It would be nice if Zelda Classic worked like this, as I am more familiar with this setup.
But the Solarus engine sounds intriguing. Is it easy to use?
And are there any ways to romhack Zelda 3?
Solarus is moderately straightforward, but it doesn't have many ZC features, such as enemy, or item editors, with a handy GUI. There is a package, that has most of the Z3 items, and enemies, on GitHub (that I also mirror, for easy access), so that you can use them in a game. Otherwise, every game object is entered as Lua code.
If you want to make an item, or an enemy, you must learn to code it with Lua, or find something in the Solarus forums to use. If you want to modify a game object, you must do it in code. You can't just punch up a GUI with all the vars, as you can in ZC.
OTOH, making maps, and using graphics, is much easier than ZC. Adding graphics is far more elegant, because there is no single defined size. Solarus treats each graphic as a unique object, on a layer. Making overworld, or dungeons, is drag-and-drop (or more like, click, and click).
There exists no Z3 ROM editor that is easy to use. In fact, there is no easy way to modify Z3, period. If you want to do that, you'd better learn 65c816 assembly first. Just about everything in the ROM is hardcoded, and optimised to the extent that you can't change values without invalidating, or corrupting the stack; or at least ruining heap values. Good luck if you want to try it for yourself...Hyrule Magic / Black Magic are so absolutely horrible to use, and they're so limited, that you may as well just be working on the ASM directly anyway.
This is why there exist only two unique, complete (I'm feeling generous, as neither truly feel finished) Z3 hacks. One unfinished, incomplete project, is at QuestforCalatia.net, which is a good place to read documentation on just how tedious hacking Z3 is in reality.
