Awesome hacking ideas - SMW Hacking Discussion

Donut Plains 1 was clearly designed to be flown over. You're given tons of feathers, ample room and plenty of incentives, not just the coins and such, but it is the first level with a secret exit and thus you would have a second chance to go nuts with the new power up.

What I'm complaining about are hackers who blame the power up when players use it to fly over levels instead of playing them as intended. That's not a broken power up. It's a broken level and you need to work harder on it.

I really don't know if the cape came too late in development, but to be honest, I find the vanilla level design in general to be a big step down from Super Mario Bros. 3.

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Chapter Two: Land of No Shame

Originally posted by Ten

What I'm complaining about are hackers who blame the power up when players use it to fly over levels instead of playing them as intended. That's not a broken power up. It's a broken level and you need to work harder on it.

Other powerups like the frog suit, the fire flower, the ice flower the hammer suit, the penguin suit, the lucky bell, the propeller mushroom - all of these add new design opportunities, without having to force the designer to "play around" their powers so much.

Why have a cape feather in your game, when you can have all of these other powerups which still give the player new abilities and let designers do new things, but don't potentially break the game(or at least not nearly as much) if your levels aren't completely hand-tailored to them?

It's also poor design to put it in and then expect players not to abuse it, of course, but there is something to the argument that the cape feather is overpowered, and I think in most hacks, the hackers are better off tossing it out and replacing it entirely, or saving it for the last few worlds, rather than using it the way Nintendo did and trying to contort their design around this clumsy flight power. And no, I'm not a fan of the Tanooki Leaf/Suit either, for much the same reason.

Originally posted by Ten

I really don't know if the cape came too late in development, but to be honest, I find the vanilla level design in general to be a big step down from Super Mario Bros. 3.

I'm with you on that one. I constantly find myself looking at little design decisions in the vanilla game that just don't add up, and probably weren't well-tested or well-thought about. I have a post in another thread mentioning some of the weird stuff just from YI1, for example. Not a bad game by any means - GOD no- but it needed an extra month or maybe two to fix up some of the more egregious level design flaws.

They still had F-Zero at launch, which would've been more than enough to carry customers for one month, and then SMW would've had an awesome December release date, but now I'm talking about the release strategy of a console and game that are 26 years old.

I've become very grumpy these last few years, and have been biting my tongue here in SMWC's forums quite a bit. I just want to let you all know that if ever I come off as harsh, I still care about you all. You guys are great.

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Originally posted by MelodicCodes

Other powerups like the frog suit, the fire flower, the ice flower the hammer suit, the penguin suit, the lucky bell, the propeller mushroom - all of these add new design opportunities, without having to force the designer to "play around" their powers so much.

Those other powerups do add opportunities for sure. So does the cape. Lazy designers force the player to use it a certain way. Good designers make levels which reward the player for having and keeping the cape by giving the player a different kind of experience when using it than without using it. If the cape makes the level too easy or enables you to skip it altogether, it is the level design that is broken, not the powerup.

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Why have a cape feather in your game, when you can have all of these other powerups which still give the player new abilities and let designers do new things, but don't potentially break the game(or at least not nearly as much) if your levels aren't completely hand-tailored to them?

A hack that isn't hand-tailored to its power ups, whatever they are, is a hack that isn't worth playing.

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It's also poor design to put it in and then expect players not to abuse it, of course, but there is something to the argument that the cape feather is overpowered, and I think in most hacks, the hackers are better off tossing it out and replacing it entirely, or saving it for the last few worlds, rather than using it the way Nintendo did and trying to contort their design around this clumsy flight power. And no, I'm not a fan of the Tanooki Leaf/Suit either, for much the same reason.

I don't like either of those methods. You can get any power up in any of my hack's 70ish levels at any time and at no point can you break the game with any of them. If I find a break I edit the level to fix the error.

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They still had F-Zero at launch, which would've been more than enough to carry customers for one month, and then SMW would've had an awesome December release date, but now I'm talking about the release strategy of a console and game that are 26 years old.

Nintendo's launch strategy was to bundle Super Mario World with the SNES.. It was still a great game. And the strategy worked exceptionally well.

GANYMEDE

Chapter Two: Land of No Shame

What if there were a 2 hour long pit hack that the only way you could beat it was by using the inputs for the current 96-exit Super Mario World TAS, but the levels were completely different?

*everything stops*
Yeah, that's me. You're probably wondering how I got into this situation...
*cut to next post*

Originally posted by The Koopa Resistance

What if there were a 2 hour long pit hack that the only way you could beat it was by using the inputs for the current 96-exit Super Mario World TAS, but the levels were completely different?

How would you even go about making something like that?

Originally posted by The Koopa Resistance

What if there were a 2 hour long pit hack that the only way you could beat it was by using the inputs for the current 96-exit Super Mario World TAS, but the levels were completely different?

I doubt it would be worth the effort since less than 1% of the viewers would notice that on their own, and it would severely restrict any creativity. A 2-hour pit hack with the difficulty of Item Abuse 3 and ColonThree would probably be more entertaining than Avatar, tho even then, I question if I'd have the attention span for watching all that in one sitting. Making/playing that would require you to not have a full-time job or go to school.

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how could it be 2 hours long if the 96-exit TAS is less than an hour and 20 minutes long

I had thought of this somewhat controversial concept for a hack a few years ago but never actually materialized, but the Pure Vanilla contest discussion kinda reminded me of it.
There was a time when I was thinking of making a vanilla hack where the OW was virtually the same, but you travel through it in reverse order, starting at Bowser's Castle and ending up at either Yoshi's Island 1 or Yellow Switch palace. Valley of Bowser would be world 1 and Yoshi's Island would be world 7. It would also (attempt to) follow a regular difficulty curve as well, with Bowser's Castle being the easiest level.
You'd probably also travel thru the Special World in reverse order, entering from Yoshi's Island and exiting thru the Star World.

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Originally posted by Sokobansolver

I had thought of this somewhat controversial concept for a hack a few years ago but never actually materialized, but the Pure Vanilla contest discussion kinda reminded me of it.
There was a time when I was thinking of making a vanilla hack where the OW was virtually the same, but you travel through it in reverse order, starting at Bowser's Castle and ending up at either Yoshi's Island 1 or Yellow Switch palace. Valley of Bowser would be world 1 and Yoshi's Island would be world 7. It would also (attempt to) follow a regular difficulty curve as well, with Bowser's Castle being the easiest level.
You'd probably also travel thru the Special World in reverse order, entering from Yoshi's Island and exiting thru the Star World.

Would you have a story to go with all that?

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Originally posted by The Thunder Productions

Would you have a story to go with all that?

Probably either:
-Mario is tired of grasslands always being the easiest, so he breaks into Bowser's level design lab to reverse the difficulty curve
-Mario retracing his steps because he either lost something or wants to reverse his adventure so he can do it all over again. If the latter, it would be stated somewhere that this is what happens whenever you delete your save file.

It would also be revealed somewhere that Bowser and the Koopalings are all dead.

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I have this idea of remaking the unfinished CD-i game Super Mario's Wacky Worlds as a full SMW hack. I mean, we already ripped two of the Koopa variants from that game, so...

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

I'm thinking about making an actual "Sequel" to Super Mario World, Called, Super Mario World 2!

NO, this would not be like YI!
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I have not tested this, but I have an idea for an evil puzzle, based off of a puzzle from the aptly named Super Puzzle World 3. There is a puzzle in SPW3 where you have Yoshi hold a key in his mouth, then purposefully die by jumping into lava. You die directly above a keyhole. While you're in your death animation, the keyhole activates and you activate the exit.

My idea combines this puzzle with a Kaizo trap. There are several hacks out there where you are given a choice of items to take along (e.g. P-Switch, Key, Koopa Shell, Springboard). In my idea, if the player takes the P-Switch, they safely activate the normal exit. Activating the secret exit requires choosing the Key and then purposefully falling for the Kaizo trap, causing the player to fall into lava and then activating the keyhole that lies beneath where he dies.

This idea came to me the other day but I'm not sure if it's possible. What if there was a tool that took songs composed in Mario Paint and allowed you to translate those songs into the game using its different channels and instruments.

Currently working on an SMW hack. Check out my WIP Thread!
https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=viewthread&t=120148

i have some ideas

overworld stuff:
1.paths that turn 90 degrees
2.sprites that wonder the plains like in mario 3
3.being able to trigger cool events with certain items(a great way to hide secrets)
4.being able to have more than 6 submaps and 1 overwolrd, it would require a lot of asm work , and would need a plugin to see in lunar magic... but imagine the possibilities with 2 overworlds and 12 submaps...
5.an inventory like mario 3

But , there are also some things that would be cool for the main levels... although i can't think of many at the moment:
1.making all the grass tiles act in a way similar to tile100 , like for example, a tile with grass on the right could be passed from the left, and a block with grass on the top left could be passed both upwards , and from the right.
2.mini "!" blocks, basically you press small switches that make the "!" blocks fill, but only until you gain an exit
3.that blue piranha plant in a plant pot from SMBX would be cool

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Tons of secrets on the OW like SM64 Last Impact had

Like a working calculator

and maybe taunting messages that appear after not movin for a certain amount of time

Both of the above can be acheived pretty easily, just takes dedication. The second one would require ASM, but the first one can be done with Lunar Magic and some nice trickery.

As for Dynasty's stuff, a lot of that exists, save for the 2xOverworld_stuff. You might want to look into Fourth Sector or Under Crimson Skies for some "Secret Item" trickery. An older version of Keytastrophe, the original one, also featured Secret Item stuff, which was very well done for its time.

One thing I would like to see, but never will, is a Metroid Prime 2 hack using Super Mario World as a base. Hacking SMW is much more user friendly and successful than Super Metroid. It's possible to code all of Samus's abilities into SMW. It would be pretty neat one day to play a Super Mario World hack and suddenly find Quadraxis staring you down.

Originally posted by Skewer

One thing I would like to see, but never will, is a Metroid Prime 2 hack using Super Mario World as a base. Hacking SMW is much more user friendly and successful than Super Metroid. It's possible to code all of Samus's abilities into SMW. It would be pretty neat one day to play a Super Mario World hack and suddenly find Quadraxis staring you down.

Or a Half-Life game using SMW as a base. If someone did that, maybe they could use the epistle 3 plot.

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In addition to what Skewer said, a SMB3 inventory already exists.

Extend Star World 3 to be a FULL level
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