SMBX: The Great Empire; You strike first

[Sebby19]

This game was made by Knuckles96 (and magibowser), who currently runs the only forum for SMBX. It is just as big as The Invasion 2, and is fairly good. It does suffer from some balance difficulty issues, the main reason being the scarcity of powerups. Some levels are also quite long, but not drawn out.

[Fapnoob]

niiice more SMBX stuff.

[raocow]

Yeah so I just got done recording tomorrow's video and.... it's good. This game is really... REALLY good.

[Sebby19]

Interesting note about the levels. In this episode, should you ever find a shortcut to later in the game, you can then proceed to do the levels backwards. I did that on my first playthrough for a bit before deciding to go back and do things 'properly'.

I'm can only guessing at what your talking about Rao, but I'll take a crack at it anyway; the water levels do indeed have the best eye candy :)

[Terry von Feleday]

Oh hey, that reminds me, I wanted to do that whole "replace the SMBX graphics with ASMT stuff" thing, didn't I. I got as far as the powerups and the various varieties of koopa before terraria came along and all my attention turned towards trying to make that game look better (so far with... middling success.) Maybe this means I should switch back?

[Torkirby]

This game certainly LOOKS good. I'm liking the level design a lot. C:

[FlareDarknight]

This game certainly LOOKS good. I'm liking the level design a lot. C:

In my opinion the level design's OK.It's kinda chaotic(At least that's how I see it.)and I don't know if I should be happy about it or not.I mean...The levels are huge,with a lot of stuff in them,which makes them colourful.But at the same time there are a lot of useless things in the levels and,,,yeah.I don't like those things.

[megamario]

The levels seem a bit longer than they really should be. A bit crowded, too.

[Punisher]

http://www.mediafire.com/?qrw18g0sbfd5d99

Here's the game, if anyone wants it.

[warioeagle]

Oh hey, that reminds me, I wanted to do that whole "replace the SMBX graphics with ASMT stuff" thing, didn't I. I got as far as the powerups and the various varieties of koopa before terraria came along and all my attention turned towards trying to make that game look better (so far with... middling success.) Maybe this means I should switch back?

I tried doing this as well, but the sprite sizes don't quite match up and my image program makes the sprite look odd when resized. If you want any help with this, I'll gladly help if you can send me the sprites. Ripping them from the rom isn't easy to do either.

Of course, I'm talking about the ASMT graphic thing, not the Terraria thing.

[Terrinix]

http://www.mediafire.com/?qrw18g0sbfd5d99

Here's the game, if anyone wants it.

Awesome, that's exactly what I came looking for! Looking forward to another great LP.

[Rameau's Nephew]

Phun phact: Just as The Invasion 2 is a remake of the original "The Invasion", so too is The Great Empire a remake of the considerably less popular "The Crappy Empire".

Ah, but this particular version looks to be shaping up well enough. I quite liked today's water level, but then again I've always been a sucker for overgrown, sunken ruins. Actually, I've always been a sucker for any sort of water level which dares to have an interesting æsthetic theme, as I find the sea a source of great mystery and wonder, and yet in Super Mario World hacks (yes, I know this isn't one, but it's close enough), it usually tends to be dealt with in a very boring a generic way. Now if only we can get a beach level which isn't a sunny tropical strand with palm trees and yellow sand.

Oh, but the name "A deep sea adventure" raised a few eyebrows by me for ridiculous personal reasons. Alas, this phrase will forever be associated with a dream I once had where, tattooed on the underside of an octopus, stretched out across two oppositely positioned tentacles, was a movie poster bearing the tagline "A deep sea adventure that will fuck you up." This formed a strong contrast with the actual image depicted, namely a sort of vaguely impressionistic colored pencil drawing of a harbor of a small New England fishing village on a cloudy day, which strongly suggested the marketing folks were woefully misrepresenting the actual content of the film in a misaimed attempt at attracting a wider audience. Disgraceful.

[Punisher]

Sorry Rao, that would be my save. Spoilers,

That level you saw me on may or may not give you ire.

And Link makes that Birdo fight a million times easier. Jus' sayin'

[Ometeotl]

That's why we do things called "research" to learn how to do things we don't know, instead of just saying "screw it" and sending it anyway.

[Terry von Feleday]

I tried doing this as well, but the sprite sizes don't quite match up and my image program makes the sprite look odd when resized. If you want any help with this, I'll gladly help if you can send me the sprites. Ripping them from the rom isn't easy to do either.

Of course, I'm talking about the ASMT graphic thing, not the Terraria thing.

What do you mean with "look odd"? Do they turn out really blurry? If your program has settings on the resizing, make sure to set the resizing type/whatever to "nearest neighbor" whatever the equivalent is, and always resize by exactly 200%.

The problem isn't even as much the sprites being pre-scaled for whatever reason as it is that a good number of sprites will have to be more or less redrawn to fit in the new set of weird restrictions (whereas one may think that not having the SNES' natural limitations around would make it easier, but nooo...), like the goombas: Originally I just wanted to insert the ASMT furbas as the SMB and -3 ones and make a "fat furba" for the SMW one, but it turns out that because the goombas are in a head-on perspective, they have no different sprites for facing left or right, so I will have to draw something else for them. Ugh.

If you want to help a bit: I've compiled a list of things to be replaced in the Effect and NPC folders here, you could look around and see if theres any non-inserted thing that you can insert without having to alter it beyond scaling it to 200%.

A2MTGFX.rar

(186.66 KiB) Downloaded 142 times

This is the current A2MT graphics files, just open them in yy-chr, the .zst file is the palette.

And this is the graphics I have already converted into the SMBX format that can just be pasted into the relevant folders:

effect.rar

(20.25 KiB) Downloaded 127 times

npc.rar

(80.06 KiB) Downloaded 120 times

That's why we do things called "research" to learn how to do things we don't know, instead of just saying "screw it" and sending it anyway.

Oh Ometeotl, there is so much anger within you these days.

[Punisher]

Oh Ometeotl, there is so much anger within you these days.

Why ome hasn't been kicked from the haus yet is beyond me.

[Terry von Feleday]

(hint: your attitude isn't helping either)

[Argumentable]

Let's all be friends (yes, I did something)

[megamario]

Was that music from Aquaria?

[Bean]

I was starting to get worried that there weren't going to be any midpoints at all in this one, then my fears were alleviated in that one level.

[warioeagle]

What do you mean with "look odd"? Do they turn out really blurry? If your program has settings on the resizing, make sure to set the resizing type/whatever to "nearest neighbor" whatever the equivalent is, and always resize by exactly 200%.

That's exactly what happens. I'll try doing that to see if it helps.

...like the goombas: Originally I just wanted to insert the ASMT furbas as the SMB and -3 ones and make a "fat furba" for the SMW one, but it turns out that because the goombas are in a head-on perspective, they have no different sprites for facing left or right, so I will have to draw something else for them. Ugh.

SMW Goombas are the only ones that have different sides. It does fit with the original graphics of the games, so I'm not really that surprised. I think it might be possible to make the other sprites have different sides with a little coding added, but then the code will have to be added for every level that they're used in.

I'll download the graphics and see what I can do to help. If I can change how some of the sprites work as far as having different directions, I'll let you know.

Edit: Any idea if the other characters are going to be used/replaced? Just wondering if Demo is the only one being added to replace Mario or not.

[Sebby19]

So, if you completed Deep Sea Adventure first, you would have unlocked Toad's House and Mushroom Heights.

Just to repeat myself with different words, all levels completed in this particular episode reveal all paths connecting to it (unless it's a secret exit). So you can go through the levels backwards if given the opportunity.

[Terry von Feleday]

Edit: Any idea if the other characters are going to be used/replaced? Just wondering if Demo is the only one being added to replace Mario or not.

Oh, definitely, everything that's property of Nintendo will have to (even the backgrounds, but I'm putting that off for now), I just don't know what to replace them with yet. There's a great number of things that don't have an equivalent in ASMT (everything on the list I posted marked with "none", basically), and once we insert everything that does I'll make a new thread to collect ideas and suggestions for those things.

[warioeagle]

Thanks for clearing that up for me. Unfortunately, I may not be the biggest helper for replacing graphics. Ripping sprites to make them a normal picture file is something I haven't done before and I'm having trouble with it. I don't know what file shows which sprites and can't find the proper palette for everything.

Would it be asking too much to get a PNG sprite file? I seriously don't understand how to use YY-CHR.

[Oracle of Wuffing]

hey hey hey woah there some of the graphic replacements your makeing are my intellectual property and i do not approve of your cheap knockoff graphics being inserted into this project it makes me very angry and JUST KIDDING, GO FOR IT.

Edit: Any idea if the other characters are going to be used/replaced? Just wondering if Demo is the only one being added to replace Mario or not.

Oh, definitely, everything that's property of Nintendo will have to (even the backgrounds, but I'm putting that off for now), I just don't know what to replace them with yet.

Haven't been keeping up with the A2MT stuff, but weren't they going to introduce a bunch of Demo's family people or something in there? Lazy logic dictates we'd just recycle those guys into good guys.

Since I think it was brought up last topic, I saw that there was that whole, "Silhouettes of every graphic stored as a separate graphic" when I ran that reformer screenshot on SMBX, and I'm actually wondering if those were just used as hit detection masks? Actually, does the game explode when you try to force a graphic too big into a character that's too small (eg SMW Small Demo into SMB3 Small Mario)? I don't imagine it being something that'd crash the game, just cause stupid collision issues further on...