Wario Land 2 editor

[evmatter]

Earlier this year, I started hacking Wario Land 2. Originally, I just wanted to hack it so that I could find all the hidden areas in the game since there are so many. Then, after seeing Drenn's Wario Land 3 editor, I figured that I could make a similar level editor from what I learned about the Wario Land 2 rom. The editor should have no problem working, but if you find any bugs please let me know. Any feedback is appreciated.

Download link on the utilities page:
http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/1098/

Screenshots:

[Raccoon Sam]

... ! !

Wow! That looks absolutely amazing. I read the readme and I'm confident you know absolutely what you're doing. Judging by the screenshots, it looks feature-packed too.

Alas, trying to open it gives me this:
The Java JAR file "WL2Editor.jar" could not be launched.
Check the Console for possible error messages.

The console is empty. My OS is OSX 10.9.5. and my Java version is Java 7 Update 71. I will try running the jar later on my home computer with a different OS, but I can already tell this is an amazing editor.

Please log all your findings of unused data to The Cutting Room Floor!

[Mr. Jolt]

From what I see here, this editor must be amazing! I think you have out a considerable effort into making it. I'll play with this editor later, since it looks awesome! 

[evmatter]

I'm running Java version 8 Update 20 (build 1.8.0_20-b26). This is a relatively recent version of Java, so that is probably the reason why it is not working on older versions of Java. I built it using Windows 7, but it was not working when I tried running it on another Windows 7 computer with an older version of Java.
December 24, 2014, 12:46:36 AM - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)
After upgrading the Java version on another computer, the program ran just fine. Regardless, I changed a setting in the compiler so that it should be compatible with JRE 1.6 and up.

The Cutting Room Floor page has also been updated: http://tcrf.net/Wario_Land_II

[wariolandgoldpiramid]

This sounds really awesome, and I really want to try this program out.
Unfortunatly, it does not work.
It gives me a window to select a file. But, after i choose what file to open, NOTHING HAPPENS AT ALL!
I tryed opening the correct rom, a wrong rom, regadless. The rom does not open. There is no error message. The select a file window simply closes, and nothing happens.

And i just recently updated my Java to the most recent version, so I have no idea why this is happening...

[Jorpho]

To be clear, does this only work on the GBC version, or does it work with the original, too?  (And are there any interesting differences in the data?)

[evmatter]

Thanks for the feedback. If this issue is solved, then other users won't have the same issue. I updated to the newest java version (Version 8 update 25), then recompiled the program using a different approach. See if this version works: https://app.box.com/s/uzoxhf75eip5zj53giau

As for which version of the game works, only the GBC version works as far as I know. I was unable to find the original game to test with. One thing interesting I found in the GBC data was that only the first megabyte of the data is used. The second megabyte appears to contain parts of the original game such as the original sprites. If you compare images between the original and the color version, some of the sprites appear to be slightly different (apart from the fact that one isn't in color).

[90s Retro Gamer]

Are there any Wario Land: Mario Land 3 editors???

[evmatter]

There doesn't appear to be any editors for Wario Land: Mario Land 3. However, there's a lot of documentation about the rom in this thread: http://jul.rustedlogic.net/thread.php?id=15144

[wariolandgoldpiramid]

Thanks for the feedback. If this issue is solved, then other users won't have the same issue. I updated to the newest java version (Version 8 update 25), then recompiled the program using a different approach. See if this version works: https://app.box.com/s/uzoxhf75eip5zj53giau

Unfortunatly, this one does not open up at all
There's an error message "A Java Exception has occured"

[evmatter]

Okay. Hopefully this one works. I recompiled everything with Java 6 using only the basic command line operations. Let me know if this one works. Here is the link: https://app.box.com/s/uzoxhf75eip5zj53giau
Yes, it's the same link as before, but the files in the zip file should be updated.

[wariolandgoldpiramid]

Yeah, it opened!
I'll try it out and tell you what I think of it later
January 20, 2015, 10:47:23 AM - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)
I tried it out, and it does seem to be very good, but some things are a bit confusing.
Still, with a bit of learning, it can be learned

[NekoBaron]

I fricking love this and signed up just to post a review for it.

Is it possible to edit the tilesets that you have to select from?

And I would love if you could add a coin counter when viewing a level so I can gauge if I need to add more to a level.

[evmatter]

Thanks for the review. One of my goals for this project was to make it easy to use.

Now that you mentioned it, I'll definitely start trying to add some tileset editing features into the editor. I'm still trying to think of a good way to implement it. The game doesn't store tilesets as a whole but instead keeps the sprites, metatiles, tile behavior, palettes, and other things in different parts of the rom and throws them together for each level. The "themes" in the editor were actually hard-coded to give the appearance that the tilesets were better organized. This is why it's a bit tricky to implement. What I'll probably end up doing is auto-generating themes from the rom as it's loading. That way, it'll be easier to maintain some sort of organization. The themes would no longer have names but would be assigned numbers.

The coin counter idea, on the other hand, should be fairly easy to implement. It'll be included it in the next release.

[NekoBaron]

I mostly would like to just be able to use more block types is why Im interested in it for puzzles and such, since you generally can only have certain ones per set sadly and I was hoping to come up with some complicated ones like enemy only platform bouncing more combined with the fire/fat/throw blocks and such but I'm enjoying it still even with the current tileset and game limits.

Im aiming to redo all 50 levels with the same chapter themes more or less and just trying thing out, like if I can mess with boss arenas and still have them work, and things like flatten wario does not like slopes >_> . Messing with the tileset pallets are pretty awesome and give quite a nice set of options and its a shame the original didn't use the more varied colours as much.

[evmatter]

Here's what the tile set editor looks like so far. "Themes" will now be called tile sets.



So, I decided not to auto-generate tile sets to choose from, but instead made it more like how it is organized in the rom. Changing tile sets won't be as simple as in the previous version, but there is a lot more control. This way is also better because it will allow you to add more tile sets to the game. You should be able to make about 6 more tile sets, although there could potentially be much more if I created a better data management system. Also, the amount of palette sets that can be used has increased from 70 palette sets to 203 palette sets. Once I create the palette editor, it should be fairly easy to add new ones.

One thing that I found interesting when messing with the rom is that subtiles can be flipped and put in the foreground. This was a feature that was never used in the actual game, but is still fully functional. I assume this was because it was ported from the original gameboy to the gameboy color.

[evmatter]

The palette sets panel is now finished. Now you should be able to edit any of the palette sets that the tiles in the levels use as well as create new palette sets. Another thing I decided to add is the ability to edit the palettes of objects/enemies. The palettes for Wario's alternate forms are also contained in the object sets, so those palettes can be edited as well.

Here is a link to the editor with all the updates added:
https://app.box.com/s/xuhkx5cbhmf0c7il8mm8wmzlsc9l7jud

[NekoBaron]

This is fricking awesome, I'm a lil scared of editing too many thing in the tilesets but its helped out big time to be able to tweek some of the pallets to correct some of the colours and adding alternate blocks, the coin counter helped out a lot too.

[evmatter]

Small update:

Since it's hard to know what resources you're editing in the tile sets and palette sets, I added a feature to let you know what levels and regions use that resource. If you hover the mouse over the text fields found in the new panels, a list of levels and regions that use that resource will show up.

Link: https://app.box.com/s/qi8wuwy5k52bh2765fmzuimurw9nzaly

[NekoBaron]

perfect, the only one thing I've notice is the lil hi-lighted square and selection indicators seem to be 1-2 pixels too big/off center (just a lil graphical issues).