I'm sure hoping this is the place to post my rom hacks

[Sun]

Alright, first things first.

Hi, I'm Sun, I'm a guy in this big crazy world who's trying to rom hack all by his lonesome and made a couple of rom hacks without really knowing how to do an amazingly good hack. That being said, I think these two hacks are okay for what they are.

The plot of both rom hacks is about an island situated in the middle of Whereeveryouwantit, Mushroom Land, now I say "plot" but the plot doesn't really get started until about 3/4 of the way through the first Rom Hack, initially, during concept stages, the first rom hack(hereby referred to as Winner ! Island 1) was that it would be a hack for you to test your skills, this quickly fell apart after realizing I didn't know every trick of rom hacking, just shell jumping and item climbing. So, I abandoned that(although some levels still give off the feel of training levels) and went with a hack that has a few good concepts and some Kaizo creations, I could not edit any of Winner ! Island 1's boss fights as I only had Lunar Magic and as I'm sure everyone here knows, you can only do so much with Lunar Magic when it won't let you change any bosses or for that matter boss levels without screwing up the game entirely.

Now as for the second rom hack(hereby referred to as Winner ! Island 2) is probably my greatest(this is a flawed opinion and probably biased) creation in relation to my skills(which aren't great at all, I assure you), I started just making up these interesting concepts that while some didn't translate to game very well, sounded amazing in my head, like a level where you had to keep with Yoshi while he was zooming by on a conveyer belt, unfortunately, he doesn't stay still long enough with his hopping to make that level work effectively at all, but I left it, in the hopes that someone would be able to tell me if there is any way of fixing that level or making it halfway decent or anyway to just make Yoshi stop hopping period.

Winner ! Island 2 is also the hack where the plot shines, a rouge computer program has taken control of a program designed to work as a time machine, as a result he has unleashed his glitched minions upon the island. Now while I wanted to avoid glitch enemies(even I know that no one probably likes glitch enemies with my limited knowledge), I also didn't want to place Goombas or Koopas everywhere, because to me, that would feel more vanilla than the first rom hack, I have to hand it to the glitches though, they sometimes look like something that'd you would see in SMW, I'm not great at drawing, but I'd like to see the enemies become actual enemies and not glitches someday.

Below you'll find both rom hacks, a video detailing a glitch in one of the special levels that I found at random, readme files for both hacks(containing the story, enemies, and levels as well as commentary into what I was thinking when I made these hacks) in a nifty little downloadable package.

http://www.sendspace.com/file/sbz5tr UPDATED 3/16/2013

(As a side note, if anyone knows another file uploading site that they would prefer to download from that's free, please mention it.)

Winner ! Island 1 Screenshots:

Title Screen


Yoshi's House


Training Area, left in the game if you want to practice Shell Jumping


A really early level, also part of the Training Area, left in to show you that there'll be mazes in the game


Yoshi aka Stupid Horse



Winner ! Island 2 Screenshots:

Title Screen


The "Big Bad Behind the Scenes" Villain


Double Decker Dump, a level in which you must float through Nippers to get to the top portion of the level


Mario, coming face to face with a Mutant Mage


Mario, running from some Headless Dolphin Heads


If anyone can help me fix these or if they don't need fixing, comment and tell me if I'm heading in a good direction with all these concepts. Personally I kind of like a few of them, like Sky Swimming and Tree Top Hopping, as well as Yoshi zooming by while you try to keep up, even though that failed and the level where you don't have to move a muscle, which also failed.

[CM30]

Screenshots aren't required, but I'd really love it if you posted some. Because part of me wants to try these hacks/levels, but I'm skeptical about whether I'll enjoy them due to the lack of screens and I don't want to go through the hassle of downloading an IPS patcher and setting up the game if it turns out to be kaizo or some crap.

[Sun]

Screenshots aren't required, but I'd really love it if you posted some. Because part of me wants to try these hacks/levels, but I'm skeptical about whether I'll enjoy them due to the lack of screens and I don't want to go through the hassle of downloading an IPS patcher and setting up the game if it turns out to be kaizo or some crap.

I have edited the first post with screenshots.

I don't have screenshots for every single level, but they'll come soon.

[swirlybomb]

I hate to be all Negative Nancy, but floating Munchers alone is kind of a red flag as to a hack's quality!!

[yogui]

Haven't played, but by looking at the screenshots :
-Pipes are cut-off and flying in the air. You should but some blocks under them.
-Same for the flying muncher. And p-balloon segments are better by using enemies as a obstacles than munchers.
-Never use glitched enemies, that's no good.
Tomorrow or another day I will try it and comment on the level design.

[Sun]

Haven't played, but by looking at the screenshots :
-Pipes are cut-off and flying in the air. You should but some blocks under them.
-Same for the flying muncher. And p-balloon segments are better by using enemies as a obstacles than munchers.
-Never use glitched enemies, that's no good.
Tomorrow or another day I will try it and comment on the level design.

Ah, yes, I figured both the nippers and the glitch enemies would raise a couple of flags...

I need to find a Sprite Tool and find out how to exactly put the custom sprites in the game, if it's anything like creating music for Addmusic... I'm probably in trouble.

I will fix the pipes as soon as possible.

[Moosh]

So I tried out both and I can't say I really liked them too much. Here's some of the problems I had with it:

• Rushed level design - Your levels felt really rushed. I feel like you put more focus on getting every level changed than making the best levels you could make.
• The training level - You had that whole training level at the beginning for doing shell jumps yet in the levels I played it didn't feel at all like a super difficult romhack.
• Stuff that's unchanged from the original game - Don't do this. You can be so much more creative than this.
• Bugs - The problem isn't just the bugged enemies either. I experienced slowdown and disappearing objects all over the place when I played it. I was stuck on one of the star world levels for the longest time before I opened it up in Lunar Magic and saw that there was supposed to be a keyhole.
• Palette issues - When you horribly bork up your palettes don't save it to the rom. It might help if you saved backups often when you work on stuff.
• Mazes - I speak from experience when I say don't do tight mazes like you did here. It's really boring to play through and it makes good enemy balance impossible. As a designer you're just forcing yourself to either make your enemies trivial or super difficult requiring powerups or glitches to get past.

I'm reminded of some of my early ventures into game design where I put mazes everywhere and had serious difficulty balancing problems. I'm sure like me you'll learn from your mistakes and improve with time. So don't view these first two hacks as a massive failure; view them as a learning experience.

[Sun]

So I tried out both and I can't say I really liked them too much. Here's some of the problems I had with it:

• Rushed level design - Your levels felt really rushed. I feel like you put more focus on getting every level changed than making the best levels you could make.
• The training level - You had that whole training level at the beginning for doing shell jumps yet in the levels I played it didn't feel at all like a super difficult romhack.
• Stuff that's unchanged from the original game - Don't do this. You can be so much more creative than this.
• Bugs - The problem isn't just the bugged enemies either. I experienced slowdown and disappearing objects all over the place when I played it. I was stuck on one of the star world levels for the longest time before I opened it up in Lunar Magic and saw that there was supposed to be a keyhole.
• Palette issues - When you horribly bork up your palettes don't save it to the rom. It might help if you saved backups often when you work on stuff.
• Mazes - I speak from experience when I say don't do tight mazes like you did here. It's really boring to play through and it makes good enemy balance impossible. As a designer you're just forcing yourself to either make your enemies trivial or super difficult requiring powerups or glitches to get past.

I'm reminded of some of my early ventures into game design where I put mazes everywhere and had serious difficulty balancing problems. I'm sure like me you'll learn from your mistakes and improve with time. So don't view these first two hacks as a massive failure; view them as a learning experience.

Well, I sincerely thank you for your comments, this is really what I need to help with my rom hacking.

Looking back I have no idea now why I put so many mazes, especially in the first hack.

I think by the end I was rushing a bit, there were some personal problems in my life that kind of bogged me down and I started losing creativity around the end of both hacks.

Ah, yes, the Training Area, as soon as I finished it, I had realized that the only "hard" stuff I'd seen in a hack was Nippers and Shell Jumps along with the occasional item climbing, I abandoned the idea of making a training hack and for whatever reason, I left the Training Area in when I started focusing on the story of a rouge computer program invading the island and I suppose it serves as a level that shows off concepts that never quite made it, it probably won't be there if I decide to make another sequel, which is doubtful unless I can get a grasp on real hacking.

Yes, leaving things unchanged, I've gotten a sprite tool, but I'm just not sure how to get the sprites into Lunar Magic, I open up the program (I think it's Romi's Sprite Tool) and I put in the name of the hack and the sprite text list but it doesn't show up in Lunar Magic when I open that particular rom, the readme isn't much help for troubleshooting.

I also don't know how to insert new backgrounds or change them, the background editor in Lunar Magic isn't user-friendly like the level editor itself is.

Oh crud, I knew I forgot something when I was removing Nippers and moving secret exits.

Of course, the question is, if I'm going to attempt to make Winner ! Island 2 look at all like something that looks decent, should I even continue to make changes to it anymore or just leave it there as a kind of "what not to do", although I hate thinking about it like that since some of those concepts were kind of nice, even if some of them didn't work entirely as I planned.

By palette issues, I assume you mean when the Magikoopa is kind of not all there when he starts firing off magic spells. I'm unaware of anything else changing colors as it never happened in all the times I play-tested.

I think that for my next hack, if there will be one, I'm going to take my time and use everything I can in Lunar Magic while adding some custom music if at all possible, possibly even some overworld editing.

I'd also like to make some new bosses, I'm not sure if there's a tutorial for that though.

I certainly won't view them as failure, I've always viewed them as, I hope these are the right words, "skill progression", like the first one is just downright completely novice, while the second explores exit-making, use of the unused test levels, different kinds of wacky concepts and some form of a plot.

The story of the second game itself probably far out-classes the game itself and I'm sure if a amazingly good rom hacker got a hold of it, he probably could have made it a lot better than I did.

Well, I suppose it's back to the drawing board.

As a side note, the new patches are in the first post at the top.