Genesis - Zero Tolerance level editor

[firewing]

Still nothing, I tried to find where those tiles are stored in the ROM, used Gens VRAM debugger to get the pallette and Tile Layer Pro to view the ROM with this pallette but couldn't find anything, either the color order was wrong or textures are not stored in a plain format, I don't know. I only found in-game font and some title screens. I'll keep trying. Now there's another problem, I need to do something to optimize the way the editor draws the map. It wasn't that bad for Zero Tolerance maps which are 32x32, but with Beyond, where some maps are 2.5 times larger, it's really slow. It would be also good to completely rewrite the editor in C++ for a better portability since according to my site visitors counter, Linux and Mac users are also interested in the editor. Currently the code is written in Delphi which is win32-only.

[Ghostroo]

Well the best suggestion I can think is just use scroll bars for BZT's levels till you can fix up the code to work properly. Personally I don't have any issues loading the editor on my system since I don't use a pre-made machine (I custom make my own). Also another platform that can work is JAVA but I've seen the results of what can happen with another game editor (master system) which does get resource intensive.

As for the tile issue, I do believe the key issue is that ZT and BZT uses a different method to display tiles, which is why Tile Layer Pro can't reconise them correctly because it doesn't know how the ROM renders those tiles. I've looked through the rom on Tile Layer Pro and noticed that the tiles are being displayed at a 30 to 40 degrees angle, which would also explain why in Gens KMOD the tiles aren't "fixed" in VRAM (it's always constantly being updated which ever direction you're facing except the background which is fixed).

You would have to delve deeper in to how the ZT/BZT engine displays those tiles before you can get it to display correctly in the editor (I don't know or think Technopop released the source code). Since Tile Layer Pro is now a "discontinued" editor, I'd say it's going to be impossible to expect the author to update it for other Genesis/Mega Drive game engines, and I don't think to this day the author has given the source code out or should expect it to be released any time soon (unless his/she is reading this).

[firewing]

There are already scrollbars, to enable them just uncheck the "resize ..." checkbox (only available when editing a BZT ROM), but I made this for another reason as well - with some levels, the editor window simply doesn't fit in 1280x1024 and lower resolutions.
For tiles, I couldn't find them neither in ZT nor in BZT ROM. And I don't think the way they're stored there really differs because according to what I've seen when I've been making BZT maps support, the engine is almost same.
I'll keep messing with it

P.S. I do neither ever use pre-made PCs, I always assemble them myself (though I wouldn't mind if I get an Alienware )

[Ghostroo]

Originally Posted by firewing

There are already scrollbars, to enable them just uncheck the "resize ..." checkbox (only available when editing a BZT ROM), but I made this for another reason as well - with some levels, the editor window simply doesn't fit in 1280x1024 and lower resolutions.
For tiles, I couldn't find them neither in ZT nor in BZT ROM. And I don't think the way they're stored there really differs because according to what I've seen when I've been making BZT maps support, the engine is almost same.
I'll keep messing with it

P.S. I do neither ever use pre-made PCs, I always assemble them myself (though I wouldn't mind if I get an Alienware )

What I meant about how the ZT/BZT engine handles tiles, I meant that it's in another "format" that Tile Layer Pro simply just doesn't understand because it wasn't programmed for it. Unlike ZT/BZT, games such as Sonic The Hedgehog and Streets Of Rage use stationary tiles (which are viewable in TLP) but ZT/BZT seems to use a different form of tiles, almost similiar to how textures are handled in many older 3D game applications (think of Wolfenstein). Unless one can figure out how ZT/BZT is displaying the tiles in a "texture" format, then it's not a simple task of implementing the same technique in the editor.

Don't worry, you'll figure it out eventually. You may just need to delve deeper in to how the ROM is handled in an emulator (understand what happens in the Z80 CPU and such to figure out how it's displaying the graphics).

Another game I know that also has 3D styled rendering is Battle Frenzy aka Bloodshot. Unlike ZT/BZT, it had a larger view and managed to handle itself rather well though it was rather taxing on the CPU/GPU (did have some slow-downs). Like ZT/BZT however, tiles are rendered in a texture styled format.