[Tony H]

Been working on a new Zombies Ate My Neighbors SNES ROM editor, and thought I would post it in here to see if anyone has any comments or suggestions.  I've submitted a bunch of other editors/programs to RHDN, but have never posted in this section for input, so thought I'd give it a try.





Some of the features that are currently fully working:

* Editor uses pattern searches to find everything in the ROM, which means that it will work on any version, any region, as well as with or without a header.  It should also work on any ZAMN ROM that has been patched with a ROM hack from RHDN, although I haven't tested that yet.

* All of the values shown above were loaded directly from the ROM.

* Can edit starting values like lives, level, ammo, etc.

* There is a Health section for starting health (new game), health after you lose a life, and health from a First Aid kit.  There is an option that will keep all 3 of these health values the same, which is highly recommended.  The reason is because if you set your health to a higher value and you use a health kit with a lower value, it may reduce how much health you currently have to whatever value you have the first aid kit set to.

* Can add snow to the first level (Zombie Panic).  Credit to TCRF for the info on that.

* Can edit some of the weapon damage amounts.  May add more weapons later.

* Can edit how long things last, like how long you're invincible after getting hit or losing a life, as well as how long some of the potions last (Monster potion, etc).

* Can edit the hit points (HP) for some of the enemies, as well as all 3 of the final bosses.  The final bosses have a lot going on with HP, so there are several different values you can adjust.

* Can adjust how many points you get for each neighbor rescued, which allows you to make it easier or harder to get enough points for bonus victims, etc.

* There is a music and sound FX randomizer that lets you experiment with different values to change which music plays, and which sound FX play.  Not particularly useful, but still fun to play around with.

* When you've made any adjustments you want to make, you have the option of patching the ROM you currently have open, or making a new ROM with all of the changes patched into it.  This keeps your original ROM safe.  If you make a new ROM, it will automatically have "Patched" added to the end of the patched ROM's name, which makes it easy to remember which ROM was patched.  Example: Zombies Ate My Neighbors (USA) Patched.sfc.

* Editor will let you know if it recognizes your ROM as a ZAMN ROM (USA, European, header or no header), but will let you open any ROM just in case.

* If the editor can't find all of the pattern searches when looking for ROM addresses, it will let you know that some or all of the addresses weren't found.  There is a diagnostic tool that you can use to help figure out what went wrong (see the "Dump" button info below).  I tested the editor with 4 different ROMs (USA, European, header and no header) and it worked fine on all of them.

Partially finished:

* There is a Dump button that will dump all of the ROM addresses that the editor found into a text file.  It contains: the name of the game along with it's location on your computer, all of the ROM addresses it found including the values and a description of what each ROM address is for.  Have this about 30% done.  This can also be used to help you figure out what the problem is if the editor didn't load all of the values.

* There are Help/Info buttons that should answer any questions.

* Still working on the GUI and may change it around some.

* Have a little free space in the GUI, so may add a few more things to edit (any ideas?).

* Have not finished the Walk faster, No kickback from Bazooka, or Zombies won't hurt neighbors options yet.  Still haven't decided if I'm going to use those, or add something different.

I played this game a lot many years ago and I've added most of the things that I remembered thinking would be fun to edit, but it's been a long time so I may have forgotten some things.  If anyone has any ideas on other stuff to add or any suggestions, I'd love to hear it. 

[FlamePurge]

this is awesome!

[Tony H]

this is awesome!

Thank you, vivify.

I downloaded some Zombies Ate My Neighbors ROM hacks from here (RHDN) to see if they would work with the editor.  On the very first one I tried, the editor couldn't find the string of bytes it was looking for that enables snow on level 1 in the original/unmodified ROM.  This made sense since all of the levels had been completely changed in the ROM hack.

I added a feature in the editor that checks to see if certain graphics for level 1 have been changed, and if they have, it disables the "Add snow to level 1" option.  This fixed the problem with the ROM hacks, and now 5 out of 5 ROM hacks I've tried so far have worked fine.

ROM hacks tested so far: Ultimate ZAMN, ZAMN - The Sequel, ZAMN The Lost Levels, ONMZAMN, and Oh No! More Zombies Ate My Neighbors.  They all worked fine.

Interestingly, when testing the Oh No! More Zombies Ate My Neighbors ROM hack, it showed that it was able to have the "Add snow to level 1" option enabled, so I turned that option on and patched the ROM.  Even though level 1 is completely different in this ROM hack, it still had snow on the ground.

The new feature that checks to see if snow can be added to level 1 is completely automatic, and makes it impossible to try and make changes to the ROM that could cause problems.

[sevin0seven]

thank you! one of my favorite games. finally it has an editor.

[Tony H]

thank you! one of my favorite games. finally it has an editor.

You're welcome.  One of my favorites too.  Used to play the hell out of this game.

I finished the editor and it's now on RHDN: https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/1683/

Some extra things added...

Each section now has two buttons for showing different values.  One button shows what the normal values are, and the other button shows what the current values are in the ROM that you have opened in the editor.  Useful if you've already patched your ROM before, but you want to make some more changes, but forgot what values you used before.  You can use the "Normal Values" buttons to see what the default values are for comparison.  If you click all of the "Normal Values" buttons and then patch your ROM, it will be restored back to it's original/unmodified state.

Added a bunch of detailed information in the "Boss HP info" button.  Explains why there are so many Boss HP values used in the game, etc.  The Help button also has a bunch of useful info.

Will most likely make a Sega Genesis version next.

What the final SNES version looks like:



May 21, 2022, 03:16:41 pm - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)I found a bug where the editor couldn't find a few ROM addresses with European ROMs.  Bug has been fixed in version 1.1:

https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/1683/

[FireBrandWhip]

"...won't hurt neighbors." LMAO 🤣

Zombies DIDNT eat my neighbors?!

I am impressed with your editor by the way will the giant baby be possible and or be able to edit what item and neighbor drops from that boss.

Also an editor where we can change which levels get dark or perhaps change them all to have different statuses would be f****** awesome!!

One more thing I like to usually suggest a feature that doesn't exist normally in the game.

So here's two of them:
Would it be possible to patch the game so that werewolves don't hatch out of the tourists? And or change which neighbors turn into werewolves? Perhaps a baby turns into only one werewolf! Lol.

For the second feature something like a manic mega mode where waves upon waves of zombies come at you on a small screen and you have to kill a certain amount of enemies to beat the level... Sort of like call of duty!
This shouldn't be hard and would actually be pretty fun to have a "waves level"

Oh and I guess here's one more would it be possible to have two zeeks or two Julie's and give the second player a slightly different palette?

[KingMike]

"Zombies won't hurt neighbors" sounds a little busted.
That is a major risk of the game. Especially being down to one neighbor. You find that neighbor in the level, and you either immediately win the level or you immediately game over, depending if you or an enemy gets to them first.

[FireBrandWhip]

"Zombies won't hurt neighbors" sounds a little busted.
That is a major risk of the game. Especially being down to one neighbor. You find that neighbor in the level, and you either immediately win the level or you immediately game over, depending if you or an enemy gets to them first.

Right. However it's a feature that Tony H put into his editor.

... Although now that this is come up it would be cool to have a certain number limit of how many neighbors can get killed. Say put three so that it will always keep three neighbors up.

On another note do the unkillable neighbors have mobs constantly trying to attack them or do they just ignore them? Perhaps even have a hit points box counter for each neighbor I suppose that would require expansion.
Just a few thoughts on that.

[Tony H]

"...won't hurt neighbors." LMAO 🤣

Zombies DIDNT eat my neighbors?!

I am impressed with your editor by the way will the giant baby be possible and or be able to edit what item and neighbor drops from that boss.

Also an editor where we can change which levels get dark or perhaps change them all to have different statuses would be f****** awesome!!

One more thing I like to usually suggest a feature that doesn't exist normally in the game.

So here's two of them:
Would it be possible to patch the game so that werewolves don't hatch out of the tourists? And or change which neighbors turn into werewolves? Perhaps a baby turns into only one werewolf! Lol.

For the second feature something like a manic mega mode where waves upon waves of zombies come at you on a small screen and you have to kill a certain amount of enemies to beat the level... Sort of like call of duty!
This shouldn't be hard and would actually be pretty fun to have a "waves level"

Oh and I guess here's one more would it be possible to have two zeeks or two Julie's and give the second player a slightly different palette?

Thanks for the feedback on the editor, good to know that someone is getting some use out of it.

I completely forgot about the giant baby.  That one shouldn't be too hard as far as HP values and what it drops.  The tourists not changing into Werewolfs should also be no problem.  Will check these out a bit later.

The rest of those requests would probably require a ton of work, but I'll look into them.

Right. However it's a feature that Tony H put into his editor.

... Although now that this is come up it would be cool to have a certain number limit of how many neighbors can get killed. Say put three so that it will always keep three neighbors up.

On another note do the unkillable neighbors have mobs constantly trying to attack them or do they just ignore them? Perhaps even have a hit points box counter for each neighbor I suppose that would require expansion.
Just a few thoughts on that.

Correct, the "Zombies won't hurt neighbors" option can be turned on or off, depending on what you prefer. 

If the option is turned on, zombies do sometimes tend to gather around neighbors while trying to kill them.  The HP counter for neighbors sounds interesting, may look into that as well.

Working on the Genesis version of the ZAMN editor, and it has an option that makes zombies ignore the neighbors.  May add the same option to the SNES version.

The Genesis version also has a very basic level select feature that you can patch into the game, which allows you to choose your starting level from the Option Menu within the game.  The SNES version doesn't have an option menu, so I tried to do the same thing in the password menu, but couldn't get it working.

On last thing about the SNES version of the editor, It looks like the Snakeoid HP adjustment doesn't work.  It reads the HP value correctly from the ROM, but it doesn't get patched.  Will get that fixed soon.

EDIT:

Link to the Genesis version of the editor: https://www.romhacking.net/forum/index.php?topic=34960.0

EDIT 2:

Finished version 1.2 with these changes...

Fixed a bug where any new Snakeoid HP value was not getting patched into the ROM.

Added a new adjustment so you can edit the amount of HP for the Giant Baby bosses.

https://www.romhacking.net/utilities/1683/

[FireBrandWhip]

Cool.

Also there is that alien spaceship that you got to use soda cans to kill... It can be taken out but it takes a while usually not worth it.

As for the manic waves mode... To make it very simple.

That shouldn't be too hard to add just something like the way the zombies generate... And then put an intensity counter of how often they spawn.(say: 0 slow, 1 medium rate, 3 high, 4 rediculous)

And after a certain number of counters higher numbers of mobs and more intense mobs spawn...(after set amount, say 25% of 255) Such as the evil dolls and mummies... Then later throw a couple chainsaw Maniacs (after 75%).

After the counter of kills reaches 100% of (set amount, 255) that level ends automatically. Triggered just like walking into a doorway.

This of course would be a polished feature after the other things are figured out and done.

Another thing that would be cool is have regular mobs have a random chance of dropping a random item. Sort of like the vampires drop skeleton key.

As for easy features, would it be possible to remove the slimes spawning in cabinets? Or adjust what things Spawn from what types of cabinets or boxes?

With these features we can make some really freaking cool mods!