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 The Ultimate EarthBound ROM Hack Utility! Latest News (16:30 03/10/02):
Final Update! Yes, this is the last update, at least for a very, very long time. The reason it is the last update is mentioned in the previous news update, look there for the details. Okay, well here is the last stuff.
While this site is frozen, I assume that one or two EB Hacking sites will spawn up somewhere. I also assume that whoever's running the PK Hack forum will do something to let people know about those sites, like add links to those sites on the message board or something. We must not let the EB hacking community die out just because this site isn't being updated anymore. It's been a really fun ride. Maybe someday I'll come back and have an unbelievably awesome editor for those hardcore EB hackers that will still be around in a year or two or three. That'd be cool. I already have ideas for a big hack of my own that I would like to do in my spare time :) Have fun, and may you never forget Joe the Talking Toilet, Insane Hillbilly Hippies, the li'l ghost that possesses your ROM (what other editor has that?!? None!) and this. May the Itoi be with you.
Post by Tomato: Hello, it's been a long six months, hasn't it? But what a great six months it's been. I bought some peanuts. First, I bring a bunch of stuff you should check out:
Let's see, next order of business. Well I (hopefully) will be graduating from college this May, and there's only two months between then and now. Now here's what I have to get done in those two months: Finish Star Ocean translation script editing, finish Bahamut Lagoon script editing, finish Star Ocean dub stuff (a lot of work bleh), finish Mr. Saturn vs. Hitler EB fangame, finish/get semi-finished the Starmen.Net Online EB Walkthrough, continue to maintain Starmen.Net so it doesn't fall apart like old dog doo, finish editing my translation of a novel I'm working on, find a publisher for that book, do all my normal schoolwork including a 15 page paper and several smaller papers, find a job in Japan, find a place to live in Japan, and many other things I can't think of at the moment. All within 2 months!!! Yay. Anyway, for that reason, I will not be working on hacking stuff for a long time. Also, upon graduation, I intend to move back to Japan and hopefully work as a professional translator (of games I hope, but if not, oh well). Anyway, in Japan, using phones is very expensive, and internet access is even more expensive. The last time I was there, they still were charging for the time you use, not like here in America where we get to use as much as we want for a flat fee of $20 or whatever. No, they gotta pay for like every minute they're on, PLUS the already expensive phone calls. So I won't be around all that much when that time comes, most likely. BUT, I know I've told a bunch of you this already, but I've come to think of hacking EB as a hobby. You know, how some guys like to tinker with cars to make them better or some guys like to build stuff? I like to hack this thing around. Anyway, since I know more about SNES assembly language and stuff and since my skills have naturally advanced since when I first started writing PK Hack code, I think what I'd like to do is start over from scratch and build a totally new utility that would encompass all the hacking stuff we can do now, plus all the new stuff I'll figure out, into one single program. I think that would be pretty cool. Especially when I think about all the new stuff I could probably do now. The thing is, this would only be a thing I do in my spare time when I'm bored and not out doing stuff like work or running around town scaring the locals with my gaijin antics, so progress would probably be very slow. In fact, I think I'd probably spend a year or more on it. I dunno what I'll do. But we'll see. I know a lot of EarthBound hackers won't be around if/when I release such a program, but I also know there are people who like to tinker with it just as much as I do. So hopefully I'll see you then. Yes, I am freezing this site. I think I need to do one last update next week or so to get a few more documents/programs on the downloads page. But there will be no updates after that for a VERY VERY long time. Oh yeah, I keep forgetting, I still need to edit the EB Text Editor to let you partition out the Expanded ROM area. I don't know when I'll get around to that. I'll try to fit it in during these 2 months but I can't promise. Adios!
Post by Tomato:
PK Hack Theme Song!
In related news, I'm still waiting for Umi's theme song :P
Post by Tomato:
 This update is brought to you by the Sweltering Snowman, who has been brought to life with the miracle of Tomato. First, Mr. Snowman notes that there's a new version of the Compressed Graphics Editor out! You can now mess with bigger sprites without the hassle of Annoying Old Party Men barfing all over you.
Next comes GuyInSummers' Control Code doohickey. It's useful for people who don't know how to read control codes just by looking at the numbers. So if you've had trouble or been scared of using control codes in your hacks so far, this will save your life. (DIE MIDI DIE!) Trying to navigate it can be likened to trying to make your way through the monkey caves though - you'll get lost easily. Anyway, here you are: Finally, here is the happiness of the Sweltering Snowman in .IPS form!!!
There you have it. A nice update all around. Now get out there and start making new enemy graphics! I'm thinking I might start a tiny section on this site for coolest enemy gfx (inside and outside battles). Post your stuff on the PK Hack board.
Post by Tomato: I've written a small Windows utility that lets you convert 16-color .BMPs to the EB compressed format. The program will also insert the new image into the ROM. You can also edit data in the enemy graphics pointer table. This isn't an easy-to-use program, so only more advanced hackers should use it. Get it here: If you're wondering what CGPED stands for, it was originally to be merely a Compressed Graphics Pointer Editor, but I decided to go all the way and incorporate .bmp->EB converstion & insertion as well. I couldn't think of a good interface for this, so it's a little odd, but at least you can do stuff with it.
Post by Tomato:
 I haven't deciphered the compression routine, but I *have* figured out one part of it. So I can't display graphics, but I *can* create them! The bad part is that since I only have one part of the routine figured out, the compression ratio sucks, but it doesn't matter, the sprites I can make are the same size as uncompressed sprites, plus since we have know the location of the enemy gfx pointers, space is hardly an issue. Basically in simple terms this means I can create new battle gfx!! It's still in very early stages, the pic you see now is what I created in a hex editor, and I had to figure out the binary and bitplanes on paper, so there is no battle gfx editor as of yet. I don't know when I'll have one out, so just hold on. Here's a patch of the above pic for you to see, so you can see that I'm not faking ;) The sprite replaced is Frank's. I obviously edited his name too. Battle sprite editing (and almost all other gfx editing for that matter) is no longer a dream. Woohoo!
Post by Tomato: This is just something I've been thinking of doing, I don't know if I'll go through with it. Well, I'm actually certain I will, eventually. I enjoy hacking EB just as a hobby, so I'm sure I'll be hacking it for years to come, even though most people here will have long forgotten about this stuff. Anyway, here's the pic:
 Again, who knows when or even if I'll work on this in the future. Obviously I plan to have a lot more stuff included in the future. In other news, I don't remember if anybody sent me any patches lately, so if you did send me one and I haven't posted it yet, resend it to me and make sure I don't forget! Be sure to check out the forum! I usually post all new news there now. I've posted a couple unofficial new text editor releases there, so if you haven't heard about them yet, go look now!
Post by Tomato: This update may be kinda late. Oh well. First of all, I got updated patches from BlueAntoid and GuyInSummers. I'm sure they got newer versions in the works right now, but oh well. I like that term. Also, really cool news! I don't know why I never tried before, but I found the pointer table for graphics! Meaning that we're on the road to getting graphics decompressed! Yay!
Post by Tomato: This update has 2 patches. JonBound has been debuggerfied, so you can play through without getting stuck. If you find more bugs, tell BlueAntoid ASAP so he can go do more hacking. He even added more stuff, and he's especially proud that you get Tony (well the equivalent of Tony) to go with you after you leave the boarding school. Yeehaw!
As for me, I've decided to finally do some research of the super fun debug menu. You see, the entire debug menu is based on control codes. As you know, you can do a lot of cool stuff with the debug menu, so I hope to find out how to do that stuff with control codes. The reason the debug menu doesn't show up in the text editor is because the control codes are WAY too complicated and my parser just totally barfs on it. It crashes when it sees the debug menu. So if I figure out more control codes, the parser will eventually be able to read the debug menu correctly. So it's a double plus. I already did the very first thing... I figured out how to make a big window appear, and you can write stuff in there too. So I made a simple little stupid hack. It might give some hackers out there some ideas for stuff. I know I could use a big text box for some cool stuff. Longer Mr. Saturn text! Tons of SMAAASH! hits! Maybe fit that magazine article into one box. Or maybe using it for A NEW DEBUG MENU. Well, I don't know about that but you could do a lot of cool things with a bigger text box. Try out my patch to see my first crappy idea. You have to talk to Ruffini in the Onett Drugstore to see it.
I'll probably post some more patches later when I find more cool stuff. Oh yeah, in case you didn't hear, spaanoft is thinking about working on a PK Hack 2 this summer (if things work out). That means he can use all my code that went unused last summer! Which means you hackers better get ready!
Post by Tomato: Unbelievable! Two updates in 2 days! Whoa! Read the update below this one so you don't miss some more cool stuff! First, BlueAntoid sent me some REALLY cool FAQ on how to use the EB Text Editor. You are required to read it, it's very good. In fact, that's basically why I'm doing this update. Look here:
Because he did that cool help file, I felt like updating the EB Text Editor. Now is version 3.0! Get it here:
What's new, you're wondering? Well here you go:
Whew. And while I was at it, I promised to make this about 10 years ago, so I finally made it. I had the code already, I just hadn't made it into something useable.
And I also made this because a lot of people seem to have the bad dump of EB:
I wanna see ROFISH's patch! Somebody gimme!
Post by Tomato: Added two new patches! One is from GuyInSummers, who you may or may not know has been working on a big hack for 8 or 9 months now. He says it's going to undergo serious revisions in the future, so don't go crazy if the game is buggy. It may not be as complete as JonBound, but he promises to get revenge someday... The next patch is actually a unique one. I got the idea one day when ROFISH was posting on the forums for a project SimonBob has. Basically it's similar to the concept Chrono Trigger had - when you beat the game you can start over with and keep all the stats and equipment you had. Unlike Chrono Trigger you can't see different endings, but you can still do lots of cool stuff. Go check it out! You can get both patches in the Downloads page. Go!
Post by Tomato: Whoa! Another update! Yippee! I've added some links to the links page, and added a few patches to the downloads section. You MUST check out JonBound. Okay, so the name is a little bland, but it's the biggest, most completest, coolest EB hack made so far! He even had to do some manual hacking because PK Hack and the other tools weren't enough for this crazy guy! Pick up the patch here. I've been pretty busy lately, I mainly just translate games for ROM hackers and try to stay sane, so there's really not much work being done on the EB hack prog scene. But who knows, I might pull a Tomato and one day show up with a PK Hack 2. If you have patches and/or EB hack-related links, please let me know, otherwise this page will never be updated. As for the IRC channel, I got rid of it last year sometime, sorry if you've been going there and not seeing anything useful. Some crazy goons took the channel name because they like PK Hack a lot. I also updated the sprite editor page because people keep mailing me and I always wind up saying the same thing. I will no longer answer questions concerning how to get it to work. The information there will help you. That's all for now. Check out all the hacks I've put up! They're cool!
Post by Tomato: Yay, an update! I updated the downloads section with 2 very cool things: EB Text Editor source isn't being released because it would be useless to everybody. Only I know the horribly complicated insanity that is EB's text system, and all the horrors of taking user input and converting it to that system and back, the terriblenessosity of the raw listing and pointer listing stuff, just to name a few things, aside from the barfy Windows MFC code. Trust me, it'll be easier to figure the text system out on your own rather than figure out my code. Although I do think there are some old prototype text editor sources in that zip. Oh well. I think I'll mess with the links page since I know there are a few links out there. Yeah if you got IPS files send them my way. I might not upload them for a while but there's always a chance I might update sooner than you'd expect.
Post by Tomato: Not much updated, just added a link to the links section. As you may know already, PK Hack is on double-secret freezation, because neither spaan nor myself have enough time to work on anything. We also are not all that interested in hacking much more. However there is always the possibility of us continuing it later in the future.
Post by Tomato: EB Text Editor 2.5 is out! Get it here! Tons and tons of awesome new features. Look at the help file it comes with for a list of the new features. I've also gone and fixed the site up a small bit, a lot of stuff was outdated. Heh. Oh, 2.5 is probably the last EB Text Editor to come out. I'm really busy for the next month and a half; I don't think anything major or new will come out for a while. For those interested, I've compiled a bunch of my unused source code (easy to read/use BTW), and some documentation on interesting addresses in the EB ROM into a file here. If you're daring, try to use this information to write your own special editor type thing for EB!
Post by Tomato: New version of the EarthBound Text editor is out!
Post by Tomato: I've uploaded two programs:
Post by Tomato: Well, I went and bought a book on MFC programming in Japanese, and messed around with it a bit. My first real program is just a tiny little EB Save State Editor, which you can get here. I'll add a few things to it in future versions, like inventory editing, etc. But for now, please check it out, find bugs, etc. I might make a text editor, etc. once I become somewhat confident with Windows programming.
Post by Tomato: Okay, this update is just to let you know that I won't be doing very much coding for PK Hack for the next few months. There are a few reasons. First, spaan has WAY too much of my code to use already, enough for 2, maybe 3 new versions of PK Hack, including font editor, text editor, store editor, and more. Second, I have some of my own projects I want to pursue, mainly with DirectX, which I haven't touched in over a year. It's not EB related, so don't get your hopes up. Third, I start school and move in less than 24 hours, meaning I'll have a lot less time to work on stuff. But, I'll still do small code tweaking, like stuff spaan needs for the text editor, but no new code, no new advancements in things like map editing, etc. for a while. I don't know when the next verison of PK Hack will be out, so don't bug us. It'll be out when it's out, I hope.
Post by Tomato: This isn't a major update or anything, but I thought I'd update anyway. Due to the large number of requests I got in emails and stuff while I was gone, I looked into trying to see if I could change the music data in the game. I found some correlations with some SPCs, but they're not 100% the same. I may have to do some SPC researching and stuff before I can get any results out. I think everybody would agree that SPC importing would be practically THE coolest thing PK Hack could have. Of course, I still have a lot to do. Here's all my current stuff I'm working on, or have found out a little bit about and need to do more work on:
As you can see, that's a lot of work. The fact that I move soon and start school soon will slow things down. Plus, spaan's getting buried in more and more code each passing day, I hope he can release some slightly new version of PK Hack so he doesn't drown in all my hack code, but that's up to him. I just write the hack code ;) I know there are some ROM hackers that visit this site and check out PK Hack sometimes, so if you could help me out with some of the stuff I'm working on, I would greatly appreciate it! I'm only one guy!
Post by Tomato: As promised, during my week-and-a-half absence, I worked on the text editor code. I'm happy to say that it's now making serious progress. It's at the point where spaanoft can start coding the GUI. What's nice about this is that I think we can do the GUI without quite as many of the confusing functions that I thought we would. I've "discovered" something interesting about the text in EarthBound. It's not just text. Just about everything that happens in the game happens in script codes, which is mixed in with text. What this means is that once the first version of the text editor is released, you can potentially do any of the following:
I also discovered that the debug menu is nothing more than just a thing the programmers used to test their scripts. Scripts get complicated REALLY fast. So I figure I could always try to look at the debug menu to see how things are done. Anything the debug menu does you can do, and more. Now, when I mentioned moving sprites around, a good example of what I mean is like what happens after you exit Jackie's Cafe after you finish Moonside. You see a delivery guy walk up to you, talk to you, leave, then a monkey runs up to you, talks, teleports, etc. Then Electra comes up to you and talks to you. You'll be able to do things like that with this text editor. Of course, it won't be easy to make complicated things like that, but people will slowly catch on I think. This is of course why the text editor is taking so long. But, it's worth it; you can almost make your own game now. In slightly different news, I've located the main text pointer table, which is real nice. I'm still working on getting it looking 100% nice, but an added bonus with EarthBound is that the sprite # and movement # are bundled right together with the text pointers, so you can change the sprites of people who talk to you, and also change how they walk around. It's really cool. The programmers rely so much on openness of the code that even gift boxes are based on the exact same principles as regular people. What this means is that you can obviously change what's in each gift box, but you can also change any certain gift box' sprite to something else, say a telephone sprite, or heck, even the Dungeon Man sprite. You can also make the gift box move around! And, if you're a real good script code hacker, you could probably make it so gift boxes never become empty. Although I haven't tried that one myself. Of course, I made a patch. Here's what I did to get this patch made:
As you can see, that's all sort of complicated, but when the PK Hack text editor is released it'll be much easier to do and understand all that. And of course, this patch is the biggest, coolest, and most complicated one I've released to date. If there's one patch on this site you should try out, it's this one. And of course, here are some pictures of stuff:
But, that's not all! I've located a lot of other cool stuff. I can now change which enemies appear on what maps. And I can make them boss battles or regular battles. But, cooler than that, I can now manipulate map data. I've already started on a map viewer, but there's one minor problem, that being the fact that depending where on the map you are, a tile changes. For example, tile #1 in the Tenda Village area is totally different than tile #1 in Onett. This of course will take a lot of time to figure out. Plus the fact that I haven't decoded the compressed graphics for each tile means that if/when I do have a map viewer/editor out, all the tile graphics will not be pulled from the ROM in real-time, which is pretty bad. Here are some more pics:
Post by Tomato: For those who had trouble downloading the help files earlier, just download this zip, unzip both files to the same directory, and double click pkhack.hlp. spaan wants to try to find map data, so maybe we'll do some map stuff after all! For those having problems with the sprite editor by dragging the ROM icon onto the program in Windows, you'll have to go to the DOS prompt and run it. It should then work just fine.
Post by Tomato: I've made some more steps toward text editing. First, in the text editor that will come with a future version of PK Hack, you'll be able to do so much. One thing that I already have implemented is ROM expansion. Essentially, this will give users up to 1 extra megabyte (!!!) to use for whatever text they want. Does that rock or what? That's enough text space for maybe a game 3 times as long as EB! I've also got EXTREMELY basic text editing functions up and running. I'm just experimenting and toying around to get a feel for stuff before I start getting into trying to compress user input into a certain size and fitting it in over existing text. I also totally rewrote my text pointer table code. It's really cool, check out this file to see proof that I'm making progress. Unfortunately, there are quite a number of text pointer tables, and I only know the location of the first one. Drat. I'll find out more later. And, I have to put up the obligatory cool pics that I usually post each update. These pics demonstrate that my ROM expansion code works, my text writing code works, and that I am capable of pointer remapping, which will also be a feature in the upcoming text editor.
And of course I need to give out a patch. This patch is pretty stupid and small, but oh well. I only changed it so you get a nice message when you kill the Runaway Dogs in Onett. Also, I can't expand a ROM and give out patches, because regular ROMs aren't the correct size. So, for this patch, I had to "borrow" some blank space I found in the ROM. Heheh.
Post by Tomato: Over the weekend, I did a ton of coding. One result is probably the coolest program to ever hit the EarthBound community, this neat little sprite editor here. I also made major updates to the sprite viewer. In addition, I've totally redesigned my text-related code, so now I'm getting a little closer to the final goal of an EB Text Editor. To see what I mean, check out this. Remember that dump of EB's text I made long ago? Compare that to now, where everything looks right and there's no garbage. Just all text, baby! Yeah!
Post by Tomato: Last night I got around to ripping the palette info from the EarthBound ROM, and now my sprite viewing code makes the sprites look MUCH nicer. My next release of the sprite viewer isn't quite ready, but should be released soon. Since I can now manipulate palettes, I thought I'd release nice little patch that changes palettes of all the human characters. It's pretty cool, check it out! Also, we were in such a rush to release 0.2 that we forgot to thank everybody who helped. So here's the thanks file! In a day or two we might release version 0.21, which will only have small modifications to the code, no new functionality really, except maybe support for variations of the EB ROM, plus maybe that Windows help file I was going to write.
Post by spaanoft: PKHack version 0.2 is out! After much delay, stuff, programming, debugging and everything, it is now HERE! Also, now that this version is out, Tomato and I will be taking a break from PK Hack. Probably not too long, but a nice break. We do other things. :/ But, Tomato does have a lot of other code done that we'll get into v3 when we start on it. Ooo. Also, thanks to SirX-Wolf for the cool splash screen for this version! Very cool. Well, you should all go download v2 now.
Post by spaanoft: I have been working hard on the UI, just so you all know. It is coming along quite well and we're hoping to get this out soon. In the mean time, I've made a small IPS of what this program can do so far. All changes in this are done by what is done for PK Hack v2. Even the IPS was made by it since the IPS making has been added. Anyway, get the hack HERE. Also, just so you all know. This version will probably not have the save state editing in it. We're trying to streamline and get this out much faster. If I work, like, a whole bunch and tear all my hair out, I may just squeeze it in, but don't be hoping. Sorry to anyone waiting for it.
Post by Tomato: I've located the text pointer tables, and have begun writing the code that will eventually allow you to edit the game's text. All I can say is that programming the text-editor stuff is gonna kill me. I swear that not only were the EarthBound designers on some sort of trippy drug, but the programmers were too. How I wish they had set stuff up uniformly..... I'll just say this, it'll be at LEAST a month before we have any sort of release for a text editor. At least. I'm also hoping that we'll make a text pointer remapper, so that advanced users can really get some cool stuff going. People who could use that wouldn't be restricted by the size restraints that newbie text editor people will be.
Post by Tomato: Well we got that stuff I mentioned below all squared away, cuz spaan is a fast worker. I still anticipate at least a week and a half, at the least. That's if we work non-stop until then. So if it takes a little longer, don't bug us please. I've updated our links page with a few PK hack fan pages, mail me if you want yours in there. It's really useful for people who have hacks-in-progress, and want people to check them out. At least, it saves me a lot of time that way. We will have an IPS creator option available in version 0.2. So be happy! No more dealing with SnesTool or other IPS creators. I don't know if we'll have a patch applier this next version, however. Everyday, PK Hack gets better and better. I really think you'll be impressed with it. As you can see, we are putting a lot of time and effort into it.
Post by Tomato: Well, I'm here to post news about a few additions we'll have in PK Hack v0.2. First, we'll probably have IPS rom patch creation capabilities, maybe even the option to apply one to a rom you already have open. We'll have the ability to sort the enemy list by the original order (like 0.1), alphabetically, or by enemy level. Enemy level is useful because the levels proceed more or less with the order that you meet enemies, making it a lot nicer to hack specific parts of the game. Also, thanks to some help from spaan, I found out some really cool stuff. But, that means we have to change a few things in our design, namely the part about choosing which enemies an enemy can call. The problem seems to be a pretty big one, so that might set us back a day or two. But the next release is quite a while a way so nobody'll notice anyway, right? Anyway, the deal with this is that before, say you gave an enemy the PSI Starstorm capability. When he would go to use it, it would probably say "Runaway Dog tried !". Well, I've figured out how to change that. You can make it say the correct PSI name. Or not. You can make it say he's casting PSI Lifeup but it's really PSI Starstorm. Similar things work with items. Say you give an enemy an item effect, like a Toothbrush. The enemy normally wouldn't use it correctly. But now it can, with PK Hack 0.2.
If you have questions or comments, please e-mail Tomato and/or spaanoft. |
