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I Hate Tomatoes! (Test build inside!)

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From the maker of two contest levels that did not place so well comes I Hate Tomatoes! A Standard: Very Hard(?) experience that will potentially make you want to revoke my ability to express myself through SMW rom hacks. Or maybe you'll like it? I don't know I'm not your mother.

The Story

There is no story. Well at least not in the sense of an overall plot. I can't even commit to writing on my own time I'm not about to bog down this hack with that. But each level on it's own is a self contained story. There's a little message box at the start of each level that has a tiny bit of plot in it, just a little something about the environment of the level. The only thing tying all these individual experiences together is those darn red tomato blocks that are all over the place.

Features

There's no life system. HUD elements will only show up when it is necessary for the level. A block that will make you start big all the time exists, and aside from that no power ups (unless I decide I want them as I'm building this). Every level has a secret exit that is hidden obnoxiously but none are required for progress.

The Levels

Farmer Snifit's Tomato Patch


Since Snifits are so rarely used around here, they have used their free time to learn how to grow tomatoes. Unfortunately, the kind they grow are so spicy touching them will hurt you. Also the Snifits want to shoot you, it's their thing.

Speedrunner's Beach


Have you ever wanted to feel cool like the people who beat Super Mario Bros. in under 5 minutes? Well, you wont even have that long, just 65 Mario Time Units. Perfecting your movements will be the key to getting across the beach before the goal sphere is gone!

66 Kontest Lane


I once had a dream of doing okay at KLDC. That dream died when I got 66th place out of about 70 contestants. This ghost house was built on the burned down remnants of Hazy Halls, but with the added bonus of a Dark Boo who will perpetually chase you.

The Ocean? What Ocean?


There is a distinct difference between a "Water Level" and a "Swimming Level". I would never make someone play a "Swimming Level" because they are just plain not good. "Water Level" elements are good though, so please enjoy some time with some wonderful sea life.

Acquisitive Canyon


That's a big word for greed, because this level requires getting 99 coins to clear it. That's actually a lie because the secret exit requires a different number. I wish Yellow Koopas wouldn't respawn indefinitely because I wanted to put their coin drop to work with the gimmick here. |-O

Cave of Trails


Has anyone found a good use for the coin trail sprite before? That thing kinda sucks. Here's a level about it. Also yes I did completely steal a loving homage to the Mad Thwomp visuals from JUMP1/2. Love it but I'm not married to it, if whoever came up with that wants me to call it off just shoot me a message, I'm friendly.

Richard and the Spring


From one gimmick infringement to two, here is a level with a Fuzzy who has a spring on his head. It's his favorite thing in the whole world and he doesn't want you to stare at it. So just bounce on it instead, he can't stop you.

There will be more levels than these, probably around 15-16 total unless I feel like wrapping this up a lot earlier. Two level names floating in my head right now are Staff Infection and Everything. I'll leave you to imagine what those are about.

When will this be out?

Eventually. I work on it whenever I have free time and inspiration. At the very least once all levels shown here are complete I will release a demo.

Post Scriptum

There are members of the community with tomato as part of their name. This has nothing to do with them, they are nice people. I just don't like the food.

Looking good Mr. Nope, excited to see more


You can see progress on my projects/art on my Twitter!
Can't wait to see how the story of Richard and his spring will unfold. Looks promising from what you have been showing in the SMWC's #showoff channel.


The difficulty seems to be high, but I want to try it
このアカウントは無効になりました
I've enjoyed what you've been showcasing on the Discord so having a nice little thread for it all is nice.
It's just sorta awesome to see the Sprite Stack Gimmicks and things revolving around those Tomato Blocks. Will Fruit & Veg themed Hurt Blocks become the next trend?

Regardless I'll be looking forward to seeing more updates and progress whenever it's ready!

Keep it up Nope! #smrpg{<3}
Thanks for the kind words everyone!

Progress on this is going to slow down a tad because of my participation in a certain contest, but I figure I could reveal some little tweaks and elaborate a bit on other things.



Firstly since the initial post I did some tweaking to some sprites to make them more accurate to official artwork. A very minor thing but it's a nice personal touch as far as I'm concerned.



Next I kinda only glossed over this but there's no life system, which means no goal tape is necessary. That means I could use the goal orb, which has a lot of funny uses (especially with the disassembly). The green one is for the normal exit, the red one is for the secret exit. Speaking of which...



I did mention there are secret exits. They are going to be very well hidden, to the point people may shout "who the hell would ever think to look there or try that?" I hope I get to hear them. They all lead to areas of the level that run in a different direction with the associated gimmick, or sometimes even double down on it. I do plan on having them be permanently opened once you find them, just gotta figure out the best way to do that. They are also not required for progress and wont lead to any shortcuts, existing only to offer the players a little extra challenge should they seek it.

Lastly there's some QoL changes I implemented recently like the retry system but there's no real reason to take screenshots of that.

#thp{O_O1}
I do also hate tomatos, the taste and the texture of them is gross.

Jokes aside, this hack looks wonderful! Im probs gonna fail at it, but hey it looks good.


Keep your spirits high, and your noodle sweaty!
I was busy with a contest entry so I hadn't been working on the hack for a little bit there. To make up for the thread being pretty inactive I am bringing you a video this time:

Staff Infection


This one is a throwback to the VLDC9 compilation's final level, Staff Invasion. Near as I could tell not a whole lot of people liked that one, either because it was too long or because its presence as the game's final thing took away from the contest winners themselves. None of those problems exist here though.

Mega cool level for me. #smrpg{y} I have a question, will it be on C3 Winter 2022?



List Soundtrack - List Hacks

Mega Man X3 OSTs
Originally posted by Infinity
Mega cool level for me. #smrpg{y} I have a question, will it be on C3 Winter 2022?


Thank you :)

I will try and have a demo out for C3.

The atmosphere, the music, the Boopas #w{<3} such a great level!
C3 stuff: http://www.smwcentral.net/?p=viewthread&t=67626 HDMA-Codes and Custom Music included!

1 Island Of Vanilla Feeling: http://www.smwcentral.net/?p=section&a=details&id=5988

MaSeHiHa World 1: http://www.smwcentral.net/?p=section&a=details&id=6055

DINGS Demo: https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=section&a=details&id=12147

Life has been getting in the way of me making serious progress with anything as of late. There's also the fact I'm trying to work on several level pieces at once. I figure I could show off some screenshots of a few things.

The Ocean? What Ocean? (Secret Exit Path)


There is a way to gain entry to the underwater temples you see in the background of the main part of the level. Inside of it, the fish are acting a little differently, mainly faster than usual. Except Rip Van Fish, he just starts fires now.

Propeller Block


Glide around the night sky with a propeller block! Make the Ninji's hanging around jealous that you can take to the sky while they can only run and jump. Avoid obstacles like fences that kill whatever you hold, Roto Discs that live to be annoying, and Bloopers that nobody told they should be in a body of water.

So Sadistic It's Unrealistic


You ever get the feeling some level designers expect too much of you? Like you just wanted to play a nice, relaxing game of *insert SMW hack here* and it turns out the game wants to frustrate you to death? Well I'm not like that. This level gives you the option to go around any sort of seemingly impossible obstacle, provided you can figure out where to cut around the nonsense. Not like the rest of the level will be free anyways.


Nopecontest more like dopecontent amirite

But in all seriousness, this is definitely one of those hacks that I get excited to see updates on. Every level looks super fun and engaging. Good work!
Every dream is but another reality, never forget…

My In-Progress Hack

Thank you for the kind words :D

Let's take a look at what I have been up to as of late.



I kind of left this level to rot for a while, because I couldn't think of too much to do with it. I've decided to rebalance the level a little bit, making it easier than what I was originally going for and that's helped me find motivation to work on it again.



I broke ground on the secret exit path for the Richard Spring level. It's on fire now. It has a wavy heat effect that doesn't translate well on a still image but trust me.

And now, much like a teacher who doesn't feel like doing much work today, I am going to put on some videos:



The most relevant path of this level has been finished.





And two secret exit paths have been finished as well.

Been a bit since the last update in here. If you've been following my progress elsewhere, like the discord server or my twitter, you've likely already seen these videos but I will share them here anyways. Who is going to stop me?





Now for the more exciting news, ten levels are fully completed! This was the goal I set for myself before I would be ready to make a demo. Now, a demo wont be ready for the public just yet, but I am ready to start looking for testers. I will still be doing some re-balancing before I give anything out, but if you are interested in being a tester feel free to message me saying such, or just reply here. I will make a thread over at the testing forum when the time is right as well.

I am moving into an unofficial testing phase. This zip has the patch and some notes, one of which says what I am looking at to adjust if necessary and the other for where the secret exits are. I think I ironed out all errors that plagued the rom the first several times I put that zip together, but regardless if you choose to give things a shot for me and tell me how it goes I'd greatly appreciate it!

Proper testing will begin shortly, and a thread will be made for that in the testing forum.

It dawned on me that I haven't posted any updates in this thread in a long time. The most recent I've talked about it on the forums in general was my C3 thread. Progress has been continuing but incremental. I don't think I have much new to show off that wasn't done in that thread but there's a couple things worth mentioning.

-While at the moment I feel as though I have "level designer's block", I still feel I am on pace to have the hack completed by next C3. The majority of the levels are done now, and the ones that aren't are at least started with some progress in them.

-Unlike the demo I released a while ago, the final version will have a standard level progression. I am considering the idea of adding in a sneaky little shortcut to the end, though the implementation of such at the moment is up in the air.

-As per the 20 levels and 40 exits is what I intend to roll with. Normal exits will be for progression and secret exits will be for additional challenge. Might do a "good ending/bad ending" sort of deal but I am not planning on putting plot in this game so :P

-Many levels have been significantly nerfed since initially shown off, mostly because the scope of the hack kept changing and later levels were being made to be easier. For example; Farmer Snifit's Tomato Patch is still intended to be the first level, so I had to remove some of its more challenging tasks. Didn't make much sense for the first level to ask you to do things that the "final" level does.

Anyways nobody likes to read paragraphs upon paragraphs without pictures so let me give you some fun pictures:

Farmer Snifit's Tomato Patch (Secret Exit Path)


The secret exit of this level used to effectively be a HAL room, but I since I made actual sub-levels for every other secret exit path I felt the need to update this one. It has bigger Snifits.


Richard and the Spring (Secret Exit Path)


I changed the background to one I ripped myself, because the old one was a recolor of the main part of the level and it looked bad.


Number Cruncher


The goal of this level is to defeat enemies in such a way that your score matches (or exceeds if you are smarter than me) the shown number, before the autoscroll crushes you to death.


Number Cruncher (Secret Exit Path)


Some people don't like math. If you attempt to do any math here you die.


Lotus in Ruins (Secret Exit Path)


In the main part of the level I gave moles hats. Now I have given fish hats. I think everyone should consider wearing a lotus plant as a hat. That is the world I wish for...

Anyways if you exclusively followed this thread for info on my hack, sorry for letting this thread sit for so long without an update. Join the discord, I can't shut up about it over there.

Perfect !! I'm looking forward to the full version



List Soundtrack - List Hacks

Mega Man X3 OSTs
Okay so I've done a real garbage ass job of keeping all my updates in one place it looks like. Been doing my progress reports on the hack at C3's for the most part.

Anyways I thought my loyal fanbase of around a dozen people would like to know I've finished the last level. There are 20 levels that pretty much fully exist, which was my goal. So the hack should be released real soon right?
No!


There's still many, many odds and ends that need to be taken care of before a proper release. A lot of it is really minor things, but there's also a great number of those things and an almost inversely proportional amount of free time I have working full time to be able to live. What still needs to be done, in no particular order;

-Overworld (this has been outsourced to my good friend  Ringo)
-Hint house, where info on the game's secret exits are located
-Credits, as I did not write down who did what as I was going along and I got a lot of working backwards to do
-Minor tweaks I keep putting off doing (fixing the sound that plays in the first part of Sadistic, fixing Blooper's animation, making some hidden things more visible; stuff along these lines)
-Testing

To that last point I plan on putting out a test build fairly soon. I'll put out more specific details of what I am looking for regarding that when I make a thread over on the testing forum, but as a general notice I am looking for people who are proficient at Standard: Very Hard and the category formerly known as Kaizo: Light, more the former than the latter.

Can this all be done before next C3? Maybe, maybe not. I want a C3 release but if I have to delay it to the next winter one to be sure I am putting out the best possible product I wont hesitate to do it that way. Or I'll release an almost finished version early and save a fully complete one for then.

:)

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