Lunar Magic suggestions and discussion (LM v3.51)

Did LM 3.0 do anything special to the way layer 3 backgrounds or main screen/subscreen settings ($212C/D) are handled?

No, but channel 2 is used for pretty much all DMA in LM ASM hacks, so it may not be a good idea to use that for HDMA.

I recently noticed in the Modify Secondary Entrances dialog there is an option to clear all slots, which is really useful. Would be good to have something like this in another options as well, for example in the Edit Boss Sequence Text, Edit Message Box Text and Edit Level Names dialog, and maybe why not, an option to also clear all Layer 1 and Layer 2 Events in the overworld (would be useful when making overworlds from scratch).

Thank you for keep on going, FuSoYa. It is really amazing to see the dedication given for all these years.

I'm reposting this from the comments section of the news announcement but the "secret" goal-tape sprite(s) in vertical levels do not work while the "normal" goal-tape sprite does.

Sometimes, when you're in the middle of a level and go back to the very start, there'll be a handful of shellless green Koopas falling from the top left corner. All at once, all in one bunch, and completely out of the blue. I've seen this happen in my own hacks but also in others, including TSRPR. I haven't found a way to reliably get this to happen, except for this one ZMZ savestate (includes .bps). Go right a little, then left again, and it'll be raining Koopas.

It looks like there are as many Koopas spawned as there are sprite slots, and their sprite number is 00. Maybe there's a routine somewhere that loops over all sprite slots to reset sprites, setting all tables to 00 (X position, Y position, sprite number etc.), but accidentally sets the sprite status to non-zero? I used to think it was Sprite Tool that caused it, but that link above is the VLDCX base ROM which I don't think has custom sprites in it, so maybe it's an ancient bug in Lunar Magic after all?

So here's something a little farther fetched: could it be that LM adds a routine that resets all sprites but forgets to reset their status, so you end up with a bunch of sprite 00 in position 00,00? I'm not sure if the fault is LM's or that of some other tool, but I noticed that bug as early as 2008 and as late as 2017, and not many other tools and patches have been around for that long.

That's so crazy(!), because it IS so rare that I completely forgot about it. I was watching an Lp'er circa 2010 (that far back) I forgot his name however he had at least 90,000 subscribers and remember; this is 2010. Anyway, he made it halfway through the level then "went back" to the very start of the game to show the detail visually to match what he was talking about. Out of nowhere 5-7 shelless green koopas began raining however he caught the glimpse last minute as he was already sharply turning around when it caught his attention and he (and the audience likely too) was like "what the heck is that?!" When he went back they were no longer raining down and never even likely was even able to touch the ground. Also, it doesn't need to touch Lunar Magic because this was the original SMW ROM unmodified. (Yoshi's Island 2) It wasn't till you brought this up that I remembered this at all because I completely forgot about it.

I don't remember the YTbers name at all because it wasn't like I was subscribed or anything I just "found" the video but I know he had a slight lisp & a somewhat "gay" voice(If you know about "Jasper" from 'Family Guy' type-thing) Also he wasn't an SMW-ROMhack Lp'er he had just been playing the original SMW is all.

I'm going to download that .bps file now; I want to experience it again.

Edit: It is possible that maybe he hadn't downloaded a 100% clean ROM file and it had touched Lunar Magic-- I had just recognized however that he clearly, himself, had never touched Lunar Magic or did any ROMhacking.

Edit 2: Just remembered: Another, possibly revealing detail if you believe you can still find this youtuber is he has(had?) dozens & dozens of videos of himself playing a game called "Picross"(?). It was my first time seeing the game then but wasn't too interested in the game itself just a bit of his dialogue. (Picross was a puzzle game too)

Edit 3: I just played the game & seen the koopas, however I remember them falling down a bit differently like somewhat 1-by-1; Fake image:

How feasible would it be to give the Map16 editor a "view usages of this tile" feature? You'd select a tile, and it'd list all the levels where it's used or let you know if it's unused. Athough you could argue the burden of keeping track is on the user, a feature like that would make Map16 management a lot easier, especially in larger hacks. The "Scan for undefined exits" already exists, and it's an arguably similar function, so it may not be that far-fetched to ask.

So here's something a little farther fetched: could it be that LM adds a routine that resets all sprites but forgets to reset their status, so you end up with a bunch of sprite 00 in position 00,00? I'm not sure if the fault is LM's or that of some other tool, but I noticed that bug as early as 2008 and as late as 2017, and not many other tools and patches have been around for that long.

It'd require going through all the levels much like "Export/Import Multiple Levels from File" does. And if it had to do that, it might as well just analyze the usage for all the tiles and dump a report to a text file. But I'd probably just have it check visible tiles. So not ones that are covered, or that have conditions for appearing that haven't been met (like switch palace blocks).

No, prior to 3.00 LM did very little involving sprite code. It expanded the sprite level pointers to 24 bit, set up the hooks for custom block/sprite interaction, fixed the moving ledge hole... and that's pretty much all that comes to mind.

I doubt 1) would happen; you see, SNES has a somewhat tight VRAM limit, and LM has already reached it since version 1.70. if you want a BG4 and a BG5, you'd have to sacrifice another thing, like the sprite GFX slots.

Regarding 3... since we have the big levels feature and the 'more levels and events'... it would be fair to have. In this point, I'm along you, roberto: it'd be nice to have an OW expansion.

Renember when SNES games have BG4 and BG5?
Check the Racing Stripe.