Porno-Graphic: Powerful New Tile Editor from BHDN

[Rotwang]

The folks at Baddesthacks.net and I are proud to announce Porno-Graphic, a new tile editor currently in development by BHDN true-believers manwithcatears, el kadong, and myself. What's special about Porno-Graphic is how it processes tile data through custom XML "profiles". Unlike currently existing tile editors which limit you to a sampling of hard-coded "codecs" for popular systems, Porno-Graphic profiles give you full control over the tile format for the ROM you are hacking, from tile dimensions to bitplanes, allowing you to edit games that render their tiles in unconventional ways never before supported by popular tile editors.

The Porno-Graphic profile format is powerful but straightforward. Simple tile formats are easy to lay out, complex ones are also doable, and the crazy ones are finally possible.

Profiles can also contain definitions for more than one tile format. Some profiles, particularly the ones for various arcade systems, contain "regions" that define parameters for individual games for that hardware and allow you to define tile data that is composited from multiple ROMs at the same time. This effectively opens the floodgates to a new age of arcade ROM hacks. As an example, this is what it looks like to load tiles for a CPS1 game. The standard CPS1 sprite tile format is selected. Note that the user can control the starting offset for a section of tile data to load, as well as the byte length.




(Rotation tool was added for editing arcade games designed for a vertical monitor mount.)

And here is a screenshot from the same game, but with the non-standard 32x32 background tile size selected at the Import window.



Rather than redoing all this work every time you want to open up your ROM for editing, Porno-Graphic has a project file system that contains any sets of tile you have imported, as well as tile arrangements (more on this at a later date) and palettes. You will be able to manually create a palette, import a palette from popular editing software formats (GIMP, Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, etc.), import a palette from a known format in a ROM, or from a dump of Video RAM in MAME's debugger. At the moment, rudimentary pixel editing is planned, but the long-term goal is to include a comprehensive export/import system so that the bulk of graphics editing can be done on third party editors without any of the usual hiccups involved with other editors that are out there.

Right now a lot is left to be implemented, but the focus right now is to lay the right foundation for the broader scope of this project. We want Porno-Graphic to be the most powerful tile editor ever created and we will stop at nothing to achieve this.


Oh yeah, it also supports Neo-Geo.

[MasterGwonam]

Amazing. 

[MathUser2929]

Great program it looks like. The name of the program sounds like it comes from bhdn tho.

[HaxorKyo]

Great program it looks like. The name of the program sounds like it comes from bhdn tho.

There is no emoticon for what I am feeling.

[NiO]

this is looking pretty interesting for those like me that have some drawing skills but none about coding

[Midna]

Great program it looks like. The name of the program sounds like it comes from bhdn tho.

Right, I mean it's not like one of the earliest NES emulators ever was called NESticle or something.

[shadowmanwkp]

Right, I mean it's not like one of the earliest NES emulators ever was called NESticle or something.

I feel like an idiot for only now noticing that portmanteau.

[tettsui77]

Right, I mean it's not like one of the earliest NES emulators ever was called NESticle or something.

Good man.

Spirit of '97 mah boy.

[Googie]

This is really cool, I love it!     

[Klarth]

Right now a lot is left to be implemented, but the focus right now is to lay the right foundation for the broader scope of this project. We want Porno-Graphic to be the most powerful tile editor ever created and we will stop at nothing to achieve this.

Looks like I have some competition for my project. Well, good luck guys.

[Silas.Design]

Is this compatible with SNES roms? I made a Top Gear rom hack but wasn't able to change the car selection screen sprites because I can't find them on the rom at all, they seem to be compressed in some way.
This could help me out big time.

[Raccoon Sam]

This is legitimately the coolest thing I've seen in some time. In fact, I've wished for similar tools for a long time but everything we have so far is hit and miss. Tile Molester is great but only does 8x8 and graphics only. Djinn Tile Mapper is amazing but never works quite right.
I have very high expectations of this.

Is it cross-platform? Does it do 1D and 2D?

[Rotwang]

Looks like I have some competition for my project. Well, good luck guys.

A little friendly competition never hurt anyone.

Is this compatible with SNES roms? I made a Top Gear rom hack but wasn't able to change the car selection screen sprites because I can't find them on the rom at all, they seem to be compressed in some way.
This could help me out big time.

It is compatible with SNES roms, but for now you'll have to figure out the compression on your own.

Is it cross-platform? Does it do 1D and 2D?

It is a .NET application. Not sure what you mean by "1D" here.

[freem]

I too am confused by the mention of "1D"... Not sure what it's in reference to.

This program is looking pretty good so far; CPS1 tiles aren't very easy to deal with. :S

The name of the program sounds like it comes from bhdn tho.

that kind of seems to be the point (emphasis mine)

Porno-Graphic: Powerful New Tile Editor from BHDN

[tvtoon]

It is a .NET application. Not sure what you mean by "1D" here.

It is probably the "overlay" feature from Tile Molester, where you can choose between one and two dimensions. Mostly to setup 8BPP+ formats correctly (TIM images from PlayStation).