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Remember when you first started hacking smw?

It was around 2008 or 2009 that I found SMW hacking was even a possibility, I can't quite remember at the moment. Regardless, I remember my first forays into hacking were just placing objects and sprites around in haphazardly random locations until it eventually resembled something you could just barely call a level. I didn't realize overworld editing was even a thing until a couple years later. My first actual hack itself didn't actually come until 2010/2011 when I first joined SMWCentral, since I had once again gotten myself super busy with stick figure animating up until that point.
i remember.
It was a sunny winter morning when i downloaded Lunar Magic for the first time. Didnt had a single cloud in the sky, and the wind that came through the half open window was cold, but not to the point of causing discomfort. I remember watching every pixel of the download progress getting filled, as i felt all my dreams and hopes were soon to be fulfilled. Big mistake. Almost two years later ive seen all the anger and disgrace i caused to other people lives. Ive seen myself being mocked, cursed, ignored. Ive seen all the dreams and hopes being flushed into the toilet of the smw community. But i remember that sunny winter morning.
Around 2011, I downloaded Lunar Magic and try to play something. Originally, I just want to play with some objects. Suddenly, I just thought I can create an underground dark cave with ghosts (when I didn't actually play other's SMW Hacks yet). I added some random stuff and some stacked munchers, and tried to improve it in weird methods. Then, I made my first ever SMW level.

I am still keeping my original files, as well as that level.
When I first got into hacking around 11 years ago, I had just about every single trope nailed down on how not to design a level. Blind jumps, making the level about as unfun as humanly possible (basically taking every opportunity to be a dick to the player), extreme item babysitting (i mean juggling at least 2+ items being necessary to proceed), casual SMW level edits, and literally copying a level just to meme on it.

Painful memories looking back, because I can't believe that, one point or another, I thought I was funny or original with those levels. But I guess it just shows just how much of a long way I've come.

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STELLA!
I remember 2008 very well. I couldn't use anything except for Jonwil's blktool so I tried to make an entire hack around that. I also loved the idea of garbled sprite graphics for some reason.

Originally posted by Falaflame
making the level about as unfun as humanly possible


THIS. I'm guessing you were pretty young when you registered too. Something about being a dumbass teenager equals shitty Mario levels. Once I grew up and got to college a couple years back, my level design and aesthetics got way better. I'm not like a legend or anything but you can see the progress over ~10 years for sure.
I remember downloading Lunar Magic somewhere back in 2008, and trying tinker with what I considered hard. This was before I discovered Kaizo at the time and was super interested in it up until 2016. And now I plan on disrupting that silence. Brings back memories, to say the least.
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I remember the first thing I tried to do was insert an MP3 using AddMusicK.

I also mostly made remixes of classic Mario levels, and I had no idea how to use ExGFX. If I wanted to put Purple Marios over top of Monty Moles, then the moles would never appear in the hack.

also muncher swarms lol
I got into it in mid 2008 when I was 13, after a break from speedrunning N64 games. I was just about to start 9th grade. I am now preparing for a Masters degree in Robotics.

I loved how easy to use and intuitive Lunar Magic was. I designed around 50 levels for a hack in my first few months before I got into Assembly. I had a lot of fun lurking in the now defunct #serioushax IRC channel, creating tons of patches and sprites, including the Ultimate n00b boss (which I sincerely hope has been obsolete / superseded by something relevant to today's times). During that time I finished playing the first two Paper Mario games, and drew so much inspiration from them I started to design my own Paper Mario themed hack. Unfortunately, my obsession for gimmicky ASM and getting into the latest SMW hacking tech hindered my progress until my motivation eventually died out in late 2012. I have been checking this place every other year, but I have more or less moved on from the scene. It has been a fun few years though, and I won't forget how my first bout into programming came from learning Assembly in this place.

Can't forget my peak degeneracy period in late 2009 where I'd spend 12 hours a day on my computer chair writing ASM code. Good times.

It was in 2017, when I got my own laptop. I didn't have a Wii U, and SMM2 hadn't been announced (obviously), so I looked for other ways to make my own SMW-style levels. I remember being determined to make the ultimate creepypasta hack. I didn't even know how to use ExGFX or insert sampled music.
"Glauben Sie nicht alles, was Sie im Internet lesen." - Karl Marx
I found SMW hacking when I was 15 in 2009. Not sure how I found this place, but oh well. Wasn't too long after getting into things that I decided I wanted to learn ASM, and so I used Schwa's tutorial and figured things out. Never did finish a hack, but now that I'm back I've started something new so maybe it will go somewhere?
I started around 2007 and joined SMWC in 2008 (and was a very missbehaved autistic delinquent, to put it lightly).

When I started: I was about 13 or 14; I signed up to SMWC at 14. The date I see on my profile says:
02-05-08 11:07:40 AM (registered for 10 years, 11 months and 22 days)

It will be 11 years, in just over a week. It's weird to think that I'm only 3 years away from my account being as old as I was when I first signed up. By then, there will most likely be users here who were born after my sign-up date.

I feel old now. It feels strange to put it all into perspective like this.

I still haven't knuckled down and finished the base ROM for my project "Dreamland", but I'm determined to do it, even if I have to wait decades until retirement to get the free time. 😂



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Originally posted by Iceguy
I got into it in mid 2008 when I was 13, after a break from speedrunning N64 games. I was just about to start 9th grade. I am now preparing for a Masters degree in Robotics.


Dang Iceguy, I remember you being around. Can't believe it's been that long.

I got my start around 2006 or 2007, I can't quite recall. My join date isn't correct because I believe the entire user database was wiped, maybe just preceeding Nightfall? SMW hacking was my first foray into game design, which 12-year-old me had decided was by far the most viable career option. From there, I discovered ASM, which was my first programming language, which escalated to Java and internships and finally full time jobs in software engineering. I have SMW hacking to thank for my entire career and livelihood!
If I am remembering correctly, I got into SMW hacking around 2008 which is much earlier than when I made an account here. I was in the 8th grade back then and my first exposure to this was someone's Brutal Mario video on Youtube.

One thing I remember is how ASM patches long ago used to not be .asm but actually .ips files. Those were some...interesting times.
Layout by RanAS, modified by yours truly.

I think it was late 2014 (november), and when I first opened Lunar Magic... I didn't knew what I was supposed to do. Once I opened rom, first level I tried to edit was... 102 (Yoshi's Island 4). I placed some objects but I didn't knew how to make camera scroll vertically in that level, since i placed them very high.

My first ever hack (which was "finished" in late august 2015. "finished" because it really wasn't, it had some glitches and I forgot to actually save some levels) was a crappy edit of SMW, with all levels being modifications of originals (with only a few exceptions). At that time I learned how to insert custom music and inserted new tracks for each level. Sometime later I learned how to insert ExGFX and I built Special World with all levels containing custom graphics, I remember my satisfaction once I learned that.

Once I learned how to insert custom sprites i started working on new hack that uses unique sprites for each level, but it wasn't complete, and I tried to revive it multiple times with different ideas (even nowdays, i plan to give it another go for the 4th time?).

Those are my earliest expiriences with SMW hacking. After that I'll create more hacks (that are most likely dead), I'll start learning ASM (not counting attempts somewhere in 2016) for real in early 2017 when I got my own laptop, and become who I am today.
Apparently it was over 8 years ago in 2011. April fools too, that's appropriate. I must've been 15 at the time. I don't really remember being 15 but I'm pretty sure I was an embarassment so I'm mentally blocking it out. Nevertheless you were all endlessly patient with me and helped me deliver the most vanilla hack since vanilla ice himself. I recall being so inept at world layout design that Hadron went through and polished my cartography just so I could have a hack approved. Now that's what I call a hero. You'd have thought he was mama mario herself with the skill at which he could make those marios.

This site has had such a profound impact on my life. It was my first exposure to programming and taught me to think so much deeper about the design of the games I played. It was also my first taste of the wonderful world of internet forums and to this day is the only one I've ever posted on more than once or twice. It helped me come out of my shell and believe in myself a bit more, but most importantly planted the seed of what I wanted to get out of the crazy train called life. Nowadays I work as a gameplay programmer at my favourite game studio and I don't think I would've ended up there if it wasn't for all of this and all of you. So thanks a bunch, thanks all the bunches. Always been a privilege.
I was hacking way before I knew SMWC was a thing. I think I picked up my copy of Lunar Magic from a site called The Helmeted Rodent? Although I was hacking Gen 3 Pokemon at the time too so I may be thinking of that. (On that note, Googling "Helmeted Rodent" turns up some really shady search results so I'm gonna advise agaist that.)

I made this YouTube tier Kaizo hack called Mario ZX which in it's own way earned a little bit of infamy among a few SMW players on YouTube. It was glitchy. The level design was trash, but my God did people love it for some reason. Most people played it for it's final level "Darkness Tower", which was infamously difficult to play without tools. Obsticles included spinning spike balls that you had to spin jump between, with each spike ball being surrounded by a boo ring, and the Koopa jump room, where you had to jump off of a large number of goombas to make it to the other side of a huge pit. The final jump required you to jump off a falling spring board. It was an almost frame perfect manouver and only one person has footage of themselves making it.

Sadly enough, to this day it's the only SMW ROM hack I can claim I actually "finished". I was considering the idea of getting back into it, so maybe it won't be like that forever.
SMWC's official dentist since 2011.

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I started in late 2016, so I'm still a bit of a newbie here..

Aside from spending hours upon hours in the Mario Vs. Donkey Kong series' level editors, I wasn't very well-versed in level design so I would often look to other sources for inspiration, usually other SMW hacks. In fact, my main inspiration for SMW hacking was Aeon's Lunar Legends demo, which is kind of what I based my current hack off of for a while. Despite being a demo of a game that will never be finished it's probably my favorite hack on the site...

I'm still nowhere near the league that most users here are with hacking but I like to think that I've improved quite a bit from how bad I used to be, though even despite that I've been working on the exact same hack since I started 3 years ago and I feel as if I've made no progress at all...usually most people try to get out their first hack as soon as possible. I've put quite a bit of effort in my project though, so I feel that would be a waste.

I joined SMWC on November 5th, 2016, but even despite being a member for nearly 3 years, I've never really felt like a part of this community...I don't recognize many users (aside from a recurring few) and I haven't joined many discussions. Most I've done is share the progress of my hack, but I should honestly get on changing that soon.

Funnily enough, I probably could have joined SMWC or been hacking SMW much, much earlier if I just found the right site. When I first downloaded Lunar Magic in 2016, I went and downloaded a SMW ROM so I could start hacking and was surprised by how easy it was to find said ROM because years earlier, I recall attempting to download an SMW ROM from a sketchy website that was actually selling it, and I obviously didn't have the means to buy it being as young as I was. For some reason I didn't attempt to find a ROM for free and assumed I couldn't get into SMW hacking, but I'm glad I didn't pay for it..
your simplistic human mind cannot possibly comprehend the complexities of my thoughts
I've known about SMW hacking since I first started playing SMBX, so around 2013 I guess?
But I never explored anything about it until a few (two) years later, when I started playing SMW hacks; back then I also tried lunar magic's basic features and made a small level. I only really started to get into it when I lost the levels from an old SMBX episode and decided I had enough of SMBX. (that said, I eventually got back into SMBX)
When I was 10 years old I discovered emulation and from there discovered Super Mario World ROM hacks and stuff, and there were a few times I attempted my own SMW hack. I even had made two crappy hacks, but one of them was only on my old computer that has long since been formatted multiple times and the other I uploaded onto Megaupload not long before it was taken down.
The very first time I learned about hacking and such was back when I was reading Bob and George and I stumbled upon Lunar Magic 1.3 while looking for sprite graphics. That was like 18 years ago.