
ZII Map Editor 1.0
By Trax

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Finally, ZII Map Editor for Mac OS X is officially released. The prog is fairly straightforward, nothing too fancy with the UI. 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

Very simple. First, do menu "File" -> "Open ROM...". Select any Zelda II ROM and East Hyrule will load in the main view. Then, simply point and click. Select the kind of terrain you want to use from the palette on the right and click on the map...

If you want to change the region you're working on, be sure to save your work first. The prog don't show any dialog to ask if you want to save. It will be fixed soon...

The "Groups" field

In the lower right corner of the view, there are two 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. On the other hand, if you are over, the exceeding groups will be lost in the process...

Additional notes

- This editor only edits terrain, not key areas. This means that if you change the location of a grotto, a palace or any other hidden area, it will NOT affect the location of the corresponding area. Such a function is not implemented yet. But I'm working on it, so you can expect to see it in a future release...

- Death Mountain / Maze Island has a maximum of 1000 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 graphics used are arbitrary GIF files. It means that even if you open a ROM with modified graphics, you won't see the difference. I'm working on taking the graphics from the ROM itself...

- Enjoy !

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

simon@bwass.org

