Whitehole v0.9 RC -- Level editor for Super Mario Galaxy 1/2
by Mega-Mario -- see About box for a more extensive credits list
http://kuribo64.cjb.net/

We at Kuribo64 thank you for having downloaded Whitehole, and hope you won't regret it.


1. Getting started

Whitehole is a Java program. It is built against JDK 1.7 so it'll require JRE7 (or anything equivalent) to work correctly.
For Windows users, a little launcher (whitehole.exe) is provided for convenience. Otherwise, on any platform, you can just open a terminal/console and type: java -jar whitehole.jar

Whitehole operates on files extracted from a SMG1/2 ISO. So you first need to get an ISO. We aren't going to help you find one, though.
Once you got your ISO, you need to create a folder and extract the files in it. For now, extracting the ObjectData and StageData folders is enough, but that may change later, so if you want to be sure, you should extract all the ISO's contents.
Now open Whitehole and hit the 'Select game folder' button. The dialog shown may be disturbing at first because it looks like a file selection dialog but it is meant to select folders. Select the folder where you extracted your ISO's contents. The StageData and ObjectData folders must be directly in that folder. If everything is allright, Whitehole will list all the galaxies available.

To edit a galaxy, you select it and hit 'Open galaxy' (or alternatively double click in the list). You can also open the BCSV editor, but you really shouldn't try to use it unless you know what you're doing. The BCSV editor is a raw, user-unfriendly tool that lets you edit BCSV files, that is, many data in SMG games.


2. Editing a galaxy

Once you have opened a galaxy, you will be shown a window with lists and a white panel. The program isn't crashed or frozen or anything. Loading and prerendering a whole galaxy just takes a few seconds, so be patient.
Eventually, if everything goes right, the window will show a rendering of the galaxy.

The left panel lets you choose which scenario and zone you want to edit. It also lists the objects in the current zone under the current scenario. The galaxy preview is also interactive. Moving the mouse while holding the left button moves the camera, moving while holding the right button rotates it. Clicking an object selects it, or deselects it if it's selected. Moving the mouse and holding the left button while an object is selected, moves it. You can also use your mouse's scrollwheel to move the camera or objects perpendicularly to the screen.

The Zones section of the left panel has a button labeled 'Edit individually'. Clicking it will open the selected zone in an individual editing window. The zone editing window works pretty much the same was as the galaxy editing window. Changes made to a zone in one window only reflect in the other ones when they're saved.

The Objects tab allows you to add and delete objects. I think that part is self-explanatory enough...

When an object is selected, the Objects panel will show all of its properties, and let you edit them. It is quite raw atm, though.

3. The settings

The settings can be modified from the galaxy listing window, by hitting the Settings button. There are a few settings available:
* Check for object database updates on startup: if enabled, when launched, Whitehole will download a more recent version of the object database (objectdb.xml) if any.
* Use shaders for 3D rendering: if enabled, the 3D renderer will use shaders. This allows for more accurate rendering, but you need a compatible GPU.
* Render objects in low-res when dragging: if enabled, when moving the camera in a galaxy/zone view, the graphics will be rendered in wireframe. For slow GPUs.


That's all folks! Have fun with Whitehole.