Dawn of the Fourth Day

After a week of finals, and consequently learning more about rotational dynamics than I will ever need to know, I was finally able to get back to hacking and programming. Great, right? Of course, no one ever knew I left, but what the hell.

Anyway, I had a revelation today. Look at Jigglysaint's hacking documents with a HEX EDITOR OPEN. When I read them for the first time, frankly I could not make any sense of anything he said. But at any rate, I understand now that the entire level data for dungeons and the overworld is referenced by room pointers. And all the sprite placement data is referenced by room pointers too! Crazy, right?

So I took off. I edited the raw hex data with nothing but notepad. And check out the first room of the tail cave: I think it actually looks pretty good.


So that's that. But this week is a double whammy, because I also learned a ton about Windows API programming.


Not only did I learn how to create, populate, and apply menus, I learned to use resource scripts to add in icons and dialog boxes. I downloaded a great free resource editor called ResEdit which actually worked great, seeing as MS VC++EE has no resource editor included...


You can see  to the left my progress on the "editor" so far. I'm actually apprehensive of how I'm going to be able to apply this to a real editor. With Windows API, can I open any file and write hex code to a certain offset? Can I export graphics? Can I move controls at runtime? Argh. There is a long road ahead children.


What I learned:
-A whole hell of a lot about how the level data works
-How to use resources to create a whole hell of a lot of windows controls
-when editing images, using two hands on the touchpad of a laptop saves a lot of time


What's next:
-Windows: reading, writing files, and custom dialogs, etc.
-Overworld editing, dungeon and overworld pallette data, etc.
-Packing for a sub zero camping trip this weekend. URGH.