NESTool aims to be a better NES Screen Tool.
Before creating this new tool I did try to build NES Screen Tool with borland C++ builder, but was unable to get the project open. I believe it will only build with an older version so instead I decided to rewrite the parts that needed to be rewritten in order to improve it. I chose to use the Qt framework and C++ for 2 reasons:
My aim in writing this tool is to make it easier to work with multiple nametables. The NES Screen Tool 2.04 I used in the past has a feature to "Remove doubles" and "Remove unused" but only takes the currently loaded nametable into account when figuring out which tiles to remove and adjusts only the current nametable. When using the same tile set for an entire game with multiple nametables it has no way to take all the nametables into account and make the necessary adjustments to all of them. The entire reason I created this tool is to fix that missing feature.
I would also like to add the ability to import image files directly creating both the tileset and the nametable(s) required to display the image given. Hopefully I'll be able to implement that sooner than later.
At any rate I hope you find this tool useful and appreciate any feedback good or bad about things you would like it to be able to do.
thanks, Jeremy Whiting jpwhiting@kde.org