Lunar Magic suggestions and discussion (LM v2.52)

For imamelia: If you want to get rid of that extra sprite text from showing up, there's an undocumented setting to suppress it. For the tool tip, add 1 to the Type value.

For Katerpie: I later realized you were probably talking about the sprite, not just the block. Thanks, I'll correct the info on that.



If it's from the emulator crashing, probably not as it's likely not on LM's end. You could try replacing the emulator core with another to see if it handles the issue better.



You might be thinking of someone else, unless you mean the one way back in 2005. That was a close call. I can't remember if there was another backup of LM back then or how old it would of been... I do recall being more concerned at the time with some other project that could of been completely vaporized in that incident. Even the 2-3 weeks of work I did lose on that one was pretty annoying to have to recreate, as the original code was done during a coding spurt. Lesson learned though. Since then stuff like that gets backed up to a DVD every 6-12 months or so, with more frequent backups copied to a separate hard drive.



Yes, I'm aware of all this. As I indicated, there's nothing on this topic that hasn't been said in some form before, even before SMWC existed.

In fact, here. This is from an email between myself and Smallhacker back in 2009 before I returned (hopefully he doesn't mind being quoted, but I don't think there's anything too objectionable in it or that he hasn't said elsewhere).

> The biggest problem with LM is that it's closed source and updated by
> someone who pretty much left the community... and by "updated", I mean
> "barely updated". No, I'm not one of those who say "zomg u should add
> all teh external programs like blocktool and stuff to lm cus im too lazy
> to use more than one program". This is more of a serious problem. Lunar
> Magic is the core of the SMW hacking community. As of yet, there are no
> other SMW level editors out there, which more or less gives LM a
> monopoly on SMW hacking. Without LM, SMW hacking breaks apart. Thus,
> every other aspect of SMW hacking (both external tools and ASM hacks)
> has to maintain compability with LM. Otherwise, nobody will be able to
> use it as that would cut them off from LM. Therefore, Lunar Magic
> restricts certain aspects of hacking. Custom sprites as they are now
> exist merely out of luck that there happened to be two mostly unused
> bits in the sprite data. Various other (mostly very hackish) methods
> were proposed as one couldn't simply expand the sprite format, as that
> would render them incompatible with LM.  There have also been other
> instances of interesting ideas made impossible as it would, for
> instance, require tweaking the level format or something else that LM
> pretty much forces to be static. Lunar Magic could therefore be
> considered one of the biggest obstacles in advanced SMW hacking.
>
> Don't get me wrong. I respect you and all the time you've put into Lunar
> Magic. I also understand and respect your wishes to keep it closed
> source. Furthermore do I also respect your departure from the SMW
> hacking scene to move on to whatever else you're doing and not spend
> your entire life updating the program for some ungrateful people
> constantly demanding new features. I'm in no way blaming you for this
> situation, nor do I wish or expect you to solve it (as that would
> require releasing the source code which you've decided not to (and
> therefore shouldn't)). You've already done more than enough than anyone
> of us could ever ask for. I simply wanted to point out what I considered
> one of the most worrying problems with Lunar Magic: its monopoly
> combined with its closed source. In fact, I think the only way to
> resolve the situation is up to the community: creating an open source
> alternative (not necessarily a replacement). I guess we'd better stop
> being lazy and get to work. Wait, that requires massive effort. 99% of
> the community's collective interest just disappeared.
>
> This is where the point to this rant (or whatever you want to call it)
> should be, but I can't think of one other than what I've already said.
> Oh well.
>

*shrugs*  Well as you said, if it really becomes that big of an issue,
the community could create an alternative SMW editor.   And yes, it
would be a massive effort for potentially little gain depending on
what customizations are actually done.  I suspect most skilled
programers would prefer spending that kind of time on creating editors
for less hacked games instead.  But it could still happen if someone,
or enough someones, were bored and/or motivated enough to do it.

Although with that said... If it was for something really truly
important/useful, was well thought out and had bug-free ASM done,
didn't make sense to implement another way, didn't require major
modifications of LM's internals, and I had spare time...  I likely
wouldn't be opposed to tweaking LM for it.  For example, if the custom
sprites had required an extra byte to be implemented, it wouldn't have
been a big deal to adjust LM for it so it would parse correctly.  Just
as long as it's a very, very occasional request kind of thing.

I mean, it's nice to know that you're aware of what people would have to do to make up for you disappearing, but I feel like that's not going to stop people's curiosity about the whys of keeping it closed.

Is it actually something worth keeping secret or is it just you really wanting to stick to the "even if I told you it wouldn't matter" thing?
Cause I mean, you're right and it's up to you, but it's no wonder people will keep asking if there's never an answer...

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The latter, though I see you still don't entirely get it. No matter the answer, there are always people who will take any response on the topic as encouragement to make further appeals, or theories on why they think I must really not be releasing it, and so on. It'd be futile and useless, but they'd do it anyway.

So, no thanks. I see no reason to participate in any of it. Anyone curious can be referred to my post on the previous page, and that's all I have to say on the matter.

Not sure if this has been asked before, but since publishing source code isn't an option, did you consider adding something like plug-in support before? It would require a lot of time and effort, but the benefits should be mostly self-explanatory. People could make a lot of minor modifications to Lunar Magic themselves (even including ones specific to the project they're working on) without needing the source code in the first place. Sure, it would never be as flexible as full source code access and bigger changes would still require changeing Lunar Magic directly, but it could already satisfy the needs of many, many people. For example: adding a new button to the menu bar with some basic functionality could be a rather simple plugin feature to implement (of course the more flexible a plugin system would become, the more effort would be required to implement the feature into Lunar Magic). Nowadays there are basically hundreds of options for implementing plugin support into an application. The most straight-forward one would probably be to load user-created DLLs from a specific folder, though this would likely require maintaining and publishing some C++ header, so I guess it technically violates the "no source code" rule. Another option that is a bit more complex (but still seems mostly simple from what I've seen so far) would be support for Lua scripts. No C++ source code would have to be exposed and it would have the potential added benefit of users being able to directly test and verify their scripts in Lunar Magic (of course testing a DLL-based plugin would be a bit more difficult).

I assume you probably already considered plugins at some point and came to a conclusion on them, but I wanted to make sure. After all, it's a popular approach that a lot of available closed-source software uses. For example, I would never voluntarily use Visual Studio to write C++ code if Visual Assist didn't exist to make coding a lot more fun.

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Feel free to visit my website/blog - it's updated rarely, but it looks pretty cool!

Alright, thanks for digging out the response!

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Feel free to visit my website/blog - it's updated rarely, but it looks pretty cool!

Can there be an ability to change GFX033 on a per-level basis, like with the other slots that can have ExGFX?

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Kinda in hibernation for a while. I hope to be back in full swing soon.

IMO the best outcome is document SMW's workings in abstract/neutral enough terms an editor can be re-invented in the more distant future (whenever Windows backwards compatibility no longer suffices). We don't need to specifically know what LM does, or step on the proverbial toes of its code contributors.

Given how ExGFX 60-63 exist for cases where one would need a lot more animated frames, there doesn't seem to be much need. But there's nothing stopping you from adding a bit of ASM on level load to decompress any ExGFX file you want into RAM there.

the mario exgfx patch also does gfx33 (here)

Would an option to have Lunar Magic open levels starting from the screen where the level entrance is positioned instead of always starting from screen 00 be doable? With that there wouldn't be an inconvenience when opening levels that start at higher screen numbers, like a vertical level that starts at the bottom (such as Vanilla Secret 1, 109).

Based on your response about plugin support I don't expect much but, can there please be an easy way for translations to be done? Currently as it is if I want to translate LM I gotta dig into the EXE with resource hacker where everything is iin no order and I don't even have the ability to change all lines of text. Something like an .ini containing all the different strings of text in Lunar Magic would be of great help for the non-english hacking community.

I suppose it can be added. I wonder if it should be on by default, as new users might find it a bit more convenient when starting out.



As mentioned a couple pages ago LM wasn't built with translation to other languages in mind, and I don't want to spend a lot of time changing that. Also just a text file of strings would be inadequate for dialogs.



Perhaps one of these days I should just start a new thread for LM so that I can keep the first post somewhat up to date on a handful of things that keep popping up that have already been discussed so people don't have to wade through 100+ pages or have it answered again...

>As mentioned a couple pages ago LM wasn't built with translation to other languages in mind, and I don't want to spend a lot of time changing that.
The amount of time it would spend you to implement this would more then make up for it with new hackers who don't understand English. It actually feels a little bit selfish since its essentially a big middle finger to a lot of people.

Feel free to make a new thread yourself, we'll replace this one.

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While that might be nice, there's still a fair cost in time to both implement and maintain. It has crossed my mind a few times in the past, but like a handful of other things it's just not something I'm willing to do at the moment.



I don't know why anyone would think that, unless they were somehow insecure over-

*spots location: Quebec*

...oh. Anyway, don't mistake indifference for malevolence.



Alright, thanks. Might do up something in the next while when I get the chance (kind of don't want to, but it really would be saner in the long run).

That's a bit of a lowblow, isn't it?

I don't think even a position like yours grants you the right to openly mock people this way.
More than ever, you've been criticized lately, and people bring up more and more often questions you refuse to answer for unexplained reasons.
Don't you think it's time to actually listen to people and stop treating them like fools ? Geez.

I'd say that it's a two-way street in a way, though. People have been really accusatory and aggressive towards FuSoYa recently in this thread to a really extreme degree.
Like yeah he's doing something that isn't the best for us, but in the end it's his software and we have no actual right to try to guilt trip or pull some kind of moral high ground on him.

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