I've had to quit working on about 5 games so far because the emulator thinks that parts of some background are connected with parts of some foreground stuff. Occasionally, it's just an annoyance that doesn't look very good, but often times it's game breaking.

My best example would be the very first level of Adventures of Lolo. Often the floor bricks are attached to the Tree graphics and I don't see any way to separate them. The Trees need to be brought to the front because they are obstacles you can't pass through, but this also brings up floor bricks that need to be in the background which then cover your character as you walk around.

Sorry I can't make a video to better show this. Using an outdated laptop. I'll try to clarify if you need me to, but if you play the very first level of Adventures of Lolo you'll see what I mean and this is a problem on many games that I've encountered.

UPDATE: Strange.... but somehow it corrected itself and separated the bricks and the trees. I didn't do anything to make it work.

So... Lolo is a bad example I guess, but it happens a lot in Faxanadu and Battle of Olympus as well, among other games. It has never corrected itself on any other game before.

Some screen shots will be greatly helped. Let's talk about a specific game so we can analyze the problem. Have you read the manual.doc, especially the "Delete button" part?

Battle of Olympus is a great example. If I have time maybe I can get some shots of Faxanadu as well, but I think these pictures to a great job explaining the problem.

Honestly, I'll have to look harder for the manual.doc. I thought the only documentation for this emulator was the 4 videos and I don't have the attention span to watch videos without somebody explaining what's going on. A manual will be a huge help. I'll be sure to check it out before I do anymore work.

EDITED TO ADD: I did manage to get the delete button to fix a few similar things in Blaster Master, but I was unable to get it to fix the above problem in Battle of Olympus.

- Does 3dnes considers it as three shapes or one unique shape? Select it to find out.

It considers it as one unique shape. The second picture above shows the entire selection when you select any part of it. The Delete button doesn't do anything but bring the Layer back to "Unknown".

UPDATE: Here is an example of the Delete Key not fixing the problem in Faxanadu:

In the above image, you can see the wall, the windows and the shields are connected to the desk. Also, for some reason, on the left edge of the desk you can see a bottle that's attached to it as well. The Delete button does not separate any of this.

UPDATE 2: Adventures of Lolo.

The bricks and trees won't separate at the top. The bricks won't separate from playable blocks on the bottom.

UPDATE 3: Godzilla.

The mountains that are supposed to be obstacles in the foreground remain part of the background image. Delete doesn't fix this.

On the map screen, Godzilla and Mothra, and the enemy monsters are part of the honeycomb grid and cannot be separated.

I recommend you to reread the use cases of Delete button in the manual. It's basically like that:

- If you see shape A + B are merged, only press Delete does not work! Instead:

-Navigate the game to a location when only A or B visible, let's say A is visible. Select A and change it to a different pattern then press Adjust. It will create a new pattern for A.

- Continue to navigate the game to a location when both A and B are visible. Select it and hit Delete. Then 3DNes will delete the A+B pattern, recognize A pattern and create a new pattern for B.

Hope it helps you in some situations.

Yeah. That's why it works about half of the time. In the cases above, it simply won't work.

In Battle of Olympus and Faxanadu, it happens in one screen rooms.

In Adventures of Lolo, you only have 1 screen per level.

In Godzilla, the top and bottom 3rds of the mountains are in the foreground, but the background is an entire strip and contains the middle of the foreground mountains. In the stage select screens in the 2nd photo, it is only a single screen.

Your explanation makes sense as to how I was able to get it to work in a lot of instances, but until there is a feature made that allows some sort of manual splitting of pre-determined sprites, there are going to be a lot of games that just won't work.

More examples from Bucky O'Hare:

I am having the same issue with Shadowgate. We need a way to fragment selected segments on static screens.

Don't know about fragmenting, but an idea for merging could be allowing players to select multiple objects at once by holding down ctrl and providing a merge button.

Being able to select multiple tiles would also be useful if there's several things that one wants to change in the same way (say several characters of the game's font). You could just select them all and change them to char, cube or whatever in one go.

Edit: Actually for fragmenting there could be a fragment button that, when pressed while having something selected breaks it down to the individual tiles?

Just throwing around ideas, of course I don't know if any of this is actually doable within the system currently in place.

Yeah AKJ, Shadowgate doesn't work well. It also has a lot of text problems that will hopefully be easier to fix when you have the ability to select a group of sprites.

I think a fragment option would be great to break down images. Even better if there could also be a group button that could then regroup only the ones you wanted grouped. Don't know if this is at all possible, but looking forward to seeing what's next to come.

I really don't want to put any more work into these games until the release with save states comes out though. Especially long RPGs like dragon warrior and final fantasy.