And Another Thing - discussion thread (bowz soft deadline at August 29th)

[PSI Ninja]

After not working on AAT for several weeks, I'd like to start contributing again within the next few days. We got a lot of work done leading up to the March 29th deadline, but activity has stagnated lately. Hopefully we can get the ball rolling again soon - I really don't want to see this collab die. Here are some of my thoughts on what SAJewers posted above, but I need to spoiler some of them now that we know rao is skimming through this thread.

TITLE SCREEN
We have a logo, and that seems to be it. I know PSI Ninja at one point offered to make the title screen level, though I don't know if that's still the case.

Yes, I volunteered to do the title screen level a few months ago, but finishing it is very low on my priority list. If someone else wants to make it instead, then they are free to take my claim. Otherwise, we can just choose one of the completed levels to be shown off in the title screen movie. That way, we don't have to do any extra work.

FINAL CASTLE
AFAIK there's been some random discussion, but nothing fully concrete yet about anything. I know some work on a boss has been done, though.

SPECIAL
We know what we're doing, and we have the first 2 sections and the boss at the end. No one has claimed a section or done anything since the boss was inserted.

For the final castle, I think participants should just start working on their rooms without worrying about WtH aesthetics. Someone else can change the graphics and palettes afterwards. Also, these rooms should be relatively short, since they're going to appear in the context of a longer marathon level.

As for SPECIAL, I don't know if it should be a hard rule to only reference postgame content from previous collabs, because that seems too limiting. Maybe we can reference the more "iconic" levels instead? For example, I'm thinking of remixing I Need To Breathe! from ASMT, which I think is a memorable level, but it shows up in the early game. And besides, it would probably be easier to remix an easier level to be hard, than to remix an already hard level to be harder, if that makes sense.

WORLD MAP
Nao made up a level order, with what exits lead to what levels. We have a mockup of what World 1 is, and a rough idea for the Fishmarket and Forest World. Names for submaps haven't been concretely decided (outside the Fishmarket), and no one has offered to actually make the World Map.

I like the idea of gradually deforesting the forest world as levels are beaten, but I don't think we should use ASMT's forest world as a base (as was suggested previously). It would feel out of place to just lift the map directly from our predecessor like that. I think we're competent enough to create our own submap design without needing to reference things too hard all the time.

Also, we need to figure out what to do with Rachel's Rebate Rotorcraft. It offers a fast travel option, but I pointed out in another thread that it might not be worth it because you have to traverse a couple of screens before getting inside the helicopter, and the worlds are not too far away from each other anyway. To make the fast travel worth using, I suggested that it should allow the player to warp to any level that was unlocked instead of just warping to each world's rotorcraft station, but I don't know how people feel about that idea (or if there are any more suggestions).

SPRITE GFX
There was some discussion about changing Blaarg and Bullet Bill from what was used in A2MT, but nothing concrete. To my knowledge, Booblah, Panser, Angry Sun, Spike Ball, Ludwig, Lemmy, Wendy, and Trouter don't have custom graphics yet (and still use their default Mario graphics). Also still need a "No Cat Llamas" graphic.

I can insert Catabo's Bunny Bills some time later this week. The Ludwig, Lemmy, and Wendy resprites will depend on whether or not we're still going to use those boss fights in the collab. I'd say respriting everything else is low priority, especially if enemies like Boo Blahs and Pansers are only used in one or two levels. Since they don't have A2XT equivalents, we'd have to come up with new graphics from scratch, and I'm not sure anyone's motivated enough to sprite them.

IRIS
Partially implemented, but not fully. I will note the Separate Luigi Graphics patch says you can have more than just 2 characters. I wonder how easy it would be to also port Calleoca and Pily from the the advent christmas events? (jut throwing this out there, not something I'm saying we should do)

We should just focus on finishing Iris' graphics. Having a full set of Calleoca and Pily sprites in the SMW engine would be cool, but it's scope creep. And we can't just copy from the A2XT/Advent sheets, because SMBX doesn't account for all SMW poses (e.g., looking upwards, ducking when small, and cape flight). Not to put anyone on the spot, but last I heard, Koba said he would try to Frankensprite Iris' missing frames. Right now, she's just Green Demo for the most part.

CUTSCENES
No idea

I don't have any strong feelings on what the story should be, but I'm just hoping that the dialogue would be similar to ASMT's style. I liked how pithy and clever ASMT's writing was, and I would rather the script not be too fanfiction-y and juvenile like Production, or too bogged down in verbosity like the SMBX games.

[SAJewers]

Hi 'sup it's me raocow. This thread is the only thread I read about aat, and even then not really in depth or anything.

anyways, ah
are cutscenes actually needed ?

I thought this was a paired down hack.

not sure how intensely we should explain things in front of raocow so uh. spoiler tag! but--

honestly we were under the impression that the cutscenes would, at their highest possible tech, probably be akin to like, the ASMT1 cutscenes, but presumably at least a little updated for the times. and that's a VERY strong "at most", with the very real chance they'd be even more lo-fi, and the writing we'd be doing for them shifting to compensate for it.

that much to say, "we were pretty much anticipating the only cutscenes would be for the intro, POSSIBLY before the boss in bowz castle, for beating the bowz castle, and for beating the postgame". if there's other cutscenes and people are willing to work on us with them, that'd be cool! but we were genuinely under the assumption cutscenes would be fairly sparsely used since the one thing about the story that seems to be consistent with everyone is "it's going to be very excuse plot-y and threadbare, and that's kind of the joke, since the focus is on gameplay anyhow"

Yeah I assumed any sort of cutscene writing would be like ASMT, with dialogue before some levels, plus castle destruction text, etc., and not much else.

After not working on AAT for several weeks, I'd like to start contributing again within the next few days. We got a lot of work done leading up to the March 29th deadline, but activity has stagnated lately. Hopefully we can get the ball rolling again soon - I really don't want to see this collab die. Here are some of my thoughts on what SAJewers posted above, but I need to spoiler some of them now that we know rao is skimming through this thread.

FINAL CASTLE
AFAIK there's been some random discussion, but nothing fully concrete yet about anything. I know some work on a boss has been done, though.

SPECIAL
We know what we're doing, and we have the first 2 sections and the boss at the end. No one has claimed a section or done anything since the boss was inserted.

For the final castle, I think participants should just start working on their rooms without worrying about WtH aesthetics. Someone else can change the graphics and palettes afterwards. Also, these rooms should be relatively short, since they're going to appear in the context of a longer marathon level.

As for SPECIAL, I don't know if it should be a hard rule to only reference postgame content from previous collabs, because that seems too limiting. Maybe we can reference the more "iconic" levels instead? For example, I'm thinking of remixing I Need To Breathe! from ASMT, which I think is a memorable level, but it shows up in the early game. And besides, it would probably be easier to remix an easier level to be hard, than to remix an already hard level to be harder, if that makes sense.

WORLD MAP
Nao made up a level order, with what exits lead to what levels. We have a mockup of what World 1 is, and a rough idea for the Fishmarket and Forest World. Names for submaps haven't been concretely decided (outside the Fishmarket), and no one has offered to actually make the World Map.

I like the idea of gradually deforesting the forest world as levels are beaten, but I don't think we should use ASMT's forest world as a base (as was suggested previously). It would feel out of place to just lift the map directly from our predecessor like that. I think we're competent enough to create our own submap design without needing to reference things too hard all the time.

Also, we need to figure out what to do with Rachel's Rebate Rotorcraft. It offers a fast travel option, but I pointed out in another thread that it might not be worth it because you have to traverse a couple of screens before getting inside the helicopter, and the worlds are not too far away from each other anyway. To make the fast travel worth using, I suggested that it should allow the player to warp to any level that was unlocked instead of just warping to each world's rotorcraft station, but I don't know how people feel about that idea (or if there are any more suggestions).

SPRITE GFX
There was some discussion about changing Blaarg and Bullet Bill from what was used in A2MT, but nothing concrete. To my knowledge, Booblah, Panser, Angry Sun, Spike Ball, Ludwig, Lemmy, Wendy, and Trouter don't have custom graphics yet (and still use their default Mario graphics). Also still need a "No Cat Llamas" graphic.

I can insert Catabo's Bunny Bills some time later this week. The Ludwig, Lemmy, and Wendy resprites will depend on whether or not we're still going to use those boss fights in the collab. I'd say respriting everything else is low priority, especially if enemies like Boo Blahs and Pansers are only used in one or two levels. Since they don't have A2XT equivalents, we'd have to come up with new graphics from scratch, and I'm not sure anyone's motivated enough to sprite them.

The issue with SPECIAL is that no one has signed up to take a section of it, or do much of anything with it, outside of "let's make it a multiperson level" after Nao and Jolpe had to back out.

Potential Solution (idk if it's possible though): add a patch or uberASM so a certain button or combo takes you to the 105, rather than having a spot in each world. Also, I plan to update it as well.

Right now, there are levels that use Ludwig/Lemmy/Wendy, and I don't see us replacing those with custom bosses atm.

I was fully assuming anyone whoever tried to port Pily/Calleoca wouldn't be doing much else anyway.

IRIS
Partially implemented, but not fully. I will note the Separate Luigi Graphics patch says you can have more than just 2 characters. I wonder how easy it would be to also port Calleoca and Pily from the the advent christmas events? (jut throwing this out there, not something I'm saying we should do)

We should just focus on finishing Iris' graphics. Having a full set of Calleoca and Pily sprites in the SMW engine would be cool, but it's scope creep. And we can't just copy from the A2XT/Advent sheets, because SMBX doesn't account for all SMW poses (e.g., looking upwards, ducking when small, and cape flight). Not to put anyone on the spot, but last I heard, Koba said he would try to Frankensprite Iris' missing frames. Right now, she's just Green Demo for the most part.

CUTSCENES
No idea

I don't have any strong feelings on what the story should be, but I'm just hoping that the dialogue would be similar to ASMT's style. I liked how pithy and clever ASMT's writing was, and I would rather the script not be too fanfiction-y and juvenile like Production, or too bogged down in verbosity like the SMBX games.

I sensed scope creep and have been summoned accordingly. Seems it also had that effect on raocow. Hi raocow!

if i had to guess probably near impossible? it depends on whether we want to harass rix and chaox to make us new sprites

Not promising anything, but if y'all can provide a complete tilesheet for Demo's and/or Iris' graphics (assuming the tiles and/or palettes are different from how they were in A2MT) I can maybe try deriving another sibling from them after MaFAB3 is over? Either that or I'll just slap Boon's head on them to make the ultimate fusion protagonist. But probably the first thing.

For now, here's Calleoca's and Pily's sprites from A2XT2 and the Gaidens:

calleoca_a2xt_small.png
calleoca_a2xt_big.png
pily_a2xt_big.png

These weren't made with tile size limits in mind, but for what it's worth Pily's sprites were set up for a palette swap shader -- the hair/dress, eye, skin, and white stripe all have separate color ramps with zero overlap. I don't know how much of a difference that actually makes, but between that and her having a monochromatic color scheme like Demo and Iris I imagine she should be a bit easier to edit and adapt to a SMW player palette than Calle?

EDIT: I almost forgot, here's Pily's palette sheet

palettes.png

Here's Demo, with palette. Idk how palettes work with that patch as I haven't tried

[KobaBeach]

are cutscenes actually needed ?

I thought this was a paired down hack.

it's literally just "shove vwf cutscenes in it and write inane bullshit in it" it only takes like 5 mintues + what cam said

I sensed scope creep

is this truly scope creep? i felt like making a basic boss but that's only because i have autism

[KobaBeach]

also is this truly dying like. i thought people just didn't have any sort of base requirements for

the castle stage

which is fucking people over a lot before they start making like 30 second stages for that shit

the idea of this eating shit + possible scope creep going under my nose is giving me mad anxiety sorry

[Rixithechao]

I mean, for my part when I said scope creep I was just jokingly referring to the stuff about the player characters and cutscenes. The actual cutscene plans sound sensible, and even if I make new Pily/Calle graphics don’t feel obligated to use them if the addition of a third player character isn’t worth the trouble. Even if they’re not used in this project, they’ll still be available as a community resource for a future hack or other project.

[KobaBeach]

I mean, for my part when I said scope creep I was just jokingly referring to the stuff about the player characters and cutscenes. The actual cutscene plans sound sensible, and even if I make new Pily/Calle graphics don’t feel obligated to use them if the addition of a third player character isn’t worth the trouble. Even if they’re not used in this project, they’ll still be available as a community resource for a future hack or other project.

Yeah I've been mostly hands off regarding that shit and I actually said no abt Pily and Call i think, especially since maybe Pily wouldn't fit in a SMW hitbox? I don't want to throw the people who suggested them under the bus, I mean it'd also just be a costume like in JUMP half, but. I feel like the focus here should be in the levels and, cutscenes should really just be mostly a meme like in ASMT.

The hack is currently a bit inactive because most of us are busy (it's literally me just being unhinged in the general channel rn) and we're trying to figure out how to set up the theming of the final stages so people can make small 30 second rooms for fun and merriment. I feel like. We'll be fine? Maybe.

Also:

The only boss I want to make is final boss shit (x2?) and even then I don't want to go too all out with Julius tier shit and Mode 7 and all due to possible deadlines (by which i mean just a sane release date), and I kind of have some experience under my belt from coding random shit out of boredom and it's not set in stone, we can just make a wacky edited Bowser if we need it.

The postgame is give or take, we also have a Parrot Boom Boom resprited big boo with Black Plague's layout from ASMT1 as a back up and it's actually super funny and I want to actually keep that even if I or Lord Ruby wind up making a second boss (no more tho)

[KobaBeach]

Hi 'sup it's me raocow. This thread is the only thread I read about aat, and even then not really in depth or anything.

anyways, ah
are cutscenes actually needed ?

I thought this was a paired down hack.

okay someone on the discordt (sic) mentioned that it may have triggered your spidey sense because of tsrp2r having fucklong cutscenes for a game about beating up big boo repeatedly until the end of time, and i will fight tooth and nail to keep that sort of thing out. i don't care if we have small subplots, but we shouldn't have smwcp cutscenes or Deep Lore. my name is not skewer (scorpion)

also surprising no one this convo took a turn into catabo bringing up fire emblem romhack culture and me bringing up general jrpg romhack and amateur rpg maker project culture, and later i mentioned tokyo mew mew and we were talking abt anime to eachother (me and cat) i think???

"anyway yeah i feel like you can do good writing in a jrpg romhack but you need to actually be Good At Writing period first" - me, feel free 2 quote this

[SMCslevelengine]

meanwhile for colossus 2 I had some other idea regarding lore somewhat based off of what metroid prime does

deep lore, if you choose to go looking for it, and therefore won't be mandatory to sit through

[KobaBeach]

more like and aFARTher thing

meanwhile for colossus 2 I had some other idea regarding lore somewhat based off of what metroid prime does

deep lore, if you choose to go looking for it, and therefore won't be mandatory to sit through

my biggest inspos for how story should be done in smw hacks and just in non serious gamedev in general personally is like. vldc 2010's vanilla rain and tails gets trolled if you want to go fucking insane. or whatever carol managed to slot in in the later brutal mario demos where no one is in character and somehow everyone's an asshole especially mario.

or barkley gaiden if you want to sound like a fever dream, im honestly thinking abt whether having conlang in it like a lot of JRPGs and such is too obvious keeping in mind barkgai's "gun's" and "~F.A.T.E.~" and "vidcons", though i could study racing lagoon's english patch and see how mind melting that game's script is, rendered by hilltop and crew's translations at least. also vangers, which ronco is playing now, should be good too, gotta see eastern mind and chu-teng's translations.

this is to say, i like working on my humor and incomprehensibility when i can

i think people in aat have different ideas for that tho but it won't be big, i just wanna have a parallel to a_xt and asmt1's meme cutscenes but if we can't shove it in then Fuck It. it stays out

[camwoodstock]

this is to say, i like working on my humor and incomprehensibility when i can

we have mentioned this elsewhere but our specific plot we have in mind for AAT is. to an extent, also us working on humor/incomprehensibility, but it's entirely the joke that it is (to an extent) incomprehensible, since. well. we won't spoil in case raocow pokes in. ;P

[KobaBeach]

we have mentioned this elsewhere but our specific plot we have in mind for AAT is. to an extent, also us working on humor/incomprehensibility, but it's entirely the joke that it is (to an extent) incomprehensible, since. well. we won't spoil in case raocow pokes in. ;P

that's so epic and for the win sibs.

[Daizo]

What version of SA-1 is this hack using btw? I want to know if it's SA-1 v1.40 or later for

a boss I'm working on.

(spoiling for raocow's sake)

[KobaBeach]

What version of SA-1 is this hack using btw? I want to know if it's SA-1 v1.40 or later for

a boss I'm working on.

(spoiling for raocow's sake)

We used the one included in Lunar Helper's initial patches so it should be v1.40? I can ask Underway to see if they know, I'm not sure if it writes any watermark of sorts into the hex data like LM.

[Lord Ruby]

We have version 1.40, yes. The watermark is at 00:84C0-84C3, see the programming section of the documentation for more details.

[KobaBeach]

We have version 1.40, yes. The watermark is at 00:84C0-84C3, see the programming section of the documentation for more details.

fart buttoned. thank u v much rubes /honest

[KobaBeach]

Just dropping by for an update. Some of it may be a spoiler so be warned.

The final castle is being worked on. Work is slow right now, but summer was also slow for us last year so i think we'll be okay. Me, Bumpty, PSI and maybe Big Brawler and Jipples are open to making more than one stage to help fill the castle. So far 8 have been claimed and 4 are finished. We're focusing on levels only so far, as for the concept of an endboss, whether it'd be a Bowser edit like Mice or something custom is undecided.

I want the boss design to be a team decision with me overseeing it rather than being a single person's concept, so it'll take a while, beside coding. Regardless of Bowser edit or custom programming, I'll probably make most of the code. If anyone wants to help, I'll make sure to keep it well documented either way. If we do decide on something it'll be NDA, so I won't be able to comment on it to raocow, before he reaches it.

Overworld needs to be made, an order has been mostly decided by the people. We're just looking for someone to make the landmasses and such, Luckwaive has done World 1 so far. Themes are decided, if anything needs to be done it might be some porting duty, which I'm open to helping with despite my lack of skill, but other than that!

Need to finish porting Ittababy's Iris edit to SMW, I will not be using any of Willh*rt's recolors, Hoeloe was nice enough to let me borrow an A2XT2 sprite to reference Fire Flower colors, but I will have to patch it so that the yellows in Palette 8 change to purples for her eye when she's out. I'm gonna try to experiment with this later on, as well as edit some Mario/Luigi text to change to Demo/Iris. If we can do separate Death Counters it'd be nice but that's a stretch goal. We're also open to using :retrauxiris: as the AAT2/A4MT Iris rep, but only if Rixi and Chaoxys are fully available.

DJ Buckley was working on a port for the final castle too. There is another level that should probably need to be finished, me and SAJewers are gonna handle it due to the people who started it not being able to finish it (one has RL issues, the other is retiring from Mario), I can't go into detail into it. Other levels also need to be finished, they asked for extensions, finishing this ASAP isn't a huge priority, but I will use deadlines if necessary.

I'll try to clean up the to-do list in the spreadsheet soon, and try to figure out a jokey plot soon. We must make sure it's not dry and full of pointless fanfic exposition, speaking as someone who likes fanfics... Mostly queer romance stories and fangames faithful to the feel of the original franchise.

Using VWF only once in the hack was considered, but I'll go and probably poll the remaining users. I'm open to mostly using dialogue message boxes like ASMT (but not automatic ones, so you can ignore it), but I'll ask how the other members feel about it.

I also need to finish porting a song for bonus rooms (we have two kind of as a goof).

[KobaBeach]

Okay I'm gonna have to step down for at least a hot second bc.

I have to be real, a lot of this development has been kind of stressful. I don't really show it but half of the time I've been incredibly scared of this going off the rails for the smallest thing like A2MT, despite everyone assuring me that it's fine. People putting reminders to do stuff has been driving me up a wall and it's filling me with fucking dread because I keep pressuring myself to rush myself to do everything because I Consistently Feel Like I Literally Do Nothing.

Here are some actual quotes from people on that last one btw:
"You did an invaluable job setting up the baserom and everything. If you don't have the energy to keep going, which would be fine, I think the rest of us would be capable of wrapping the project up, since everything is pretty much (the equivalent of) open-source." - Lord Ruby
"I mean, I'm good at ASM and I'm sure I could do it with enough time, but setting up all the patches and uberasm and initial patch and everything sounds like a daunting task that I'm glad I didn't have to do." - Lord Ruby again
"you literally started the project it's fine. and it's almost done" - Valentine
"you did like a bunch of coordinating and shit, that's a lot of work" - Underway

Meanwhile I'm constantly like. "i guess?? i didn't code enough asm for this". Or maybe I didn't make enough levels or like helped people enough or anything.

Another factor is that I actively fear for the future of the collabs' fucking sustainability because of A2MT, A2XT2's scope bloat (it's why I went off the rails on the A2XT2 thread earlier even if I didn't attack anyone) and just. The General Vibe on YouTube comments and on fucking Discordhaus and whatnot, I wouldn't be surprised if Spotzone was the same.

I am constantly repeating myself to not die early at any point ever because my brain keeps memeing me into thinking that if I am not around, like if I leave the site or anything, someone will try to run AAT5 or whatever and turn it into A2MT 2.0. Like, guaranteed. I'm trying to keep myself aware of not going full control freak, because no one likes that. But that is a primal fear that has been plaguing me for the past few months.

I did an ASMT project development timeline, and the fact they were done in near succession like VIP1-3 were drives me fucking insane. Not out of spite towards the organizers, but out of fear about me doing the same thing. I am so set in stone that we must start any sequel like half a year or later on to properly recharge and be ready for a second go. At the very least I need it.

ASMT dev start: June 28 2009?
ASMT LP end: April 30 2010
ASMT release: May 5 2010
A2MT dev start: May 27 2010
A2MT cancellation: January 25 2014

ASMBXT dev start: October 30 2012
ASMBXT release: March 15 2013
ASMBXT LP end: May 15 2013
A2XT1 dev start: May 18 2013
A2XT1 release: August 23 2014
A2XT1 LP end: October 16 2014
A2XT2 dev start: October 16 2014
Present day. Present time: June 12 2023

I'm also expecting the constant voices of people in the YouTube comments going "wow this hack is shit. I can't believe these people made a game for reasons other than making something good???? get with it game designers" or people in the LP thread attacking the game over very minor flaws like with Jump 1/2 and such. It's actively affecting how I interact with people on Talkhaus because I just become embittered and anxious.

I had to turn off the comments when rewatching VIP2 2016 because of this, it was affecting my mental state.

I am at a wit's end with a lot of my life, I'm actively dissociating like every day. Being drained from trying to upload my bara pics onto an art site for archival purposes and then being reminded to organize something so raocow could signal boost the project was the very minor thing that just made me completely deflate.

It doesn't help that I'm also consistently harassing myself mentally over not drawing enough or drawing too slow, when I should be drawing for my own therapeutic purposes.

I Have to fucking step down for at least a hot second. I'm open to providing assistance if needed but I must let people know that I might just run out of steam completely and just zone the fuck out for like a month like replaying one of the Windows Gagharv games or something for the 20th time.

I cannot keep forcing myself to learn and enrich myself and work for others' sake all my life. This is fucking 2015 high school all over again. I don't know if I'll be able to fully lead an AAT2, but I will try to make it happen at the very least. People said I'm a very good leader but like, I just don't have the stamina, especially when I'm constantly drained from sleep disorders that have been going on for the past year, chronic anxiety, cPTSD and autism.

I'm not trying to make myself a victim, if anything, I kinda brought this upon myself but like. I don't know if I can fully lead a collab as the main showrunner. I'm sorry if I insulted the A2XT2 people or anything, I'm just a dissociative mess and I am on the brink of a meltdown. This is why I feel like I can never work an actual job or take commissions or anything.

AAT is not cancelled, but I must step back for a hot second. I am very sorry for this unprofessional post, and also for my lack of ability.

images.jpg (5.04 KiB) Viewed 8184 times

[SAJewers]

Don't worry, for the most part, what's left others have claimed and there's not much you need to do. Of the things on the Todo list assigned to you:

• The Final boss can be passed off to someone else, or we can cobble together something from smwc sprites
• The music stuff can probably be passed on to dj buckley, who's doing the final level music already
• Most of the ASM stuff can be passed off to others or don't need to be done
• The Iris/GFX stuff can be passed on to Catabo
• In terms of leadership/running the project, you already have people like me, lord ruby and psi ninja (among many others) who have stepped up, so nothing to worry about on that front.

I'm heading out in a bit; when I get back, I'll try to take stock of what's left and make a big post about it

[camwoodstock]

Don't worry, for the most part, what's left others have claimed and there's not much you need to do. Of the things on the Todo list assigned to you:

• The Final boss can be passed off to someone else, or we can cobble together something from smwc sprites
• The music stuff can probably be passed on to dj buckley, who's doing the final level music already
• Most of the ASM stuff can be passed off to others or don't need to be done
• The Iris/GFX stuff can be passed on to Catabo
• In terms of leadership/running the project, you already have people like me, lord ruby and psi ninja (among many others) who have stepped up, so nothing to worry about on that front.

I'm heading out in a bit; when I get back, I'll try to take stock of what's left and make a big post about it

also, just piping up and saying that we are LITERALLY just waiting for a call-sign from someone willing to help implement cutscenes with whatever engine we have to go "yes, we're going to have story cutscene for <x> thing" to basically go full hog on actually writing stuff, precisely BECAUSE we don't wanna commit to it until we know for a damn fact that cutscenes are 1) gonna happen and 2) which ones there'll be. until then we're just waitin' on standby, so don't worry much abt us.

[Rixithechao]

well damn.

There's a lot of apologies I feel I owe you, Koba, but even if I'm too dense to realize that reminder and follow-up from me was the last thing you needed this morning until it was too late, I've at least managed to pick up on the fact that "sorry" hasn't been helping.

Instead I'll say this: setting up and running a team project is difficult and complicated. At least from the outside looking in, you've been managing and organizing this thing much better than I have with any of the projects I've been involved in. I took a bit to figure out where some things are, but that's on me more than anything. And I meant it when I said I like the spreadsheet, it looks so clean and structured and somehow all in one sheet instead of the 5 million sheets and documents we have for a2xt2; really, just, y'all are setting an example in keeping the number of spaces and materials for the project sensible.

Contributing to a project you're organizing is a lot of work on top of that. Folks who understand that aren't going to look down on you for not pushing the limits to an unhealthy extent, for delegating things where possible and stepping away for the sake of self care.

For whatever it's worth, I'm going back to keeping out of discussions for this project unless expressly called on to share an a2xt2 graphic or something. And after a2xt2 and demo survivors I won't be serving as an organizer for any other collabs; the last thing I want is to drag any further community projects down with scope creep, keep contributing to that ambient stress surrounding sustainability and keep feeding into armchair dev attitudes in raocow's viewership. As much as I feel like I've learned from my experiences with later projects and would like to think I'd handle things differently... the safest option is still to leave calling the shots up to folks with a proven track record of scope management and contribute what I can in a supporting role.

There's more I want to say but my own all-nighter fatigue's set in. Hopefully this post isn't too much of a mess, and here's wishing you the best.

I'm gonna go sleep through the afternoon now.

[SAJewers]

Ok, since raocow is apparently making an announcement on youtube about collab stuff, here's the full status on everything I can think of right now. Since the deadline for final castle section submissions was set at August 29, I think it might be a good idea to just set that as the deadline for most of the remaining stuff?

LEVELS
Levels 007 and 12E still haven't been submitted. 104 needs to be finished, and 00D and 128 have unfinished bosses still in the works.
4season said they'd look into helping get 104 across the finish line, but some miscommunication meant they haven't started on that yet.
A few levels also need Custom No-Catnip intros, and some need updating; I'll get to those eventually.

FINAL CASTLE THINGY
I don't know how many sections we want for this, but right now we have 12 sections claimed. 5 are done and inserted, 1 needs to be inserted.
Also need to make up a HUB but I might have an idea for that if no one else steps up.

SPECIAL
Hasn't really been worked on yet, and will likely be on the backburner until after the final castle is done.
I should be able to take this on and get it done, though any help would be appreciated.

FINAL CASTLE BOSS
I'm hoping someone will take this on for Koba, otherwise we'll probably have to cobble together something out of SMWC sprites. This is probably the big thing blocking any sort of release.

OVERWORLD
Nao has already come up with an order for levels, though it does not account for 2 levels, one of which will likely go into world 1 (I haven't been able to play it since it's broken in my copy and haven't updated, but it's 1.5 difficulty), the other of which will go before Rachel's Rebate Rotocraft.
World 1's (we really need to come up with names for these) map has already been designed by Luckwaive for the most part, though it hasn't been inserted (and probably needs tweaking for the added level). Both The Fishmarket and Deforested Forest World have somewhat solid plans, though no concrete designs. Lord Ruby made a draft idea for The Urban/Mountain World, while Catabo and Scarfley made sketches for the Open/Main Overworld area. AFAIK nothing has been suggested yet for the other 3 worlds.
It'd be nice if we could get going on that again and come up more concrete plans to lessen the load on Valentine, who offered to help with the overworld work.

MUSIC
One of the Bonus game songs isn't finished yet, and I'm hoping DJ Buckley will be able to finish that up for Koba. Additionally, there's a track that needs either fixing or replacing that someone will need to look at, and we still need to finalize what music we're using for some of the overworlds. Hopefully someone can help out with this bit, so it isn't left to me.

PLOT/CUTSCENES

also, just piping up and saying that we are LITERALLY just waiting for a call-sign from someone willing to help implement cutscenes with whatever engine we have to go "yes, we're going to have story cutscene for <x> thing" to basically go full hog on actually writing stuff, precisely BECAUSE we don't wanna commit to it until we know for a damn fact that cutscenes are 1) gonna happen and 2) which ones there'll be. until then we're just waitin' on standby, so don't worry much abt us.

Sorry, I would've brought this up sooner had a minecraft kick not happened :<
I think VWF cutscene stuff are inserted? I have no idea unfortunately. But yes, they're happening. Presumably it'll be something like ASMT where there's a setup in the first level of each world and something at the end of each world, with occasional bits interspersed when needed, though I'll leave that up to you, since you're taking the lead on it.

IRIS
Iris's sprites aren't fully done, and I'm hoping Catabo might be able to help out with this, since they offered to help out with some graphic stuff.
There are a few ASM things listed in the Todo list, but those don't 100% seem necessary and are more nice-to-haves that we can probably just drop.

pinging you here to see if you can help.

GRAPHICS
Catabo made a new Bill graphic that hasn't been inserted yet. I'll get on that (now that I have push access on git).
While there are a few custom Sprites that don't have Demoverse equivalents yet, the 2 major graphics we need changing right now are Lemmy (For the Seige At Castle Wolfenstein Boss) and Ludwig (For the Spikes Do Hurt Boss). Hopefully Catabo or someone here can do something for this, so I don't have to try and cobble something together or we just have vanilla smw graphics for 2 bosses randomly.
We also need to replace Yoshi on the No-Yoshi Sign, but we can probably just take the overworld Catnip graphic for that?

ASM
Aside from the Final Boss and a few things that need inserting or fixing, I think we're good?

TITLE SCREEN
I think Catabo Claimed this? IDK the status on this; hopefully we can get a status report?

[SAJewers]

well damn.

There's a lot of apologies I feel I owe you, Koba, but even if I'm too dense to realize that reminder and follow-up from me was the last thing you needed this morning until it was too late, I've at least managed to pick up on the fact that "sorry" hasn't been helping.

Instead I'll say this: setting up and running a team project is difficult and complicated. At least from the outside looking in, you've been managing and organizing this thing much better than I have with any of the projects I've been involved in. I took a bit to figure out where some things are, but that's on me more than anything. And I meant it when I said I like the spreadsheet, it looks so clean and structured and somehow all in one sheet instead of the 5 million sheets and documents we have for a2xt2; really, just, y'all are setting an example in keeping the number of spaces and materials for the project sensible.

Contributing to a project you're organizing is a lot of work on top of that. Folks who understand that aren't going to look down on you for not pushing the limits to an unhealthy extent, for delegating things where possible and stepping away for the sake of self care.

For whatever it's worth, I'm going back to keeping out of discussions for this project unless expressly called on to share an a2xt2 graphic or something. And after a2xt2 and demo survivors I won't be serving as an organizer for any other collabs; the last thing I want is to drag any further community projects down with scope creep, keep contributing to that ambient stress surrounding sustainability and keep feeding into armchair dev attitudes in raocow's viewership. As much as I feel like I've learned from my experiences with later projects and would like to think I'd handle things differently... the safest option is still to leave calling the shots up to folks with a proven track record of scope management and contribute what I can in a supporting role.

There's more I want to say but my own all-nighter fatigue's set in. Hopefully this post isn't too much of a mess, and here's wishing you the best.

I'm gonna go sleep through the afternoon now.

I'll double-post to keep this separate from the main update/todo list, but the main reason ASMBXT went so smooth was because there were enough people around and on the same page that could be counted on to take on some of the load on every aspect of the project, and that left shaman with little need to do much other than setting a few deadlines, making some final decisions, and barking orders here and there when needed. It also helped that it was largely packaged as a collection of levels, without any worry about any sort of plot, or where levels fit, or anything like that

I feel like we've done a decent job of doing that here with AAT, though it hasn't been perfect, largely since Koba is also one of the few ASM and music people around on the project. There's definitely been a group that's been trying to do their part.

Also I mentioned this in discord, but while the A2XT1 release was August 23 2014, the levels were done (pending 1 thing) November 13, 2013 (or at least that's what I posted). Part of the reason it took so long from "levels done" to "released" was that a finished copy of the Overworld wasn't posted until April 28 2014 (then somehow we took 4 months to beta test everything?)

[KobaBeach]

okay i conked the fuck out and i feel a lot better rn

also, just piping up and saying that we are LITERALLY just waiting for a call-sign from someone willing to help implement cutscenes with whatever engine we have to go "yes, we're going to have story cutscene for <x> thing" to basically go full hog on actually writing stuff, precisely BECAUSE we don't wanna commit to it until we know for a damn fact that cutscenes are 1) gonna happen and 2) which ones there'll be. until then we're just waitin' on standby, so don't worry much abt us.

i think we just have to have someone figure out the vwf cutscene patch's python script's usage and whether it collaborates with the patches in the baserom and like addmusick.

i can do the latter no problem, despite me stepping back a bit, it's just inserting and testing out most levels with savestates, i think raocow was only worried bc he hasn't touched smw hacking in like a decade + he's not a programmer which i don't blame him programming is a nightmare (i still like it uwu)

i mostly just worry about the lore not being funny or being overly serious. this is gonna be rude but i dont want us to pull an anorakun or skewer/scorpion or tsrp2r. my cute as a button ex literally plays tsrp2 og every year over the remaster bc of no lore, and tsrp2 is one of his favorite games period.

doing message boxes like asmt1 is fine too, but i feel like we should make them optional and have them be represented with a different graphic instead of the pineapple radio speaker, also use sonikku's text box sprite so use text from other level slots. asmt having them be automatic kind of fucks with the flow, and this is also something i feel vwf shit should take into account by having start be a skip button.

however whether people want cutscenes or not is just something im spitballing and if people want it then Good, if not then Okay. i feel like we shouldn't care about the greater asmt lore and its "official bible"'s rules, though i will give props if we dont just have serac be like a deuteragonist or antagonist or whatever for like the fifth time and i'm saying this as her adoptive dad. i'm sorry lol she's become a bit overused.

it's totally fine to not have cutscenes or do what tangy suggested which is

have only one cutscene consistign of four lines in the whole game

, just do what you want, i'll try to help within my mental and physical capabilities to make this hack good but also be able to make it past the finish line in one piece. don't feel forced to make a2xt1 on super nintendo. i mostly just suggested it since a2xt was going ham on story and i was like "hey maybe we could do a funny goof out of that".

• The Final boss can be passed off to someone else, or we can cobble together something from smwc sprites
• The music stuff can probably be passed on to dj buckley, who's doing the final level music already
• Most of the ASM stuff can be passed off to others or don't need to be done
• The Iris/GFX stuff can be passed on to Catabo
• In terms of leadership/running the project, you already have people like me, lord ruby and psi ninja (among many others) who have stepped up, so nothing to worry about on that front.

I'm heading out in a bit; when I get back, I'll try to take stock of what's left and make a big post about it

The final boss is still up in the air, I want people to like help collaborate in planning it and me and whoever wants to help can try to code it or we go to the back up plan which is

shitpost bowser boss or whatever

, either is fine and the latter is even pretty funny. I haven't finished any boss yet but I do know the basics, so I'd like to at least help a bit in that aspect if we decide to go ham, but no Julius bullshit.

I don't know much about Mode 7 chicanery, despite Julius focusing entirely on bitmap rotation, so I'd have to take a few weeks to get adjusted with it (I think the values for a smooth rotation are in the vanilla rom due to bowser). Tanasinn level Layer 1 stuff I'd have to debug with the fixed VIP5 rom and study that.

But what we have to keep into account if we do go the custom route is that we need to make it like fun to fight and not like overly carol-y. If it feels like a Rareware boss (not Grunty, I must specify this despite not being the most impressed by her) then Put It Back, I feel. I don't want to just do the King of England And Queen Elizabeth's Brother-Husband from ASsMutT again but it did have a solid idea despite being relatively simple (though I still need to figure out how it did that camera lock on just for the sake of it).

I trust Lord Ruby and PSI with ASM stuff, but if they need help I'm right here, I can try to code for them during an off day or if they want me to debug someone else's hack to figure out how something works to replicate it in AAT. I'm not gonna be able to do it every day, but I want to be able to be as helpful as my tiny autist brain can do. As for Iris, I have the A2XT2 fire Iris sprites that I need to pass onto Catabo for the purposes of using that as a reference for the palette as the vomit diarrhea yellow one was by W*llhart and also it's just fucking ugly.

Making up the graphic edit without the 32x32 patch is super annoying but not impossible. I can also try to forward the MM102 graphic test room, despite not really using it at all oopsie. We shouldn't worry about Iris' canon height either, like. I think people porting All Stars Loogy are able to make him a smidge taller, but what matters is that Iris' graphic is faithful to her design. As for her purple eye, we will probably have to patch the Mario/Luigi palette upload routine to fix the Cape colors and shit to turn purple.

Also Val told me that L/R Mario Loogy costume swap patch is a fun patch and its no problem, so if you really wanna insert it then fine, but make sure it works with everything, I mostly just worry about possible under the hood complications and bloat, especially since we're already on 6MB and that has resulted in some issues so far.

I don't feel like we should code in Pily and Calleoca though, at least not for this project, Pily would need a drastic redraw to fit the Mario hitbox and still be chonky due to her SANICS 2 animation, unless we go for the 32x32 patch and I think Cally too since she's a shortie little 10 year old. Maybe give her a hat for the Mushroom powerup, like I saw in a SMWC thread earlier this morning or some cat on her head or smth, making the hitbox visible is very important.

As for music, I'm willing to help if Buckley finds it hard to get adjusted to MML syntax, I forget if he got used to it already or not, he mostly used FL Studio as a composition tool, which is a pretty good way to go. And I actively trust you all to lead this project, but I'm gonna be in the background to help steer this properly. We shouldn't worry about fitting traditional ASMT rules. If there's a bit of Mario due to being unable to make a graphic for it, it's fine, VIP certainly kept the Koopalings, even when they weren't in Mode 7, they just changed Bowser to Daddy Cool.

Mario is like MIA or dead or whatever in ASMT canon but like. We don't need to worry about ASMT canon in AAT. This is a project to help people have fun in a SMW format, like how there's SMBX format projects like SDS2 and such. Fun is what matters, pushing the games forward is secondary. The "Supplement" subtitle is meant to showcase this, while still technically being A3MT.

Okay Rixi post go

well damn.

There's a lot of apologies I feel I owe you, Koba, but even if I'm too dense to realize that reminder and follow-up from me was the last thing you needed this morning until it was too late, I've at least managed to pick up on the fact that "sorry" hasn't been helping.

It's fine it's actually not 100% your fault. I must stress that the thing is just that I'm overly demanding on myself due to gifted child culture, my father has calmed down on that for a long time now, but like it was a huge stressor for me that it hasn't fully healed in the slightest. I actively still worry about providing enough gay art and other shit for people online out of an act of goodwill when it's really not necessary.

Instead I'll say this: setting up and running a team project is difficult and complicated. At least from the outside looking in, you've been managing and organizing this thing much better than I have with any of the projects I've been involved in. I took a bit to figure out where some things are, but that's on me more than anything. And I meant it when I said I like the spreadsheet, it looks so clean and structured and somehow all in one sheet instead of the 5 million sheets and documents we have for a2xt2; really, just, y'all are setting an example in keeping the number of spaces and materials for the project sensible.

I think the spreadsheet was mostly Nao or SAJ, I only recently figured out the very very basics of fucking Excel and Google Sheets which lmao

I'm glad we're doing good, though. I consume shit like Matt McMuscles' Wha Happun videos and gaming history videos and such daily (you know how people like watch youtube videos while eating) and I kind of absorbed what development hell red flags mean for the most part, reading A2MT's subforum helped. I also took a lot of inspo from VIP and JUMP and such which mostly used like a series of general threads on a 2ch board, or a Discord server, respectively and a website to keep claims organized, a wiki table for VIP and a Google Sheets page for JUMP, maybe SMWC or Talkhaus too on JUMP's case. I mostly just worry about holding back potential.

I still wanna do a riff on the "message to newcomers of the a2mt project" thread for aat2 because that shit is just comical, sorry rao.

Contributing to a project you're organizing is a lot of work on top of that. Folks who understand that aren't going to look down on you for not pushing the limits to an unhealthy extent, for delegating things where possible and stepping away for the sake of self care.

Yeah it's pretty funny, I just kept pushing myself super hard bc I'm a chronic overworker. Meanwhile everyone was like "yo you don't have to work this hard" and it's like . I kinda brought this upon myself, but it's also mostly just untreated mental illnesses. And I feel that something most of us can relate to.

Part of the reason I take so long working on bara and such is that I'm anal about being on model (unless it can make a dude hotter to be off model) and well detailed. I draw a lot of size difference pics so I am the dude who goes all out on building detail for city shots because I'm twisted, sorry for TMI.

For whatever it's worth, I'm going back to keeping out of discussions for this project unless expressly called on to share an a2xt2 graphic or something. And after a2xt2 and demo survivors I won't be serving as an organizer for any other collabs; the last thing I want is to drag any further community projects down with scope creep, keep contributing to that ambient stress surrounding sustainability and keep feeding into armchair dev attitudes in raocow's viewership. As much as I feel like I've learned from my experiences with later projects and would like to think I'd handle things differently... the safest option is still to leave calling the shots up to folks with a proven track record of scope management and contribute what I can in a supporting role.

Sibling (-hulk hogan), I don't think raocow's viewership being entitled is your fault, I Distinctly remember you trying to combat that like some threads ago. I'd like to be able to combat scope creep in A2XT3 or A3XT or whatever but I'm also very scared of it being ignored, and I just feel bad that my brain feels that way about you when it really shouldn't.

You shouldn't feel really bad about ambient stress or shit either, like. I think you just need a second set of hands keeping track of what is too much for SMBX or Godot or whatever you want to make ASMT on (can I even mention Godot??), while also not stifling the projects too much. Personally I'm not the biggest fan of us just going full indie, but I feel like if we can have a decently sized art team working and a good starter kit (like an RTP on RPG Maker) we can make it happen.

The ambient stress thing is mostly me. Other than that I think people are just really nervous about contributing to A2XT due to high standards seeming unsurmountable, I'd suggest A2XT3 toning them down a bit, even if you want to make it story focused and less "copyright infringing". I just belched btw. At the end of the day this is meant to be a Mario clone aimed at people who want to have fun making the bing bing wahoos, that should be the main focus and lore and such should be secondary, but I understand if you want to make raocow or the rest of the team's visions come to life, plotwise.

There's more I want to say but my own all-nighter fatigue's set in. Hopefully this post isn't too much of a mess, and here's wishing you the best.

I'm gonna go sleep through the afternoon now.

digimon world boy: *digimon world voice* oyasumi
palmon: *horrible growling noises, falls asleep*

I feel like we've done a decent job of doing that here with AAT, though it hasn't been perfect, largely since Koba is also one of the few ASM and music people around on the project. There's definitely been a group that's been trying to do their part.

The reason for this is that I spent like part of the 2010s trying to learn ASM bc ~le carols~ and le custom bosses and around 2020 before I got banned for being fucking deranged I literally was like "yo why don't I try to figure out how to rip my own graphics and make my own music so I can be fully self-sufficient and be even better at hacking" and the funny thing is that I don't think 99% of SMW hackers do that. I don't think even carol did that outside of like some graphics in later demos like the Twinbee ExGFX. I think some people were impressed at me for aiming that high which lmao.

I even thought about making my own original graphics too bc fuck it + I'm friends with a freelance pixel artist who could help guide me if I got stuck purely because we both love bara and Leomon and whatnot. I must stress that no one really does this all at the same time but again, I'm a chronic overworker. Hell, Toby Goddamn Fox sucks absolute ass at graphics and programming (he may have improved on the latter in Chapter 2), his forte is writing and music. Even ZUN's forte is music, if you're really experienced with danmaku shmups, the bullet patterns can be kind of hit or miss and the programming and game design is a bit jank, no offense to him ofc.

I'm literally considering practicing 3D sculpting for both lewd and non lewd purposes and its all the fault of Daz 3D and SFM bara artists and the very rare few people who make actually good MMD animations.

I would like to learn how to make original music too, learn music theory and the bits and boops. But I'm anxious about this one friend of YK's going completely fucking apeshit at me like he does with anything Toby Fox because of childhood trauma from a high-class family focused on success making him see anyone skilled at anything as rivals, and one of his hobbies is making music using a slightly old-ish midi program. He's really fucking good at it despite not really knowing how to play an instrument. I don't hate him, far from it, but holy shit, he makes my stress levels go high.




Mario

[Lord Ruby]

Ok, since raocow is apparently making an announcement on youtube about collab stuff, here's the full status on everything I can think of right now. Since the deadline for final castle section submissions was set at August 29, I think it might be a good idea to just set that as the deadline for most of the remaining stuff?

LEVELS
Levels 007 and 12E still haven't been submitted. 104 needs to be finished, and 00D and 128 have unfinished bosses still in the works.
4season said they'd look into helping get 104 across the finish line, but some miscommunication meant they haven't started on that yet.
A few levels also need Custom No-Catnip intros, and some need updating; I'll get to those eventually.

FINAL CASTLE THINGY
I don't know how many sections we want for this, but right now we have 12 sections claimed. 5 are done and inserted, 1 needs to be inserted.
Also need to make up a HUB but I might have an idea for that if no one else steps up.

SPECIAL
Hasn't really been worked on yet, and will likely be on the backburner until after the final castle is done.
I should be able to take this on and get it done, though any help would be appreciated.

FINAL CASTLE BOSS
I'm hoping someone will take this on for Koba, otherwise we'll probably have to cobble together something out of SMWC sprites. This is probably the big thing blocking any sort of release.

OVERWORLD
Nao has already come up with an order for levels, though it does not account for 2 levels, one of which will likely go into world 1 (I haven't been able to play it since it's broken in my copy and haven't updated, but it's 1.5 difficulty), the other of which will go before Rachel's Rebate Rotocraft.
World 1's (we really need to come up with names for these) map has already been designed by Luckwaive for the most part, though it hasn't been inserted (and probably needs tweaking for the added level). Both The Fishmarket and Deforested Forest World have somewhat solid plans, though no concrete designs. Lord Ruby made a draft idea for The Urban/Mountain World, while Catabo and Scarfley made sketches for the Open/Main Overworld area. AFAIK nothing has been suggested yet for the other 3 worlds.
It'd be nice if we could get going on that again and come up more concrete plans to lessen the load on Valentine, who offered to help with the overworld work.

MUSIC
One of the Bonus game songs isn't finished yet, and I'm hoping DJ Buckley will be able to finish that up for Koba. Additionally, there's a track that needs either fixing or replacing that someone will need to look at, and we still need to finalize what music we're using for some of the overworlds. Hopefully someone can help out with this bit, so it isn't left to me.

PLOT/CUTSCENES

also, just piping up and saying that we are LITERALLY just waiting for a call-sign from someone willing to help implement cutscenes with whatever engine we have to go "yes, we're going to have story cutscene for <x> thing" to basically go full hog on actually writing stuff, precisely BECAUSE we don't wanna commit to it until we know for a damn fact that cutscenes are 1) gonna happen and 2) which ones there'll be. until then we're just waitin' on standby, so don't worry much abt us.

Sorry, I would've brought this up sooner had a minecraft kick not happened :<
I think VWF cutscene stuff are inserted? I have no idea unfortunately. But yes, they're happening. Presumably it'll be something like ASMT where there's a setup in the first level of each world and something at the end of each world, with occasional bits interspersed when needed, though I'll leave that up to you, since you're taking the lead on it.

IRIS
Iris's sprites aren't fully done, and I'm hoping Catabo might be able to help out with this, since they offered to help out with some graphic stuff.
There are a few ASM things listed in the Todo list, but those don't 100% seem necessary and are more nice-to-haves that we can probably just drop.

pinging you here to see if you can help.

GRAPHICS
Catabo made a new Bill graphic that hasn't been inserted yet. I'll get on that (now that I have push access on git).
While there are a few custom Sprites that don't have Demoverse equivalents yet, the 2 major graphics we need changing right now are Lemmy (For the Seige At Castle Wolfenstein Boss) and Ludwig (For the Spikes Do Hurt Boss). Hopefully Catabo or someone here can do something for this, so I don't have to try and cobble something together or we just have vanilla smw graphics for 2 bosses randomly.
We also need to replace Yoshi on the No-Yoshi Sign, but we can probably just take the overworld Catnip graphic for that?

ASM
Aside from the Final Boss and a few things that need inserting or fixing, I think we're good?

TITLE SCREEN
I think Catabo Claimed this? IDK the status on this; hopefully we can get a status report?

Special:

There's a part of me that is very, very tempted to write ASM for a USS Suboptimal reference, if we go for the long version, but that's last on my long list of priorities.

Final Castle Boss:
I'm still up for programming my second boss idea, which is much less ambitious than the first boss idea I had for an earlier version of 008. Unlike Koba's democratic boss approach, I'd do it mostly on my own though.

Overworld:
My world sketch is fairly outdated by now, but I suppose it could be an aesthetic idea for whoever's making the overworld though. But, knowing Valentine ... I feel she'll be doing her own thing.

Music and Iris:
I feel like these two are kind of approaching scope creep territory. I think we can just go with one bonus room theme, there's no need to go fancy here. If it's done before everything else is done, yay, if not, I don't think it's worth delaying over. A similar thing applies to Iris, where I think we really should consider a palette swap as a fallback. As for music in general, I think it would be very nice if we'd have a couple of original tracks, but that is completely beyond my power.

Plot:

To be perfectly honest, I think the whole "there's plot going on but Demo doesn't care" trope is overdone by this point. I wouldn't mind having essentially no plot other than the mysterious opening sequence, like, not even a cutscene before the final boss. It's fine if there's "just a video game happening", like in the jumps. That's my big thought, but, uh, do whatever.

There's also a bit of stuff left to do with regards to the

postgame

.

The idea of scattering clues all over the game has grown on me more and more over time, so I'm actually really motivated to take a shot at coming up with some kind of La-Mulana-esque sequence of puzzles for the first rest area, but I know PSI Ninja is also interested in setting it up.

[KobaBeach]

Special:

There's a part of me that is very, very tempted to write ASM for a USS Suboptimal reference, if we go for the long version, but that's last on my long list of priorities.

This would be so fuckign funny, if you can't do it though there's zero issue.

Music and Iris:
I feel like these two are kind of approaching scope creep territory. I think we can just go with one bonus room theme, there's no need to go fancy here. If it's done before everything else is done, yay, if not, I don't think it's worth delaying over. A similar thing applies to Iris, where I think we really should consider a palette swap as a fallback. As for music in general, I think it would be very nice if we'd have a couple of original tracks, but that is completely beyond my power.

fuxck is it scope creep? I'm down with us just using Go Red Team since that one is finished (literally SPC2MML). but wrt original tracks, i mostly just worry about some of the unused audio material from a2mt being properly used if it fits the stage bc that's good muzak. buckley is making original tracks for the end game, though i think they also considered, just,

making a kumikyoku remix

at one point.

as for iris i can see how that's scope creep, i just thought it'd be okay bc my method for it is literally just image editing on paint.net and then copypasting and properly coloring it on yychr, which is just how i rip shit now. i don't really do well with snesgfx, it tries to turn every image into using only one palette due to how its coded.

Plot:

To be perfectly honest, I think the whole "there's plot going on but Demo doesn't care" trope is overdone by this point. I wouldn't mind having essentially no plot other than the mysterious opening sequence, like, not even a cutscene before the final boss. It's fine if there's "just a video game happening", like in the jumps. That's my big thought, but, uh, do whatever.

I must add I'm on board with this too. I don't want to force plot onto people

Final Castle Boss:
I'm still up for programming my second boss idea, which is much less ambitious than the first boss idea I had for an earlier version of 008. Unlike Koba's democratic boss approach, I'd do it mostly on my own though.

i hope i can see it develop if it gets off the ground bc im a boss whore despite 90% of smw ones being shit and i really wanna see what you can do