re: A2MT

[S.N.N.]

I already stated my opinions in the now-stickied thread, but I'll say it here again: it was honestly a good attempt, but the reasons why it didn't work out were fairly obvious in retrospect. SMBX seems to be the big thing nowadays anyway (though I personally can't get into it after working with SMW for so long).

Look to the future I guess.

[Bwarch]

RIP sweet prince.

Shame it didn't work out fellas.

[Ashan]

Aw, man. That was the whole reason I joined Talkhaus (see this video)

So the levels won't even get put into a compilation hack or anything?

[Ashan]

I blame Mr Rom for this.

[S.N.N.]

If people want to then they can.

I guarantee someone will volunteer, try for five minutes, and then get frustrated/give up.

Seriously, working with a foreign base ROM + a ton of resources is a nightmare that nobody should have to endure.

[Ashan]

What if raocow were to just play the individual levels in the patches people gave?
Like, I think we put the .ips files in there that were just the levels and I'd assume most of them would work on their own.

[S.N.N.]

What if raocow were to just play the individual levels in the patches people gave?
Like, I think we put the .ips files in there that were just the levels and I'd assume most of them would work on their own.

That could work in theory, but last I heard/read, a lot of the levels needed serious work and some of them are tremendously unfun to play. Nobody ever followed up on the giant review threads that were made, so they never actually got fixed or redesigned.

I dunno.

[Unaniem]

As I never played any role in the project, there is not much for me to say besides either wishing luck to those who still want to salvage something out of the left over pieces (whether that'd be Rao playing all the levels individually to actually working something out into a game of sorts, although the latter is unlikely) or simply quote Bwarch on the matter:

RIP sweet prince.

Shame it didn't work out fellas.

[Leet]

;;;__________;;;

i guess there really was no other way - i've been thinking about 'how a2mt could go' in my head for a while now and there was really no way it could live up to the 'excitement' that would appear from its release after so long, so... augh.

i really hope some day in the far, far future talkhaus can make a new smw engine asmt game, but with the way things are going smw hacks are fading. maybe they'll receive a surge in popularity in several years or something, but... eh.

oh well, at least there will only be six collabs supposedly "running" instead of seven! that's... a bright side?

[YelseyKing]

Damn shame. I was looking forward to this hack, and it's sad to see it die. But... I understand exactly where its crew is coming from. My friends and I have been forced to abandon several very promising RPG Maker projects after they just got seriously overwhelming.

That said, was that final boss theme, aka "The Lullaby", ever implemented into the game? I'd *love* an SPC of that.

[raocow]

This is seriously a huge bummer.

I kind of want to play the 'baserom' or something for the internet one day, and let people judge for themselves. Assuming all the levels in it actually work in some fashion.

[S.N.N.]

play jesus's/anonymousbl00dlust's level first to give people an overall impression of what to expect

edit: it was just brought to my attention that his level isn't ready to be played. balls.

[raocow]

considering that tsrpr is going to end really soon, maybe not super now, to give the time to just gather as much possible in some kind of 'a not second mario thing' zip file of 'all the stuff'.

By the way, I accept responsibily for being a terrible, overzealous hypeman for this game.

[Ashan]

My level worked, although I don't know where it would be with the Talkhaustrophe happening and all.
They're still somewhere, right? Mine was even inserted into the ROM if I recall correctly and it worked there, so...

[ano0maly]

Long post, took an hour to write

In hindsight, I personally don't think official cancellation would have been necessary, as the slogan for the past couple of years was "it's done when it's going to be done". But we should have dropped the expectation that the romhack would be completed any sooner than whenever the team feels like it, if ever. Maybe this announcement would not have happened then.

I see this situation analogous to what happened with Mushroom Kingdom Fusion, "cancelled" last October. I've known little about this project before, but when I heard of the official cancellation announcement (this thread), I did some research. It looks like lot of features and cool things were carelessly added to the game without thinking about the consequences. As a result, it was difficult to repair those additions and make them, and the game, work properly.

The current plans for Mushroom Kingdom Fusion is that it's still going to have one final release, primarily based on whatever's finished so far, but after it's cleaned up. That means any future additions not already in the game are basically going to be scrapped. The source code would be released soon as well.

Anyway, this might be what happened with A2MT as well. The level submission phase of the project ended too soon, over two years ago. Much of the lagging work in the past years was not about adding content, but fixing it to get it to work. There's been a couple recent posts suggesting that we gather more people to help finish it up, but as far as I can tell, it's not stalled because it's lacking levels. The progress so far seems very lopsided - virtually all levels are submitted, but the tasks to make a functional hack (baserom, overworld, cosmetics) were not sufficiently ready by then.

The phrase tossed around for many months was "it's almost done". This phrase was misleading and may have done the project much harm. This leaves people to just wait for the hack to be completed already, underestimating the rest of the work to be done. I brought up a year ago that a key problem was that potential contributors had only a vague understanding of the objectives still to be done, besides "it's almost done". What you're left is a bunch of levels but no game.

In this analysis, SNN mentioned that nobody knows what's going on at this point. I find this important. If anyone wants to finish the remaining tasks, the first step is to figure out what those tasks are. (I was going to say this in the A2MT forum, but the remaining collaborators already want to mercy-kill it. Now I guess it's a tip to whoever that wants to continue it.)

I also think that keeping this more organized might have helped. I've taken a quick glance at the SMWCP2 forum, and it's very neat and orderly, with subforum for each world. That might be an overkill, but you get the idea. I could be wrong about this though since I didn't take a close look at threads in A2MT and SMWCP2 forums.

I agree with SNN that the project began too soon after the first ASMT was done. raocow already mentioned the second game at the end of the LP for the first game. Not even a month later was the A2MT level submission announcement. What? I think that's when the trend of overhype began, a trend that was sustained for a long time.

Lastly, the plethora of collaborations that exist right now might have contributed to killing interest for A2MT. For the first couple of years of A2MT, it was the talkhaus collab that identified with this very site. Then Super Mario Bros. X engine was introduced, via Invasion 2; the engine was highly popular, as were raocow's LPs of SMBX games, and soon after, we got ASMBXT. That's is essentially the new A2MT. Not long after, AZCT and JUMP were added, and the old original project was sidelined. Now talkhaus has developed into a host for a variety of collaborations and it's a defining feature of the board. It's no longer just about A Super Mario Thing.

Don't take my post as an authoritative announcement. As with SNN, this is just a post from a longtime observer.

[Dan]

Is... is this the channel where we discuss A2MT?

[Mabel]

ded gaem ;_;

Do release the OST tho.

[S.N.N.]

Lastly, the plethora of collaborations that exist right now might have contributed to killing interest for A2MT. For the first couple of years of A2MT, it was the talkhaus collab that identified with this very site. Then Super Mario Bros. X engine was introduced, via Invasion 2; the engine was highly popular, as were raocow's LPs of SMBX games, and soon after, we got ASMBXT. That's is essentially the new A2MT. Not long after, AZCT and JUMP were added, and the old original project was sidelined. Now talkhaus has developed into a host for a variety of collaborations and it's a defining feature of the board.

See, I agree with this particular paragraph so much, but last time I spoke up about it, I got shot down for no real justified reason. I mentioned that AZCT was garnering two posts a month at most (and the last post was actually January 3rd before I basically forced Riolu to write something). When did everything suddenly have to become a team project? This site isn't big enough to be able to support seven different collabs at once. The general trend seems to be:

1. A post about an idea for a collaboration.
2. A bunch of people with interest for it.
3. Forum is created, activity booms for a while and then dies off.
4. Jump to 1.

Like, I'm not a manager of this site or anything so it's not like I'm trying to tell people NOT to make team projects. I'm just saying it would probably be much easier and much more effective to stick to one or two (tops) at a time.

[SAJewers]

This is seriously a huge bummer.

I kind of want to play the 'baserom' or something for the internet one day, and let people judge for themselves. Assuming all the levels in it actually work in some fashion.

I'm not gonna be the guy to do it, but maybe someone should go through and pick out the best levels and attempt to recreate them in SMBX for A2MBXT.

Lastly, the plethora of collaborations that exist right now might have contributed to killing interest for A2MT. For the first couple of years of A2MT, it was the talkhaus collab that identified with this very site. Then Super Mario Bros. X engine was introduced, via Invasion 2; the engine was highly popular, as were raocow's LPs of SMBX games, and soon after, we got ASMBXT. That's is essentially the new A2MT. Not long after, AZCT and JUMP were added, and the old original project was sidelined. Now talkhaus has developed into a host for a variety of collaborations and it's a defining feature of the board.

Don't take my post as an authoritative announcement. As with SNN, this is just a post from a longtime observer.

As one of the main A2MBXT guys, I will agree with this. A good portion of people whon worked on ASMBXT have either filtered to one of the other projects, or dissapeared from the talkhaus. Last I heard, OW work was sidlined due to MaGLx.

ded gaem ;_;

Do release the OST tho.

Most of the OST was reused for A2MBXT.

[Septentrion Pleiades]

I've been through every level and made the level list. I think one of the downfalls is people keeping to themselves. I heard from limepie20 that he fix most of the levels but I haven't seen any of it as the main person beta testing it. I have long since decided that will should be cutting levels.

I all the level I submitted work and I tried to fix a bunch of other stuff. We definitely have enough for a small game with the stuff that does work. Ninety level hacks are much too long anyways. Here's my list of levels from the baserom: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=2487

I will help anyone trying to make any working game from this.

Lastly, the plethora of collaborations that exist right now might have contributed to killing interest for A2MT. For the first couple of years of A2MT, it was the talkhaus collab that identified with this very site. Then Super Mario Bros. X engine was introduced, via Invasion 2; the engine was highly popular, as were raocow's LPs of SMBX games, and soon after, we got ASMBXT. That's is essentially the new A2MT. Not long after, AZCT and JUMP were added, and the old original project was sidelined. Now talkhaus has developed into a host for a variety of collaborations and it's a defining feature of the board. It's no longer just about A Super Mario Thing.

None of the new projects made the people who disappeared disappear. I'm sure dr_kraid and sajewers wouldn't be messing around in the coding of the base rom. It's completely different groups of people with very small overlap.

[aterraformer]

Out of shear curiosity as I haven't been following the "progress", does this have any of the overworld/submaps completed? Could it be potentially set up as more than just an assorted base rom(s), like a kinda rushed, almost complete thing? Does the ASM all work together and such? Not to step on toes and I'm PROBABLY not the best person to offer (with JUMP incomplete and another in the oven) but... I'm willing to spend.. volunteer my time to piecing this puzzle together and such. Make it somewhat of a product instead of just leaving it hanging in the state it is in.

*sigh* I'm not even sure if I'm wording this properly/being a jerk/offering unneeded assistance/offering too much assistance for what it's worth

[limepie20]

I really loved a2mt, but now I couldn't bare to work on it. I remember there was a time I said I will get it finished no matter what and do it all myself if I have to, and I truly believed that at the time. I put a lot of time and effort into this, and it was great, and I don't regret it at all. Well my only regret is that the levels won't get to be played as much, and I do believe there are some play-worthy ones in there. Anyway yeah I was really passionate about the project, and I'll only allow myself to take away fond memories. Goodbye, A2MT.

[kaizoman666]

Out of shear curiosity as I haven't been following the "progress", does this have any of the overworld/submaps completed?

To some extent, yes. Zero events are done, however, and the paths are not very noticeable in their current state.

Could it be potentially set up as more than just an assorted base rom(s), like a kinda rushed, almost complete thing? Does the ASM all work together and such?

It's a possibility; the overworld test does have a good number of the levels inserted. However, as not even it is finished, and many of the levels currently are broken (ASM being the main cause), it would still take a bit of work.
And honestly, I feel like letting this hack die in peace rather than trying to force it to stay alive is a much better way of ending it. :/

but... I'm willing to spend.. volunteer my time to piecing this puzzle together and such. Make it somewhat of a product instead of just leaving it hanging in the state it is in.

The thing is, I'm completely willing to insert everything into this hack and fix everything as with the original plan. The only problem is the I nor anyone else seem to have any idea what is missing or broken. I can't search through every level on my own to figure out what needs to be fixed, nor do I have the time to search through the A2MT forum for stuff that still has yet to be inserted in the first place.

If you're willing to do work like that, maybe we could get something to come out of this. But as it is, it's simply not enough to build a decent hack out of.

[S.N.N.]

If you're willing to do work like that, maybe we could get something to come out of this. But as it is, it's simply not enough to build a decent hack out of.

Not to mention that if someone is actually planning on doing that, then all that's really happening is that we're going back to square one. As i said earlier, having someone "volunteer" to take over at this point is going to be futile and it'll likely give them a massive headache (especially since there really aren't that many competent SMW hackers left on this forum).

Just release the playable levels in a base ROM with the levels placed right next to each other on a generic map (i.e. the map from the older bases). Trying to do anything else is going to be far more painstaking than it is worth I think.

[Sebby19]

Huh, that sucks. Sorry I don't have much more to say about it.