Level testing and discussion

[SMCslevelengine]

As for the collected Dragon Coin outlines, for some reason, their Map16 outline tiles had been blanked out. I'm planning to add them back in for clarity. However, this would cause glitched graphics in any level that put something other than GFX17 in FG2. Specifically, the outlines are glitched in levels 15, 20, 74, 75, B2, FB, 108, 114, 118, 134, 1CB, 1F7, and 1FD. We may either need to globally remap the outlines to different tiles, or do some surgery on the affected levels (if they have Dragon Coins).

so that explains the black tiles I got after grabbing one of the parrot coins after putting that new background in:



as for the blanked out tiles, that was me that did that about 7 minutes later

and also a quick side note, are there really 4 open levels left?

[SAJewers]

Technically 6, but one needs to be reserved for the final castle.

[PSI Ninja]

Pushed another base ROM update. The Dragon Coin SRAM bug was fixed as mentioned, and I added the Dragon Coin outlines back in. Be aware that glitched graphics relating to the Dragon Coins may now appear. I also enabled infinite lives for the levels that have quick retry. Fortunately, the Retry System doesn't cause any problems with Dragon Coin progress.

As for the collected Dragon Coin outlines, for some reason, their Map16 outline tiles had been blanked out. I'm planning to add them back in for clarity. However, this would cause glitched graphics in any level that put something other than GFX17 in FG2. Specifically, the outlines are glitched in levels 15, 20, 74, 75, B2, FB, 108, 114, 118, 134, 1CB, 1F7, and 1FD. We may either need to globally remap the outlines to different tiles, or do some surgery on the affected levels (if they have Dragon Coins).

I see. If you want to, I can try to find a fix for this myself.

On an unrelated note: If you die after the level music speeds up (timer < 100), then the death music also has the faster tempo, affecting the tempos of all subsequent music. I tried giving tempo immunity to the new death music (md.txt), but it only causes the death music to be silent. No clue what's going on with that.

I'll try to fix this myself too, if you want it.

It's all yours. Iris' death music would probably need the tempo fix, too.

Speaking of Iris, I quickly tested if anything was broken in 2 Player Mode, and I noticed the following things:

• Demo and Iris share the same demo counter.
• Demo and Iris share the same "Dragon Coins collected" progress.
• Mario and Luigi's names still appear on the life swap menu.
• If Iris dies from exiting a retry prompt, then Demo's death music plays instead of Iris'.

I think the first two are intentional. I don't know how to fix the last issue. Also, I tried adding the three-digit lives counter patch, but it crashes the game upon entering the life swap menu. Seems to work fine otherwise.

and also a quick side note, are there really 4 open levels left?

Technically 6, but one needs to be reserved for the final castle.

To add to that, there are ~20 levels that are being worked on, but I suspect that not all of them will be finished. As far as I know, some of these are going to end up being "Rest Areas" that offer powerups and/or some kind of silly life farm, with probably one per world.

[KobaBeach]

As for the collected Dragon Coin outlines, for some reason, their Map16 outline tiles had been blanked out. I'm planning to add them back in for clarity. However, this would cause glitched graphics in any level that put something other than GFX17 in FG2. Specifically, the outlines are glitched in levels 15, 20, 74, 75, B2, FB, 108, 114, 118, 134, 1CB, 1F7, and 1FD. We may either need to globally remap the outlines to different tiles, or do some surgery on the affected levels (if they have Dragon Coins).

I see. If you want to, I can try to find a fix for this myself.

On an unrelated note: If you die after the level music speeds up (timer < 100), then the death music also has the faster tempo, affecting the tempos of all subsequent music. I tried giving tempo immunity to the new death music (md.txt), but it only causes the death music to be silent. No clue what's going on with that.

I'll try to fix this myself too, if you want it.

It's all yours. Iris' death music would probably need the tempo fix, too.

Wanted to study some ASM and art again today, but I'll try to make time to debug this. I'll have it in a separate folder to mirror onto Github before pushing it to the main repo, so I can alter levels more easily without worrying about it overwriting ship with your commits.

Speaking of Iris, I quickly tested if anything was broken in 2 Player Mode, and I noticed the following things:

• Demo and Iris share the same demo counter.
• Demo and Iris share the same "Dragon Coins collected" progress.
• Mario and Luigi's names still appear on the life swap menu.
• If Iris dies from exiting a retry prompt, then Demo's death music plays instead of Iris'.

I think the first two are intentional. I don't know how to fix the last issue. Also, I tried adding the three-digit lives counter patch, but it crashes the game upon entering the life swap menu. Seems to work fine otherwise.

The Retry music might be hardcoded, or a jump that doesn't take the edit into account. I'll try to fix this in a jiffy too. I can try to edit the life swap menu too with some hex editing.

I might actually keep the demo counter as the same for both, but if I can finagle a way to add an extra freeram or two to ycz's patch, then... The Dragon Coins may be vanilla SMW behavior, need to research SMW's internals.

The three-digit lives counter, I'll try to see what is clashing with the game, but I might have to debug actual Mario World code for that? So it should take a smidge longer. I'll study how the patch's code works internally in my Sandbox folder and rom first off.

[PSI Ninja]

New base ROM update. Various graphics and UberASM fixes were applied to a bunch of levels. Two new levels were also added: (1) another rest area, and (2) a level that had been finished for nearly a year that we somehow forgot to insert until now.

@SAJewers: I'm not sure what's the latest version of ExGFX131. One of them has an apple replacing the Tofu Block (without a key), while the other has the Tofu Block instead of the apple (but with a key). I chose the latter, but merged the apple replacement from the former.

@Koba: In your March 5th base ROM update, what changes did you make to the intro level, specifically? I think the fog effect should be modified eventually, because right now the transition to the solid white color is too abrupt.

There's still a problem with the level music being restored whenever Star Power runs out. Seems like it only happens in levels that use custom music, though. In the two levels that I know have leeks (122 and 123), the music doesn't come back (and may sometimes crash the game).

Also, the beet colors are incorrect in a lot of levels. They're supposed to have green leaves, not black leaves. Tomorrow, I'm going to attempt to go through every single level and fix the palettes. We also need to double-check which levels have Dragon Coins. Not all of them were accounted for on the spreadsheet, and I discovered a bunch of them today that needed to have the overworld icon.

[SAJewers]

@SAJewers: I'm not sure what's the latest version of ExGFX131. One of them has an apple replacing the Tofu Block (without a key), while the other has the Tofu Block instead of the apple (but with a key). I chose the latter, but merged the apple replacement from the former.

It should have the WtH apple replacing the Tofu Block, the WtH Key/Keyhole, and a Bridge piece replacing the berry.

[SAJewers]

OK, this hasn't been inserted yet, but I got this working, and went and made custom level intros for all Castles, Ghost Houses, Switch Palaces, and levels which don't support Cat Llamas. This fixes the issue of raocoin outlines overwriting tiles that are part of large bushes used in the vanilla intros (since we can easily use ExGFX or not have bushes), plus it makes things a bit cleaner (especially since we can use custom music in them). I haven't done much testing, so if someone could go through and make sure I didn't break anything, that'd be great.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... rotest.bps

For anyone curious, this wasn't hard, just a repetitive, multi-step process:

• Take your level, and copy it to an empty sublevel (for example, level 103 was copied to sublevel 16A)
• Delete everything in the previous level
• In Super GFX Bypass, set SP4 to F. You probably also want to set FG2 to F1 as well if you want some of the custom graphics I used for things like door frames
• In Change GFX in Header, set FG/BG GFX to Castle 1 for the Castle intro, or Rope 1 for the No-Yoshi Sign intro. anything else will give you the Ghost House Intro
• In Modify Screen Exits, set the level destinations for screens 0 and 1 to the sublevel you copied your level over to
• In Modify Main and Midway Entrance, set Demo's position to an X of 3, and either a Y of 16 (for the No-Yoshi Sign intro) or Y of 17 (for the Castle and Ghost House intros). Then set the Set the FG Initial Position to either C0 or relative to player at -B0. Finally, Redirect Midway Enterace to other level and set it to your new sublevel
• In Change Properties in Header, Disable Vertical and Horizontal Scrolling
• In Change Other Properties, disable the vanilla No-Yoshi intro
• If the level has a timer, add 9 seconds to it to account for the intro (I could set the time to 0 then force a timer reset in the sublevel, but some levels have multiple entrances in the level, and that would require using more sublevels, which would add more work)
• Design the single screen. If the Castle or Ghost House intros are used, then blocks to the right/above need priority on

[Lord Ruby]

OK, this hasn't been inserted yet, but I got this working, and went and made custom level intros for all Castles, Ghost Houses, Switch Palaces, and levels which don't support Cat Llamas. This fixes the issue of raocoin outlines overwriting tiles that are part of large bushes used in the vanilla intros (since we can easily use ExGFX or not have bushes), plus it makes things a bit cleaner (especially since we can use custom music in them). I haven't done much testing, so if someone could go through and make sure I didn't break anything, that'd be great.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... rotest.bps

For anyone curious, this wasn't hard, just a repetitive, multi-step process:

• Take your level, and copy it to an empty sublevel (for example, level 103 was copied to sublevel 16A)
• Delete everything in the previous level
• In Super GFX Bypass, set SP4 to F. You probably also want to set FG2 to F1 as well if you want some of the custom graphics I used for things like door frames
• In Change GFX in Header, set FG/BG GFX to Castle 1 for the Castle intro, or Rope 1 for the No-Yoshi Sign intro. anything else will give you the Ghost House Intro
• In Modify Screen Exits, set the level destinations for screens 0 and 1 to the sublevel you copied your level over to
• In Modify Main and Midway Entrance, set Demo's position to an X of 3, and either a Y of 16 (for the No-Yoshi Sign intro) or Y of 17 (for the Castle and Ghost House intros). Then set the Set the FG Initial Position to either C0 or relative to player at -B0. Finally, Redirect Midway Enterace to other level and set it to your new sublevel
• In Change Properties in Header, Disable Vertical and Horizontal Scrolling
• In Change Other Properties, disable the vanilla No-Yoshi intro
• If the level has a timer, add 9 seconds to it to account for the intro (I could set the time to 0 then force a timer reset in the sublevel, but some levels have multiple entrances in the level, and that would require using more sublevels, which would add more work)

Looks like you should also need to remap all the old screen exits that lead to the original main level, since it's moved to a sublevel. If you don't, they should lead to the level intro.

[SAJewers]

Yeah, I've done that for all the levels i've seen that use it, though I probably missed a few. Thankfully, the Save Level to ROM as... option auto-fixed secondary exits.

Also, I'm now wondering if there's some uberasm to pause the timer in the intro screen that can be used rather than adding 9 seconds, which would be even cleaner

[SAJewers]

OK, after an afternoon of research and digging, I found an uberasm solution to freeze the timer. Test this new version plz

EDIT: GDI I made a mistake try again https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/ ... rotest.bps

turns out the timer can't decrement if $0F30|!addr never hits 0

[Big Brawler]

Level 10D done, Here's the showcase and resources

[PSI Ninja]

Updated the base ROM again. Iris is now green on the overworld, and two new levels were added. We now have a complete set of Switch Palaces.

Apparently switch palace levels don't get enough love so I wanted to make another contribution with a red switch palace. This one is very short (60 SMW seconds) but quite intense and hard (one-hit is failure). Feel free to tell if some parts of the level need to be nerfed. You can access to the level directly to the right of the multicolor switch palace.

Greenhouse Gambling

Level 10D done, Here's the showcase and resources

If you want proper corner tiles for your Switch Palaces, we can easily fix that. Also, the Red and Green Switch Palaces could use custom messages after hitting the switch. Right now, they're using the default SMW text. These were suggested by Lord Ruby in the Discord today:



Let us know what you think, or if you have ideas of your own.

[Big Brawler]

If you want proper corner tiles for your Switch Palaces, we can easily fix that.

It could be a good thing because the invisible block has a bigger collision and can mess jumps, this said, I still have some issues with my own level lol


Second picture is just the green outline plants that still have them for some reason
Last picture is supposed to have the message block but doesn't show, which is strange because last night it was there

[PSI Ninja]

It could be a good thing because the invisible block has a bigger collision and can mess jumps, this said, I still have some issues with my own level lol

Will fix all of that shortly. While I'm at it, would you like the Expanded Switch Palace graphics to replace the "O" Bonus Game blocks for consistency, or do you prefer it be kept as a stylistic thing? Same question for Nitrogen and Scarfley.

I'm also going to make it so you can reenter the Switch Palaces, and add "Anti-Switches" in case the player wants to disable the red/yellow/green/blue switch blocks. To avoid having to replay the entire level again, I'm considering making shortcut pipes that take you directly to the switch.

[Lord Ruby]

I think it would be more convenient to have the anti-switches and re-switches in a rest area, maybe in the Star World if we'll have one? Programmatically, we could enable the switches by looking at cleared levels/exits flags for the switch levels, and have the switches affect the switch status itself.

[Big Brawler]

It could be a good thing because the invisible block has a bigger collision and can mess jumps, this said, I still have some issues with my own level lol

Will fix all of that shortly. While I'm at it, would you like the Expanded Switch Palace graphics to replace the "O" Bonus Game blocks for consistency, or do you prefer it be kept as a stylistic thing? Same question for Nitrogen and Scarfley.

Maybe only the down right corner, to erase the invisible block sprite, the O blocks are kinda stylistic so I wanna keep'em, but if it can't be done, just use the extended tileset

[PSI Ninja]

Finally finished adding all of SAJewers' custom No-Yoshi intros (click here for details). It took a few days, because I needed to play through all of the affected levels to make sure nothing was broken. Indeed, there were a few issues here and there, but I was able to sort everything out.

The workaround for the in-level Yoshi in the Red Switch Palace (Level 1B6) is clever, but the required act of dropping him into the pit will also erase your stored Yoshi on the overworld (which is vanilla SMW behavior). I had to employ the same workaround for Level 112, because it contains in-level "disposable" Yoshis that are necessary for platforming. And I can't have the No-Yoshi filter for Level 121, because otherwise it would break the level (first noted here). If I can figure out how to make the cutscene play without losing Yoshi in the next sublevel, then we won't have to get rid of that nice intro screen.

Additionally, I found a couple of bugs/conflicts involving the Retry System. If the retry menu comes up and you select "Retry", it will erase your stored Yoshi when you return to the overworld. This will also force the timer to be 200. These problems are apparent in Levels 6 and 122 ("Thwompire State Building" and "Life Goes On"), and I don't know how to fix them yet.

Another thing that concerns me are the levels that hard-filter your powerups with ASM or disable L/R without any warning. Now, should we also have No-Powerup and No-L/R signs for these levels like in JUMP and JUMP½, or would it be too much of a pain and we just let it be?

Having played through dozens of levels these past few days, I've noticed a bunch of level design issues. These will be addressed in a future post.

[KobaBeach]

Additionally, I found a couple of bugs/conflicts involving the Retry System. If the retry menu comes up and you select "Retry", it will erase your stored Yoshi when you return to the overworld. This will also force the timer to be 200. These problems are apparent in Levels 6 and 122 ("Thwompire State Building" and "Life Goes On"), and I don't know how to fix them yet.

I'll try to look into this tomorrow before or after I dig into ASPE Mario with a debugger and hex editor to dig out a block for Big Brawler, the sand from GariGari-kun.

Another thing that concerns me are the levels that hard-filter your powerups with ASM or disable L/R without any warning. Now, should we also have No-Powerup and No-L/R signs for these levels like in JUMP and JUMP½, or would it be too much of a pain and we just let it be?

Could always add it to the No Yoshi intros! Should be fine right?

Having played through dozens of levels these past few days, I've noticed a bunch of level design issues. These will be addressed in a future post.

YelseyKing will be glad to hear that

Let me know if you need to edit mine in any way, they feel very sloppy. If I'm able to take the time to work on my level design skills, I'll try to make better ones if we do a follow up.

I'm trying to get a better handle on mixing and matching custom tilesets through editing and ripping/re-ripping in Paint.net then recoloring on YYCHR (gotta figure out toning down color amounts though, for 32-bit PSX/SAT/GBA/DS stuff), so I'll be able to make more colorful looking levels.

Better aesthetics usually help me have more confidence on my levels. ^^

[Daizo]

did you say you wanted my levellllll?

The Crash at Craigdarroch Castle v0.1

[SAJewers]

The workaround for the in-level Yoshi in the Red Switch Palace (Level 1B6) is clever, but the required act of dropping him into the pit will also erase your stored Yoshi on the overworld (which is vanilla SMW behavior). I had to employ the same workaround for Level 112, because it contains in-level "disposable" Yoshis that are necessary for platforming. And I can't have the No-Yoshi filter for Level 121, because otherwise it would break the level (first noted here). If I can figure out how to make the cutscene play without losing Yoshi in the next sublevel, then we won't have to get rid of that nice intro screen.

Another thing that concerns me are the levels that hard-filter your powerups with ASM or disable L/R without any warning. Now, should we also have No-Powerup and No-L/R signs for these levels like in JUMP and JUMP½, or would it be too much of a pain and we just let it be?

Possible Jank solution: edit the intros for those levels so the cat llama appears to die, and combine it with this line of uberasmedit: posted a solution in discord

do agree on the no-powerup signs as well

[Lord Ruby]

Additionally, I found a couple of bugs/conflicts involving the Retry System. If the retry menu comes up and you select "Retry", it will erase your stored Yoshi when you return to the overworld. This will also force the timer to be 200. These problems are apparent in Levels 6 and 122 ("Thwompire State Building" and "Life Goes On"), and I don't know how to fix them yet.

I don't have the time to thoroughly test changes to the retry system, but the former seems to be handled in uberasm/retry_config/code/in_level.asm on lines 369 to 371, and the latter on lines 424 to 426.

[SAJewers]

Additionally, I found a couple of bugs/conflicts involving the Retry System. If the retry menu comes up and you select "Retry", it will erase your stored Yoshi when you return to the overworld. This will also force the timer to be 200. These problems are apparent in Levels 6 and 122 ("Thwompire State Building" and "Life Goes On"), and I don't know how to fix them yet.

I don't have the time to thoroughly test changes to the retry system, but the former seems to be handled in uberasm/retry_config/code/in_level.asm on lines 369 to 371, and the latter on lines 424 to 426.

yeah it's setting $0DC1 and $187A to 0 to force-remove yoshi altogether. solution would probably be to only do that if $1B9B is also 0

[SMCslevelengine]

back after a long break and might want to grab level 12C and try and bang something out this upcoming weekend

[PSI Ninja]

Just did another base ROM update (March 16th). Some of the No-Yoshi intros were adjusted, and I made the beet leaves green in as many levels as I could. Some of the levels had conflicts with palette rows C and D, so I left those alone. By the way, the reason why the Piranha Plant outlines in Big Brawler's levels were green was because that specific color was shared by the beet leaves. Therefore, they will remain black in those levels. All of the levels where the leaves were changed (or had conflicts) are listed under the spoiler below.

Beet leaves changed:

• A Warm Welcome (11F)
• Accordion Depths (124)
• Bad Day at the Garden (71, 72, 73, 10B)
• Idiom Factory II (133)
• Lady Crithania (58, 59, 5A, 5B, 5D, 5E, 5F, 11C, 174)
• Life Goes On (1D6)
• PUNT RETURN (11A, 172)
• Silent Flower Forest (20)
• Sui Glide (8D, 8E, 10F, 16C)
• The Castle of Spirits (108)
• The Palace Color is Yellow (8A)
• Tim Hortons (111, 1C8, 1CB)
• time to take a (42, 4D, 116)
• Warning! It's a Red Radish Morning (61)
• watch out! bad word ahead (12D)
• Where The Whales Come To Rest (B5, B6, B8, B9, BA, BB, 12F, 15D)
• yeah! get down! ONE MORE TIME! (10C)

Beet leaves conflicts:

• Intro Level (1F5, 1F6, 1F7, 1F8, 1F9, 1FA, 1FB, 1FC, 1FD, 1FE, 1FF)
• Revenge of the Sushi (8B, 8C, 139, 17E)
• Rift Collapse (137, 17D)
• The Beginning of Spring (10, B0, 164)
• The Castle of Spirits (FB)
• The Palace Color is Yellow (15E)
• The Purkinje Tree Ruins (B1, B2, B3, B4, 125, 177)
• Where The Whales Come To Rest (B7)

I also noticed that the HUD doesn't always have the standard color (blue "DEMO", blue bonus stars, and dark green "DEMOS"). In order to preserve the aesthetics of some levels, we probably don't need to worry about this too much.

Let me know if you need to edit mine in any way, they feel very sloppy. If I'm able to take the time to work on my level design skills, I'll try to make better ones if we do a follow up.

My comments will mostly point out some conveyance issues, things players might find confusing, or stuff that may have been unintended by the author. I'm not planning to go full "level contest judge" and critique every single design decision, though there are a few things that seem unfair or too difficult compared to the rest of the game. Generally speaking, I'm against modifying levels too much to the point where they'll start to lose their identity. It'll take a few more days to organize my thoughts, though.

Regarding the Retry System bugs, either Koba or I will take a look at it. As for the No-Powerup and No L/R signs, I'll try to track down all of the levels that have these filters, and post it here for anyone who wants to add the signs to the intros.

did you say you wanted my levellllll?

The Crash at Craigdarroch Castle v0.1

I played through your level and found no issues. Send over the resources when you're ready, and we'll insert it into the base ROM.

[Daizo]

did you say you wanted my levellllll?

The Crash at Craigdarroch Castle v0.1

I played through your level and found no issues. Send over the resources when you're ready, and we'll insert it into the base ROM.

Alright, expect it in a few days. I'm glad there's no issues.