An Experimental Thing: smaller, super dark chocolate SMWness

[Zia Satazaki]

So looking at what A2MT could have been has inspired me to try a new approach to things, and I'm wondering if anyone else would like to give this a shot? My plans/ideas for this so far:

- Completely non-SMW player physics and very different-feeling gameplay
- Multiple playable characters with different gameplay styles (Level authors can choose what characters their level can be played as, and even make the level subtly different depending on your character via Lunar Magic's conditional map16 feature)
- As little use of vanilla things as possible; lots of shared custom sprites available as a replacement
- A few custom level mechanics such as HDMA-based water (think Sonic games) available globally

Basically, we'd be going for depth and kind of reining in the breadth (i.e. only a smallish number of level slots open for the first installment with all these systems in place); this of course would involve distinct stages of planning and mechanics development before any final levels can be made, but if we can have this "pulled together" as well as I'm thinking the groundwork can then be used fairly easily for future collabs.

I have a specific development setup/workflow in mind that would be reasonably familiar to "real-world" developers and easy enough for newbies to pick up with some explanation, and would hopefully simplify things a bunch; I'll make a separate post explaining this a bit later after I've completely gathered my thoughts.

ANYWAY, now that that semi-ramble-explanation is done, I have an open question for you guys (and otherwise-gendered individuals!):

In a completely not-Mario setting, what sort of abilities and gameplay style might Demo have? Who/what might other characters be and play like?

Thanks in advance for any input!

[Leet]

no more collabs yet pls

im not an authority in any way but i think i speak for everyone

[Sorel]

Neat idea, though. I always wanted to learn how to hack SMW, so maybe I'll try to help.

[ano0maly]

I doubt talkhaus is mentally ready for such a chocolate-heavy project at the moment. A2MT itself was like that and it's one of the reasons why things became a complicated mess.

Also if it's going to be non-Mario wouldn't it be better not to use SMW hacking?

[Zia Satazaki]

My thought was I would be doing a bunch of the heavy lifting, making things modular where appropriate, and the workflow would be set up such that it would be super easy to make and check in changes to any patch where necessary (in fact, the baserom would be distributed not as an IPS, but as a toolchain that inserts all the patches and the like as a batch operation, so any non-LM-based change is just a double-click (or up and enter in a command prompt) away from insertion. This would do a lot to prevent the, erm, clusterfluff that happened to A2MT, at least from a purely technical standpoint.

Also, I have a hobby of doing ridiculous things to SMW, as shown in my A2MT level, my MaGL entry, my Metroidvania hack... (also, it's nice being able to run the whole thing on a SNES emulator!)

[Zia Satazaki]

Since this topic is pretty dead otherwise, here's a breakdown of my workflow ideas:

Project would be tracked on Github; all patches, music etc. would be applied as a batch, so that all code can be applied straight away to a clean ROM (an IPS patch would exist just to expand the ROM, have it ready with Lunar Magic's hacks, and possibly addmusic sound driver etc.) Levels would be tracked as individual .mwl files via LM's import/export all levels feature. Secondary exits possibly stored separately with a different utility, if .mwl doesn't contain them.

Certain slot ranges for ExGFX and music would be reserved for project-global use, for things like common tilesets and the like. Original music tracks go in this space as well.

Workflow would consist of pulling changes from git, applying all patches etc., making changes as necessary, exporting levels if needed and pushing a commit. A bit unfamiliar for less technical contributors, but it's simple enough once you have some idea of what you're doing.

-

As for Demo's abilities (which nobody has given a response to...), I was thinking perhaps some sort of telekinetic thing, maybe explained as being given by some random magic crystal thing in the intro? (In addition to running and jumping and possibly walljumping)

[WitherSnow]

I like the idea but i don't think people are really up to it. Not that they can't but it's a mental thing.
Nobody wants to dive headfirst into an ASM heavy hack after A2MT ( I still think we can at least add the final world and bosses.)
Keep writing things down in a word or notepad doc and after a few months bring it up again.

[KobaBeach]

I like the idea but i don't think people are really up to it. Not that they can't but it's a mental thing.
Nobody wants to dive headfirst into an ASM heavy hack after A2MT ( I still think we can at least add the final world and bosses.)
Keep writing things down in a word or notepad doc and after a few months bring it up again.

are you fucking kidding me right now

did you just forget or what

17 Jul 2014

[Mabel]

Master trole 2014

[Alice]

I like the idea but i don't think people are really up to it. Not that they can't but it's a mental thing.
Nobody wants to dive headfirst into an ASM heavy hack after A2MT ( I still think we can at least add the final world and bosses.)
Keep writing things down in a word or notepad doc and after a few months bring it up again.

are you fucking kidding me right now

did you just forget or what

Obviously his idea is fine because it's his idea meaning it's perfectly flawless.

[WitherSnow]

I like the idea but i don't think people are really up to it. Not that they can't but it's a mental thing.
Nobody wants to dive headfirst into an ASM heavy hack after A2MT ( I still think we can at least add the final world and bosses.)
Keep writing things down in a word or notepad doc and after a few months bring it up again.

are you fucking kidding me right now

did you just forget or what

Obviously his idea is fine because it's his idea meaning it's perfectly flawless.

Alice you are just too flattering!

[Whimsical Calamari]

Alice you are just too flattering!

i really hope you're being sarcastic there because otherwise taking sarcasm seriously is just another thing that everybody will take offense at you for.

[WitherSnow]

Alice you are just too flattering!

i really hope you're being sarcastic there because otherwise taking sarcasm seriously is just another thing that everybody will take offense at you for.

Yes im being sarcastic. I love witty sarcasm so much!