raocow's talkhaus

The 10th edition of the probably well known Vanilla Level Design Contest is now happening!! If you want to participate (or just have a peek), check out the event's forum over SMW Central.

yes

I thought the X stood for SMBX akin to SMWCX, and it's not.

Color me disappointed

dang, I had the first half of my puzzle level all planned out, but then I realized that they patched out the "bring-a-stomped-p-switch-through-a-pipe" glitch as well as the "recycle-a-used-p-switch-by-making-yoshi-eat-it" glitch

now I'm sad

...

...

...on second thought it's probably for the best that I didn't actually submit that lol

boo

I haven't even started and I've got problems . I'm being told that the VLDCX base ROM has been edited by a newer version of LM. I'm using the version given out for MaGL3, will there be any problems?

You can probably get by with the one given out with MaGL3, but if you want the new one, grab it here.

S.N.N. wrote:You can probably get by with the one given out with MaGL3, but if you want the new one, grab it here.

Thanks! I just didn't want to take the risk of screwing anything up (working with this gets screwy enough as is).

Now, how do I put tiles from the 8x8 tile editor to the 16x16 tile map editor?

Also, how do I get the 16x16 editor to look like this Where much of the stuff doesn't look like garbled nonsense?

I have actually done image editing trickery to make it look like this lol. Some of the tiles are tileset-specific.

Also for the highlighted part, which is for mixing two tilesets together, set BG3 (by clicking the red poison mushroom and bypassing graphics if you don't know how that works) to one of the graphics originally used by FG3 (you can check which tileset uses which graphic in the blue poison mushroom box) (so for example if you want the underground tileset to show up, set BG3 to 1A) and edit the palettes accordingly (don't forget to check the custom palette box!)
EDIT: but of course that isn't necessary unless you want to mix two tilesets together

Koopster wrote:I have actually done image editing trickery

koopster more like trickeryster

Koopster wrote:I have actually done image editing trickery to make it look like this lol. Some of the tiles are tileset-specific.

Also for the highlighted part, which is for mixing two tilesets together, set BG3 (by clicking the red poison mushroom and bypassing graphics if you don't know how that works) to one of the graphics originally used by FG3 (you can check which tileset uses which graphic in the blue poison mushroom box) (so for example if you want the underground tileset to show up, set BG3 to 1A) and edit the palettes accordingly (don't forget to check the custom palette box!)
EDIT: but of course that isn't necessary unless you want to mix two tilesets together

I'm going to need BG3 for mist as it's a part of my level's atmosphere; but I will need to be able to mix Castle and Ghost house tiles together if possible. What else I'll need to do is taking enemy and friendly sprites and making tiles out of them. I'll need to do this for the following:
Yoshi (adult and baby versions)
Rex
Reznor
Pokey (body parts and head)
Spiny
Spike Top
Koopas (Full and beach versions)
Koopa Shells
Monty Mole dirt

I'll also be editing some sprites:
Key
Held Grab Block
Big Boo (the boss)

And I'll need to know how to access world end cutscene graphics:
Grass
Whole Castle
Castle Wreckage
Whole Castle

EvilmarioBot wrote:I'm going to need BG3 for mist as it's a part of my level's atmosphere

Can you not use BG2 instead? (Maybe you're confusing it for layer 3? :p BG2/BG3 and such are GFX/ExGFX slots)

And I'll need to know how to access world end cutscene graphics:
Grass
Whole Castle
Castle Wreckage
Whole Castle

I'm not sure in which GFX file those are located, but if you want a little tip, you can make Lunar Magic extract all the graphics bundled into one single .bin file, so you can look for it by just scrolling down in YY-CHR rather than opening one file at a time. Go in "Options > General Options" and check "Use Joined GFX Files" under "ROM Editing Options". Extract the graphics again and you'll get a file called AllGFX.bin.

The cutscene castle graphics are in 2C, according to the single best thing on SMWC.

Koopster wrote:Can you not use BG2 instead? (Maybe you're confusing it for layer 3? :p BG2/BG3 and such are GFX/ExGFX slots)

Yes, I need Layer 3 mist to be mist.

Koopster wrote:I'm not sure in which GFX file those are located, but if you want a little tip, you can make Lunar Magic extract all the graphics bundled into one single .bin file, so you can look for it by just scrolling down in YY-CHR rather than opening one file at a time. Go in "Options > General Options" and check "Use Joined GFX Files" under "ROM Editing Options". Extract the graphics again and you'll get a file called AllGFX.bin.

So, how do I access AllGFX.bin, and I can't even find YY-CHR.

Also, I need to know how to get the castle color palettes into the Ghost House tileset; and, if possible mix Castle and Ghost House tilesets.

join the discordhaus, enter the #romhacking channel, and scroll up to when I was asking those exact same questions

as for palettes, just edit your level's palette locally and change whatever the heck you want.

I made an ExGFX file to use on layer 3 but whenever I do anything with it Lunar Magic it says "The graphics file is larger than it should be. This may cause glitches during gameplay." I've tried deleting some stuff I don't need from the file and it doesn't seem to have made a difference, but it also doesn't actually seem to be causing any glitches. Does it matter?

i hope i win i just deleted 9 screens because they were bad so i hope i can make them not bad asap! :D

I'm going on with placeholders for the moment, but one issue I'd like addressed is the fact the mist appears transparent in the editor, but becomes opaque when I test the level.

Also, Tile merging is apparently a thing, how do I pull that off?

Mata Hari wrote:I made an ExGFX file to use on layer 3 but whenever I do anything with it Lunar Magic it says "The graphics file is larger than it should be. This may cause glitches during gameplay." I've tried deleting some stuff I don't need from the file and it doesn't seem to have made a difference, but it also doesn't actually seem to be causing any glitches. Does it matter?

for those who weren't here to see this in the discord, it doesn't look like this affects the gameplay at all. To get rid of the error, I manually snipped off the extraneous 2048 bytes at the end of the file.

EvilMariobot wrote:Also, Tile merging is apparently a thing, how do I pull that off?

Ctrl+C from YYCHR, paste into photoshop, layer ontop of each other, and then put it back in, I think. This will almost definitely muck up the color mappings so that will have to be fixed in YYCHR

Yo real quick im like, a complete noob at this. I'm trying to make a level with those diagonal moving platforms and chainsaws (among other things but those are behaving for now), but trying to compile the needed graphics into one file i realized that one bit of the platform overlaps a frame of the chainsaw motor. Is there a way to get around that, or is there no way to use those together without glitching the graphics?

Ivy wrote:

Mata Hari wrote:I made an ExGFX file to use on layer 3 but whenever I do anything with it Lunar Magic it says "The graphics file is larger than it should be. This may cause glitches during gameplay." I've tried deleting some stuff I don't need from the file and it doesn't seem to have made a difference, but it also doesn't actually seem to be causing any glitches. Does it matter?

for those who weren't here to see this in the discord, it doesn't look like this affects the gameplay at all. To get rid of the error, I manually snipped off the extraneous 2048 bytes at the end of the file.

how did ypu dp thaat

MoneyMan wrote:Yo real quick im like, a complete noob at this. I'm trying to make a level with those diagonal moving platforms and chainsaws (among other things but those are behaving for now), but trying to compile the needed graphics into one file i realized that one bit of the platform overlaps a frame of the chainsaw motor. Is there a way to get around that, or is there no way to use those together without glitching the graphics?

There isn't really a vanilla way around that, unfortunately. You could either take the graphical glitch if you think your level will benefit enough from your idea to circumvent any sort of lost points, or you could try and find a vanilla graphic that somehow works as both a diagonal platform and part of the chainsaw (much harder than the first option).

S.N.N. wrote: There isn't really a vanilla way around that, unfortunately. You could either take the graphical glitch if you think your level will benefit enough from your idea to circumvent any sort of lost points, or you could try and find a vanilla graphic that somehow works as both a diagonal platform and part of the chainsaw (much harder than the first option).

Hmm, that's unfortunate. I guess I'll try to find something that could be passed off as both, i experimented with arranging a bunch of tiles to look like some kinda magic floating, shifting rock but it looked like shit (i actually just had an idea involving turning the platform into a diagonal cloud and having the chainsaws held up by clouds or something). Thanks for letting me know.

Mata Hari wrote: how did ypu dp thaat

open the graphics .bin file in notepad (i used notepad++), go to the very last NUL character, and press backspace exactly 2048 times.

EvilMariobot wrote:Also, Tile merging is apparently a thing, how do I pull that off?

Ctrl+C from YYCHR, paste into photoshop, layer ontop of each other, and then put it back in, I think. This will almost definitely muck up the color mappings so that will have to be fixed in YYCHR[/quote]
Unfortunately, that's no help to me at all since I don't have Photoshop and I still don't know what or where YYCHR is.

Okay, I'm using a castle tileset, but I want mist. What can I do to fix that?

EvilMariobot wrote: Unfortunately, that's no help to me at all since I don't have Photoshop and I still don't know what or where YYCHR is.
Okay, I'm using a castle tileset, but I want mist. What can I do to fix that?

You don't need Photoshop; GIMP, Paint.NET, or maybe even good ol Paint would work. YYCHR is in the tools section in SMWC and is labeled "Essential".

This one I'm not really experienced with. My guess is to start fresh with the ghost house tileset, then re-enable graphics bypass and use castle graphics in the extra slots. probably an easier way though.