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SMW Hacking
General ROM Hacking
SMW Central
Miscellaneous
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| Question: | How do I edit the graphics? |
| Answer: | First of all, you need a tile editor. Tile editors are used for editing game graphics. Regular image editors like Paint, Photoshop, etc. will NOT work.
Recommended: YY-CHR (it's the one that will be used in this FAQ).
Unlike many games, a SMW ROM can't be edited by opening the ROM in the tile editor. The graphics in Super Mario World are compressed to save space. This means that you have to decompress the graphics, edit them and then recompress them again.
Don't worry. Lunar Magic can do this for you.
Before doing this, it's recommended that you save at least one level in Lunar Magic.
Click on the Options menu and make sure that "Use Joined GFX Files" is checked. This makes editing the graphics a bit easier.
Now, click on the red mushroom button in the toolbar to export the graphics. In case you're color blind, it's the first one of the ones shown below.
This will create a new subfolder called "Graphics". In case you can't find it, it's in the same folder as the ROM you're editing.
In this folder, you should find a file called AllGFX.bin. If it isn't there, check again that "Use Joined GFX Files" in Lunar Magic is checked and try to export again.
Open AllGFX.bin in the tile editor. You should see "Nintendo Presents", powerups, goombas, koopas and some other stuff. Scroll down to see even more graphics. All the graphics in the game can be found inside this file.
If all you see is garbage, you have to make it use 4BPP SNES format. In YY-CHR, this is done by choosing "4BPP SNES" from the drop down menu near the bottom.
Now, you can edit the graphics. Click on the tiles you want to edit. It should appear to the right. This is where you edit it. When you're done, save.
When you've saved, click on the green mushroom button (the second one) in Lunar Magic's toolbar. This will recompress the graphics and save them to the ROM.
Test the game and check if it worked. |
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| Question: | Why are the colors messed up? |
| Answer: | The colors are not stored together with the graphics. The graphics actually consists of numbers between 0 and 15. These numbers are used together with a palette. A 0 means "draw color 0 in the palette here".
This picture might explain it a bit better:
As you can see, one of the colors in YY-CHR corresponds to one of the colors below it. Which one of them depends on the palette used.
For example, the last color would be red in the first palette, yellow-beige in the second palette, orange in the third palette, and so on.
These palettes are not stored together with the graphics, and can therefore not be read by the tile editor.
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| Question: | Is there any way I can get the correct colors in YY-CHR? |
| Answer: | Yes. Play the game in ZSNES (snes9x won't work). If you want to use the overworld palettes, make a save state while on the overworld. If you want to use the level palettes, make a save state while in a level, etc.
In YY-CHR, click on the button with a red/white console and a white arrow. Choose the save state you just saved. To choose a palette, click on the up/down buttons to the left of the palette list, and click a row to use it. In older versions of YY-CHR, click on the up/down buttons at the lower right corner of the program. |
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| Question: | How do I edit the Layer 3 graphics? (Title screen graphics, fonts and other stuff) |
| Answer: | The Layer 3 graphics are stored in AllGFX.bin at $27C00. In order to see (and edit) those graphics correctly, change to 2BPP GB format. When you're done, change back to 4BPP to see the rest of the graphics correctly. Alternatively, you can also use Terra Stripe, a layer 3 tilemap editor. |
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| Question: | What is a GFX file? |
| Answer: | The graphics in the ROM is stored in 52 so-called "GFX files" (called GFXxx.bin, where xx is a hexadecimal number between 00 and 33), each file being 4kb* (128 tiles). While playing, the game has 10 GFX files loaded at a time: six files for Layer 1/2 and four files for sprites. GFX32 and GFX33 (Mario and animation tiles) are 23.2 and 12 kb, respectively, and cannot be used in the same way as normal GFX files. |
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| Question: | What is an ExGFX file? |
| Answer: | Usually, the 52 graphics files aren't enough to hold the graphics needed for hacks. ExGFX files are additional GFX files that can be inserted to your game. Theoretically, up to 3968 files can be added (but the ROM will most likely not be able to contain that many files). Note that you're still limited to 10 (Ex)GFX files per level. There's no way to use more than that. |
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| Question: | How do I choose what (Ex)GFX files to use in a level? |
| Answer: | Open the "Super GFX Bypass" dialog by clicking on the red poisonous mushroom button in the toolbar (next to the SMB3 brick button) and check the box at the top of the window. Use the drop down menus to choose the graphics files you want to use. (FG1: First half of first page in the 8x8 Editor, FG2: Second half of first page, BG1: First half of second page, FG3: Second half of second page, and so on.) 00-31 are normal GFX files, 32-7E should NOT be used (with the exception of 60, which can be used for ExAnimation). 7F is a blank file, and 80-FFF are ExGFX files. |
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| Question: | When I reinserted the graphics into Super Mario All-Stars + World, everything became messed up! What happened? |
| Answer: | Super Mario All-Stars + World is incompatible with the ASM hack used by Lunar Magic when reinserting graphics. When reinserting graphics, Lunar Magic applies a hack that lets the game use 4bpp graphics. However, Super Mario World uses 3bpp graphics (meaning only the first 8 colors of a palette line are available) which are not supported by most tile editors. If you are editing Super Mario All-Stars + World, you will need to manually reinsert the graphics and deselect the option "Modify the ROM with ASM to use 4bpp tiles instead of 3bpp tiles, if it doesn't already." A word of caution: this ASM hack cannot be uninstalled once it is in place. |
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| Question: | How can you view Mario's graphics, as well as the animated graphics, inside Lunar Magic? |
| Answer: | Press Shift + Control + Page Down while in the 8x8 Tile Editor to activate Internal GFX viewing mode. You cannot edit these graphics from this interface, however. |
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| Question: | Is there any easy way to make a good palette? |
| Answer: | In the Lunar Magic Palette Editor, hold Alt and then click 2 colors that are not next to each other. It will generate a gradient between those 2 colors. |
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| Question: | How do I use Triggers/Custom Triggers in Lunar Magic 1.7x and 1.8x? |
| Answer: | First, you need to download these Custom Trigger Blocks.
Next you draw out your ExAnimation tiles (if you don't have any already.) This can be done using YY-CHR.
In the ExAnimation Window, switch your animation type to 8x8 or 16x16, your choice.
Then you switch the "Trigger" drop down window to "Custom Trigger x", x being either 1, or 2, or so on.
In the "Frames" window, you'll see "x2" by it. If both animations of your block use 4 frames each, type 4.
Then, last but not least, in the "Destination" you set where you want the animation to be.
For setting up Map16 pages and Custom Blocks, please visit the other sections of the F.A.Q. designed for them. |
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