Lunar Magic suggestions and discussion (LM v2.52)

This. Unless it's a bug fix of some sort (or a real, SMW-specific enhancement that virtually everyone can make use of), no patches whatsoever should be integrated into LM. It'd just kind of ruin the idea of it being a ROM hacking tool and turn it into a game making program that can do everything a user wants with the press of a button.

I agree on the "Export/Import parts of the palette" idea by the way, though in my opinion it's not as necessary as the Map16 editor update I mentioned earlier.

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I know I shouldn't have posted that (or at least, not worded it that way). >_> I know I'm bad at explaining things, but you've got to agree that, say, the FastROM patch and the VWF dialogue system are completely different things. Everything you mentioned there is either behind-the-scenes optimization or something that only alters the original game in a subtle way, and that certainly doesn't apply to the VWF patch. (And no, I'm not implying it's not a great thing.)

You'll certainly have some counterarguments, but I still don't think it'd be a good idea to implement every patch available here into LM.

Also, if this needs to be discussed much further, I suggest not doing it in this thread.

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It should be pretty obvious we were joking.

But seriously, I would love to be able to transfer single palette rows because when working on YM, it's been a living hell trying to transfer small portions of the palette. And an undo button...
YES YES YES YES YES.

Another feature I'd like to see is LM not even trying to insert ExGFX files that are too large in file size. Because when it does, it can really be a pain in the ass to fix.

You can already transfer global ExAnimation between ROMs rather easily... use the "Copy all Slots" and "Insert all Slots" buttons. They even use the windows clipboard.




There's only so much vblank time on the SNES to work with. If you fill all of LM's existing level and global animation slots with 4 8x8s, there's only barely enough time for it.

Besides which, from what I've seen most people run out of slots because they do silly things like filling them all with entries that only transfer 1-2 8x8s or single colors.

True, although that wouldn't work if the ROM should get messed up so badly that the global ExAnimation is overwritten, or if it won't even open in Lunar Magic at all.


Hehehe, you've clearly never seen MY ExAnimation, then...I'm constantly worried about running out of V-blank time, since I not only have a lot of global ExAnimations, some of which animate entire rows of tiles (although many of them use the Manual or Custom triggers...not sure how taxing the latter are on V-blank time), but I also commonly use dynamic sprites, which certainly take time to upload.

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I'm working on a hack! Check it out here. Progress: 64/95 levels.

Someone may have already said this. But the opyion to change Mario's GFX files in a level. Like Mario GFX in one level and have Peach ExGFX in another level.

That's the sort of thing that backups and the restore feature are for. Although if you really want that as an external file, windows used to come with a clipboard viewer that would let you save/load things directly off of it.



All trigger processing is done outside of vblank, so the only thing that matters is the actual animation itself. A custom trigger that hasn't been enabled and a manual trigger whose frame isn't being changed both won't use any vblank time.

If I remember right, the 0x800 byte transfer involved with using dynamic sprites during a frame will use up about 70% of the free vblank time that ExAnimation usually has to work with... I'd be pretty worried about vblank time too in that case.

Yes, but not built directly into LM. I will admit, that one does seem like it could be useful, especially with Roy no longer updating that patch for when it becomes inconsistent with new LMs. (Not as if other people couldn't fix it of course, it's just annoying to find the jump points again).

Only thing I can think of is that LM gets big update and all the other lunar tools are in it already.

As for an undo button I doubt it would happen due to it having to save every modifacation you make.

If you ask me, a nice addition would be a message that pops up if you are using a sprite that is incompatible with the current sprite memory.

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Nothing to see here. Move along.

Yes, I wanted to say it too. Nice would be also something like "change the value of tile numbers for this Map16 Tile (in hex)" instead of changing 8x8 tile 1B3 into 2B3 or 243 in order to make a Map16 Page for GFX for BG2 and BG3. Just select multiple map16 tiles and press something like CTRL+ALT+F11 to change the value of those tiles. Just type 100 or 90 and all Map16 tiles are now for BG2 or BG3. Dreams...

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...Huh?

Being able to change sprite tooltips based on the extra bytes would be useful, too, if possible.

Say, should I write down all the ideas that have been said in the first post (possibly with a counter for how many people mentioned them)?

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I'm working on a hack! Check it out here. Progress: 64/95 levels.

Zoom x2 and x4. Especially on the overworld. With a huge screen resolution, the overworld is really hard to select and build accurately. This could apply to the tile pickers as well.

Also, overworld ExAnimation. There have been a couple of crude patches for it, but nothing substantial and nothing in LM itself. I've been studying some of the level animation codes, and I think I could just about code something like this myself if I knew where the routine for the normal overworld animation was.

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I'm working on a hack! Check it out here. Progress: 64/95 levels.