Let's Play ASMT! - Possibly delayed for one week

[Sugar]

Afraid Of Something Unseen - Super Mario World - Ghost House
Afraid Of Something Unseen (star) - Super Mario World - Invincible
Emerald Stronghold - Cave Story - Running Hell
Emerald Stronghold (boss) - Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom - Level 8
Overworld - A Super Mario Thing - Overworld

Afraid Of Something Unseen was literally copied from VIP4. After somebody complained about it, terrain layout was changed, but sprites were left in the same place as they were, as I assume author wasn't able to move invisible sprites in Lunar Magic - the easiest way would be to simply temporarily change into tileset where they wouldn't be invisible. This is why bullet bill placement is crazy, in original level all Bullet Bill Shooter objects had properly placed spawners, but that's not the case in ASMT version of a level. Also, ASMT version of a level for some reason put solid clouds, but only made some of them solid???? I don't understand why.

Emerald Stronghold was pretty much a thing. I'm surprised you did deal with boss so well dying just once, I was honestly expecting way more, the boss is fairly crazy. Well, I guess I may be wrong about you reaching 100 demos in 3-1 (High! Sky! Fly!). Whatever.

Unfortunate that this crash did happen, I honestly will admit I never knew about it, but I suppose back when I was playing ASMT for first time I was playing ROM hacks with savestates, and I reached left edge of a level without dying and the sprite didn't respawn (as it killed itself when reaching boss door I assume). I cannot exactly tell why did it crash, other than that the sound CPU did crash, and game freezes forever waiting for sound engine when it wants to load new music (note that death music is permanently loaded, so it isn't considered loading new music technically, moving back to overflow caused infinite loop waiting for crashed sound CPU).

The darkness effect is part of egg sprite for some reason, which is why there was no darkness after respawning at Midway Point of Emerald Stronghold. Interesting in a way, I probably would have used LevelASM for darkness effect myself.change music

Well, those two were crazy levels. 3-1 is fairly crazy too, but the difficulty goes down a bit after those three relatively crazy levels. The first truly evil in terms of difficulty level is in World 4 however, I believe it was called "the hardest level". Something like that. As I said, overworld was made first, then people requested spots on overworld and made levels, and no level was rejected. Considering that, a Kaizo level in World 4 is pretty much expected. Shame.

"Afraid Of Something Unseen" is the first level of the game (out of three or four) that is a straight up reimagining of a Vip4 level.
Oyster translates the original level as "The Night of Becoming Afraid of Something Unseen" but who knows if that is the actual name or not.

Sounds surprisingly accurate to me considering it's Oyster.

[Super Maks 64]

No, ASMT v1.2 only fixes the world 3 boss and makes cutscenes skipable.

Here's the fix in .asm format: yo click me (right click the link to save the file and then use asar to apply it)

Technical explanation:

The issue is just lazy programming, the original Boss Bass sprite after having contact with Demo just changes the music and uses the return to the overworld transition that also takes lives, but there is a death routine in SMW anyway (I wonder what the original programmer was thinking though), one that has been modified, because of the Demo counter, so I made the Boss Bass instead go to the pit death routine

>music crash on ZSNES
what

I tested that bug on ASMT SNES Version and it looks like it just plays iris out song and doesn't crash the game. (I suppose the new music in original ASMT is in a different bank than the original music and it also tries playing song 0x08 which doesn't exist in that bank)
The moon works fine if you go back if you started the level from the main entrance(as the egg won't spawn again).

Also the old Addmusic was pretty great, didn't play new misc songs if the level used vanilla music.

[QubicTom]

Here's the fix in .asm format: yo click me (right click the link to save the file and then use asar to apply it)

Oh wow, thank you! I applied the patch, hopefully I didn't mess it up and the game will still work

Afraid Of Something Unseen was literally copied from VIP4. After somebody complained about it, terrain layout was changed, but sprites were left in the same place as they were, as I assume author wasn't able to move invisible sprites in Lunar Magic - the easiest way would be to simply temporarily change into tileset where they wouldn't be invisible. This is why bullet bill placement is crazy, in original level all Bullet Bill Shooter objects had properly placed spawners, but that's not the case in ASMT version of a level.
...
the sound CPU did crash, and game freezes forever waiting for sound engine when it wants to load new music

I was wondering why the level was so weirdly designed! And it seems there's still a lot about the SMW engine I have to learn (especially on the hardware side of things!)

A biblical level, then a cape flight level! Do I reach 100 Demos here, as predicted?
Ep7 - A Soaring Majestically Thing

[Ryrir]

Way to go to defy all expectations there! Amazing Job! Now to never die during the entire rest of the hack and finish the game with under one hundred demos!

The two goalposts at the end of "Noah's ARGH" are simultaneously one of the dumbest and one of the cutest things I've ever seen in an SMW hack.
If I recall correctly, the Japanese characters that show up during the ending cutscene are a reference to talkhaus user Cobalt who had these characters as their avatar at the time. I believe they wanted to make a level but didn't get around to it, so their avatar was added in a random level as a tribute.

"High! Sky! Fly!" is one of the best flying levels I have ever played. It's actually really, really difficult to design such a level because it's either going to be way too easy or way too hard. If you want to have a nice middle ground (like this level) you need to position both the pipes and the enemies really, really carefully or it all just falls apart. To get a result that feels both challenging and fair there must have been lots and lots of testing involved.
The part where you have to slide under a wall of cement blocks might have been inspired by this infamous Vip1 level, which coincidentally got a remix in Vip4. The obstacle where you have to fly up through a rope just before the midpoint is also pretty similar to this setup from that very Vip1 level.

[Sugar]

I will leave that here, detailed commentary tomorrow. It's late for me, and it seems like I can lose electricity at household at any moment considering latest thunderstorms where I live caused electric power transmission damage mostly caused by falling trees (so strong that even mobile internet access did not work).

Noah's ARGH! - Super Paper Mario - Gap of Crag
World 3 - A Super Mario Thing - World 3 (high quality) by prsnth1111
High! Sky! Fly! - Pilotwings - Light Plane

I think that the flying level is the hardest of ASMT World 3, so have fun :).

[chridd]

I think it was 7 of some animals and 2 of others? Or maybe it was 7 pairs?
*checks*
Genesis 6:19-20 says that God said to take "two of all living creatures[...]. Two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground[...]."
Genesis 7:2-3 says that God said to take "seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female"
And then Noah sacrificed some of the clean animals he'd just saved (8:20).

[QubicTom]

Way to go to defy all expectations there! Amazing Job! Now to never die during the entire rest of the hack and finish the game with under one hundred demos!

Will do! I agree that the flying level was very well made (as in, it was doable without much experience). One day I'll play a VIP flying level and it'll be awful in the best way.

...it seems like I can lose electricity at household at any moment considering latest thunderstorms where I live caused electric power transmission damage mostly caused by falling trees (so strong that even mobile internet access did not work).

Woah, have the storms passed, or are you still stranded powerless? (stranded from the internet, I mean!)

Genesis 7:2-3 says that God said to take "seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female"

So someone needs to made a sequel to Noah's ARGH in SMBX where enemies are in groups of fourteen! Thanks for checking for me :D

Platforming and flying are the themes of sky world. Not a surprise in hindsight!
Ep8 - A Smiling Maneuvering Thing

Seeing as apparently you use Windows Movie Maker to edit, can WMM render in 4:3 aspect ratio? (I'm obviously saying this for entirely selfish purposes. As someone who uses a relatively old monitor, these SMW videos only take up about half the screen.) Doesn't really bother me or anything; it's just a bit odd having all this blackness around the edge of the video when watching in full screen.

As requested, this video and all similarly sized videos from now on will be rendered in 4:3! I didn't even realize I could change that setting. Just be aware that the Super Nintendo rendered games in 8:7, so there'll still be small black bars at the edge of the video.

Edit: It turns out used the wrong custom setting for this video, so this episode is still 16:9, but future episodes will be 4:3

[Zach808]

I wouldn't worry about having twice as many Demos as raocow at this point. One thing I noticed was that in his playthrough, sometimes the counter didn't even go up when he died, so either his game was glitched, or he... never mind. :3

Anyways, that last half of the icy level went really well. Took me forever due to the length, so I thought you'd be stuck there for about an hour.

[raocow]

nah in the early part of me playing asmt the death counter wouldn't update on pit related death

[morsel/morceau]

Didn't raocow say at some point (possibly using the words 'full' and 'disclosure') in the asmt playthrough that he had used tools to get back to where he died in order to avoid fatigue? I don't actually remember if this is true, or know whether he did it habitually or only on some levels, or know when in the game he started doing it.

[raocow]

if I did that it would be only some levels, it defenitely wasn't something done on the regular. Like stuff like House of Turner maybe.

[Sugar]

On Cloud Nine - A Super Mario Thing - On Cloud Nine by prsnth1111
Some Sort of Place Type Object - Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island - Underground

I was busy testing some sort of hack type object, sorry. Flying question blocks are immune to capes. Also, there is no Ice World, there however is a Puzzle World with many ice levels.

[QubicTom]

I was busy testing some sort of hack type object, sorry. Flying question blocks are immune to capes. Also, there is no Ice World, there however is a Puzzle World with many ice levels.

Looking forward to the puzzle world! Were you testing a certain hack which I may or may not be making secret videos for right now???

I wouldn't worry about having twice as many Demos as raocow at this point. One thing I noticed was that in his playthrough, sometimes the counter didn't even go up when he died, so either his game was glitched, or he... never mind. :3

Anyways, that last half of the icy level went really well. Took me forever due to the length, so I thought you'd be stuck there for about an hour.

Getting through the second half of the ice level was pure luck. I wouldn't be able to repeat that performance! I watched ASMT years and years ago, long enough ago that this is effectively blind. So I hope to compare the Demo counters as we go on. I had about 5x more deaths than raocow on most JUMP levels, so getting that below 2x for ASMT would be pretty great!

This video was rendered in 4:3, as will all future episodes, as requested! All this means is that you can zoom in a bit more than normal on certain screens :)
Ep9 - A Shy Metaphysical Thing

[Sugar]

Charlie's Outhouse - SIDO (a German rapper, not a game) - Herz
Go, Come Back, Go! - Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island - Fortress Boss
heaven is a very sky place dangerous - Super Marisa World - Ice World (World 1)

Weird music choices for Ghost Houses. But they work. Two tracks on my list were reused from previous levels however. But yes, there is plenty of unique music in this game.

There is actually something in heaven is a very sky place dangerous, but raocow already told you about it, so whatever.

By the way, if you want to compare demos with something, I would rather consider checking Ryuu's LP (he speaks in Japanese so you won't understand him, although his LP is pretty good watch anyway even if you don't know Japanese). The problem with raocow's LP is that he didn't play the same game, and demo counter was broken even ignoring Boss Bass thing. By the point of a game he is at, he got 94 demos, and finished the game with 2639 demos (ignoring Boss Bass demos).

[Grounder]

Some Sort of Place Type Object (Alex-R) isn't what the second level today was.

[Ryrir]

Sido is this wannabe edgy German rapper who likes to pose in a skull mask for some reason. Here's an English translation of the song that was playing in the ghost house level.

It's... Well, it is what it is. Bizarre choice to port it to the SMW soundfont but there you go. The melody alone actually works pretty well for a ghosthouse...

[QubicTom]

There is actually something in heaven is a very sky place dangerous, but raocow already told you about it, so whatever.

By the way, if you want to compare demos with something, I would rather consider checking Ryuu's LP

I will return to check that out (but it won't be for a few episodes yet). At some point I'll tune in to that LP, although I now have five simultaneous projects, so my time available to watch videos is waaaay down

Some Sort of Place Type Object (Alex-R) isn't what the second level today was.

Oops! I corrected the description, thanks for that!

Sido is this wannabe edgy German rapper who likes to pose in a skull mask for some reason.

Well, ASMT is known for its unique music..!

So do people actually like Hershey's chocolate, or do they just not know that non-vomit-tasting chocolate exists?
Ep10 - A Sweet Melting Thing

[chridd]

To answer your question about whether Super Marisa World music is remixed from other Touhou games

So do people actually like Hershey's chocolate, or do they just not know that non-vomit-tasting chocolate exists?

I don't see what's bad about it? I don't think I can really tell the difference between different brands of chocolate that well.

[Sugar]

Chocolate Castle - Arcturus: Curse and Loss of Divinity - Atomic Dance
Chocolate Castle (roof) - Tay Zonday (musician) - Chocolate Rain
Chocolate Castle (boss) - Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island - Bowser

Chocolate Rain is an old meme. It made more sense to have it back when ASMT was designed however.

I think boss ran out of sprites for some reason. Perhaps it was spawning null sprites instead of not spawning a sprite when it didn't want to throw anything, I don't know. It is pretty badly programmed, and used to be even worse.

Before ASMT 1.2, boss of Chocolate Castle only worked in ZSNES. This thing was very weirdly programmed. Essentially, boss randomly picks something to throw. There is a function in Super Mario World that generates a random number, but using that would make too much sense for this boss.

No, what needed to be done was something crazier. Essentially, a level with boss has a palette animation which changes color every few frames. This color wasn't visible, but it was animated nevertheless. When boss needs a random number, it checked what was that color to determine what to throw. Due to random lags and all that stuff, this was even able to do somewhat "random" results. This did work in ZSNES... sorta.

Real SNES however doesn't allow allow reading a palette entry while drawing a screen as drawing hardware has exclusive access to CGRAM which stored palettes. SNES rendered stuff in real time with precise timings to satisfy CRT screen. There is however a short period of time when CRT doesn't render anything it receives, often known as v-blank, and special care is taken to only run code that needs access to VRAM or CGRAM during that. However the boss wasn't ran in that period of time, as it shouldn't need access to VRAM or CGRAM... but it actually did need access to it, which caused it to break in emulators more accurate than ZSNES.

Also, you may have noticed black bars in some older SMW ROM hacks. VIP3 had this issue in airship level for instance. This is essentially exceeded vblank time. The level had a lot of animations that needed to be updated every few frames, and essentially exceeded vblank time. To prevent not up-to-date state of VRAM, SNES hardware does allow the program to continue running with exclusive access to graphic RAM. This however does mean that because SNES CPU has exclusive access to graphics RAM, nothing can be rendered causing ugly black bars at the top of screen until SNES CPU stops having exclusive access.

Using this black bars hardware feature can be completely intentional, I believe Street Fighter 2 for SNES actually had black bars at the top in order to lengthen vblank time to allow for more tile changes to happen within period of one frame, but there were actual black bars in event tiles changed faster than expected. And more notably, many games during loading just take exclusive access of graphics RAM causing black screen. This does improve loading performance, as game doesn't have to wait for scene to stop rendering on CRT before uploading new graphics.

[Grounder]

some stay dry and others feel the pain

[Lockirby2]

To answer your question about whether Super Marisa World music is remixed from other Touhou games

I don't see what's bad about it? I don't think I can really tell the difference between different brands of chocolate that well.

Wow, I've listened to both these songs a few times, but I never realized that they are similar until hearing them side by side.

Also, I have no issues with Hershey's chocolate either (sorry Tom ).

[chridd]

Also, eight years after the release of ASMT? Have I really been watching raocow that long?
Also, I don't think the top of the volcano is actually a level spot...

Chocolate Castle (roof) - Tay Zonday (musician) - Chocolate Rain

I kind of dislike that song's name because I wrote a short story back in high school with that name and worry that anyone who reads it will think it's inspired by the song when in fact I wrote the story before the song came into existence...

[QubicTom]

To answer your question about whether Super Marisa World music is remixed from other Touhou games
I don't see what's bad about [Hershey's chocolate]? I don't think I can really tell the difference between different brands of chocolate that well.

That's because they make chocolate for several brands, apparently! But I don't know other American chocolate brands (as opposed to Swiss [Nestlé] or British [Cadbury's, although Hershey's sell their chocolate under the Cadbury brand in the US somehow]).

Also, I have no issues with Hershey's chocolate either (sorry Tom ).

Well, why not suggest a particular flavour and I'll give them one more try!

some stay dry and others feel the pain

I wouldn't liked to be soaked in chocolate rain to be honest. Staying dry sounds like the best idea from that song's lyrics.

Three tons of stuff I didn't know

Sometimes I want to interview people to understand their logic, and I think that's the case with the weird random-ish number generator you mentioned. I just don't get it!

Due to how restrictive the title gimmick is, I'm allowed to reuse words when appropriate!
Ep11 - A Switch Mistake Thing

[Lockirby2]

It's hard to recommend a particular flavour. I don't eat a ton of Hershey's chocolate, I just never had an issue with it.

[Sugar]

Booster Dump Site - A Super Mario Thing - Decisive Here We Go by Kil
REVENGE OF SWITCHES PRESSED - Tetris Battle Gaiden - Halloween

There is something really neat in one of pits in Booster Dump Site marked by coins.

It's sorta silly how the only thing switches really do is making one of levels harder, oh well. I suppose it's nice to see switches actually making game harder, this is like really rare, for probably a good reason.

Back when PinkKittyRose made soundtrack of ASMT, Tetris Battle Gaiden - Halloween was one of last tracks to be figured out. Talk about obscure games - a Japan only game nobody has heard of. The port was actually made for ASMT by Wyatt Croucher, but Wyatt did not check the soundtrack thread which is why it took a while to figure out.