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In honor of the late Bionic Commander I’ve begun a new ROM-hacking project. I considered re-starting Bionic Commander from scratch, but while making it the first time was fun, the second time around is just work. And I didn’t like the sound of that. So Bionic Commander has been moved to just behind the back burner.

At this point, I’ve completed three NES level editors. When I began writing Bionic Commander I found myself re-inventing the wheel in some places, while in other places I discovered how nice it is to be able to re-use code I’ve already written for another editor.

Instead of simply writing a new level editor from the ground up, I decided it would be a good idea to write a level editor framework, a set of classes to stream-line the process of making a level editor. So I did. I wouldn’t call it complete yet, but in terms of its feature set, it’s about where it needs to be. It has facilities to handle the low-level operations such as accessing pointer tables and reading hardware-bound data (i.e. palettes, patterns, and such). It also has high level features, such as an easy-to-implement level editor based very closely on Editroid. This way, I (or anyone who would like the source) can make a solid level editor with a fancy UI, without repeating all the grunt-work.

It wouldn’t be wise to just write all this program code without trying it out and making sure it does what I would like it to do, the way I way I would like it to do so. It needs to be tested and fine-tuned, ideally through the process of creating an editor using the framework. Enter my new Blaster Master level editor.

Of course, there’s already a Blaster Master level editor, BCK. In fact, I’m using the documentation created by the author of BCK. But imagine the love-child of BCK and Editroid 2.0. You’re picturing my new Blaster Master level editor. It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside.

It’s a work in progress, but it’s coming along nicely.