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Returning to hacking after a lengthy hiatus. Any fundamental changes to the process?

Hello, fine folks of SMW Central. It's a pleasure to see this community still weaving its magic after all these years. I've long been an off-an-on hacker, and it's been almost three years since I last used Lunar Magic with any degree of seriousness. I've finally mustered the desire to get back at it, but before I begin working in earnest, I'd like to know if there's been any major changes to how things are done.

In short, am I good to just fire up Lunar Magic 2.01 with all my tools, patches and knowledge from no earlier than 2014, or would it be a wise decision to slow down and download updated versions of everything and pore over the changelogs? Have there been any miracle tools released that I'd be a fool not to be utilizing? Any information along those lines would be greatly appreciated.
If you're using BTSD, there's a new block insertion tool called GPS. Lunar Magic has changed a bit too, and we use ASAR now instead of xkas if you still use xkas. Quite a bit has changed.
Working on "A Mario Hack".
Nifty. I'd never looked into custom blocks until about five minutes before creating this thread, so I have a fresh copy of the latest version of GPS. I see Lunar Magic is up to 2.43, so I've clearly missed a number of versions of it. I do still use xkas, but I have ASAR hanging out in my tools folder.

I am curious if I need to change over to ASAR, or if xkas is still a viable, if not outdated method. Lastly, I'm not sure if I need to redownload all of the patches I'm interested in, or if I can get away with using their outdated versions. I would imagine not, but if it is indeed the case, I' like to know.
You'll probably have to switch over to asar as most/many patches have already been converted and will no longer work with xkas.
That said, you don't need to reapply your old patches or anything, you can just switch and work with asar from now on. If you've got some old patches, you might have to see if a redownload is available or convert them.
Asar btw is much more convenient, as you no longer have to search for freespace manually. Everything is being taken care of by the assembler.

Lastly, there is also a new sprite insertion tool called PIXI, which works the same way as GPS does, and offers some new features. Though it's not standard yet, so you can stick with spritetool for now. (Though when downloading a sprite, check if it's PIXI only)
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