Well, I'm back with something new.



An attempt at a custom boss, where you have to hit the Hothead boss a set number of times while dodging all of the other sparkys constantly being generated onto the smaller tracks.

I had to test numerous designs, and with my limited knowledge of ASM, scrapped probably a dozen ideas to eventually end up with a simpler version than what was originally written down.

Very much based off of this Metroid Prime 2 boss, sort of.

That hothead boss looks really cool but will the final boss room version be this way? It seems that the room itself would kill the player more than the sparkies and blue hot head because getting to that shell would be pretty annoying to get to. Also that fact that sparkies keep spawning and it appears you have to be tiny does not help.

You'll get two powerups just before the boss, plus you can always duck jump and spin jump.

Right now, I'm trying to finish a level in World 9, and by that point I should be nearly done that.

Duck jumping over pits like how you have to do in the image is not my cup of tea but the fact you get power ups is good.

World 9 - Spoiler


Now, there's a bunch of World 9 floating around. In fact, there are clips from all 4 levels.

As for a World 9 boss, I may do a simpler one than I had originally planned.

And as for the other bosses, here's what I've devised:
World 6: Ruchba, the surreal artist. Like Vincent Van Gore in Luigi's Mansion, he both paints and he can animate whatever he created.
World 7: Quantum Head, a hothead boss that you have to throw shells at and get through all the mini rooms, dodging sparkies on magnetic tracks the whole way.
World 9: Maybe something to do with that pyramid in the middle?

Big robots? That was from Wario Land 4's Curious Factory level.

With March halfway done, I've noticed that Colossus has been slowing down for other reasons besides IRL, and made a checklist that could remedy that.


Note: DD stands for Drain Damage, a secret world 7 level which really needs difficulty balancing.

Hopefully with the help of some clear milestones in mind, I could push to get this hack done once and for all.

World A - The End
F

Very little is known about this part of the rift.
I

Though it's the last world of the game.
N

And it encompasses everything you would have done up to this point, and there's no holding back.

I've recently been able to check off the Artifact Temple (its hidden exit that requires beating the game), and the 1000 Year Monolith's light warp (the short transition level that leads to world 9).

Hey levelengine! ForthRightMC there! I downloaded and played pre-alpha version of Colossus. So, how the progress is going?

--------------------
7 years using Smwcentral.net... I think that's not enough.

-ForthRightMC

Look at the above two posts for progress.

After finishing two more levels in the true last world, I'll have to make many fixes as written on the camel checklist, try my hand at some more bosses, and give it one more test playthrough. I really want to get this one done.

Three months since the last post, it's time to announce yet another release!
As said in the attached readme, due to the sluggish pace at which Colossus was being updated, I've decided to release this version before calling it final, because the levels still may need balancing. That's where all of you come in.
It was getting much harder than I first anticipated to finish the last 2 levels, fix up some other issues, and try to balance the hack's bosses, which is way harder than I imagined. Colossus overall may have been too ambitious, but right now, it's almost there. For now, enjoy the 3rd unfinal release and some screenshots:
















Get it here.
Taking all feedback.

Rocket barrel ride section is extreme nightmare, especially for W4, thanks for unfair hitbox of barrel and volatile controls. Try to fit 3-4 tile-wide space with this. Lack of checkpoint prior to this section multiples frustration, if you try to beat this level w/o savestates. Can you score 50+ points in Flappy Bird?
P.S. I always find any level designed with Wiiqwertyuiop`s rocket barrel sprite to be an absolute hell to beat, thanks for volatile controls and inconsistent hitbox, that oftentimes registers crash into ceiling without even touching it.

Hmm... I'd like to leave the sections, so I was thinking of looking for another similar sprites that lets the player fly, or maybe make the bottommost tiles of each ceiling act like 25. I know the hitbox is messed which is why I couldn't get too carried away with using it.

A similar sprite? I think yoshicookiezeus make a rocket barrel sprite as well:

http://www.smwcentral.net/?p=section&a=details&id=9484

But it's not really much better as far as handling goes. I tried both in my own project, and found neither made for particularly fun gameplay.

Maybe the SNES just can't handle this sort of gimmick well. Maybe the rocket barrels out there have just been programmed really poorly. I don't know, but they're just not fun. I pretty much skipped the level in this hack where it appeared after having way too much trouble with the silly rocket thing.

--------------------
For gaming news and Wario discussions, check out Gaming Reinvented and Wario Forums respectively.

As for Mario's Nightmare Quest? Well, it's currently on Fusion Gameworks, ROM Hacking.net or the GCN at the moment.

I can name a few reasons why the Rocketbarrel doesn't transition too well into SMW.

-Depending on the direction you're going, or where the obstacles are coming from, the camera should be shifted away from the center to give the player more time to react to hazards. It's definitely possible to address this with some ASM. But there are...

-Hitbox issues. The original DKCR/TF games had a much better screen resolution which not only allowed for more open spaces, but not being limited to a tile grid also provided better control over how wide/narrow corridors could be. With SMW, you're really limited by the 16x16 tiles, and a difference of one tile's width is huge.

-One-hit death. Seriously, the fact Retro changed this in Tropical Freeze should tell you that even they realized it wasn't fun to demand flawless evasion from players the first time around (Hard Mode existed if you were up for that no-hit challenge).

--------------------

I hadn't done anything to the rocket barrel sections yet, as I noticed the game could crash somehow. This is what I found in my removal log, and I can't seem to replicate it.

Recently, I submitted the hack, which got rejected because of music-related issues, particularly the game crashing at some point after Artifact Temple.

I don't have much information about it since I couldn't reproduce these myself (using ZMZ to try to find them), so did anyone else notice anything music-related, or would know how to replicate it?

Try to run the hack on bsnes, one of the most accurate SNES emulators.

Done so, I still couldn't replicate it.
Maybe I'll resubmit it after a few more updates (outside of this music crisis) and ask someone else to moderate it, and see if they too can trigger the sound glitch; more specifically at around the same point as last time, just after the Artifact Temple.
Either that or I'll ask through Skype first.

On a completely different note, I've raised all the ceilings in the rocket barrel sections by one block by making the lowestmost ceiling blocks act like tile 25, to compensate for that stupid hitbox being roughly half a block to a full block higher than the graphic it should be lined up with. Also, you should use the R button to scroll the screen so Mario is to the left when possible, and if you're big, jump into the barrel ducking, as your hitbox will be decreased, much like on nets and with the balloon.