
                         -------------------------
                          Rygar Improvement v1.01
                         -------------------------

                 Written by Chris Hickman (chris@bpwl.com)

 Hi :-)


 I've always been thrilled by the idea of level editors!  After seeing Mario
 Improvement, Zelda Improvement, Final Fantasy Improvement, and a new Dragon
 Warrior level editor, I wanted to make my own :-).

 Jay McGavren has been giving me the information on where I need to edit
 from, so this should all be pretty easy :)

 Related URLs:

 Rygar Improvement Distro - http://www.bpwl.com/ar/utils/nes/rygarimp.htm
 Archaic Ruins (My page!) - http://www.bpwl.com/ar/
 RAGE Games (Jay's page!) - http://www.classicgaming.com/ragegames/

                               ------------
                               Instructions
                               ------------

 Rygar Improvement is an editor for the side scrolling and overhead levels of
 Rygar.  Upon loading Rygar Improvement, Rygar is opened into memory and a
 display of the first level is on your left.

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Keyboard   |GUI            | Description
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Arrow Keys |Turtles        | Scroll through the levels
 PGUP/PGDN  |PGUP/PGDN      | Jump 16 bytes at forward / backwards *
 TAB        |PCXs Button    | Switch graphics set between the 4 graphics sets
 1 ... -    |Level Display  | Input a tile into the level
            |Hex Codes      | Click on each code to manually enter (00 - FF)
 F1...F3    |Box w/3 Tiles  | Select a tile to input into the level
 F5...F6    |Little arrows  | Scroll through tile selection
 F7 & F8    |LVL- & LVL+    | Jump to the previous/next presetted level
 F10        |Exit Button    | Quit!!
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 * Generally, Rygar stores information in blocks of 16.  In most cases,
   PGUP/PGDN will switch between rows and columns.
 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 Advanced Tips:

   - The NES has an onscreen palette of 32 colours.  Many of the different
     sets of backgrounds use different palette's.  Using graphics from
     different areas of Rygar to replace those of other levels might cause
     garbled graphics to appear due to the palette being incorrect.  If you
     want to do hacking like this, I'd suggest using an NES graphics editor
     and editing the tiles so that they fit the palette that you wish to
     use.

   - For power users who have made their own custom graphics with other
     programs, you can also make your own PCX sets to load into Rygar
     Improvement.  To create compatible PCXs, make 16x120 PCXs and load them
     into Photoshop.  Convert them to 'RGB Colour mode' then back to
     'Indexed Colour Mode'.  Select the Windows default palette, and allow
     the PCX to convert it's colours to the closest match.  Name the PCX
     according to it's corresponding hex code and place it in the directory
     that it belongs with (PCXS1/ for the first set, PCXS2/ for the second).

                                -----------
                                Got Levels?
                                -----------

 E-mail your level hacks to me @ chris@bpwl.com

 I'll add them to the Rygar Improvement homepage, and if I get enough --
 I might just make improvements to Rygar Improvement :)

                            -------------------
                            Inspirational Words
                            -------------------

 I'm coding this in Borland C++ v4.5.  I own the software, therefore I use
 it.  I would much rather have written this in DJGPP or Watcom C++, but I
 haven't felt that it was right yet to make the move over.

 Programming in C is extremely fun and satisfying (when your code works).
 Rygar Improvement's GUI was created from my own ingenuity and usage of
 ASM routines to plot pixels and change palette colours.  The GUI is a
 composite of a lot of little things, and I'm including the source
 code so that anyone can take a look at the strange way in which I code.
 Let's just say that I don't understand the Virtual Gameboy source, and that
 my code probably looks foreign to most C coders too :)

 Anyway -- why is this inspirational?  I'm not a very good coder!  I am self
 taught, using a crappy compiler, and have created an NES ROM level editor!
 All it takes is a Borland C++ instruction manual and some initiative :-).
 I still have no clue about how to go about making an emulator, but I
 encourage anyone who has any C++ skills at all (maybe skills learned in
 high school? -- I haven't taken Computer Science yet, but I'm sure they
 teach you enough) to try making something like this.

 I also discourage people from making front ends.

 - Chris Hickman

                               ----------
                               Kind Words
                               ----------

 Thanks go to:

   Jay McGavren
    - Without your help in finding the level offsets, creating all of the
      PCXs, and trying to hack Rygar by hand with a hexeditor, this would
      never have existed!

   Luke Sneeringer, Micheal Lieu, and Ted Micheal
    - Thanks for maintaining Archaic Ruins so well!  It's my page, but at the
      same time, it's yours too!  It's nice to be able to take a break every
      once in a while!

   JL_Picard
    - Thanks for the .PCX reading routine and all of the help with getting
      PCX files to import.  I'm not a very adaptable coder; your help was
      life saving :).

   My mother
    - For the first two days of coding this, I had been eating cookies and
      pringles out of restlessness.  I make frequent trips downstairs to the
      pantry, drink lots of Diet Pepsi, and go to the bathroom often as a
      result of my restlessness.  Thanks go to my mother for buying me
      pringles and making cookies.

   Square Soft
    - Final Fantasy VII is awesome!  I bought it for the PC, and the entire
      time that I've been coding this, I've wanted to play it -- therefore,
      I'm trying to get this damned editor done so I can pick up on FFVII :)

                                 ----------
                                 The Future
                                 ----------

 I'm not going to have too much time to work on Rygar Improvement, but I hope
 that I might be able to get a floating GUI created and allow users to edit
 Rygar in full screen mode!  Other things include consolodating the 967 PCX
 images into 4 files.  Such might just save some harddrive space :-).  After
 I get the GUI and editor to be more flexible, I'm interested in making a
 Zelda level editor (Zelda Improvement Revisited), a Metroid level editor,
 and who knows what else :)

                                 ---------
                                  History
                                 ---------

Releases:

v1.01 - 07/25/98
  - Crash bug fixed when input and output files are the same
  - Misc. Areas offset added... (ugh... reused areas)
  - Rygar Improvement Demo v0.9 included! (Thanks Jay!)

v1.0 - 07/22/98
  - Fourth (and final) PCX set added!
  - Second PCX set completed (9F.PCX added...) :)
  - Command line options for selecting input / output files added!
  - Keyboard support added to the GUI by Jay's request.  (Bah!)
  - Fixed the age old bug that caused the output file to gain excess bytes!

Unreleased Betas:

v0.99 - 07/21/98
  - Third PCX set added. (00 - FF)
  - The second PCX set is almost complete (9A - FF) - 9F missing!
  - Lvl+ and Lvl- buttons now change PCX Set also
  - Overhead level editing added! (Change to PCX Set 3)
  - Fixed bug where 0F displayed as 'F'

v0.91 - 07/18/98
  - All 9 level offsets now available
  - Most of the second PCX set added. (00 - 99)
  - Source code optimized and commented

v0.9 - 07/16/98
  - New GUI added by Chris.
  - Dual PCX sets supported (PCXS1\*.PCX and PCXS2\*.PCX)
  - PGUP / PGDN buttons activated
  - Several bug fixes to the GUI
  - Jay discovers that there are >2< sets of PCXs
  - Jay delivers the entire first set of PCXs!
  - HEX Codes (00 - 0F) now display with both digits
  - Tile selection window rewritten -- now you can scroll away from a selected
    tile and still have it selected.
  - Both mouse buttons can now be used with the tile selector!

v0.1 - 07/15/98
  - Rygar Improvement is fully mouse operational now :-)
  - Jay made a set of PCXs for 00 - 9C, DC, and E9 - ED.  We now need
    9D - DB, DD - E8, and EE - FF to have a complete set of PCXs :-)

v0.099 - 07/15/98
  - Palette fixed!  Now we need a new GUI needed and a global palette!

v0.09 - 07/14/98
  - PCX support!  Now what you see is what you get :-) (screwed colours)

v0.05 - 07/13/98
  - Hexidecimal codes are now editable and reoutputted into RYGARNEW.NES.
  - Bug fixes here and there.

v0.01 - 07/12/98
  - Level Up, Level Down, and Exit buttons added!
  - 3 Levels are browsable by hexidecimal in the GUI!

v0.001 - 07/12/98
  - GUI created
  - RYGAR.NES reads and is reoutputted.  I realized that opening
    ROMs as binaries as opposed to TEXT is smart :-).
  - Bug exists that makes output 1 byte larger than input ... hrmmm...

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rygar Improvement is Copyrighted by a personal copyright to Chris Hickman

I am distributing the source code for the curiousity of the users of Rygar
Improvement.  If you'd like to use pieces of the source code for anything,
please contact me and say 'thank you' -- trust me, I'll let you use it :-).
If you are planning on making your own Rygar level editor, please don't use
my source code to do it, that's not why I'm including it in here.

Tecmo is Tecmo.  I am Chris.  No relation.
