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11B: Cumulus Chapel - S.N.N.

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(reserved) - S.N.N.
World: 7
Exits: 1
Theme: Sky Ghost House
Music Options: 1, 2, or compose your own.

Briefing: A ghost house - or shrine, if you prefer - in the sky. It doesn't necessarily have to be haunted if you think you can design a fair "sky temple" area without ghosts. It's pretty open-ended.
So .. couple of preliminary plans I've set up for this.

-"Cumulus Chapel" will be the name. I'm shooting for an almost church-like-but-not-really atmosphere.
-I drew some graphics here that I'm planning on using. Other ghost house designers are welcome to use them too if they so desire. I'm going to cut up that BG a bit though so that I can get some moving sky in behind. I might also change the palette to a more blue-ish color.
-I'll be composing a rather mellow tune for it, which will likely be a partial remix of world 5's map theme from SMWCP (this)
-As for the level itself .. I have a few interesting puzzle-oriented ideas, but I also have plans for a few action segments. Needless to say, Yoshi and the cape will be getting some love in this level.

e: and here is the song.
I can't believe the hack's own leader was ignored. Shame on you users of SMWC, for having such bad taste :P

About your graphics:

FG: I'm not liking anything much from the FG other than the 32x16 blocks and the cross head-stone. Instead of stacking more 32x16 block on top of each other, have a different set of graphics be the inside "dirt" of the foreground.

The R.I.P. Grave stone's shading makes it look rounded, eithe try to flatten the shading or use the same shading on a larger version (it's too strong right now for its size).

Now for that bridge, the entirety looks iffy. For the steel/rock handle, it's because it all looks like one connected steel/rock rod/slab, try adding a line where the two bars meet. The the ground itself, I can't explain what's wrong with it, it just stands out too much. Maybe the lighting on it is too bright compared to the rest of the GFX, I'm not sure why it just doesn't mix well.

Are those thin sticks supposed to be slopes, they don't look bad but they look more flimsy. No real issue, just personal distaste.

For the ladder, I'm going to be nice and say twas a good thing you added "broken steps" for the ladder as decoration. Other than that, I'd ask you to Reinstall windows redo it completely. Practice and rage makes perfect.

For the spikes, It's terrible the way you tipped the point of them with black lines may cause some confusion with it's graphics not matching the hitbox of the block. Also, is that bar supposed to be solid or passible, I can't tell. Suits of armor + statues of angels/demons would really bring a nice touch to the level's aura.

BG: Speaking of reinstalling windows, I think the windows here could use more work as they don't look the best as of now, especially for a pseudo-church like setting. I'd try the semicircle-top + rectangular body. Bonus points if you make it stained glass or have layer 3 clouds scrolling on the "outside" of the level. Also, if you wanna break-up the wall to show clouds, follow what 2dareduck did with his factory BG. Plus, add some more decoration to the brick pattern other than a differently colored brick, e.g. some cracks or mouse holes/bird's nest or some torches in the BG.

All-in-all, nothing to badd but it can be improved, maybe you could mix my ghost house set in there with your own tweaks. The music sounds fine, but it is an MP3 so no opinions for now if it truly matches the theme. Yoshi Cape love is good, just keep it clean and a not-so-much breezy level.
I wonder what a HFD opcode would do in ASM...
Actually, I was just about to post here again. I didn't really give much to work with last time.

No, I'm not actually happy with this tileset at all anymore. Truth be told, I actually drew it about a year and a half ago and dug it up hoping it would fit in this. Looking at it closely though, a lot of it is pretty bleargh and, given how my recent work has improved, I know I can draw better. I will do so once I get that track ported.

Anyway, the reason I wanted to post here is because I had a sort of additional idea for this level. What I wanted to do was create a sort of "rewind time" gimmick using the layer 2 effect from the original Ludwig's Castle using an HDMA + custom ExAnimation trick. It would basically work like this:

-Mario would run through a room while the layer 2 portion is falling.
-There would be little "safe squares". There are also no ON/OFF switches.
-Once you end up in one of these safe squares, you'd be essentially trapped. However, upon pressing a button (or something, haven't decided yet), the screen would flash white, and then the palette would turn greyscale (to the best of my ability, anyway .. I know it's possible with some animation tricks). At this point, the enemies in this portion (which will likely be custom sprites so I can actually edit them) will start moving "backwards", and the layer 2 would rise up again until it hits the top. The color would revert, and it would fall again.

So essentially, it's a trick using layer 2, but pulled off in a pretty different and unique way. I might actually rework the level's original theme a bit to fit with the idea of "time". I left a channel free in the song for a musical gimmick (hence why I mentioned Yoshi earlier), so I might create a sort of "ticking" effect using this.

Yep.
Originally posted by S.N.N.
and then the palette would turn greyscale (to the best of my ability, anyway .. I know it's possible with some animation tricks)

It's not possible without hijacking NMI however. What do you say we make a version of levelASM that hijacks NMI as well for this so that everyone doesn't need their own patch?
Why wouldn't it be possible with just LM's ExAnimation?
FuSoYa once told me that you can change a whole palette row at once with a single entry in the ExAnimation settings, I have no idea how though.
Your layout has been removed.
Well, if you can change a whole palette row it would be fine I guess, but if not, it's way too much exanimation for something that could be done in about 10 lines of code.
If there is an easy way to go about doing it, then I'm all for it. No sense in spending two hours setting up animation on something that could be done in five minutes.
Here's a levelASM that also hijacks NMI. I included a greyscale palette upload in level105 as an example (Obviously you are going to want to make your own palette or whatever). Only problem is that some colors (Mario's palette and dragon coins) don't change, so either we could move the hijack or get around it somehow else.
Actually there might be a way to turn the palette greyscale without actually creating a whole seperate palette for it. Though it would be quite tricky and take some more lines of code but I think it can be done.
Indeed, what we'd want to do is iterate through $0703, and, for each color, add up it's red, green, and blue values. Then, divide that by 3, and that is your new red, green, and blue values (Make them all the same thing), so convert that new fancy RGB value you got back into BGR format, store it in some RAM for later access, then move on to the next color. My suggestion would be to do the actual conversion in regular levelASM, then only do the upload in NMI. I would guess the final version would look something like this:

Code
REP #$30
LDX #$01F9
.loop
LDA $0703,x
STA $00
AND #$001F    ;red
STA $02
LDA $00
AND #$02E0    ;\green
LSR #5        ;/
CLC
ADC $02
STA $02
LDA $00
AND #$7C00    ;\blue
LSR #10       ;/
CLC
ADC $02
STA $4204
SEP #$20
LDA #$03
STA $4206
LDA #$00
XBA
NOP #6
LDA $4214
AND #$3F
REP #$20
STA $00
ASL #5
ORA $00
ASL #5
ORA $00
STA $7FA000,x ;This is the freeRAM I'm using
DEX
DEX
BPL .loop
SEP #$30
RTS


Then you would just change the pointer for the CGRAM DMA to $7FA000 instead of pointing to the bin and presto, you should have a greyscale version of whatever palette you are working on (I haven't tested it or anything, but it seems right).
This level has been inactive for a while i guess the owner of this forgot. I think i'll reserve this level! I got great ideas! [/moronic statement]

So S.N.N hows the level coming? I remember you posting somewhere that you would have an IPS for this level soon.

Extras



I should have something witty to put here (even if it's just to update dated info), shouldn't I?

Advertising Space

A fraction of it exists in the latest base ROM.

I'll have the first half finished by the end of the month. No doubt I've been so busy updating the base ROM and working that, while I've had motivation, I actually haven't had much time.

Either way, something playable will be here soon, I can promise that. As the leader of this thing, I certainly would not want to be a hypocrite.
I don't really have an excuse for taking this long. I could say I'm running the thing and that you can trust that I wouldn't forget, but whatever. I've really just been genuinely struggling to find time. Anyway, let's just get to the point.

Cumulus Chapel v0.1

Essentially, it ends at the "computer screen", which will be the midway point. Half of it is here, and I wanted some feedback before I made the second half. Just a couple of things to note.

-The BG isn't final, obviously.
-The Venus heads aren't final, obviously (I'll see if I can remap their heads to something more global).
-There are a couple of SFX glitches which will be fixed once I send Kipernal my song.

Other than that, you should be able to find two SMWCP coins, as well as the "code" for the computer. The next step is to implement the cursor as well as an input, which will lead into the chapel itself (which, as promised, will contain Yoshi/cape trickery).

Aside from that, enjoy. I welcome any and all feedback - positive or negative.
...Don't know if it's me, but your IPS leads me to the second part of Gnarly.
Your layout has been removed.
It's not just you. You'll want to redownload it. I installed the Shift + F8 message box fix and put Mario on a submap, which probably wasn't the best idea.

It should be working as expected now. Same link.
I like the level a lot. It has the right atmosphere, a great variety in enemies and design and great music. There are no major complaints - however, there are some small things I'd like to point out.


This jump is very hard to time correctly due to the cement block and the Venus Firetrap fireball.
Not pictured: Minor slowdown in the area as well.

Also, I had no idea that you could jump onto the Planes and ride them until in my second run through the level where I accessed the bonus area. Just a little pet peeve of mine, I didn't know how to get the second SMWC coin because of that. No need to change this, though. The gray clouds surprised me the first time I encountered them, so unless they're also featured in an earlier level, you might want to introduce them a bit better, so an unsuspecting player doesn't suffer a relatively cheap death.

Overall, the level is pretty great. Looking forward to the second half as well.
aran - Graces of Heaven
I had to do some extra work to get to the leve lbut hey nothing sprite 19 can't fix. On to the review.

I couldn't find anything wrong with the level. It was pretty good. I probably tried to hard to find something wrong with it and came up with these screen shoots/shots(can't spell)

My first instinct was to jump over here which renders the sprind board useless, but it's not like its a game breaking thing.

Great now i have to stop playing and look for some paper and pencil.
Could these codes be easier to remeber because forgot them when i reached the "computer screen".

Nothing big but i can slide through here and skip this completely.

Very easy to skip these obstacles by riding the plane thingy from above

Pretty tough for a bonus IMO.

I like the level so far. I found 2 1ups. Yay!
Thanks for the feedback guys.

Originally posted by GN
This jump is very hard to time correctly due to the cement block and the Venus Firetrap fireball.


Yeah, I had two other testers say that this spot was nasty, and I was pretty sure it was too. I'll tweak it.

Originally posted by GN
The gray clouds surprised me the first time I encountered them


See, the way I -tried- to set these up was so that they'd immediately shoot out a bolt when you got close. It doesn't seem to want to work though, which is ultimately really frustrating to me.

Originally posted by 2dareduck
My first instinct was to jump over here which renders the sprind board useless, but it's not like its a game breaking thing.


I want to do something about this area in general and make it less .. "sloppy", in my opinion. Haven't decided how I'll do that yet though.

Originally posted by 2dareduck
Could these codes be easier to remeber because forgot them when i reached the "computer screen".


Huh? I didn't think it was overly hard to remember. I guess I could reduce it to two.

Originally posted by 2dareduck
Nothing big but i can slide through here and skip this completely.


I sort of put that part there as an "intro" to the planes. I'm one of those people who feels like gimmicks need to be introduced in a moderately safe way just to show what they can do. However, if others don't like this part, I'm more than willing to make it a bit harder.

Originally posted by 2dareduck
Very easy to skip these obstacles by riding the plane thingy from above


Should be an easy enough fix by lowering the platforms a bit.

Originally posted by 2dareduck
Pretty tough for a bonus IMO.


I kind of intended for this part to be hard since it houses the first SMWC coin.

Anyway, thanks again guys. I'm still open to other comments/thoughts as well.
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