
ZII Game Editor 1.11
By Trax

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ZII Game Editor features an overworld editor and the game editor, which includes Magic, Levels, Text and many other things. I recommend Mac OS X.3 (Panther) or later, but it should work under older versions. If you have any questions, suggestions or comments about this prog, don't hesitate to let me know :

simon@bwass.org

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How to use

First, do menu "File" -> "Open ROM...". Select any Zelda II ROM and you will see a window with tabs. The content of each tab is decribed below. To see the Overworld Editor, do menu "Overworld" -> "Show Overworld Window". East Hyrule is loaded by default...

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The Overworld Editor

At the top of the window, there are the 16 different tiles, for which the graphics are now taken directly from the ROM data. Select the kind of terrain you want to use and click on the map...

If you want to change the region you're working on, do menu "Overworld" -> "Change Region", then select the region from the submenu...

Beside the tiles palette, there are two fields. One with 2 numbers separated by a comma (,). This field shows the coordinates of the last selected tile. The other field is the "Groups" field. It shows 2 numbers separated by a slash (/). The first number is the current number of groups in the region being edited. The second number is the maximum allowed number of groups for the region...

What's a "group" ?

A "group" is defined like this : a strip composed of 1 to 16 consecutive units of the same kind of terrain, which corresponds to 1 byte in the ROM. For example, a lonely unit of forest is a group. A strip of 16 units of water is a group. A strip of 17 units of mountain accounts for 2 groups...

If possible, you should always try to use the maximum number of groups allowed. If you save, and are under the maximum allowed, the remaining groups are set to 16 spiders (FF). On the other hand, if you are over, the exceeding groups will be lost in the process...

Key Areas

Now, key areas are displayed as semi-transparent purple squares. You can't move them, yet. But such feature will be added soon...

Export

You can export the current region as a TIFF image file. Do menu "Overworld" -> "Export Map as TIFF...".

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Game Data Editor

The Game Data Editor is the window that is displayed by default when you load the application...

The first tab is for magic names and levels. You can enter any number from 0 to 255. Magic names should be 8 characters long. If you want them shorter, you can fill the remaining space with periods. You can also set different effects for each spell with the check boxes on the right. You can have more than one effect per spell...

The second tab is for levels experience. You can change the name of the abilities (Attack, Magic and Life) and the amount of experience needed to go up each ability, for all 8 levels, and for extra life. Note that if you input a number that is not a multiple of 10, the nearest high tenth will be displayed, but the exact number of experience will still be needed to level up. You can't have a value higher than 9000...

The third tab is for text. For now you can only change dialogs. Other pieces of text, like the beginning story and the ending credits, will be added soon. Click on a category, and a list appears in the second column. Click on the dialog you want to edit and it will be displayed in the field on the right. If a line is more than 10 characters, or if the entire text is longer than 44 characters (including spaces and line breaks), the text will turn red and you'll heard a beep. When you are finished editing the text, confirm your changes by pressing on the button "Confirm Changes"...

The fourth tab is for beginning values. These are the items, magic containers, heart containers, techniques, crystals and lives your character will possess when you start a new game...

The last tab is miscellaneous data that you can modify. The amount of life restored by the "Life" spell. One square of life = 16 units. The other field is the number of enemies you have to kill to get an item, either a magic jar or an experience bag...

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Additional notes

- The palaces pointers only work with West Hyrule. This means that if you change palaces locations in this region, it should work, but you'll have to do it by hand with the other palaces. Also, the 6th palace is not accounted when the number of groups is computed...

- Death Mountain / Maze Island has a maximum of 1024 groups, but it's acutally an arbitrary number. It's the only region in the ROM that can be extended almost infinitely, because it's not followed by other code...

- The text editor can't make the difference between regular line breaks (FD) and delayed line breaks (FE). So if you want a delayed line break, you'll have to do it by hand, using a hex editor...

- Enjoy !

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Many thanks to Raccoon Sam for testing and feedback...

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Comments ? Questions ? Suggestions ? Bugs ?
Let me know...

simon@bwass.org

