Sonic 3 Level Editor

[Janne Evers]

SonED was the first level editor created for a Sonic the Hedgehog game for the Sega Mega Drive, and eventually became the first level editor to support the PC version of Sonic CD as well. Known for its ease of use, the program can edit object placement, palette, art, and more. New users will find the program an easy-to-use introduction into the world of editing and developing video games, while returning users will be able to use its more advanced features, as noted below.

SonED was created by Stealth from the Sonic hacking community. Following the reveal of object and ring layout notes posted to the Sonic 2 Hacking Guide by Saxman in early 1999, Stealth began building an editor to modify those layouts. The resulting program would be named SonED, a portmanteau of the words "Sonic" and "Editor", inspired by the DooM editor "DoomED".

With Saxman publicly stating his interest in having someone make a level editor, Stealth provided version .002a to Saxman for testing, which contained an entirely blue background and rings as placeholders for objects. Then on 05/10/1999, version .003a was sent over to Saxman, and subsequently released to the public for consumption. This newer version showed the level foreground. Only Emerald Hill Zone act 1 could be modified by this point.

In an attempt to augment his cost-of-living budget, the program was originally introduced as shareware at a price of $30; he later reconsidered and reduced the cost to $15 before any sales were made, after which only a few people decided to register. Eventually, someone had released their registered copy, which led to Stealth leaving the scene. Shortly afterward, he came back to release newer versions of his SonED utility for free, after having contacted the registrants on the subject.

I'm interested in making my own levels for one of these Sonic titles - 1, CD, 2, 3, S&K, which ever one is easiest will do for now. As in modding the rom, preferably. I've been looking around and I can't tell which is the best level editor, or are they all bad and the only real way to do it is to edit the Assembly code? I don't know. I'd also like to edit tiles so that I can make my own sprites, but that's a second question really, the level editing question is the important one for now.

They said modding not a fan game where you create levels. Also, the best level editor is SONLVL or sonED2 and if you want another option then esrael sonic editor (1&2) if you wanna edit sprites then flex 2 and sonmapED are a good choice. In most disassembled versions of Sonic 1,2,3,&k,3&k you shouldn't ever really have to edit levels through assembly code. And i don't know why but i can't find a disassembled version of the regular original CD but there is one but its another release. I think somewhere in 1995-1996 on PC. If you wanna do tile editing you should use SONLVL and if its sonic 1 i highly recommend you use spring yard. And for sprite tiles sonmapED and flex 2 (if needed)

And last for sonmapED: you need to be aware of tiles, so for example the signpost and eggmans face. They both use same tiles and are same on each side. BUT if you add something thats not like, for example (sonic 2 beta signpost on eggman) then you will have a werid monstrosity of a signpost. And palette hacking is simple you can edit level palettes and sonic's with SONLVL. And for sonED2 i think so.

This is a level editor for the Sonic the Hedgehog series of games on the Genesis. It supports Sonic 1, Sonic 2, Sonic 2 Beta, Sonic 3, and Sonic & Knuckles plus has some built in features useful to ROM hackers (Decompressor, Compressor, Game Genie code conversion, IPS patcher, and ROM conversion).

Industrial Park is a tool made by community member igorseabra4 in C# using SharpDX. It is an editor capable of opening a number of HIP/HOP files and display the level, with models and textures for level and objects, as well as edit some of the asset types in Battle For Bikini Bottom, The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, Scooby-Doo: Night of 100 Frights, The Incredibles and The Incredibles: Rise of the Underminer for all platforms (except the point-and-click PC versions of the SpongeBob games).

This tool is based off from, and shares a lot of its source code with another one of the creator's tools: Heroes Power Plant, a tool to edit levels in Sonic Heroes. Being also based on the RenderWare engine, both games share their model format. It also gave Industrial Park the convention of being named after a level in the game. Industrial Park uses TxdGen for converting textures and vgmstream for previewing sounds.

To learn to use Industrial Park, please follow the Essential Series of modding tutorials, starting with the Introduction To Modding page. Most of the information in the first few pages is related to using the tool, such as Industrial Park Basics and Editing Assets.

Use Choose Root Directory to pick a folder; all HIP/HOP files in the folder and any subfolders will be included in the DYNA search. Click Perform Search and all DYNAS found in any of the files will be logged.

Use Choose Root Directory to pick a folder; all HIP/HOP files in the folder and any subfolders will be included in the event search. Click Perform Search and all events which match the set filters found in any of the files will be logged. You can filter the asset types of the sender and reciever assets (Null allows for any) and the events which are recieved and sent in each link (Unknown allows for any). For example: if you leave sender asset as TRIG, target asset as Null, recieve event as Unknown and target event as Enable, you will be returned all links which are sent from TRIGs to any assets which have Enable as the event being sent in any HIP/HOPs in the folder you choose.

Use Choose Root Directory to pick a folder; all HIP/HOP files in the folder and any subfolders will be included in the Pickup search. Click Perform Search and all Pickups found in any of the files will be logged.

In this Part 2, we will take a look at several of the tools that went from being part of the crucial evolution and development in SADX modding, to the current editing tools that are used nowadays for creating modern SADX mods (as well as covering the important SADX Mod Loader).

A big step from the early days of hex-editing and rudimentary tools, MainMemory would join the Sonic Retro forums in August 14, 2009, and would then showcase all the things she made for SADX. These ranged from a Cheat Engine table and a Trainer, to specialized modding tools like the aforementioned SADXMDL, SADXLVL, SETEDIT; and several others. Later on there would also be a toolkit that included the latest improved versions of these tools named SA Tools, previously known as SADXPCTools. Another later tool, ModLoader, would eventually allow for many more things than before. But first we will take a course through the original tools, including some deprecated ones.

All of these tools were important for both helping further research the game and bringing more players or modders to the SADX community. As the community grew more attention was brought to the PC SADX port, and the state it was left in, further justifying the work that needed to be done.

Knowing that main game data can be stored in either sonic.exe (the game executable) or in a DLL file, splitting tools are provided with SA Tools in order to extract the game data files into a folder. These can then be accessed through external editing tools and rebuilt in sonic.exe/DLLs again (pre-Mod Loader) or compiled in organized folders and then redirected to the game when the mod is loaded (Mod Loader).

The earliest level modifying tools (like SADXLVL) loaded from the executable file itself, and saved changes to it as well (which is why mods like Sonic RDX came with their own EXE). However, with the introduction of SADXPCTools, splitting the game data in external files was introduced, and was necessary for making level edits with SADXLVL2, as it asks for .ini files generated by the split process.

Almost all other mods ended up benefitting from splitting once Mod Loader was introduced. Saanim, sa1mdl, sa1lvl, and other similarly named files, were generated from it and could be loaded with the new editing tools. Of course, these would be integrated into a .DLL file when the mod gets compiled.

About the audio, music files and most audio voice clips originally were in .WMA files. Changing these was as straightforward as replacing the files. But with the creation of ModLoader, it was possible through a update in 2016 to use .ADX files (which were the original format used in SA1; and also fixed an issue with audio clips lagging sometimes). There would be other specific sound effects stored in a different way though, which were .DAT soundbank files. These would require the use of a specific tool for replacing the sounds inside (more on that later).

SETEdit is a rather early tool made specifically to modify SET files through a Graphical User Interface (GUI), that made it convenient to change the coordinates for specific objects in levels. It was a more practical method than painstakingly hex-editing the file while having to check the right values.

It allowed you to change the music track used for certain music IDs (which meant that you could change the music file used for a certain event or stage, edit physics values, swap character spots, and a slew of other things. Any changes had to be saved directly to the .exe file in order to be applied.

Of course, it would receive an updated version known as SADXTweaker2, which would be bundled with SA Tools. One of the more useful upgrades was allowing you to save changes to a mod file instead of the .exe itself (which can be compiled as a .DLL. More on that later). There was more visible info and notes added too, like the name for music tracks in the music list editor.

With the initial versions being released somewhere around 2009, SADXLVL is one of the earliest editing tools for the game. It would later evolve into a fully-featured level editor and would be the only one out there. And, of course, it would become vital to many future SADX mods and projects.

c80f0f1006