============================================================================= Secret of Mana Save-State editor for ZSNES Version 1.2 - June 05, 2003 By Paul D. Shoener III ============================================================================= CONTENTS Introduction Getting Started Explanation of What Everything Does Automatic Update Feature Uninstall Information Version History Acknowledgements Contact ================ - INTRODUCTION - ================ Secret of Mana has always been one of my favorite games for the SNES. So naturally (for me at least), it was my first choice for making an Editor. It's been an on-and-off project for me over the last couple of years, but I decided to make it available recently so that other Mana fans who are so inclined may also enjoy it. =================== - GETTING STARTED - =================== This Read-Me contains detailed instructions on how to use the program. If you don't want to wade through all of this, just go ahead and start using the program. It's really not that difficult to use. :-) The first thing I recommend doing is going into the Option and setting the location of your ZSNES save-state directory. After this, the program's dialogs will always start there when browsing for save-files, etc. To load a save, just choose File | Open from the menu and select a save-state from Secret of Mana. Although the program tries to detect if the save-state is from Mana, it might not always succeed. Just make sure it's for the right game or things might get wierd! :-) To edit the information, just go to the appropriate tab and modify whatever you want. To save your changes, choose File | Save from the menu. ======================================= - Explanation of What Everything Does - ======================================= Check the hints that appear in the status-bar when you move the mouse over many items. "Party Info" Tab: This tab contains information common to all party members. Here, you can edit the party's GP and Utility Items (healing, misc. items) "Equipment" Tab: Here, you can see what kind of Armor the party has in the appropriate menu "rings". If you see a "B", "S", or "G" next to an item, that means that either the Boy, Girl, or Sprite, respectively, is currently equipped with the item in that slot. To change an item, just click on it and a menu will appear from which you may choose the new item. If a character was equipped with an item from that slot, the character will NO LONGER be equipped with the new item. You'll have to do that when you're back in ZSNES. "Weapons" Tab: On this tab, you can see which weapons the party has, the weapon names, their levels, and which weapon a character is equipped with. You can edit the levels of the weapons by changing the number in a weapon's edit box. Choose from 1-9. The icon next to a weapon indicates that it is equipped by a character. To equip a different weapon, right-click in the box to the left of the desired weapon and a menu will appear. Choose who will be equipped with the weapon, or "None" to un-equip the weapon. A couple of notes about this information: * First, when you forge a weapon that you have edited, the game can get confused. If that happens, just click the '!' button and all of the weapon levels will be restored to their correct values. * Secondly, in order for a change in weapon level to show up in the game, you may be required by the game to equip a different weapon and then re-equip the weapon of choice. This must be done while playing. To get this to work right away in the beginning of the game when there is only one weapon (just the sword), you'll have to un-equip the sword from the editor (see above), change the level, and save. When back in ZSNES, press F4 to load the save. Now go into the weapons ring and equip the new sword! "Boy", "Girl", and "Sprite" Tabs: These tabs let you view/edit the information about the respective characters. If an edit box is greyed-out or a button is disabled, then that information can not be edited. Personal Info.: Here, you can change the character's Name, Experience, HP, MP. To change the level, edit the experience points. The game will take the appropriate actions to level-up your characters. The changes may not show up right away. To trigger the update, you must take an action that causes the desired value to change (defeat a monster, etc.) You may also be wondering why the Maximum HP and MP is greyed-out. The reason is that this information cannot be restored to the appropriate values if changed. I may make an option that allows you to change it in a future version. For an easy way to set HP/MP to maximum for all characters, see below under "Goodies". Skills: Clicking the appropriate button will bring up a dialog that allows you to edit the Weapon/Magic skill-levels. To change the skill, just type in a new value over the old one. Choose OK to accept all changes and Cancel if you change your mind. Once you choose OK, the values will be altered and will appear the next time you enter the dialog. The file will not change, though, unless you explicitly save. "File" menu: Open/Save (should be obvious :) See below for a note about automatic updating of information. Re-load: Choose this item to update the program's information on a saved-state. You might want to do this if you know that the information has changed since you loaded the file. This will cause the program to re-load the save from disk and update all of the tabs with the updated information. 1 through 4: These are the most recent save-states that have been edited. You can use these to quickly load a save-state. Clear List: Choose this to clear the list of most-recently opened files. "Goodies" menu: The different choices in the Goodies menu will let you quickly restore the check-marked items to their maximum values. This is useful if you need to heal frequently and are switching back-and-forth between this program and ZSNES. To apply these goodies, just choose the option to "Apply goodies" or press the equivalent short-cut key (Ctrl+G). "Options" menu: Settings: This will bring up a dialog that lets you change the program's settings. Here is an explanation of the settings: "Default path for save-states": This option lets you determine where the program will first go for save-state operations (loading/saving). "Save settings on Exit": This will cause the options to be saved when you quit the program, as well as the most-recent files list. "Remove" checkbox: When you want to remove the program, make sure you check this box first before deleting the program files. It will remove the program's registry settings. "Help" menu: About: Brings up program information. For example, version information. ============================ - Automatic Update Feature - ============================ If you are running the editor at the same time as ZSNES, you can use both programs in an alternating fashion to keep your characters healed and your items filled, if you so desire. Here is an example to illustrate this feature: Say you loaded a save-state file into the program. Next, you switch back to ZSNES and play some more. In the process of doing this, you save over the same slot that was loaded into the editor. Now, the party takes some serious damage and needs to be healed quickly! You save the state and then switch back to the editor. When you do, the editor will say that the save-state file has changed since it last loaded the file and will ask if you want to update. You choose yes and the newest progress is loaded into memory. You then choose to apply the goodies and the quick-fixes are made. After this, you save the file and switch back to ZSNES and press F4 to re-load. Note: If you don't update, the old information will remain in memory. When you save, the save-state in memory will replace the save-state on disk. Thus, any changes that had occurred to the file since it was loaded into memory will be wiped-out. Be careful! Explanation of why anyone would want/need such a feature: 1) It will keep you from accidentally overwriting a new save file with old data because you forgot to re-load. Needless to say, this can save a great deal of frustration! :-) 2) It's a bit faster than manually reloading all of the time. ========================= - Uninstall information - ========================= The program can be removed from your system via the following steps: 1) In the Options, there is a check-box to remove registry information. Check the box and click OK. The program will then remove its' registry entries. 2) After closing the program, just delete this program's files. =================== - Version History - =================== Version 1.1 - June 5, 2003 : Fixed a bug where an illegal weapon value caused the program to crash upon loading a save state. Thanks to Daniel Turner for reporting the bug and providing me with a save state to help me track it down. Version 1.1 - September 1, 2001 : Re-designed the Equipment tab. Fixed a rare bug relating to names and the fact that this caused the Girl and Sprite tabs not to appear. Thanks to Apaley for pointing this out. Fixed the automatic re-load feature, which got broken when the mini-preview image was added to the ZSNES save-state. Version 1.0 - June 2, 2000 : Didn't change the version number because I figured that no one found and downloaded the program yet. :-} Made an icon for the program (or rather, borrowed one from the game! :-) Added the "Level-Up" goodies option. Now saves the goodies settings (except for Level-Up. This was intentional!) Version 1.0 - May 28, 2000 : Initial release. ==================== - Acknowledgements - ==================== SquareSoft, for making this great game. The ZSNES team, for their excellent ZSNES emulator. The Snes9X team, for their SNES9X emulator and for being one of the major pioneers of SNES emulation in the early days. Razor, for encouraging me to write my editors and for some coding advice. ======================= - Contact Information - ======================= Check my web site (http://home.earthlink.net/~paul3) for updates to this program or to see what other programs I've got. If you have any comments, find any bugs, or just want to say "hi", feel free to send me an E-Mail at "paul3@earthlink.net"