PokEditor v3

Author: Turtleisaac

Multifunctional in-depth editor for Pokémon Gen IV (4) game data.

Written entirely in Java and is completely OS-agnostic.

Java 20 is required. Newer versions may work, but if older classes have been deprecated or removed in those versions, then it may not work for those higher versions of Java.

• The majority of the backend can be found in my other library, PokEditor-Core.
• Also powered by my other libraries, Nds4j and Nds4j-ToolUI.
• This tool is still in active development and will receive periodic updates as improvements are made and bugs are found, time permitting.
• Please join this Discord server for help with using PokEditor v3 or for help with any questions relating to Pokémon Gen 4 and 5 hacking.
• Currently can be used in English and has partial French and Chinese support.

Usage

Builds are available in the Releases page here on GitHub. Simply download the most recent release, unzip the zip file, and double click the file contained within with the name PokEditor.jar!

Unlike prior versions of PokEditor, v3 is intended to fully be used within the tool. No more exporting sheets or editing them elsewhere. Additionally, there is very little effort required by the user to get it set up this time around. No more annoying sheets setup process, it should just automatically load everything into the sheets the instant you open a project.

Building from source

Requires a JDK (the module compiles at source/target 20; CI builds on 21) and Maven.

1. Install the sibling libraries first, in this order

None of the three are on Maven Central at the versions this pom pins, so each has to be built and installed locally before PokEditor will resolve. Order matters: Nds4j underpins the other two.

git clone https://github.com/turtleisaac/Nds4j.git          && mvn -f Nds4j/pom.xml          install -DskipTests
git clone https://github.com/turtleisaac/Nds4j-ToolUI.git   && mvn -f Nds4j-ToolUI/pom.xml   install -DskipTests
git clone https://github.com/turtleisaac/PokEditor-Core.git && mvn -f PokEditor-Core/pom.xml install -DskipTests

When a change spans several of these repositories it is developed on branches of the same name in each, so check out matching branches before installing. CI does this automatically, falling back to main where no matching branch exists.

A clean checkout does not build yet. pom.xml also declares io.github.turtleisaac:VariableTracker:1.0-SNAPSHOT, which is published nowhere the build can reach and has no <repositories> entry. The field script editor is disabled, but ScriptDocument still imports the library, so it is still needed to compile. See TECH_DEBT.md.

2. Build the runnable jar

mvn clean -Pdist package

This produces target/PokEditor-3.2.0-dist.jar, which is the artifact to hand to a tester or attach to a release — every dependency in one archive, launched with java -jar. Add -DskipTests to skip the suite.

The plain mvn package deliberately does not produce it: target/PokEditor-3.2.0.jar holds this module's classes without its dependencies and is not runnable on its own. dist is a separate profile because it costs ~17MB of output that nothing in CI consumes. (Under -Pdist that plain jar also picks up the unpacked WinLaF classes as a side effect of the step below. Nothing distributes it, so this is harmless — but it is why a -Pdist build should start from clean.)

Do not hand-assemble the jar

The dist profile does two things that are easy to miss, and getting either wrong produces a jar that starts fine and then dies the first time someone types into a combo box in a sheet:

• It writes an Add-Exports manifest entry. jide-oss predates the module system and does instanceof com.sun.java.swing.plaf.windows.WindowsLookAndFeel on a path every JIDE component reaches. On Windows that package lives in java.desktop, which does not export it, so the check fails with IllegalAccessError before it can answer false.
• It unpacks WinLaF.jar. That dependency is <scope>system</scope>, and the shade plugin resolves only compile and runtime scope, so it is dropped silently. On Linux and macOS no JDK ships that package at all and this copy is the only thing satisfying it, so without it the same code path dies with NoClassDefFoundError instead.

Neither substitutes for the other — on Windows, parent-first delegation finds java.desktop's copy and shadows WinLaF.jar entirely. TECH_DEBT.md has the full account.

CI builds this too

Every push builds the same jar and uploads it as a run artifact named PokEditor-jar, so a tester can download it from the Actions run rather than waiting for a release. CI also verifies it: it runs the look-and-feel resolution described above against the built jar, once under this runner's own conditions and once under a simulated Windows one, and then checks that the second fails when the manifest entry is withheld — because a check that passes either way would go green on exactly the artifact that crashes.

3. Run it

java -jar target/PokEditor-3.2.0-dist.jar

Running the tests

mvn verify -Djava.awt.headless=true -DexcludedGroups=dead-code

This is what CI's Build step runs, and it must stay green. The dead-code tag marks tests for classes with no callers anywhere in src/main — they are the specification for whoever revives or deletes that code, not defects anyone can hit. They are expected to fail, so omitting -DexcludedGroups will report failures on a healthy tree.

Those tests run in CI's separate Known dead-code failures step, which pins both the tagged count and the failure count. Pinning them means a regression cannot be hidden by tagging it, and a fix prompts someone to remove the tag — so if you add or fix a tagged test, update EXPECTED_TAGGED / EXPECTED_RED in .github/workflows/build.yml and say why in the commit.

List of Spreadsheet-Based Editors

• Personal Data Editor

• TM Learnset Editor)

• Level-Up Learnset Editor

• Evolutions Editor

• Move Editor

GUI-Based Editors

• Pokémon Sprite Editor