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Tool: HexManiacAdvance: A New Hex Editor for Gen 3 Hacking

haven1433

haven1433

Modder / Programmer
42
Posts
10
Years
  • Age 35
  • Seen Jan 16, 2024

[Tool] Hex Maniac Advance

Author: haven1433
Current release: v0.5.6

HexManiacAdvance

Introduction

HexManiacAdvance is a hex editor designed for editing Pokemon GBA games. It specifically targets the English games Ruby (AXVE), Sapphire (AXPE), FireRed (BPRE), LeafGreen (BPGE), and Emerald (BPEE) and can edit the 1.0 and 1.1 versions. Being a hex editor, it can view an edit any data in the file. But for a lot of data, HexManiacAdvance offers an enriched editing experience which can rival and surpass other editors like PGE, G3T, Yape, AdvanceMap, and XSE.

For all you binary Rom Hackers, I need you to give it a try and let me know what you think. I want it to be the most useful hex editor possible for Gen 3 ROM hacking, but I can't do that without feedback from hackers like you!

Features


Data Editing

  • Edit Pokemon names, stats, evolutions, moves, and pokedex entries
  • Edit Trainer names, items, and pokemon teams
  • Edit Move names, stats, and descriptions
  • Edit Item stats and effects
  • Edit many other miscellaneous tables in the game like multi-choice text lists, what moves are effected by SoundProof, how much money different types of trainers give you, in-game trades, and what moves won't appear during metronome
  • Edit many constants within the game, such as the shiny odds, the stat boost for various badges, or the exp boost for lucky egg or traded pokemon

Map Editing

  • Edit existing maps, or create entirely new ones!
  • Simple event scripts are transformed into controls in a panel, making it easy to edit trades, pokeballs, trainers, NPCs, and more.
  • Built-in script editor with auto-repoint.
  • Advanced map drawing features like 9-grid support, smart-fill, and a mixing bag.
  • Adjust map size and connections visually.

Text Editing

  • Find and edit almost any text in the game
  • Safely and automatically repoint text that's too long to fit in its original space

Image Editing

  • Edit images and tilemaps directly within HMA, or use import/export to convert from PNG so you can use your favorite image editor
  • Never worry about tilesets again: HMA lets you treat tilemaps just like any other sprite
  • Edit the title screen and the menus
  • Edit the townmap and player icons
  • Edit sprites of pokemon, trainers, items, and Overworld characters
  • Edit type icons
  • Have full control over how you handle shared palettes, or ask HMA to do it for you

Code Editing

  • View/Edit events scripts like you would with XSE
  • HMA can integrate with AdvanceMap as a script editor
  • View/Edit battle scripts and animation scripts for your moves
  • View/Edit thumb code

Utilities

  • Safely add the Fairy type to your game
  • Expand your game with any number of additional moves
  • Create and apply patches (.ips and .ups)
  • Reorder your pokedex
  • Export backups as you work
  • Create or apply patches in the IPS or UPS format
  • Create backups of your hack to prevent loss of work

Community

  • An active discord community to help with any problems you encounter
  • Frequent releases with bugfixes and new features

Screenshots

uUYoaqk.png

oZ134BE.png



Download

Tutorials

Notes: Please report any bugs in the Discord server. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any trouble!
 
Last edited:
Dreamaker

Dreamaker

Banned
97
Posts
14
Years
Very useful.
I am very grateful to have an editor want to modify the Pickup Ability.
No other tool has that.

No other tool has a Metronome editor, do you plan to add? ;D
 

Entaro Ceraphenine

48
Posts
7
Years
Amazing software!
It seems like a lot of hassles will be saved for binary hackers like me!

There is one tiny problem. If I go full screen, the app crashes. Here is what the crash log says:
Spoiler:

Otherwise it works just fine!
 
haven1433

haven1433

Modder / Programmer
42
Posts
10
Years
  • Age 35
  • Seen Jan 16, 2024
Entaro Ceraphenine said:
Amazing software!
It seems like a lot of hassles will be saved for binary hackers like me!

There is one tiny problem. If I go full screen, the app crashes. Here is what the crash log says:
Spoiler:

Otherwise it works just fine!
Click to expand...

What version of the app are you using? You can check by going to Help -> About.
If you're using the latest version, I'd like to try and fix the issue for you. If you can reproduce it with the debug version and send me the crash.log file from that, I'll be much more likely to be able to find it.

LykO said:
Very useful.
I am very grateful to have an editor want to modify the Pickup Ability.
No other tool has that.

No other tool has a Metronome editor, do you plan to add? ;D
Click to expand...

I just added the metronome / mimic "forbidden moves" table because of this comment ;) it'll be in version 0.3.8.
 

Raduziel

34
Posts
3
Years
haven1433 said:
I've been working on this for about a year, and I've finally made enough progress that it's ready for its first public beta!

68747470733a2f2f692e696d6775722e636f6d2f497855476562662e706e67
Click to expand...

I've downloaded this tool but I'm a little lost. How can I go precisely to this window?

Clicking on the sheet "Table", the dropdown menu doesn't have "pokestats". The closest I can get is this:

4w721Aq.png


What am I doing wrong?

Thanks.
 
Anthroyd

Anthroyd

Professor
211
Posts
7
Years
Note to readers: this tool will likely become an all-in-one gen III hacking suite. Although it's labeled simply as a "hex editor," it assists you through various other tasks like rearranging the Dex with an extremely intuitive drag-and-drop interface, importing new mons, replacing obscure text, modifying abilities, etc. I highly recommend picking this up and learning how to use it properly.
 

Entaro Ceraphenine

48
Posts
7
Years
haven1433 said:
What version of the app are you using? You can check by going to Help -> About.
If you're using the latest version, I'd like to try and fix the issue for you. If you can reproduce it with the debug version and send me the crash.log file from that, I'll be much more likely to be able to find it.
Click to expand...

My one is version 0.3.5.. or at least that is the one where the error happened. Haven't tried the latest one, tho..
 
haven1433

haven1433

Modder / Programmer
42
Posts
10
Years
  • Age 35
  • Seen Jan 16, 2024
My one is version 0.3.5.. or at least that is the one where the error happened. Haven't tried the latest one, tho..
Click to expand...
You can get the latest version here if you want. Either way, I can't fix the problem if I can't reproduce it or if you don't have a crash.log. If you provide me with steps to reproduce the issue with the latest release or if you can share a crash.log file from the crash, I'm much more likely to be able to fix it.

Either way, thanks for trying it out!
 
haven1433

haven1433

Modder / Programmer
42
Posts
10
Years
  • Age 35
  • Seen Jan 16, 2024
What am I doing wrong?
Click to expand...
You're doing nothing wrong :) you can any table in the editor using the 'goto' option: Edit -> Goto in the menu, or Ctrl+G as a shortcut. Then you can type in some text of what you're looking for to filter the list of tables.

Specifically, the table that you're looking for (pokestats) was renamed to data.pokemon.stats in the most recent version, so that's it's name in the dropdown that you're looking at. But "Ctrl+G -> pokestats" should still be able to find it just fine.
 
Outwitter

Outwitter

You reap what you plant...
163
Posts
6
Years
This editor looks very promising and is rightly so recommend by none other than Anthroyd himself! I'll definitely be keeping an eye on it and would love to see it evolve into a single editor for all gen 3 hacking needs. I have a question if you don't mind. This might sound stupid but can HMA generate INIs for completed hacks? In other words, can I modify sophisticated hacks like Gaia for example with HMA? This is something where PGE fails and G3T becomes mediocre....
 
haven1433

haven1433

Modder / Programmer
42
Posts
10
Years
  • Age 35
  • Seen Jan 16, 2024
@outwitter HexManiacAdvance doesn't use INI files. It instead stores its metadata in TOML files. Whenever you open a rom for the first time, it'll generate a TOML file based on what it finds in the rom. I'm working to guarantee that this works perfectly for Ruby, Sapphire, FireRed, LeafGreen, and Emerald, but it tends to work fairly well for romhacks as well. It's not perfect: it may get the length of some of the tables wrong (for example, the number of pokemon or number of moves), but everything is stored, organized with labels, in the TOML file, and you can edit anything that's incorrect.

This does, however, require that you actually KNOW what's going on in your rom ;) so it won't work so well if you're using a big rombase without knowing how it works. But if you know what's going on in the file, you can customize the generated TOML file to get HexManiacAdvance to display it correctly for you.
 
Outwitter

Outwitter

You reap what you plant...
163
Posts
6
Years
haven1433 said:
@outwitter HexManiacAdvance doesn't use INI files. It instead stores its metadata in TOML files. Whenever you open a rom for the first time, it'll generate a TOML file based on what it finds in the rom. I'm working to guarantee that this works perfectly for Ruby, Sapphire, FireRed, LeafGreen, and Emerald, but it tends to work fairly well for romhacks as well. It's not perfect: it may get the length of some of the tables wrong (for example, the number of pokemon or number of moves), but everything is stored, organized with labels, in the TOML file, and you can edit anything that's incorrect.

This does, however, require that you actually KNOW what's going on in your rom ;) so it won't work so well if you're using a big rombase without knowing how it works. But if you know what's going on in the file, you can customize the generated TOML file to get HexManiacAdvance to display it correctly for you.
Click to expand...

So I should know "what's going on in the file"; that's pretty much the essence of hacking, I guess! Thanks for the reply though. Stay safe, keep working!
 
haven1433

haven1433

Modder / Programmer
42
Posts
10
Years
  • Age 35
  • Seen Jan 16, 2024
@LykO I haven't tested on Windows 7, since I use Windows 10 usually. But it should work on Windows 7.

However, you mentioned that you're using .Net Framework 4.8. HexManiacAdvance is built with .Net Framework 4.7.2. Can you install that version and then let me know if it works?
 
haven1433

haven1433

Modder / Programmer
42
Posts
10
Years
  • Age 35
  • Seen Jan 16, 2024
LykO, I went through and checked my build settings: none of them have changed between 0.3.7 and 0.3.8. They're both built with .Net Framework 4.7.2. Perhaps there's some backwards compatibility in 4.8 that was allowing it to run apps built with 4.7.2.

Either way, your screenshot convinces me that the .Net version is not the issue. If I get access to a Windows 7 machine to test with, I'll look into it and try and fix it. Otherwise, I'll mention that the project is open source; if you're up to it you can try building it locally.

HnaxDiz.png


That would require installing Visual Studio, but the free Community edition should be capable of doing the build.
 
Last edited:
DjTarma

DjTarma

192
Posts
5
Years
The tool is perfect in many ways, in addition to improving QoL, it helps the user to fix problems that he does himself in a few clicks.
HMA has arrived to revolutionize the hacking scenario in an extremely positive way!
It is possible to modify many variables with few clicks, and imagination.
 
Last edited:
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