File names matter.
bn4bm.gba
bn4rs.gba
By default, this repo is set up to only modify bn4bm.gba (BN4 Blue Moon, US version)
To modify an additional rom, new parameters for it must be included in compile.bat and compile.tpl. If you are making changes with assembly files then the new rom will need to have proper addresses defined for it (asm/xyz_addr.asm).
There are full text archive dumps of BlueMoon and RedSun in /textdumps/. Search through it for what you want and copy the text to bm_text.tpl before editing. Some common text archives have already been copied over.
Before you can edit a script, you must ensure you've included the @archive and @size values for it. The order of definition is archive, size, script(s) where scripts always go under their respective archive.
An intact text archive looks like this:
@archive 00A455
@size 10
script 0 mmbn4s {
"Bingus"
end
}
script 1 mmbn4s {
"Binted"
end
}
etc...
When copying a text archive, not all scripts need to be included. Any script that gets excluded will simply remain unmodified. Scripts can also look like this:
@archive 74C670
@size 256
script 5 mmbn4 {
msgOpenQuick
textSpeed
delay = 0
"""
Snowstorm
attack!
Ice Panel
"""
keyWait
any = true
end
msgCloseQuick
}
Note the difference in the name directly following the script number (mmbn4 vs mmbn4s). The script type ending in 's' is usually simpler and supports fewer commands. Details about this sort of stuff can be found in the /plugins/ folder where you can find files such as mmbn4s.ini which describe all the commands that are available in that type of script.
The important text archive where your text changes go is located in the root of this repo.
bm_text.tpl is for BN4 Blue Moon. This is a textpet file, thank you Prof.9
To modify assembly, or do any sort of procedural hex editing, look inside the /asm/ folder for assembly files such as bn4.asm. Put your modifications in that file.
The _addr files such as bn4bm_addr.asm and bn4rs_addr.asm are to define addresses in the ROM that are different between the two versions of the game, allowing you to modify addresses defined by a variable that gets set depending on which rom is being edited. If you are only modifying one version, you can ignore this file and nothing bad will happen.
Assembly edits are carried out by armips, which has some fantastic documentation.
https://github.com/Kingcom/armips
run compile.bat to apply the changes. ROMs get generated in the /out/ folder along with a BPS patch that can apply over a vanilla ROM.
In the same folder you will also see release.py. This python script is nifty and will construct the patch folder and generate the required metadata for Tango. Open release.py in a text editor and follow the instructions in the comments to set up your patch metadata for release.
Running the python script requires the python runtime (very easy to install).
https://www.python.org/downloads/
You could ignore the python script and put the metadata together yourself, but like, c'mon.
TextPet https://github.com/Prof9/TextPet (MIT License)
armips https://github.com/Kingcom/armips (MIT License)
Flips https://github.com/Daedalus007/Flips-daedalus (GPL3 License)