemon tools (thus probably messing with the way the editor wants to work; I thought perhaps since it was just viewing the files it wouldn't care if they were essentially read-only). I had to go in, grab all the files in one of the stage directories (the CHI files in this case as a test) and copy them out of the game file and into the file system. Opening them with the editor then allowed me to view the maps. Of course that probably won't do for future editing purposes so I guess I'll have to get a bin to iso converter or something unless .bin support is added later. But either way that should solve the issue.

Ah yes, that would likely be a problem.
Since SNEER is intended to be an editor in the future, we're going to require write access to the map files, so I consider it acceptable to force the user to have extracted the map files from the ISO, and not be trying to use them from inside a CD image.
I should make note of that in the readme.

Thanks for posting back about what it was- that makes life easier for me^^

Ah, okay, so that was actually the intended way to go about it. I kind of just muddled through to get to that result -- I originally figured since there was nothing in the readme about extracting the map files that it was intended to just open them from the iso.

Having the edited maps separate from the rest of the game until they need to be re-added for testing will probably be an easier situation for people making a lot of backups as they edit maps anyway since the individual maps are rather small in size and thus easier to back up.

can you add a full text and dialogue editor to your SotN editor please? So lots of people can make translations to their own languages  and i hope it won't be that hard cuz there are not so many texts and dialogues in the game.

Unfortunately, because of the way the dialogues etc are implemented in the game, it's going to be quite difficult.
I'll mark it down tho, as a possible future feature.

Hello to you, Nyxojaele. 
I'm as you, on one project in the same game.
Sorry, I'm french and it may you don't understand all that I say.
I didn't want change the structure of the maps, I did want just translate the game in french. In our country we don't have SOTN in french...
I did want translate the text and the sound, and at the last season I say to me, "Why don't remake the game completely?".
Then I began change the musics, the voices and the texts...
The only problem is, I have not understood how function the structure of the maps. It's for this raison, I have been waiting for your software since long time.
The viewer version work very good, I hope just, the real version will be for very soon.
Congratulation, very good work! 
Just a last thing.
Is it possible to create one map file if we create our own tile file?
I explain, I wish add in the PSX version translated by me in french, the lost levels of the Jap version of Sega Saturn.
I though it's a good idea, there is only four levels, the underground garden regular and the inversed, as well for the cursed prison.
For the moment I don't think put a interactives sprits in those regions cause I don't know yet the function of the game on this way.

I would like SNEER to be able to do exactly that, at some point in the future!
But that will probably be one of the last things I program in, as I don't fully understand how to do it yet >_>;;

For now, the [high level] plan is:

Viewer -> Editor -> Creator

Me too, I don't full understand all. But, it must say, it's enough complicated for a PS1 game...
Otherwise the high level Editor would be great for me for now.
I'm rather specialized in the translation of text and sound. But the mix of both should be good for a new game. 
I'm very impatiently to try it. 

Nyxojaele, could you update your first post with a list of things you need help with, or a to-do list, so random people can trawl the internet looking for places where what you need has already been done?