Hello SMWC! I've been a huge fan and resided here since making an account in 2014, forgive my pleb status as I've never felt qualified enough to post here since I've only mildly dabbed into TAS'ing Yoshi back in 2009, much less actually producing any romhack material.
I'm trihex, known for speedrunning Yoshi's Island (the original) since 2004. I've actively been speedrunning it for over 10 years, from 2004 to roughly August 2015. I took a break to not get fatigued and burned out, but of course still love the game and romhacks are totally filling that void I felt and (with enough ambition) can make the Yoshi romhack scene extremely relevant to speedrunning!
I wanna speedrun Super Mario World 2+2 at Awesome Games Done Quick 2017. I want to speedrun a romhack for 100k+ people live. But I need your help! I need to make SMW2+2 into a 2+2 "S"
Why choose Super Mario World 2+2?
Vanilla Yoshi has been done various times at GDQ. 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015. I've done Yoshi at every presence except 2013, which Carl played and set the scale with detailed, rich, per-level commentary. I followed suit in 2015.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTlW1-uuoas
^ SGDQ 2015 Yoshi's Island run by me. To give an example of the atmosphere, audience exposure, and enthusiasm that *could* be felt by a Yoshi Romhack!
We've hit a point where despite WR holder Trix holding a time ~4min faster than me, there isn't any major advancements beyond "making less mistakes/playing cleaner" -- not ideal for GDQ audience. Thus, a new take, with fresh levels and discovery abound, a Yoshi romhack seems suiting to pitch versus letting Yoshi Island die from GDQ spotlight due to fatigue.
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Super Mario World 2+ is 1st romhack, really linear, quite boring to speedrun. Not on par w/ Yoshi Vanilla.
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Kamek's Revenge is meant to be played on emulator w/ savestate to progress at a moderate pace. In real hardware, it lags too much in World 5/6 (enemy spam) and takes upwards of 7 hours to complete 100% on in it's current form
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NEW Yoshi's Island is a *very* puzzle-oriented take on YI, and feels more like a Zelda game staring Yoshi than a platformer. 4 years spent developing it by YoshiFan, it also has *all* speedrun tech nerfed out of it, so every level is played as intended and *easily* takes 10hr for me to casually get far in the game. Far too long.
And last...
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Super Mario World 2+2 is the sequel to 2+, created by romhack creator GoldenYoshi. Released in 2008, it is by far the best romhack amongst the major hacks. Has the best difficulty curve, spirit, and lenght of the original in-tact. And in many aspects, is actually more technical than Vanilla Yoshi is!
Why need a 2+2 "s"? What's wrong w/ 2+2 as-is?
2+2, as of right now, is comfortably a 4hour game in speedrun form in terms of marathon estimate. You could push down to a 3:20-3:30, but it involves some insanely risky double-dupes that lose *minutes* if failed throughout quite a few levels.
More important, for GDQ, a romhack is already facing scruitiny to be accepted/considered. A *lenghty* one is doomed before start. At 4hr, I'm longer than Paper Mario 64, and longer than most pitched RPG's. Length is critical to make this happen. Plus, there are some questionable levels that really slow down the hype pacing of 2+2 as a single playthrough, speedrun, and watch.
2+2 S, is an approved-by-original-creator re-take of the 2+2 romhack. We'll be removing the slowest/boring levels (to speedrun), minimizing autoscrollers, and polishing the remaining levels to be as good (if not better) than Vanilla in aspects!
When done, the final runtime is aiming to be a crisp 2-2.5 hr in length. As long as Vanilla Yoshi, familiar in visuals/tone/physics/fun, but *entirely new* for a GDQ audience and the stagnant Yoshi speedrun scene~
3) Why rename it to "Golden Yoshi's Island?"
With all due to respect to GoldenYoshi and the SMWC community, not everyone is savvy in the romhack history of Yoshi's Island. When I explain I'm playing 2+2 on TwitchTV, no one knows what that means as it doesn't explain anything.
No one calls Yoshi's Island "Super Mario World 2" which is where the title "SMW2+2" derives from, they call it Yoshi's Island. No one knows that 2+2 is a sequel to 2+, because 2+ is a more linear/less speedrun'd romhack compared to 2+2's awesomeness. And officially pitching it to GDQ as a lengthy-zero-explanation "2+2 S" isn't gonna help get it accepted.
I suggest Golden Yoshi's Island as a fitting tribute to the romhack creator himself who spawned the scene of giving Yoshi Island more life after the 1995 original. And, the dialogue/story references to a Golden Yoshi being the one to save the day in the final level, 5-8. (Also, the romhack being titled this gives an excellent hook to commentate during the GDQ run about what the "Golden Yoshi/Chosen One" is)
Now that I've explained, who wants to help/volunteer make this possible? <3
- Feel free to view the proposed changes to the levels @
http://pastebin.com/TjKEk6sf
- Come join the GYI development discord @
https://discord.gg/j4m2uYM (required to contribute to project)
- Come check out the GYI dev excel spreadsheet for assignments across the 14 levels getting changed @
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14OKWp-qtbLb5_lw4T1ML98PIAdY1bovUASA4AEyOcEA/edit#gid=0
- Dev team Discord Dropbox for file sharing is granted access once you're in the discord!
Largely, the project is divided into level editing and non-level editing tasks. Level ediitng is top priority then these down-below:
ALL OTHER TASKS FOR GYI:
1) new title "GOLDEN Yoshi's Island" (as in physically change title screen to say that)
2) speed-up transofmration speed
3) remove kamek dialogue in all levels except final level, 5-8 (as in, default boss trigger to play the "already died here" kamek animation that is dialogue-less
4) level icon art for 1-E, 2-E, 3-E, 4-E, and 5-E
5) remove island cutscenes after each world's boss (x-8 levels)
6) ability/special code/option to play credits sequence from level select (to give a 100% run a proper credits finish)
7) add romhack credits/special thanks to everyone who helps make GYI possible <3 (possible to extend the Kamek monologue text after final boss fight to say a screenful of thanks?) (especially tribute to GoldenYoshi for making the romhack on behalf of us, the GYI staff
