My Christmas gift for the MBN...

[Renesans]

I didn't know it was so different... I guess that new projects shouldn't be started in classic VB then

[Battler]

The thing is, I don't know VB.NET... to be honest, I don't know any programming language as well as I know classic Visual Basic, at least as far as writing Windows GUI programs is concerned (I do know and even prefer C/C++ when writing console programs these days). I'm considering learning how to make C and C++ Windows GUI programs, but it will take quite some time before I master it.

[Renesans]

Yeah, I understand your problem, programming languages are sadly not "immortal". Well, at least most of them are not (C/C++ are getting close). That's why a good programmer's job is to always learn newer and newer languages.

[Ditzy_Doo]

Yay!

[xesf]

Originally Posted by Battler

The thing is, I don't know VB.NET... to be honest, I don't know any programming language as well as I know classic Visual Basic, at least as far as writing Windows GUI programs is concerned (I do know and even prefer C/C++ when writing console programs these days). I'm considering learning how to make C and C++ Windows GUI programs, but it will take quite some time before I master it.

Move to another language, no one uses VB this days. Its really rare someone needs such a programmer. Most of them hate VB actually.
If you want something like VB for Windows GUI, don't go into VB.net, switch completely to C# and you will love it.

As if you want to go beyond Windows you should stick with C++.

[Battler]

LBA 2 Saved Game Editor version 1.7.0
=====================================

New features:
- Replaced compression algorithm with a DLL based on the code from Adeline Software International, increases speed;
- You can now edit the life points.

Current features:
- Loading, editing, and saving LBA 2 saved games;
- Editing a lot of things - from the area code to inventory, Twinsen's properties (life, magic, kashes, etc.), holomap data, and even images;
- Currently can only export images to .BMP, but can also import from .GIF, .JPG, .DIB, etc.;
- Compression on saving modified compressed saved games.

Things to do:
- Editing more things, such as the game flags;
- Exporting images to formats, other than .BMP;
- Dumping the saved games to some ASCII format.


How this program works
----------------------
You load a LBA 2 saved game. The program will automatically load it and show the values. The various tabs represtend the various parts of the saved game.
When modifying the inventory items, be careful that for enabling a second-level item, such as the Blowtron, you also have to enable its first-level base item, in this case, the Blowgun. And you also needs to enable the Crystal of the Celebration, before changing it to either the PistoLaster without the Crystal, or the working PistoLaser.
If a button or check box is disabled, this means that either it's a countable inventory item, and thus you need to change it in form of its count from the "Other data" part, or you can't modify this item at all.
If you want to import an image, the image has to only use the colors that are in the LBA 2 palette. The best thing would be to import an 256-color image that uses the LBA 2 palette.
When you're done modifying what you want to modify, save the file either to its current location or to a new location (which can only be an external model file).


Credits
-------
Me (Battler): for starting the program and general coding.
Alexandre Fontoura (XesF): LBA 2 saved game format specification.
Kazimierz Król (Zink): uncompression and compression code.


Links
-----
The program: http://citadel.rol.im/lba2sge.rar.
The source code: http://citadel.rol.im/lba2sge_source.rar.

No new revision of the LBA 2 Saved Game format specification with this version of the LBA 2 Saved Game Editor, because I need to find the old one first before I can updade it.


Screenshot
-----------
No screenshot because this version is almost exactly the same as version 1.6.0 in appearance.


And yes, version 1.7.0 is still written in Visual Basic 6, in 2017. However, it's tested and working on Windows 10 Version 1703 (Creator Edition). I'll see about releasing a version 2.0.0 written in C (which is the language I currently know best) but no promises.
And I forgot to remove Zink's credit for the compression code (since I no longer use his) but ah well, without it this program wouldn't have been possible in the first place so it can stay.

[SpaceGuitarist]

Nice!

[xesf]

That's great, thanks for working on a new version and for sharing.

If you manage to find something new to the format, please make sure to update http://lbafileinfo.kazekr.net/index....=LBA2:Savegame


Note: you have to run the app in Administrator mode.

[Polaris]

Nice

[xesf]

Battler, can you make a new version of the EditorFile3D?
When trying to use in LBA2 and select an entry in the list is crashes with error "Invalid property value".
Same happen if you change Entities.

[gravel22]

That's crazy the LBA community on all aspects is on stamina

[Battler]

- xesf: I'll looking into that editor... if I can find its source code again. I admit that I completely forgot I even made that, so who knows where the source code is.

Edit: Just found it.

Also, if anyone needs, I can resume work on something I never finished, that is, a program to edit the Kanji font of Japanese LBA 1. It might be useful if someone wants to translate LBA 1 into Chinese or Korean (or even something wackier such as Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs or even Cuneiform ).

[xesf]

thats greay. That one will be a great help.

[Battler]

Originally Posted by BloodzTunic

Hey sorry but this save editor doesnt work when i open a save it closes

I know this post is 10 years old now, but I can confirm this problem still exists, and I even know why now, after running into the same problem when trying to open a saved game with this on Traditional Chinese Windows 95 (on my emulator, don't worry; and don't ask me why that language - someone on my Discord server asked me to install it) - it's because when the program is run on Windows with non-Unicode page set to something that is not Western (CP 1252), the Visual Basic 6 run-time messes up the saved game data, likely by processing the strings with the data. I am currently working on a fix (that will involve avoiding Visual Basic 6 strings altogether).

[Battler]

LBA 2 Saved Game Editor version 1.8.0
=====================================

New features:
- Reworked saved game loading and saving so it no longer breaks on non-Western versions of Windows;
- Changed the title text colors and background.

Current features:
- Loading, editing, and saving LBA 2 saved games;
- Editing a lot of things - from the area code to inventory, Twinsen's properties (life, magic, kashes, etc.), holomap data, and even images;
- Currently can only export images to .BMP, but can also import from .GIF, .JPG, .DIB, etc.;
- Compression on saving modified compressed saved games.

Things to do:
- Editing more things, such as the game flags;
- Exporting images to formats, other than .BMP;
- Dumping the saved games to some ASCII format.


How this program works
----------------------
You load a LBA 2 saved game. The program will automatically load it and show the values. The various tabs represtend the various parts of the saved game.
When modifying the inventory items, be careful that for enabling a second-level item, such as the Blowtron, you also have to enable its first-level base item, in this case, the Blowgun. And you also needs to enable the Crystal of the Celebration, before changing it to either the PistoLaster without the Crystal, or the working PistoLaser.
If a button or check box is disabled, this means that either it's a countable inventory item, and thus you need to change it in form of its count from the "Other data" part, or you can't modify this item at all.
If you want to import an image, the image has to only use the colors that are in the LBA 2 palette. The best thing would be to import an 256-color image that uses the LBA 2 palette.
When you're done modifying what you want to modify, save the file either to its current location or to a new location (which can only be an external model file).


Credits
-------
Me (Battler): for starting the program and general coding.
Alexandre Fontoura (XesF): LBA 2 saved game format specification.
Kazimierz Król (Zink): original decompression and compression code.
Adeline Software Internation: decompression and compression code from which the DLL used by this program was compiled.


Links
-----
The program: http://citadel.rol.im/lba2sge_1.8.0.rar.
The source code: http://citadel.rol.im/lba2sge_1.8.0_source.rar.

[pitiflake]

Wow ! Now that sure IS some investment for the community !!
Happy new year to you Obras !

[Phreak]

The links appear to be dead for me. Does anybody have a copy or a working link?

[Battler]

Fixed links:
The program: http://citadel.ringoflightning.net/lba2sge_1.8.0.rar.
The source code: http://citadel.ringoflightning.net/l...8.0_source.rar.

And why do we still have such a ridiculous limit on post editing that no other site has anymore?