So yes, the press has been neglected as of late. I’m not going to try and pretend it hasn’t. But as usual, there is a reason. ZOHS’s popularity with me boomed because at the time I had no “real” projects (I put “real” in quotations because Zelda Oracles hacking will never be the priority it was in the past). Combine that with lots of free time to work on stuff and you’ve got some nice fluent development. But then I started learning C++ for real and beginning to understand its power and with that I was doing lots of research about dynamic mesh generation. One thing led to another and lately I’ve been working on a game instead of the suite.

However, that’s not to say ZOHS is being abandoned! I recently realized it’s okay to have multiple projects! In fact, it’s good! Multiple projects keep us from getting bored, while giving us the satisfaction of workflow. It also helps us better understand what we’re trying to do. With the lack of attention towards one specific thing and instead splitting it up, it allows us to step back and look at the bigger picture. When I started developing the suite, I just wanted a cleaner Zelda Oracles level editor that integrated all the external tools – the script editor, text editor, chest fixer, etc… while making editing tasks easier. Doing a better job programming things was a big priority.

But because I spent long periods away from it, I’ve had time to think about how things could be done better instead of regretting additions I’ve made along the road. A good example of this is the recent release of ZOHS beta 0.05. One of the coolest beta releases in a long time in my opinion, this release marked a huge point in this project’s development. While casual users might just look at it and think it only adds a hex editor and list downloading, it has done much more.

What took so long with it was migrating the map editor to use the plugin system. It’s not loaded externally (yet?), but all of the map editor’s code, GUI and functionality included, is its separate class that uses the plugin API. Before, all of this code was thrown in the main form’s code and stuff was beginning to get really cluttered, like ZOLE 4′s code. But this migration allowed me to keep it as clean as if it was running on ZOLE 5, the 100% plugin-based shell, but with the power and simplicity of ZOLE 4. This is exactly what the ZOLE 6 should be.

Working on the project in tiny bits and pieces has allowed me to add some neat features, make simple design tweaks that have large impacts on development, and fix bugs that would’ve been tough to find. An example of the latest feature is there is an option to draw the tile(s) you’re about to place instead of just a white box. This simple addition is going to make huge changes, because now you can (A) preview what your change will look like before messing with the map and (B) know what tile(s) you’re about to place. Let’s, for a moment, pretend there won’t be a history feature (undo/redo) [I believe this is going to wait until the networking update, because it will probably follow the same system to allow undoing/redoing ALL tasks]. For the clipboard, you currently have to have “Clipboard” checked in order to place its tiles instead of the regular tileset’s tiles. Perhaps you’ve made big changes to the map and haven’t saved and have a lot of tiles on the clipboard selected, but you want to place one tile from the tileset. Uh oh, you forgot to untick “Clipboard” and already placed the tiles, and you haven’t saved your work! Now you have to start over! But wait, that isn’t likely to happen anymore because you can visually see you’re still using the clipboard without looking at it! Of course, this option is completely customizable. The opacity of the tiles you’re about to place can be 0% (off), 25%, 50%, 75%, and 100% (fully opaque). Here’s what it looks like:

The design tweaks I was talking about are simple changes that make editing easier. One example is right-clicking when dragging to place a line causes the line to be removed, in case you want to get rid of or redo the line.

So all in all, releases may be spaced far apart, but good things are happening to the suite. Progress is always going to be slow, but I don’t think it’s a project that will die. After all of the core elements, progress will probably pick up and it will soon make ZOLE 4 obsolete. I am looking forward to it.

~Lin

Long story short, I released ZOHS Beta 0.04 before testing map swapping even though I knew it I shouldn’t have. I guess eagerness to get something out strongly overpowered patience. Not even 10 minutes later did I fix the bug and re-upload the beta version.

In other news, I’m trying to think of ways to revive the Primary Zelda Hacking community. With most of its core people gone, it’s tough to build it up. I have beta releases, but they’re so people can find bugs to squash early on. Not many people are going to want to use it over ZOLE until it can do everything ZOLE can and more. ZOHS isn’t going to take off until I at least get the scripting engine done, so that’s one of my goals for at least 0.06 or 0.07. Beta 0.05 is going to consist of a lot of code rewriting and organizing to allow a smooth creation of the API that’s going to be used for most of the mini editors inside the suite. The problem is ZOHS is using a lot of ZOLE 4′s code, especially with map loading. The only new hacking-related code is the graphics loader, which was taken from ZOLE 5. The suite, for the most part, has just been a pretty interface that brings it all together.

This post is getting really long, so I’ll save describing the API and macros in another post. I believe they’re the biggest things to implement at this point and once done, the suite’s progress will fly and quickly become superior compared to ZOLE 4.

That said, since there isn’t a whole lot going on in the hacking scene right now, this part of the site will consist almost entirely of progress on the upcoming Zelda Oracles Hacking Suite – a utility meant to replace ZOLE 4 and all of its counterparts. This includes new features, new systems, code changes, demonstrations, and to-do lists. You can still download all of the beta versions here and when the program reaches a more stable version, the source code.

This website is supposed to act as a copy of the really old blog before the forums rolled around. It acted as an outlet for me, Lin, and I don’t want to flood the forums with my emotional connection between Oracles hacking and the nostalgia behind ZOLE. I hope you all enjoy reading as I will writing, and happy hacking!

~Lin