Greetings to you all, SMW Central. After actively lurking about for the better part of nine years, I believe I'm ready to find my voice, if but in a small way.

To that end I've been studying ASM for quite some time now, and while I certainly don't stand among the masters, I'd like to share the fruit of my efforts with you all nonetheless. In the spirit of C3, I humbly present my first submission here:

The YOSHI EXPANSION KIT!

This patch allows Yoshi to function properly in all 8 sprite palettes, thus doubling the number of usable colors of Yoshi. Moreover, this patch moves a huge number of Yoshi's various functional parameters into easy-to-edit defines while simultaneously splitting them up on a per-Yoshi-color basis. Want green Yoshi to have a tongue that only stretches half as far as yellow Yoshi's? Want blue Yoshi to run away twice as fast as red Yoshi? It can all be easily done, with no ASM knowledge required whatsoever.

If you are familiar with ASM, however, then this patch provides a smörgåsbord of tidy hijacks to let your imagination run wild. Yoshi's tongue gets longer as it eats berries? Yoshi does not run away if you have all 5 Dragon Coins? The sky is the limit. Heck, with enough free RAM and some palette trickery, one could make a 90 level hack with a totally unique Yoshi in each stage.

This patch utilizes Lunar Magic's extra bit setting for non-custom sprites, allowing the new Yoshi palettes to be inserted into the level without requiring any custom sprites; .s16 and .ssc files are included to ensure proper sprite display in the editor. There are no included palette files, meaning it's up to you as the user to make your Yoshis look good and keep them consistent across different levels. It should also be noted that, unfortunately, the patch is not currently compatible with SA-1.

This patch's functions don't translate well to pictures, but I think you can get the gist:




Thank you all so very much, for checking out my work and for making this community everything it is today. I look forward to getting to know a bit better these names, these people whose posts I've been reading for the lion's share of a decade. Cheers!






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I'm going to sing this next one in the key of X, if you don't mind:

"I looked sideways, thinking of the dog-man. Now, I noticed a man identified similarities between dogs, as well as how to eat dog meat. I've seen our big dog, he often ate food. Men are like dogs, stabbed surprisingly strong and sharp. Once he is eating, shooting all the bites in all directions, then suddenly he is like a dog biting a person stronger. Since there are no additional cuts to my chin, I was looking quite comfortable - he worked with who I am, but he seemed to be a dog in every detail. In a place where all of them are fast, he could have been eating everything they ate. Was Teacher very upset? All bets are consistent with reason, but this person would confuse the tourism sector.

It is sufficient to be part of the dog at all,
but this enough to become part of all the dogs."

My sincere thanks everyone, for all the kind words and warm welcomes - I expected nothing less from you all.


This is exactly the feedback I was hoping for, thank you. I tried to keep the usage as simple as possible, but after refining the config files so many times it became all but impossible to see things from a fresh perspective - glad it wasn't too overwrought.


Thank you kindly! I too would've thought that something like this would've been made years ago. I suppose the real "eureka!" moment was learning that the main Yoshi palette RAM address is only read and written to once each - after that, the patch's direction became quite clear.


It only seemed fair to establish early on that I am not to be trusted.

To everyone else who responded, you have my thanks - I'm thrilled to receive such a positive response (I'm still anxiously awaiting some major bug I missed to come wriggling out). I will continue to support this patch as long as I'm able, so by all means let me know of any problems that arise or any features you'd like to see in the future.

I always enjoy it when this project turns back up, because something incredible is always right around the corner. Your team is committed to presenting a polished, coherent experience, and your individual talents bring out the best in one another's work (as any good team's should) - I respect your efforts immensely, and I'll be watching for what happens next.

By the by, there hasn't been a tech demo of sorts for this game yet, has there? Even just the "finished enough" characters in a simple room to let people get a feel for the current controls/physics? As one who also works with per-character physics changes, I worry that even if everything is laboriously tuned to my liking, people might still balk at the feel of the controls simply because they're different than those used in the 50 other hacks they've played. I'm curious if you've given any thought to/have any opinions on this uncanny tendency to evaluate a SMW ROM hack as one of many SMW ROM hacks rather than as its own game, even following highly extensive changes (doubly so for using SMW-esque assets).

I'm also going to go ahead and echo the praise on the boss work - truly fluid stuff, right there.

And for what it's worth, the "best hack ever" claim doesn't read as particularly arrogant to me, personally. I hear it more as a friendly challenge - "You think you could make an even better hack? Then do it! Bring your absolute best, 'cause that's what we aim to do!" (Feel free to reign me in if I'm way off the mark on this one.)

As a fan of the inscrutable, I support this... experience?

I'm curious as to what manner of trauma the game code must suffer to turn into this kind of thing without crashing outright. How much time was spent engineering the "correct" level of chaos? Was it an undertaking of some measure, or did you just sort of hit it with a hammer a few times?

At any rate, kudos for hitting the "functional enough" vibe that leaves the players with just enough sanity to appreciate everything they've lost.

If you do what you love and love what you do, the rest will follow. If I may speak frankly out of respect for your project, I don't see this being the kind of hack that everyone will have heard of; that said, I absolutely see this hack as being well-liked by the vast majority of folks who give it a try. A sleeper hit, if you will. And hey, word of your work can only keep spreading, so who knows? This project is bound up in a charming earnestness, I'm sure it'll find its way.

As far as content, I'm a fan of your powerup system, visually and conceptually. The Sword of Soaring in particular is a very creative interpretation of the old cape feather that ends up working extremely well. If you find yourself in need of some help in realizing your final vision for your powerups, feel free to drop me a message - I'd like to see where this goes.

Ah, now this is good stuff. As a fellow oldster, I must say I've always been a fan of your style - it's great to see that you're back!

Your graphics are supreme, simple as that. Your overworld is immaculate save for the SMW clouds and smoke puffs, which contrast rather starkly. I'm fairly certain they're placeholders, though.

The player character is most charming, simple but distinct. A question, though - on the wall run pose, am I correct that Eszett is bearing her teeth, the black pixel representing her missing tooth? I was trying to figure out what her expression was supposed to be until I happened upon the victory pose, which made tooth thing clear (nice detail, by the way). On the subject of the victory pose, will there be any sort of transition frame(s)? In my head, snapping to and from that pose to the neutral standing pose looks a little abrupt, though perhaps it's smoother in practice.

The only graphic I don't care for, and boy is it minor, is the "9" in the status bar font. I totally see it now, but the tail seems "pinched" in a weird way that threw me at first glance. I have a feeling that changing one pixel would make all the difference. Also, the bag graphic in the status bar seems to go behind some layers, though I can't imagine you didn't notice.

So, do you have any idea what sort of gameplay you're after? Exploration, puzzles, gold old-fashioned platforming? Are there abilities or physics changes in the works, or will it be classic Super Mario World with a few hundred coats of gorgeous paint? I look forward to seeing where this project of yours goes, best of luck to you.

Huh... There's an intriguing little something about this project, can't quite put my finger on it.


Probably something to this effect. That, and how the game about the cute bunny promises to eat my face off in terms of difficulty.

Are you in a position to describe any game mechanics? I'm assuming by way of referring to Paper Mario that there are to be action commands or some other sort of real-time element in battles. What sort of stats govern how battles play out? I spot a reference to "physical damage" - are things strictly physical/non-physical, or are there elements to consider? Is there a level up system of sorts? Concrete or in the works, I'm curious how you'd like this thing to play. Achieving good RPG design sounds maddening.

Also very curious, and hopefully not off-topic, about what role you as a designer think that the RNG should play in an RPG such as this. Are you aiming more for a Paper Mario spin, with battles being very straight-forward with very mild random effects, or full-on Pokémon style in which earning the ire of the RNG is an automatic GAME OVER?

In any event, I wish you the best of things. Keep at it!

Ordinarily yes, those four Yoshi palettes pull garbage data if taken to the overworld. While this patch does not set up any kind of custom overworld Yoshi sprites, it does allow the user to pick which one of the default four colors to assign to each Yoshi. If you decided to turn the Palette F Yoshi into, say, an orange Yoshi, you could set it to appear as red or yellow on the map (or blue or green, but that'd be silly).


Possible with this patch, no; possible in general, absolutely. You'd probably have to borrow some message slots from levels to accomplish that, but I imagine that wouldn't be a big deal.

My thanks again to everyone for taking the time to post your kind words, I'm supremely happy to have had the opportunity to provide a resource of this caliber.


I most certainly intend to, thanks!

I quite enjoy enemies like this. It's crazy looking and kind of intimidating at first, but it really doesn't seem too domineering a threat by itself - which of course lends itself well to a series of increasingly difficult setups when mixed with other hazards. I look forward to seeing how this critter will be utilized in a level proper.

(I also look forward to a Dry Bones version to bring the Castlevania homage full circle, hint hint.)

Now find a way to anchor one of these bad boys to your sprite-carrying goombas.

Ahhh yes, this is still looking so very looks-so-good. I'm curious how long it takes one to attain pixel-wizardry of this caliber. I'm afraid my complete artistic ineptitude precludes any critique of the visuals besides "they're really good," so that'll have to serve for now. (I will reiterate that those clouds on the northwest of your map could do with a teeny bit of texture, though I understand it's a recycled image.)

Gameplay-wise, I'm liking what I'm seeing. Might that be MarioE's walljump patch, or is it a custom creation? Is Eszett able to jump off of the same wall multiple times? The super jump seems to charge quickly enough to avoid chopping up the action, which is a good thing. Looking at the camera-scrolling image, though, I have to ask if any thought has been given to the fact that ducking is seemingly used both to charge the jump and to scroll the camera - will these functions be decoupled later? Leaving them shared gets doubly tricky, as the super jump wants to move you very upwards while the camera is now very downwards.

I'm not totally clear on the "change into a spinjump in midair" mechanic - is that something the player does at will to bounce on the special block, or does the block itself bounce the player while spinning them?

At any rate, I'm glad you're gaining ground on this project of yours. I quite look forward to what's to come.

Hm, this was good practice.

Enjoy!

A quick search turns up at least three different raccoon patches - which one in particular might you be using?

In the meantime, though, educated guess suggests your problem is RAM address $72 - finding a way to set it to #$24 after flight is over would probably fix your issue. Normally it gets set to #$0C when jumping from a full sprint (as one must do to fly), which allows the player to accelerate in midair until landing.

I can't imagine how long it took to set all this up, but it was well worth it - this is one quality intro sequence! It sets the mood fairly decisively, but there's a decent amount of subtlety at play, too. I like in particular how the word-flood intensifies with no input from the player before starkly transitioning to a still room, player now in control. I imagine most first-time players would probably sit there for a moment before realizing they're even in control now, which would only add to the effect. And don't think I didn't spy that painting of a ship looming over the player from the get-go!

Also, kudos for making your house look like a house, that has house-y things inside of it. I've seen plenty of hacks over the years that have tried to bill a lamp and a sheet on some crates as a house, so I appreciate your going the extra mile.

If I might pick a few nits, first thing would be the text. I personally think the font itself is fine, but the colors could use some tweaking. I don't know how much freedom you have palette-wise, but I'd give some higher text/background contrast a try. Next is the "GO AWAY" right before the end of the first wave of text. The G being half-sunk in the rest of the letters made me misread the phrase as "OKAY" the first couple of times, though that may just be the consequence of .gif choppiness.

The words seem to be loosely organized into two columns - was this deliberate, or a limitation? It's not super jarring, but the extra degree of organization is at odds with the chaotic "panic" vibe I think you're reaching for. Also, I believe your status bar has just been painted the same color as your background - one can see the text sliding under the numbers on Layer 3 by looking carefully at the top of the screen.

Work in progress though it may be, it's still looking very well executed. Truly fine work!

I still haven't gotten around to trying the demo proper as of yet... Better feedback to be provided [eventually] -

That patch is just a slightly hex-edited version of the vanilla gravity + cape flight routine, and that turns out to be something of a problem. I had coincidentally been studying that routine for my own needs and I made an earnest effort to come up with a fix for you, but everything I tried bugged out something else due to how the base code is structured. It can most certainly be done, it's just considerably more complicated than I expected (or it really isn't and I'm just not seeing it). I'm disinclined to keep playing with it, but I'll be sure to let you know if I happen upon anything useful in the future.



I took a crack at this one as it seemed fairly simple - and it was, though I sure made a mess of it. I hope you don't mind if I post it here, as the code is on the smaller side:


Tested, and seems to work fine in the context of vanilla Super Mario World; I don't know what other changes you've made to the powerup system, however, so if something isn't behaving properly, just let me know.

File Name:	Powerup Instead of 1-up
Added:	2011-05-13 06:55:24 PM
Authors:	wiiqwertyuiop
Tool:	xkas
Requires Free Space:	Yes
Bug Fix:	No
Featured:	No
Description:	This patch will give you a powerup when you get 100 coins instead of a 1-up.
Download:	Download Backup - 536 bytes

Merged with Star When 100 Coins, also by wiiqwertyuiop, and submitted as an update to the latter. Both patches were nearly identical.