GBA ROM editor "SeiSaboten", editor for Sword of Mana
cearp, a long time member and frequenter of the ROM hacking sections around here, dropped in to share news that they have released a nice Python coded editor for Sword of Mana on the GBA. It goes by the name SeiSaboten and code for it is available under GPL v3. North American and Japanese region versions only at present, but there are not too many existing hacks for it so should be minimal conflicts there.
Sword of Mana was released fairly early in the GBA lifetime and garnered somewhat mixed reception. The game itself is an enhanced remake, though actually enhanced compared to what we see going from the PS3/360 to PS4/xbone, of Seiken Densetsu: Final Fantasy Gaiden, which goes by many other names (if you had an original gameboy in North America you might have played it as Final Fantasy Adventure, though in Europe it would have been known as Mystic Quest. Indeed for many that was their first introduction to this whole RPG thing) and has since seen yet another remake. Oh and it is also the first game in the Mana series, which features the legendary Secret of Mana.
Said mixed reception came off the back of a variety of complaints but it remains a staple of many favourite GBA game lists, games people always have in their collection and ruiner of fun as it is hard to run on certain emulators. The features this editor supports should be able to correct several of those complaints depending upon how much work you want to do, though difficulty should be quickly sorted one way or the other (if you increase monster stats you should in turn be able to increase difficulty and thus solve one of the more common ones). The editor also features a nice randomise function for those of you that enjoy the "randomiser" flavour of ROM hacking.
Being Python based then it should be able to get things working on any number of operating systems which is always nice to see (the second picture above is running on Linux). At time of posting there is no compiled version available so you will have to install Python on your system (go with the 3.? series) if it is not already there.
For those not familiar then Python is a massively popular programming language (often said to be the glue that holds modern computing together), somewhat higher level and thus often a first language for many. The installer there should just install and remain silent until you need it -- this will not be another Java needs an update for the 5th time today type of thing. Pending an official build of it then you should also be able to make a windows executable quite easily if you want with py2exe.
Python is also quite a nice programming language rather primed for this sort of editor and thus you might want to look at the code to get an idea of what making such an editor entails, indeed quite often we get asked such questions and between this and the Klonoa editor the other week then 2020 is starting off rather nicely for fans of ROM hacking editors and those looking to learn about making them.
Github link
https://github.com/llakssz/SeiSaboten (there is a big green button on the top right saying clone or download, and the option to get a zip of the lot).
GBAtemp mirror (there mostly as a mirror, probably best to grab the current version from github)
GBAtemp discussion thread
