Here is InsmEdit, the first editor for Insmouse No Yakata.

It’s a simple editor that can currently edit patches with level layouts, level passwords, and player starting positions.

It comes with a readme file that explains everything and an example patch that demonstrates its usage.

Special thanks to DogP for his forum post which encouraged me to do research on Insmouse and KR155E for his excellent FAQ which helped in finding out where the player starting positions are stored.

Attachments:

1. 

   insmedit.png
   

1. insmedit.zip

That’s cool! Can you put in monsters too?

I’ve not played Insmouse actually, but really like the idea of making a special version of it.

Protoman85 wrote:
That’s cool! Can you put in monsters too?

No, I haven’t yet figured out how to control that. Help is welcome.

Wow, that’s great! We should all create some levels, add in some text and graphic hacks and create an “Insmouse No Yakata Reloaded” with this. 🙂

BTW, I am on Windows 7 (64 Bit) and I got the following message when I first tried to start the editor:

Component ‘COMDLG32.OCX’ not correctly registered: file is missing or invalid

The following guide helped me solve the problem: http://devonenote.com/2010/02/register-comdlg32-ocx-on-x64-win7/

KR155E wrote:
Wow, that’s great! We should all create some levels, add in some text and graphic hacks and create an “Insmouse No Yakata Reloaded” with this. 🙂

That would be great.

BTW, I am on Windows 7 (64 Bit) and I got the following message when I first tried to start the editor:

Component ‘COMDLG32.OCX’ not correctly registered: file is missing or invalid

The following guide helped me solve the problem: http://devonenote.com/2010/02/register-comdlg32-ocx-on-x64-win7/

I’m on XP, so I’d have never found out. Thanks for providing a solution.

Great work on this!

KR155E wrote:
BTW, I am on Windows 7 (64 Bit) and I got the following message when I first tried to start the editor:

Component ‘COMDLG32.OCX’ not correctly registered: file is missing or invalid

The following guide helped me solve the problem: http://devonenote.com/2010/02/register-comdlg32-ocx-on-x64-win7/

I got the same error on Vista 64bit, but all I had to do is run it as the administrator.

Wow, pretty cool stuff. I have admit that I never played Insmouse No Yakata, though. If I find some time on the weekend I will try it out.

Wow! That’s really cool for an amazing game! (i love Insmouse no Yakata)

Now, all of us can make our mansion… I’m glad i have picked up the Flashboy, definetelly worth it just for all the scene.

Very cool… nice job! If you’re looking for a similar project, 3D Tetris could be done in much the same way.

DogP

I’m planning to use this level editor to design level layouts that look like the faces of famous Nintendo characters. So far, I’ve done some work on paper, now I just need to try to use the editor to apply it to the game. Can you guess what famous Nintendo character my first level map depicts?

Attachments:

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   mansion-of-insmouse-level-map.bmp
   

nice one, its gotta be Princess Peach leaning in for a big kiss, prize please……

Birdo from Super Mario USA!

LOL!

My prize for Hedgetrimmer is my thanks for making me laugh.

My prize for Dreammary is my congratulations for actually being correct. 😉

Attached is my next one:

Attachments:

1. 

   mansion-of-insmouse-level-map-2.bmp
   

Toad!

I was hoping that those 2 characters would be easily identifiable, since they should be among the easiest ones to make.

I’m having difficulties deciding about what to do for Mario and Luigi. I want to go with the original classic style, but if I do that for both of them, there is no way to distinguish between Mario and Luigi, since their sprites look exactly the same in the original Super Mario Bros, and we all know that one can’t use different colors to distinguish them on the Virtual Boy.

I could use the different sprites that appear for their faces in the Super Nintendo version of Super Mario Brothers 3, which appears in Super Mario All-Stars. I did that for Luigi, and it looks like I would just have to squish his face a bit to make Mario’s, but I really like the original Mario’s face for Mario.

I don’t know, I’m a little torn over what to do for them.

Attachments:

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   mansion-of-insmouse-level-map-3.png
   

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   mansion-of-insmouse-level-map-4.png
   

3. 

   mario-and-luigi-sprites.png
   

This inspired me to do some more research on Insmouse.

After reverse engineering for the last six hours, the only thing I’ve figured out is where the “next level” table is (it specifies which two levels come after each level) and I’ve discovered a weird table that can be modified to shift the layouts around on the map (well, that’s what it seems to do).

I’ve also improved my ROM map which I started making in May. Hopefully I will some day discover how to edit the monster positions.

That would be so great if you one day figured out how to edit the monster positions. Right now, I figured it would be pretty tough and time-consuming to figure out which original Insmouse Level Map should be replaced by the new Nintendo Character Level Maps.

I’m hoping that Mario and Luigi can be the first two levels where the path splits for the first time. They will either appear as I have them now, or I could make the Mario level look like the Super Mario Bros. 3 Mario head, or I could simply flip the original Super Mario head horizontally to make the Luigi level, so it would be a sort of mirror image of the other map and that would allow the original Mario and Luigi sprite from the first Super Mario Bros to appear in the game (which is what I’m trying to do for all of the other characters: use the sprite from the game where they made their first appearance). I like the large difference in the level maps as they appear right now, though, so I may leave it as is.

Since the game allows levels to have names that are 4 letters long, I’ve come up with the following names for the first four level maps that I already posted:

1. BRDO
2. TOAD
3. MRIO
4. LIGI

And here are the names for the next five level maps that I’ve created:

5. GMBA
6. KUPA
7. BZYB
8. BILL
9. ABOO

Attachments:

1. 

   mansion-of-insmouse-level-map-5.png
   

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   mansion-of-insmouse-level-map-6.png
   

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   mansion-of-insmouse-level-map-7.png
   

4. 

   mansion-of-insmouse-level-map-8.png
   

5. 

   mansion-of-insmouse-level-map-9.png
   

Benjamin Stevens wrote:
That would be so great if you one day figured out how to edit the monster positions.

Indeed. In fact, all this time I’ve been trying to find them but ended up finding everything else instead.

Today, I found out how to edit the amount of time you get for each level, how much time you need to have left to get to the next upper level, and which music track plays on the level (there are 12 tracks in the game, I think). I also know where most of the character sets and some of the character maps are (fun fact: the ROM contains the graphics from “Sample Soft for VUE Programming”), but graphics don’t interest me because they don’t really add anything new to the game.

I’ve also made a disassembly of the code with David Tucker’s disassembler and figured out what some short routines do (this is my first encounter with assembly language on the VB), but I don’t know whether that’s even worth trying. There is a lot of code but if we figure out which parts do what, we can change how the game behaves (and also add features, because there is a lot of unused space).

Sometimes, I think about whether all of this is meaningful. The game is simple enough that a team of experienced homebrewers could recreate it. On the other hand, we can think of reverse engineering as a kind of archeology.

Since the game allows levels to have names that are 4 letters long, I’ve come up with the following names for the first four level maps that I already posted:

1. BRDO
2. TOAD
3. MRIO
4. LIGI

And here are the names for the next five level maps that I’ve created:

5. GMBA
6. KUPA
7. BZYB
8. BILL
9. ABOO

Shouldn’t you keep the passwords a secret? And I think it’s more in the spirit of Insmouse if the passwords are actual words, even if it takes a bit of thinking to associate them with levels. For example, you could use JUMP and PIPE: Mario was originally called Jumpman and Mario and Luigi are both plumbers.

I’ve noticed that some of your maps are 24 tiles big in one or both dimensions. This is a bad idea, because you will confuse the player when they get to the edge of the map. Try playing the TRAP level from Example.imp to see what I mean.

Shouldn’t you keep the passwords a secret?

I am fine with everyone knowing the passwords for my game (if and when it may become a full game). I want people to be able to easily see all of the levels if they wish.

And I think it’s more in the spirit of Insmouse if the passwords are actual words, even if it takes a bit of thinking to associate them with levels. For example, you could use JUMP and PIPE: Mario was originally called Jumpman and Mario and Luigi are both plumbers.

Well, the way I look at it, in most cases the designers intended the password to be an actual word that designates or names the actual object that the respective level map looks like, and for whatever reason, they limited the name to four letters. Because of this, when creating the level maps, they had to limit themselves to objects that could solely be designated by four-letter words. My goal is to create level maps that look like characters in the Mario games, and I don’t want to have to limit myself in any way when deciding what character can become a level map. So in the spirit of Insmouse, I am using the technique of coming up with names that designate the actual character that the respective level map looks like, but because of the four-letter limitation which I cannot get around, I must come up with abbreviations for the names in certain cases. Plus, I hope to eventually make 45 different character level maps, and I don’t think I could come up with actual four-letter words that can be associated with all 45 different characters. 😉

I’ve noticed that some of your maps are 24 tiles big in one or both dimensions. This is a bad idea, because you will confuse the player when they get to the edge of the map. Try playing the TRAP level from Example.imp to see what I mean.

Okay, I played the TRAP level and see what you mean. I agree that this looks bad for a playable game. I originally thought that I had a 24 by 24 tile space to work with, but I guess I will have to limit myself to 22 by 22. Thus, I’ll have to go back to all the level maps I already made and cut out the least necessary rows or columns when necessary to ensure that they are no larger than 22 by 22, but for all the new level maps, I’ll make sure I make them no larger than 22 by 22 in the first place. Thanks for this info. 🙂

HorvatM wrote:

Today, I found out how to edit the amount of time you get for each level, how much time you need to have left to get to the next upper level, and which music track plays on the level (there are 12 tracks in the game, I think). I also know where most of the character sets and some of the character maps are (fun fact: the ROM contains the graphics from “Sample Soft for VUE Programming”), but graphics don’t interest me because they don’t really add anything new to the game.

I’ve also made a disassembly of the code with David Tucker’s disassembler and figured out what some short routines do (this is my first encounter with assembly language on the VB), but I don’t know whether that’s even worth trying. There is a lot of code but if we figure out which parts do what, we can change how the game behaves (and also add features, because there is a lot of unused space).

Sometimes, I think about whether all of this is meaningful. The game is simple enough that a team of experienced homebrewers could recreate it. On the other hand, we can think of reverse engineering as a kind of archeology.

Sounds like you are close to figuring out how the complete game works. Would be great to be able to do a ROM hack that changes the complete game including graphics and sound and just using the game as an engine.