Make sure you have the latest version of Double Helix.

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Basic

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- The Basics -
Most people with any experience using Double Helix or ZeroFission at all should be fine skipping this part.

Double Helix uses, essentially, four layers of tiles. Three of these layers, the Background, Level Layer, and Foreground, are entirely graphical; they comprise what you see in-game, as well as in the Map window. The Background is drawn behind Samus and other sprites (enemies and other graphics samples that move a lot), whereas the Level Layer is in front of sprites and Foreground is in front of Level Layer. Foreground isn't necessarily available in every room, and should pretty much only be used for certain things, explained soon.

Clipdata is the fourth tile layer. Clipdata is invisible, but it's what the player interacts with; you might say it shapes the world. The most commonly used Clipdatas are 00 - Air and 10 - Block. Air is, obviously, air; empty tiles through which anything can move freely and normally. Blocks are just the opposite; nothing can move freely through them (except certain enemies). Samus can walk across the top of them, but she cannot walk through them. They are what you can walljump off of and grab with the Power Grip.

Clipdata isn't just limited to blocks and air, however; it also contains things like slopes, bomb blocks, energy tanks, and other similar and assorted things. Clipdata is what makes the Foreground layer especially useful; there are special Clipdatas to control its brightness and transparency, making hidden passages very easy to construct.


- The Interface -
DH's interface is relatively simple. The Map window shows what you see in-game, while the Tileset window allows you to select tiles to draw in a graphical layer. The main window, however, is where much of your time will be spent. The Area and Room dropdowns allow you to select which room you are editing. Tile information shows you the clipdata of the block under your cursor. View toggles which graphical layers are visible in the Map window; this does not affect anything in-game. Control, obviously, affects which layer you draw in, and Controls for Map Copy allow you to choose which layers are copied to the clipboard. Map Coordinates is your cursor's X and Y position in hexadecimal tiles. Window options are just what they suggest; unchecking Show Map or Show Tileset will close the respective windows until you re-check them, and View Clipdata highlights all tiles that use the Clipdata you have selected. Sprite set affects which sprite set you are viewing (these are changed during the game through certain events and through playing on hard difficulty). Edit Scrolls, Edit Doors, and Edit Sprites affect whether or not you can drag around, view (in the case of scrolls), and otherwise edit the respective things. The Clipdata dropdown is where you select what clipdata you place on the map when you draw Clipdata. The Edit Scenery button allows you to edit the very back layer in-game (known as BG3). Edit Level Palette lets you change the palettes used by the graphical layers for the room's tileset.


- The Clipboard -
DH has 16 clipboards available for use at once. These can be accessed from Tools in the main window's menu. Using the clipboards is quite simple; simply edit the tiles as you would the Map, then once you're ready to insert the tiles into the clipboard in, hold Ctrl and click. It might not seem too terribly useful at first, but it removes a great deal of tedium from editing.


- Right-Click -
DH has a special function to make drawing much faster. Right-clicking and dragging on the Map or Tileset will greatly increase the number of tiles you can simultaneously fill or select. This, once again, will remove a lot of tedium, since you can click-drag over multiple tiles to draw in them.
NOTE: This function is currently extremely buggy; refrain from using it until interdpth gets off his lazy ass. PWND!

Right clicking is also used for other things, such as: Editing doors, sprites, and scrolling. When you first add a sprite (Explained later), it is normally added in the top left corner. You can right click that sprite with "Edit Sprites" checked, and you'll be presented with a dialog, where you can choose the sprite. This works the same for doors, except the dialog is different. To edit scrolls, you can click and drag anywhere within the scroll to place the top-left corner on the tile your mouse is located at, or you can right-click and drag to change the scroll's dimensions. Make sure you leave Edit Scrolls unchecked until you're ready to edit them.


- Minimap -
The minimap editor can be accessed from the Tools menu. It is very similar to the Map editor, but there are a few key differences. The palette affects the visibility of the tile at different times; gray (palette 0) is visible at any time, blue (palette 1) and orange (palette 2) are visible when you enter the minimap square in-game or access a map station, and green (palette 3) is visible only when you enter the square. Higher palettes aren't intended to be used in-game, so it's quite possible that attempting to do so could cause errors.

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Beginner

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- Doors 1 -
Editing doors is a necessary aspect of most kinds of hacks. It can be quite easy, too; all you need to do is right-click on a door icon to bring up a list of options for the door. The Room Door is the number of the door in that room (only useful in any way if you want to debug in the RAM), while the Actual Door is the value of the door in the area. To connect two doors in one area together, simply find the Actual Door value of one of the doors you want to connect, then put that value into the "Connects too door" field on the other. DH will automatically hook them up together once you save. Exit Length is the distance from the door at which it puts you when you come through, in signed hexadecimal. Generally, for horizontal doors, you'll want 20 (for ones facing right) or E0 (ones facing left), or for vertical doors, 10 for doors facing down or F0 for doors facing up. Door Width and Height are just the dimensions of the door zone. To move a door, make sure Edit Doors is checked, then just click in the door field and drag.

Door Type gets its own paragraph because it is especially interesting. There are only 5 valid values for it: 12, 14, 51, 52, and 54. 12 means that the transition... transitions without any sounds, 14 means there will be a "door closing" sound, 51 will use an elevator sound, 52 has a room popup with no sound, and 54 has a room popup with a door closing sound.

- Sprites 1 -
Changing sprites is a simple task. Simply right-click on the sprite image to bring up a dialog containing the sprite, where you can choose it. When you first add a sprite, it will be added to the top left of the map. It won't be visible, but you have to pretend it is. But before you choose your sprite, you have to choose the sprite group. This can be done in the "Header Editor", under the "Sprites" group box ... Here you can also change the number of sprites the current room has. If for some reason when you add your sprite, it doesn't take get added at the top left, just add another.
STAY AWAY FROM THE STUFF AT THE TOP OF THE HEADER EDITOR UNTIL YOU READ THE SECTION ON IT LATER.

- Room Options and Text Editor -
In Room Tools-Room Options, you can clear out entire layers with a single click. The Height and Width fields are the dimensions of the current layer, in tiles. Click Save after changing these dimensions.

Combined to make these sections not seem ridiculously small and worthless, because they're not, the Text Editor is accessible from General Tools. In the Text Editor, you can select, view, edit, and preview the strings in the game, both English and Japanese. Make sure, however, that you don't make your new string any longer than the original, as you'll overwrite new strings. Operators wrapped in brackets, such as [NEWLINE], [RAW 0x4E0F], and similar things count as only one character. [NEWLINE] and [END] are fairly self-explanatory as to their function; [NEWLINE] creates a new line in the text. In strings like the opening text, this moves the text down a line, while in things like item pickup text, it creates a point where the player must press A to continue.

- Stat Editor -
The Stat Editor is a powerful tool for editing enemy statistics. In Zero Mission, it allows you to change enemies' health, damage, resistances (what damages it), and drop percentages. In the resistances, a checked box indicates that the enemy is vulnerable to that weapon type. All values in here are in decimal (what is used by normal people every day), so you can just type in the values you want straight away. Drop Percentages do not need to add up to any particular number. Please note that scrolling too far down the list of enemies will crash DH.

- TSA Editor -
The TSA Editor allows you to edit the construction of graphical tiles in the game. To use it, open up the editor in the General Tools menu, then click on a tile in the Tileset window. This tile is the one that you will save over. Once you have the image of a tile in the TSA Editor, you can replace the four parts of the tile with 8x8s from the left of the editor. You can flip the tiles and change their palette using the controls at the right. Once you're satisfied, hit Save Block to put your changes into the tileset.