Jacob's Super Mario World - Works in Progress

Hello Everyone,

I am very new to this, just want to say that up front, but I am having fun exploring this new world that opened up for me. I recently got myself a Raspberry Pi B3+ board and installed RetroPie as the main OS. After playing some old games, and looking around the internet for enthusiasts, I came across Lunar Magic. So far I have made two levels and plan on making more. I would like some feedback on the two levels I have made already though and see if there is any interest in them and possibly more hacks.

I generally use Lunar IPS to patch .ips files to my original ROM files and plan to upload my hacks using .ips files. If this isn't the community norm here please let me know! I don't mind converting to other formats.

I am having a great time doing this and hope to become an active member of your community! Please let me know what you all think.

Thank you,
-Jacob

P.S. I apologize in advanced for my literal Screen Shots. I use my TV to test my hacks on my RPi so it was easiest to just take a picture wth my phone.

Screen Shots:

The first level, located at Yoshi's Island 1, is titled "Jacob's Super Mario World".

The second level, located at Yoshi's Island 2, is titled "Leap Of Faith".

Link to the .ips file:
https://bin.smwcentral.net/u/37311/Jacobs%2BSuper%2BMario%2BWorld%2BAlpha1.0.ips

Hey there, welcome to SMWC!

It's quite clear from your screenshots that you're a beginner playing around, but that's a phase everyone goes through, so you're perfectly fine there.

In general, what you want to avoid is objects cutting into others (blocks and pipes cutting into the ground, for instance) and leaving pixels of air behind. To long-time hackers, that looks unpolished. Sometimes you can get around it by simply looking for non-cutoff versions of those tiles, sometimes you can create new tiles from existing graphics (such as upside down ledges), and sometimes there's no other way than drawing new graphics to avoid the cutoff.

Your level design seems very promising though! There's some neat setups there, and it's heaps better than the "uninteresting flat ground" levels some people start out with.

As for a patch standard, SMWC has recently replaced the .ips format with .bps, which can be created and applied with FLIPS. IPS is still fine to use, but BPS has the advantage of being smaller in size, able to auto-detect if it's patched to the right ROM, and, well, the standard for hack submissions on this site.

Keep on making levels! The most important part is that you're having fun, and you'll pick up the finer points in no time.

If you want the proper screenshots, though, you have to take advantage of your emulator on your device to take them. Also, you should avoid stretching the page weirdly to not hinder browsing it. You can link to the pics if they're too big, though.

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.

Welcome to SMWC! There's a New to SMW Central? Introduce yourself here! thread.

Aside from the cut-off tiles, I do sort of see where you're going with this level design.

Have you ever played Super Mario World before? If so, how do you find Lunar Magic 3.01? We recently just had a big new feature since version 3, being able to create levels that are both long horizontally and tall at the same time. This is certainly a good time to get into SMW hacking.

I do recommend taking screenshots at native SNES resolution from your emulator though, for showcasing; some people have low resolutions (in 2019 lol) and big pictures will stretch their pages.

Definitely look up tutorials though, you will learn so much, namely from the List of Essential Tutorials thread.

I haven't watched this before, but you might find it useful. Barb streams a lot of Super Mario World variants and he's made this 3 hour video using Lunar Magic.

Originally posted by WhiteYoshiEgg

Hey there, welcome to SMWC!

It's quite clear from your screenshots that you're a beginner playing around, but that's a phase everyone goes through, so you're perfectly fine there.

In general, what you want to avoid is objects cutting into others (blocks and pipes cutting into the ground, for instance) and leaving pixels of air behind. To long-time hackers, that looks unpolished. Sometimes you can get around it by simply looking for non-cutoff versions of those tiles, sometimes you can create new tiles from existing graphics (such as upside down ledges), and sometimes there's no other way than drawing new graphics to avoid the cutoff.

Your level design seems very promising though! There's some neat setups there, and it's heaps better than the "uninteresting flat ground" levels some people start out with.

As for a patch standard, SMWC has recently replaced the .ips format with .bps, which can be created and applied with FLIPS. IPS is still fine to use, but BPS has the advantage of being smaller in size, able to auto-detect if it's patched to the right ROM, and, well, the standard for hack submissions on this site.

Keep on making levels! The most important part is that you're having fun, and you'll pick up the finer points in no time.

Thank you! I will start using the .bps file format.

Originally posted by Conal

Welcome to SMWC! There's a New to SMW Central? Introduce yourself here! thread.

Aside from the cut-off tiles, I do sort of see where you're going with this level design.

Have you ever played Super Mario World before? If so, how do you find Lunar Magic 3.01? We recently just had a big new feature since version 3, being able to create levels that are both long horizontally and tall at the same time. This is certainly a good time to get into SMW hacking.

I do recommend taking screenshots at native SNES resolution from your emulator though, for showcasing; some people have low resolutions (in 2019 lol) and big pictures will stretch their pages.

Definitely look up tutorials though, you will learn so much, namely from the List of Essential Tutorials thread.

I haven't watched this before, but you might find it useful. Barb streams a lot of Super Mario World variants and he's made this 3 hour video using Lunar Magic.

What is a cut off tile? I have played SMW before and found Lunar Magic here on this form after looking for SMW hacks. I will start to screen shot from my emulator though, good advice. Thanks for the links!

Originally posted by Emerald Shell

If you want the proper screenshots, though, you have to take advantage of your emulator on your device to take them. Also, you should avoid stretching the page weirdly to not hinder browsing it. You can link to the pics if they're too big, though.

Yeah, I am going to have to take SS from the emulator from now on I didn't think they would appear so large on this page lol

I've gotta say, your level design, while primitive, is leaps and bounds above what you normally see coming out of just beginning smw hackers, like WYE said. Normally you see large expanses of flat land or sprite spam everywhere but you're making pretty good use of all of Lunar Magic's resources to create some neat layouts.

And what a cutoff tile is is basically when you're looking at something that is clearly intended to be opaque, but you can see the background through it, as if the graphics have a crack or hole through them. The most notable example of this is where you have the cement blocks cutting through the dirt.

---> Magic: The Gathering Legends <---

Originally posted by JacobSMW

What is a cut off tile?

On the left is cut-off, on the right is tidy. Avoiding cut-off just means to connect the tiles together so they look like they're meant to be together, it's a visual thing.

But if you look really closely on the upside-down land tiles, you'll notice the dirt bit seems to mirror the 8x8 tiles about it. That's something you could make your own custom MAP16 tile for.

<- See the cut-off tiles where the land meets the grey cement blocks? Yeah, sure a lot of original 16 bit games have untidy graphics, but since we're not using CRTs, it's something we notice more easily.

But regarding making your own MAP16 16x16 tile, see this?

Basically, this tile does not exist in the original game for grass lands. What you do is go to the 16x16 Tile Map Editor

in Lunar Magic and left-click to highlight this tile.

Then, while still highlighted, scroll down and right click in this blank space to paste it. With the newly pasted tile, you can select "Flip Y" to make it work upside-down, or mirror it with "Flip X". I made the "Act as" 3F to make it act like a dirt tile you can walk though, although it really doesn't matter in this particular scenario, but you can make your MAP16 tile "Act as" anything, so if you look on the first two pages of MAP16 you can see all the different kinds of blocks and what their position is. Their position is their "Act as". So in the 3F position is the dirt tile, thus if you want to make a new tile that you can walk through, you make it "Act as" 3F.

Then go to the Add Objects Window

and go to the drop-down menu to select Direct Map16 Access (Lunar Magic). On Map16 Page 2 Tiles 0x200 to 0x2FF you will see your newly placed tiles.

From there you can put your own MAP16 tiles into Lunar Magic. Also, you'll find tiles in Page 0 and 1 that aren't typically part of the foreground you're working with, like this upside-down.

You can take any of these and copy them to the empty pages starting at Page 2. I'd recommend against changing Page 0 and Page 1 tiles though, since they're already being used by the game and MAP16 globally affects that tile for the entire game.

Have fun!

Originally posted by Conal

Originally posted by JacobSMW

What is a cut off tile?

On the left is cut-off, on the right is tidy. Avoiding cut-off just means to connect the tiles together so they look like they're meant to be together, it's a visual thing.

But if you look really closely on the upside-down land tiles, you'll notice the dirt bit seems to mirror the 8x8 tiles about it. That's something you could make your own custom MAP16 tile for.

(...)

Wow, that is an in depth response thank you so much! I am going to use this technique in my levels.

Hi JacobSMW, welcome to SMWCentral! Hopefully you find everything you're looking for here, and of course don't be afraid of asking questions.

As for your current hack, it definitely looks like you have the ambition to make a full scale hack, polished and all. Once you get the idea of basic things to avoid, level designing really makes you pay attention to all the detail and becomes a lot more fun. Keep it up and again, welcome!

mariofreak4500