- •Downloads:
- •Update Log:
- •Table of Contents:
- •Prologue: Bare Basics
- •Chapter 1: Key Terminology & Abbreviations
- •7Zip Archive – Supposedly the best file archiver there is, but not used as much, and thus less convenient. Requires 7zip or winRar to use.
- •VisualBoyAdvance – most people’s emulator of choice, almost always referred to as “vba” for short.
- •Chapter 2: Using Nightmare Modules
- •I upload anything that I think might be useful to someone on that site. Just use the menus and search until you find it.
- •Chapter 3: File Management
- •In order to be a successful hacker you need to have a lot of good management.
- •Chapter 4: Pointer Tables
- •Chapter 5: Battle Animation Editor
- •Chapter 6: Character Editor
- •Chapter 7: Class Editor
- •Chapter 8: Item Editor
- •Item icon – obvious
- •Chapter 9: Spell Association Editor
- •Chapter 13: Movement Cost Editor
- •If the value next to a type of terrain is ‘255’ then it is uncrossable because a unit won’t have 255 movement points.
- •Chapter 16: Battle Palette Reference Editor
- •If you want to know how to actually edit battle palettes’ colors, you can find that in a later chapter that I will make.
- •Chapter 17: Arena Class Editor
- •It’s a bit of work, but making cGs is quite rewarding, and it’s easier than some stuff, that’s for sure! Good luck with your cg making!
- •Chapter 20: Lyn’s Ending Editor
- •Chapter 21: Tutorial Editing/Getting Rid of the Tutorial
- •Part 2: Downloading the Programs
- •Part 3: Preparing Your midi
- •If you still have more than 10 tracks, you should find another midi. Sorry but, there are limits in life.
- •Part 4: Applying Blazer’s Beta Music Insertion/Instrument Patch
- •Part 5: Converting Your midi
- •Part 6: Making Your midi Repeat and Transferring it to Your rom
- •If the b1 and bc are next to each other then I can almost guarantee you want to replace it, so hit “replace” and do that with every instance and once you’re finished you’re good to go.
- •Part 7: Track Pointers & Repointing
- •Part 8: Finale- Assembling Your Song & Profit
- •If you don’t have this module, you’ll have to use this outdated way of doing it. Do check to see if you have the latest Nightmare Modules in general, but otherwise… well, sorry I guess. Xp
- •Part 9: Possible Errors & Wrap-up
- •Part 10: Documentation and Stuff
- •Atrius’ Notes:
- •Charon’s Notes:
- •Part 11: The Music Hacking Run-Down (Shorter Version of Tutorial & Walls of Text)
- •Part 12: Credits & Thanks
- •Chapter 25: Music Editing with Zahlman’s Song Editor
- •If you actually do type in help and press ‘enter’ on your keyboard, it’ll give you a list of commands, and tell you some stuff. Here’s the important stuff:
- •It worked! Great! I know how to import a song!
- •Chapter 26: Exporting Music with gba2midi
- •Chapter 27: Battle Background Graphics
- •If it doesn’t, I suggest double-checking all your settings (everything should be compressed) and make sure your width is set to 30 and your height is set to 32.
- •Chapter 28: Music Array Module
- •Chapter 29: Sound Room Editing
- •Chapter 30: Chapter Unit Editing with Nightmare
- •Chapter 31: Death Quotes
- •Chapter 32: Event iDs
- •Chapter 33: Battle Conversations
- •Chapter 34: Triangle Attacks
- •Chapter 35-36: The Animation Modules & Repointing Tutorial
- •It should look like this:
- •Chapter 37: Support Editing
- •Chapter 38: Miscellaneous Nightmare Modules
- •In this chapter I’m going to quickly run through what some other nightmare modules do.
- •Vendor/Armory Editors – edits the contents of vendors and armories.
- •Vulnerary Editor – edits the amount of hp restored by a vulnerary. (Default: 10)
- •Vulnerary Editor – edits the amount of hp restored by a vulnerary.
- •Chapter 40: Text Editing with fEditor Adv
- •Chapter 41: Portrait Formatting & Preparation
- •Chapter 42: Portrait Insertion with fEditor Adv
- •I wouldn’t mess with the palette editor (the colorful boxes).
- •Chapter 43: Locating Palettes
- •Chapter 44: Editing Palettes
- •I don’t exactly have a color I want to use for this title screen background, so I’m just going to show you how to get the rgb of some random color on a portrait.
- •If something didn’t work right, make sure you:
- •Chapter 45: Working with gbage
- •Chapter 46: Chapter Data Editor
- •Vision Distance is for Fog of War (fow). If it’s ‘0’, it’s assumed there is no fog of war.
- •Hold it! (Unless you aren’t hacking fe7!)
- •Chapter 47: Map Creation
- •I’m tired of writing this tutorial. Honestly. So from now on, I’m going to stop making so many wasteful comments like the one I am typing right now.
- •Chapter 48: Map Insertion
- •If you’re looking to make a totally new chapter (instead of being limited to the old game’s exact same scenes with exact same events) then read on, because I’m going to hack events next!
- •Chapter 49: Event Assembler Basics
- •I would just always add end guards since it’s not something you need to worry about too much.
- •Chapter 50: Events – The Layout
- •Including the stlb
- •Chapter 51: Events – The Event Codes
- •Items is just a list of items with a max of 4 starting items. I prefer to use the 3rd method of writing them, with the brackets and all. Each item is separated by a comma.
- •Chapter 52: Event Construction
- •VillageGate: // name of tile data group
- •Chapter 54: Chapter Creation Finishing Touches
- •Chapter 55: Importing Tilesets
- •Part 2: The First Frame
- •Part 1b: Palette Preparing
- •Part 2: Testing the Foundation to Your Animation
- •If all goes well, your guy should be standing, kinda like this.
- •Part 3: Making the Rest of Your Frames
- •Chapter 58: Custom Battle Animations – Scripts
- •I just pulled a Xeld. Had to do that at least once in this tutorial.
- •If you don’t know what a sound sounds like, just test it out with your animation and find out. Experiment with the codes if you need to.
- •Chapter 59: Custom Spell Animations
- •0X85 command count for this spell: 10
- •It’s true! It did work! It’s still very much a work in progress, as you can see, but the point is we got he test frame working. The rest just takes time, patience, and the attitude that you can do it!
- •Chapter 60: Weapon Icons
- •If you did, you are successful. Despite the odd format of the icons, you have spotted them, and that is what is most important, in my honest opinion.
- •I have this show up:
- •Chapter 61: Map Sprites
- •Chapter 62: Proper Betatesting
- •Chapter 63: vba’s Tools
- •Chapter 64: Other vba Options
- •In this chapter I’m going to detail some of vba’s semi-obscure but not totally obscure options. Knowing how to use vba will help you test your game in various ways.
- •Chapter 65: Recording Videos & Sound
- •Chapter 66: Fixing the Desync with VirtualDubMod & Video Rendering
- •Chapter 67: ips Patching & General Patching Information
- •Chapter 68: ups Patching
- •I suggest you read the ips patching tutorial (at least the beginning) if you haven’t done so as I will not be as thorough with this chapter as I was the previous.
- •In an extremely similar manner you can apply patches. Take a look.
- •Chapter 69: jfp Patching
- •Chapter 70: xDelta Patching
- •Chapter 71: Nightmare Module Format
- •It is recommended (for reasons of readability by humans) that a newline
- •Is unused ("null") for editboxes.
- •Chapter 72: Miscellaneous Information Archive
- •Chapter 73: Useful Links & Websites
- •Chapter 74: Bonus – Assembly Hacking
- •Preparations:
- •Part 1: Background Info
- •Part 2: Inserting an Assembly Hack
- •Part 2: Breaking Down Your First asm Hack
- •I digressed a lot, but back to the point:
- •Part 3: Second Example – More Codes, More Fun
- •Read other people’s doc.
- •Part 4: More Examples – “Speed-Analyzing”
- •It’s thumb. Write to offset 0. Start with label “Initial”. Push 5 registers and the last register, then start a loop counter in r2 with starting value 0x00.
- •Ifat *Conditional id* *asm routine pointer*
- •I may have mentioned this before, but finding where to hack routines is difficult. And I’m sure I mentioned that finding space for them is difficult.
- •It’s not super long, but it’s got some new things we need to learn. Let’s get started.
- •Part 5: Finding asm Routines & Basics of Using a Debugger
- •Warning: terms may not be accurate. In fact, they almost definitely aren’t accurate, as you’ve probably figured out by now.
- •I don’t know what the flags do either, but they’re there, right next to the window. That’s g.
- •I hope to hear of your achievements in the near future!
- •Final Chapter: Credits, Thanks, and the Epilogue
Chapter 52: Event Construction
I’m going to make this chapter easy on myself. You look at a bunch of events and recognize all the codes used (because I explained most of them). Then you are like “oh, this makes sense” and you get a feel of how actually using the codes to build your events work. Right, I’ve explained enough about events, so you’ll have to work it out on your own by looking at this chapter of mine from Tactics Universe. If you still need more help constructing your events, please look at Arch’s tutorial, found here-- http://serenesforest.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=21165
#include EAstdlib.event
//#include NewMacros.event – this would load my custom macros. You can add a line like this
//to load your own macro file, which can contain your own macros and macros by others.
//I suggest you download Arch’s and my macros from the FEShrine as they are very useful.
org 0xC9C9C8+(4*0x5A) // - tells the game where the pointer to this chapter’s events is
POIN Pointers // - makes the pointer
org 0xCB2000 // - tells where to insert data
Pointers: // label name
POIN Turn_events // makes a pointer to turn events, same for others but different events
POIN CharacterTalk
POIN Location_events
POIN Misc_events
POIN Ballista_events Ballista_events
POIN BadEN BadEH BadEN BadEH
POIN GoodEN GoodEH GoodEN GoodEH
POIN Opening_event Ending_event
Turn_events: // name of turn events. Look how it matches with the POIN to the top.
TURN 0x00 PreBattle [01,01] 0x00 0x00 // - creates a turn scene on turn 1 on the ally phase
CODE 0x00 // ends structure events
PreBattle: // the actual turn scene that is referenced in the turn event. be careful with //capitalization and spelling always!
BlackOff // custom macro used to fade out of a black screen at the beginning of a chapter or // after battle preps
ENDA // ends the scenic event
CharacterTalk: // for character talks, most commonly recruitment conversations
CODE 0x00 // ends structure events
Location_events:
Village(0x07,Village1,3,2) // creates a village with event ID 0x07
Village(0x08,Village2,3,8) // creates a village whose scene is “Village2”
Village(0x09,Village3,2,11) // creates a village with co-ordinates (2,11)
Village(0x00,Village4,1,14) // village that can be visited repetitively due to 0x00 as event ID
Door(9,14) // allows a door to be opened at 9,14
Door(10,14)
Armory(WeaponShop,6,16) // creates an armory at (6,16)
Vendor(ItemShop,9,17) // creates a shop with a list of weapons called ItemShop
CODE 0x00 // ends location events/structural events
Village1:
Text(0x0D,0x970) // text macro that loads background 0x0D and text 0x970
ITGV KnightsCrest // gives a KnightsCrest to the active unit visiting the village
REMA // removes graphics/returns to map
ENDA // end scenic event
Village2:
Text(0x01,0x971)
MONE 0x00 5000 // gives 5,000 gold to player, for villages (cutscene would be 0x01, not 0x00)
REMA
ENDA
Village3:
Text(0x0D,0x972)
ITGV 0xA5 // gives item/weapon 0xA5 to current unit
ENDA
Village4:
Text(0x01,0x973)
REMA
ENDA
WeaponShop:
SHLI IronSword SteelSword IronSpear SteelSpear Javelin IronAxe SteelAxe HandAxe IronBow SteelBow // list of weapons available at weapon shop
CODE 0x00 // data separator
ItemShop: // same structure as weaponshop
SHLI Heal Mend Fire Thunder Lightning Shine Vulnerary Antitoxin
CODE 0x00
Misc_events: // miscellaneous events, triggered events
ALIGN 4 // prevents misalignment from shops
CauseGameOverIfLordDies // when event 0x65 is triggered, game over screen will occur
DefeatAll(Ending_event) // when all enemies are defeated, the game goes to “Ending_event”
AREA 0x14 ItemFind [9,13] [12,14] // area event with event ID 0x14 called “ItemFind”.
//Item can be found by waiting anywhere between [9,13] or [12,14]
CODE 0x00
ItemFind:
ITGV DoorKey // gives a doorkey
REMA
ENDA
Ballista_events:
CODE 0x00
Opening_event:
ALIGN 4 // prevents misalignment from ballista data
CameraOff // custom macro that turns the camera off so it doesn’t follow unit movement
CAM1 [0,0] // moves camera to position [0,0]
UnitClear // custom macro that clears all units from the field (redundant, no units loaded yet)
BlackOff // custom macro that removes black screen
CAM1 [0,0]
ENUN // waits for event to finish/camera to move
LOU1 Allies // loads unit group “Allies”
ENUN // waits for units to move
CAM1 [3,10]
STAL 40 // stalls the game for time of ‘40’, a short pause that helps the flow of events
CAM1 [6,14]
STAL 40
CAM1 [14,14]
LOU1 Kelik // loads unit group “Kelik” (NOT necessarily the character “Kelik”)
ENUN
STAL 40
CURF [14,15] // flashes the cursor on (14,15)
FADI 0x10 // fades in with speed of 0x10
BACG 0x0A // loads background 0x0A
FADU 0x10 // fades out with speed of 0x10
TEX1 0x967 // loads text
REMA // clears text and returns to map
STAL 0x10 // stall, but with hex input
ENDB // goes to battlepreps, one can alternatively use a macro
Allies: // name of unit group/event label
UNIT Sain 0x00 0x00 Level(1,Ally,False) [6,16] [6,16] [0x00] [00000000] // loads character “Sain”
UNIT Lyn 0x00 0x00 Level(1,Ally,False) [3,12] [3,12] [0x00] [00000000] // class “0x00”
// the game knows to load Lyn’s class as Lyn is already an allied unit in the save data
UNIT 0x49 Myrmidon 0x00 Level(15,NPC,False) [14,15] [14,15] [0x00] [00000000]
// loads level 15 NPC without autoleveling (automatically adding stats)
UNIT Empty // unit separator to prevent glitches
Kelik:
UNIT 0x02 0x00 0x00 Level(1,Ally,False) [16,14] [16,15] [0x00] [00000000]
UNIT Empty
Ending_event:
MUEN 0x05 // fades out of music at speed 0x05
FADI 0x10
BACG 0x0A
MUS1 0x0038 // loads music 0x0038
FADU 0x10
TEX1 0x968
MNCH 0x17 // goes to chapter 0x17 (not exactly chapter 17, but the 0x17th chapter in the data)
ENDA
GoodEN: // allied units, controls positioning and # allowed in battle preps
UNIT 0x02 0x00 0x00 Level(1,Ally,False) [16,10] [16,10] [0x00] [00000000]
UNIT Sain 0x00 0x00 Level(1,Ally,False) [8,12] [8,12] [0x00] [00000000]
UNIT Lyn 0x00 0x00 Level(1,Ally,False) [16,4] [16,4] [0x00] [00000000]
UNIT Empty
GoodEH: // allied units in hard mode (you can limit the # allowed in battle preps)
UNIT 0x02 0x00 0x00 Level(1,Ally,False) [16,10] [16,10] [0x00] [00000000]
UNIT Sain 0x00 0x00 Level(1,Ally,False) [8,12] [8,12] [0x00] [00000000]
UNIT Lyn 0x00 0x00 Level(1,Ally,False) [3,4] [3,4] [0x00] [00000000]
UNIT Empty
BadEN: // normal mode enemy units
UNIT 0x49 Myrmidon 0x00 Level(15,Enemy,False) [16,2] [16,2] [0x9C] [0x00, 0x03, 0x09, 0x00]
UNIT 0xB3 Archer 0x00 Level(10,Enemy,True) [14,15] [14,15] [ShortBow,IronBow,Vulnerary] [0x00, 0x03, 0x09, 0x00] // loads inventory of ShortBow etc.
UNIT 0xB3 Pirate 0x00 Level(10,Enemy,True) [18,13] [18,13] [SteelAxe,HandAxe] [0x00, 0x03, 0x09, 0x00] // unit has AI of “attack in range” (00030900)
UNIT 0xB3 Pirate 0x00 Level(10,Enemy,True) [2,12] [2,12] [PoisonAxe,Vulnerary] [0x00, 0x03, 0x09, 0x00] // unit DOES autolevel (set to true)
UNIT 0xB3 Pirate 0x00 Level(10,Enemy,True) [10,6] [10,6] [IronAxe,HandAxe] [0x00, 0x03, 0x09, 0x00]
UNIT 0xB3 Pirate 0x00 Level(10,Enemy,True) [6,7] [6,7] [HandAxe,Vulnerary] [0x00, 0x03, 0x09, 0x00]
UNIT 0xB3 Fighter 0x00 Level(10,Enemy,True) [15,6] [15,6] [SteelAxe,HandAxe] [0x00, 0x03, 0x09, 0x00]
UNIT 0xB3 Mercenary 0x00 Level(10,Enemy,True) [7,3] [7,3] [SteelSword] [0x00, 0x03, 0x09, 0x00]
UNIT 0xB3 Mercenary 0x00 Level(10,Enemy,True) [12,10] [12,10] [PoisonSword,Antitoxin] [0x00, 0x03, 0x09, 0x00]
UNIT Empty
BadEH: // for hard mode units
UNIT 0x49 Myrmidon 0x00 Level(15,Enemy,False) [16,2] [16,2] [0x9C] [00000000]
UNIT 0xB3 Archer 0x00 Level(12,Enemy,True) [14,15] [14,15] [ShortBow,Longbow,Vulnerary] [00000000]
UNIT 0xB3 Pirate 0x00 Level(12,Enemy,True) [18,13] [18,13] [SteelAxe,HandAxe] [00000000]
UNIT 0xB3 Pirate 0x00 Level(12,Enemy,True) [2,12] [2,12] [PoisonAxe,Vulnerary] [00000000]
UNIT 0xB3 Pirate 0x00 Level(12,Enemy,True) [10,6] [10,6] [IronAxe,HandAxe] [00000000]
UNIT 0xB3 Pirate 0x00 Level(12,Enemy,True) [6,7] [6,7] [HandAxe,Vulnerary] [00000000]
UNIT 0xB3 Fighter 0x00 Level(12,Enemy,True) [15,6] [15,6] [SteelAxe,HandAxe] [00000000]
UNIT 0xB3 Mercenary 0x00 Level(12,Enemy,True) [7,3] [7,3] [SteelBlade,Vulnerary] [00000000]
UNIT 0xB3 Mercenary 0x00 Level(12,Enemy,True) [12,10] [12,10] [PoisonSword,Antitoxin] [00000000]
UNIT Empty
org 0xC9C9C8+(4*0x59) // - Pointer to tile map changes
POIN TileChanges // repoints tile changes
org 0xCB1F00 // puts data at offset 0xCB1F00
TileChanges: // list of tile changes
TileMap(0x00,0x03,0x02,0x01,0x01,VillageGate) // tile change #0 (0x00)
TileMap(0x01,0x03,0x08,0x01,0x01,VillageGate) // top-left tile of change is [0x03,0x08] or [3,8]
TileMap(0x02,0x02,0x0B,0x01,0x01,VillageGate) // [0x02,0x0B] = [2,11] – convert to hex
TileMap(0x03,0x01,0x0E,0x01,0x01,VillageGate) // w/ your head or a calculator
TileMap(0x04,0x09,0x0E,0x02,0x01,TownGate) // tile area is 2 tiles horizontal, 1 tile vertical
CODE $FF // terminates tile changes
CODE $00 // above
CODE $00 // above