Paper Mario: The Plasma Star (may be cancelled)

This is probably cancelled.

-Story-
While the Mario Bros. are at their house, a Toad comes and warns them of an evil troop known as the Z-Squad.
The Z-Squad's leader, Skallor, learned of an ancient artifact known as the Plasma Star being kept in Violden City. He has possessed someone (Can't say because spoilers) to go infiltrate the artifact's chamber. However, he hypnotized him wrong and made him break the artifact and throw the pieces everywhere across the kingdom. These pieces must now be taken back and restored. However, the absence of the star caused a problem;
There is an alternate world, directly below the Mushroom Kingdom. The artifact controlled its gravity, and once its power runs out, the two universes collide and are destroyed. The game is based around collecting the seven Plasma pieces by battling bosses. Huh, where's the middle one at, though? You'll have to find out!

-Partners-

Goombenji the Goomba
A sweet little guy who's always there for you. He gets all the info for places beforehand memorized for instantaneous feedback upon pressing the X button.


Kacy Koopa
A country lady who's a frequenter of the Z-Express, often traveling between her family's houses and her own house in Saramuhi Desert. Koopas are really good with firing shells, so that's a thing she's really good for. My personal favorite partner because she uses Southern words and I get to my express myself.


Bob the Bomb-omb
Who could forget the good 'ol demolition experts, Bob-Ombs? He's aptly named for his ability to combust at the stroke of the L button.


Lanakitu the Lakitu
The cruel flyin' Koopas themselves are nice thanks to pacifism, as us SMWCentrallers would say. She's nice enough to lend you her cloud when you press that button on the back, right of the L button... What's it called? R? Yeah, that sounds about right Hahahahah ecks dee fucking end my misery please.

-Screenshots-

Overworld Map

The Mario Bros.' humble abode

Oasis Cafe, where you'll meet Goombenji

Violden City

Grassy Way, the first real level in the game.


-Info-
This is a ROM hack that aims to make Super Mario World similar to Super Paper Mario and the Paper Mario series as a whole, doing this by adding an engaging storyline, NPCs, towns, diverse levels and overworld, friendly partners, humor, and more.

This isn't a collab, but my friends and I have been doing some levels. Teammates include:
Level Designers:
•tmauri
•Pixel-Gon
•toad64

Graphics Designers:
•Rainbow Star
•Mario Doge
•Myself

-Features-
This SMW hack features:
•Custom and Original Songs
-Songs composed by me
-Custom remixes and arrangements
•Original Graphics
-Ripped and hand-drawn graphics
-Vibrant colors and environments galore
•Fun levels
-Action-packed levels, and each has its own secrets.
-Bosses to defeat and mysteries to solve

F.A.Q.
When does it come out?
Sometime late 2018 if I had to guess.
IS LUIGI IN ITTTTTTTT??????????//?//
Yeah, obviously! Look outside of Mario's house.

Why's the Plasma Star important?
It controls the world's gravity, otherwise the two universes would smash into each other and implode.
Why are you so cool and hot and sexy and stuff, TJF?
Oh, I'm flattered.

Interesting concept but I'm not feeling it so far to be honest.

For starters I don't think there's harm in reusing the Paper Mario partners instead of coming up with bootlegs lol. Or at least, make their names a bit more creative. Lalakitu isn't bad, I guess Bob is ok too but Goomie and Koopy are pretty... bad names.

As for the screenshots: everything looks very lacking in polish so far. I can't take the "it's a WIP" excuse cause if you're showing this off it must mean that you think it's ready to be shown off. Besides I see lots of hacks being submitted just in this state.
The overworld is very empty, the status bar is broken, the second screenshot looks really bad in structure and colors and is very lacking in detail, the screenshot with Mario's house has graphics with basically no texture. The sewers have a pretty clear cutoff with the pipe at the top, and this barrier has honestly really bad graphics, especially for something that's supposed to be solid at first. I think these graphics are very lacking too. And the last screenshot has more obvious cutoff at the bottom to the right of the staircase.

It just... looks very, very unpolished right now. It might be hard for you to notice as the creator, I don't know. I just wish people would give polish a lot more priority than they usually do.
I hope you make the levels fun too, and not just a mere showoff of the mechanics you came up with.

Good luck!

How about Kacy Koopa and Goombenjamin, Goombenji and just Kacy for short.

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Alright! Download time!
This is the first half of Chapter 1, where you meet Goombenjimen and defeat King Gombo and Iggy Koopa to obtain Junglii, the Jungle/Grassland orb.



AWESOME RAINBOW DOWNLOAD LINK
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DOWNLOAD

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Y'know, I was just thinking about sprinkling in some SPM inspired lore in my hack, so this comes at an interesting time.

Sadly, your demo patch isn't working. Flips is telling me that the patch isn't intended for my ROM, and I double checked that my ROM was clean just to make sure. If you're using SMAS+SMW, I do recommend switching to just SMW as your base ROM, even if it means you have to copy all your levels and such over. It'll help you out in the long run, believe me. For now, I only have the screenshots to go off of, and... Well, to be frank, I'm with Koopster.

Most of the ExGFX are pretty lazy, and there's brazen cutoff everywhere. I think that if you were to finish this hack and submit it, with the level of quality control you're keeping on it right now, it would not be accepted.

Step up your game. Literally and metaphorically. I've got a feeling you can do better than this visual pulp we see in your screenshots, and Paper Mario inspired stuff always has a lot of potential, but everything needs good quality control and an author who is willing to spend a lot of time on their work to make it good.

Don't be discouraged; take this criticism as the push you need to take your work to the next level.

I recommend checking out some of the level design tutorials in the tutorials/old tutorials section. APPALLED in particular is great, very useful. Mark Brown also has a great video which relates to this, despite being about another Mario game.

As for GFX, you're a bit more on your own there, but just put effort into it and make sure every pixel has a purpose, and you should be fine.

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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.

(Avatar by http://reyleias.tumblr.com/, butchered by me)

Sorry, I was in a hurry and clicked the wrong base rom.
This goes to SMW, not SMAS! What made you think it was SMAS!?
Anyways, here you go.

DOWNLOAD

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Alright! Here is the design of Goobenji, you're first partner.

(I wish I could resize it to be HD)

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My current hack(s)

I can draw graphics, test and criticize hacks.
and a little asm too

Now, some decisions.
1. Should Mario's pallete be that orangish red from TTYD, SPM and SS? Or the plain red from Color Splash and PM64?


2. How about this Mario's House?

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Here is a new titlescreen:



Also nobody has been responding for awhile, so I guess nobody likes this idea anymore

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The title screen has potential, but it needs work. First, I'd suggest expanding the border around the "Orbs of Truth" text, as I mistook it for some sort of illegible yellow characters at first lol. The author name above the "Nintendo" text is really hard to read too, I'd add some black outlines to it for consistency and to make it stand out more against the background.

Some of the characters are also very poorly drawn, in particular the Goomba, the Koopa shell (?) and the one to the right of the title text. I'd like to give some more specific feedback, but I'm not too experienced with graphics, specially Paper Mario-styled ones.

The background itself is really boring to look at, due to the lack of color variety (it's just a bunch of green, everything is the same shade too) and recognizable shapes (I get the hills, even if they look a bit weird, but I'm not sure on what the flat green tiles below it are supposed to be). I recommend either using one of the vanilla BGs with edited palettes (that might be a bit too generic, though) or getting anything from the Graphics section that you feel fits what you're going for.

It has potential, but right now, your main problems are :

- Your lack of technical skills to be drawing custom graphics (no shading, weird proportions, inconsistent shapes...)

- This game lacks direction ; I didn't see a single level that had something interesting to get my attention, it was just always a "Oh, I guess he knows how to insert this thing, neat" feeling.

- The level design is barren and completely non existent, I think I counted something like, a dozen enemies and they were all basic koopas/goombas (and the boss thing)

- The lack of flow as well ; I never knew what I was doing, especially when I was introduced to the first partner.

Some more precise nitpicking :



If you modify the vanilla font, modify it for all the characters for consistency's sake



Hello there palette error or something

The scrolling in this level should be set to constant, since having it set to anything else makes it seem like the house is 20 kilometers wide.

...that and the music hurt my ears a bit



Brick cutoff

The "windows" actually look like chocolate bars and are very ugly too



Oh hey Luigi, you're really...italian.
Maybe too stereotypically italian on this fine day

Why does Luigi even teleport me out of the level anyways ? I mean the side exit's already there, you missed the opportunity to flesh out the character of Luigi a bit there.



Spooked by Vanilla Mario



Basic mistake ; Never put HMDA OR Layer 3 with a text box



Very confusing



Even more confusing!



Hey I exit Mario's house and I'm back here for some reason

The music just stops after I enter Casa Goomba



That's a very neat combo the Layer 3 scrolling issues + cutoff + text box in the same level
Also the cafe looks, well. It's a homeless person's cafe I guess



Wait what the heck happened. Is this supposed to be something else other than a test level ?



I don't understand why :

- Why is the partner "system" a switch palace revamp ?
- Why the Pirhanna plant
- And why the fireplace sprite




Huh.
Well, this level has nothing interesting going on : You grab a key and bam this boss :




Shouldn't really use this boss imo

In short:

- Read up on Level design, it's basically imperative. Not just how to design a level, but how to design a game. Think about the player's decisions and what YOU want to see in a game.

- If you want to make your own graphics, train yourself with basic drawing lessons. I'm no artist, so I can't recommend anything specific.
If you want custom stuff without bothering to learn for it, you should get a friend to help you out or something.
Otherwise, just stick to ripping graphics.

Answers to these:
1-3: yeah, I know. I suck at making anything in SMW. I don't even know why I even try to make a hack

4: ...

5: ...

6: Don't ask

7-8 Couldn't find any other "mario's house" graphics.

9: He did that in Color Splash, and I will code in options in the dialogue

10-11: sorry

The rest: That's because I didn't update the patch yet.

This is why I should just use Romhacking.net

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My first few levels and first hack were horribly flawed gameplay wise because I didnt have the technical knowledge behind game design.

This guide might be old but it still holds up to the core of how to make things interesting when designing levels.

Dont give up but also dont set goals that are too unrealistic and too complex, your motivation might run out pretty quick then.

CHAPTER 1:Welcome to the Jungle
Mid-Boss: King Gombo
Boss: Iggy Koopa
Orb: Junglii
Download

I won't be working on more until I finish World 5 of Super Mario's Adventure.

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Btw, it's not really a switch revamp.
Goomenji's is, but the other three all have mechanics.
Pressing select with Kacy Koopa fires her shell.
Pressing L with Bob makes him explode.
Pressing R with Lanakitu makes you float in a cloud.

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I also released a trailer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nt51cUGaVdc

Embedding CSS doesn't work for me, sadly.

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Hey, people, how's it going! I plan on creating translations for the game when complete. I just wanted to, you know, tell you guys.
ALSO! I am revealing the chapter titles and themes to those of you who are curious.

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I can help you translate to Polish if you want

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I have a Discord server as well! (by joining, you agree to the rules)
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Basically, I believe in peace and bashing two bricks together.

I can help with Dutch as well if you want me to.