ROM Hacks: Super Mario World The Lost Adventure Episode 1

[RHDNBot]

Update By: isaix

Finally,after 2 cancelled SMW hacks and after a year of work,I finally release Super Mario World The Lost Adventure Episode 1.Its a complete Super Mario World that features,80 stages(more than the original game),Custom musics,Custom Boss battles,Custom graphics,Custom palette,New Power Ups,Increased difficulty,Redesign overworld map,And more...

Have Fun!!!

RHDN Project Page

Relevant Link: (http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/974/)

[Mauron]

Despite doing surprisingly poorly at this, I'm enjoying it. "Real Tetris" stuck out in level design.

The patch requires a headered ROM.

[isaix]

What is a headered ROM?

[Jigglysaint]

Usually, there are about 512 bytes at the begining of a SNES rom dump that are not part of the actual game.  It can be safely taken out, and the major bonus is that the rom is easier to work with since you won't need to be adding +200h to every offset.  The downside is that what gets created in a headered rom requires a headered rom to be patched, and some people are very anti-header.

[isaix]

Oh,I see

[Mauron]

Lunar Magic requires a header, and will prompt you if you load an unheadered ROM.

[I.S.T.]

Despite doing surprisingly poorly at this, I'm enjoying it. "Real Tetris" stuck out in level design.

The patch requires a headered ROM.

Thanks for the info, that's been added to the entry.

[isaix]

I'd like to know what you guys think about the game's difficulty.Is it a fair difficulty,does it progress like it does in a real Mario game(Starts Easy ends hard),cause I've been told that it was hard to get through.I'll try to lower the difficulty for Episode 2 if its truly a problem.

[Gideon Zhi]

Usually, there are about 512 bytes at the begining of a SNES rom dump that are not part of the actual game.  It can be safely taken out, and the major bonus is that the rom is easier to work with since you won't need to be adding +200h to every offset.  The downside is that what gets created in a headered rom requires a headered rom to be patched, and some people are very anti-header.

I am one of those people. Headers, essentially, contain a little bit of extra data appended by copier devices (such as a Super Wildcard, Super UFO, or Game Doctor SF). This little bit of data differs from copier to copier but typically contains the same information - sram size, number of banks, that sort of thing. It mainly functioned an obfuscation device so once ROMs were inevitably dumped and passed around they wouldn't work on a rival's copier device.

As stated, headers are not part of the original game: they're data added by copiers, and they tend to make address calculation a pain as every string or ASM command appears 512 bytes after the address it's supposed to be at. There's no really good reason to keep them attached to a ROM, excepting the fact that a few ROM-editing utilities inexplicably require them. This makes no sense to me as not only is address calculation made more difficult, but headers are copier-specific: a ROM with a header will work on exactly one type of copier, and there are easily half a dozen different brands out there. Chances are the header's not going to work on your copier if you have one, and you're going to have to use a utility (such as inSNESt) to convert the header (or add one back) regardless of the header's current presence.

In short, headers are like tonsils: they serve no practical function for most users and cause more problems than they solve. They're vestigial and ought to be removed before any work or distribution is done.

[badinsults]

I played a few levels, and I think the level design is pretty good. No Kaizo here.

However, this hack has the same problem many SMW hacks have - the sound is glitchy. If you hit a message block, the sound completely glitches out, which can only be fixed by resetting the game. If you fix this bug, then I certainly would be keen to play further.

Also, there is a grammatical mistake in the message block in "Yoshi's Land".

Edit: another minor quibble, the paths on the map are not covered off before you beat the level. It looks like you could just walk straight up to the castle!

[isaix]

I played a few levels, and I think the level design is pretty good. No Kaizo here.

However, this hack has the same problem many SMW hacks have - the sound is glitchy. If you hit a message block, the sound completely glitches out, which can only be fixed by resetting the game. If you fix this bug, then I certainly would be keen to play further.

Also, there is a grammatical mistake in the message block in "Yoshi's Land".

Edit: another minor quibble, the paths on the map are not covered off before you beat the level. It looks like you could just walk straight up to the castle!

About the sound glitch,the problem is not the game itself,its the emulator you're using.I had the same problem with other rom hack and even mine when I used the wrong emulators.I originally wanted to inject my hack to be playable as a Wii channel,but the Wii doesn't support a lot of custom music.If you want to play Super Mario World rom hacks on a Wii you need to download Snes9xgx version 1.15,the latest versions does not support custom musics and if you want to play on your PC you should use ZSNES emulator(I've played through the entire game without any sound glitch with this emulator).

[Gideon Zhi]

About the sound glitch,the problem is not the game itself,its the emulator you're using.I had the same problem with other rom hack and even mine when I used the wrong emulators.I originally wanted to inject my hack to be playable as a Wii channel,but the Wii doesn't support a lot of custom music.If you want to play Super Mario World rom hacks on a Wii you need to download Snes9xgx version 1.15,the latest versions does not support custom musics and if you want to play on your PC you should use ZSNES emulator(I've played through the entire game without any sound glitch with this emulator).

Asking the users to use an old, inaccurate emulator then claiming that the newer, more accurate emulators have problems because shoddy hack work doesn't behave correctly on them is a sign of ignorance. If you try the game on real hardware, chances are the sound will glitch out in the way described. ZSNES is truly a poor metric to judge by; it'd be like using Twilight instead of Macbeth as your bar for classifying writing as a masterpiece of literature. Try BSNES instead. If the sound glitches on BSNES, then yes the problem IS with the game, and not with the emulator.

[I.S.T.]

About the sound glitch,the problem is not the game itself,its the emulator you're using.I had the same problem with other rom hack and even mine when I used the wrong emulators.I originally wanted to inject my hack to be playable as a Wii channel,but the Wii doesn't support a lot of custom music.If you want to play Super Mario World rom hacks on a Wii you need to download Snes9xgx version 1.15,the latest versions does not support custom musics and if you want to play on your PC you should use ZSNES emulator(I've played through the entire game without any sound glitch with this emulator).

The utility that you used to make the custom music has a bug that happens to make it sound right only on ZSNES. it's a documented bug with it, and it'll fail on the real hardware and on any other emulator.

[isaix]

The utility that you used to make the custom music has a bug that happens to make it sound right only on ZSNES. it's a documented bug with it, and it'll fail on the real hardware and on any other emulator.

Oh,I didn't knew about that,but I guess that's not really a problem since everyone can use ZSNES and its not the first hack that work on specifics emulator,I've encounter that problem a lot with other ROM hacks.

[Celice]

If ZSNES ever gets its sound emulation fixed, it will be a problem.

It's always disheartening to see people justify doing things the wrong way

[isaix]

If ZSNES ever gets its sound emulation fixed, it will be a problem.

It's always disheartening to see people justify doing things the wrong way

I don't get your point,what is wrong with ZSNES,its just an emulator like an other?

[Lenophis]

The problem isn't that it's an emulator "like any other." It's actually very inaccurate with a lot of things it tries to emulate, and since it hasn't been updated in years, it's fallen way behind. You can stick to the caveman emulator if you wish, but just know that this will become a problem because other people want things to work correctly. Think of this as constructive criticism for future development.

[isaix]

The problem isn't that it's an emulator "like any other." It's actually very inaccurate with a lot of things it tries to emulate, and since it hasn't been updated in years, it's fallen way behind. You can stick to the caveman emulator if you wish, but just know that this will become a problem because other people want things to work correctly. Think of this as constructive criticism for future development.

I have no problem with criticsms.Its actually a good think,I want to know what I did right and what I did wrong to make my next hack even better  .

[badinsults]

About the sound glitch,the problem is not the game itself,its the emulator you're using.I had the same problem with other rom hack and even mine when I used the wrong emulators.I originally wanted to inject my hack to be playable as a Wii channel,but the Wii doesn't support a lot of custom music.If you want to play Super Mario World rom hacks on a Wii you need to download Snes9xgx version 1.15,the latest versions does not support custom musics and if you want to play on your PC you should use ZSNES emulator(I've played through the entire game without any sound glitch with this emulator).

Who says I was using an emulator?

I play my SNES games on a SNES, like a real man!


Seriously, the sound glitch problems that exist in Super Mario World hacks is well known, and it is shocking that after all these years, no one has found a way to fix them. When I got my first flash cart, I was really excited at the prospect of playing all these hacks. But really, people tend to test these on old versions of zsnes, which has inaccurate sound emulation. These sound glitches not only cause the music to screw up completely, but it often causes the game to freeze.

As such, this hack is broken, and is in need of work. You should not have to ask people to use an inaccurate emulator to play a SNES game.

[assassin]

In short, headers are like tonsils: they serve no practical function for most users and cause more problems than they solve. They're vestigial and ought to be removed before any work or distribution is done.

one apparent advantage to headers is that the cartridge size data isn't very specific, only having sizes of 2 Megabits, 4, 8, 16, and 32 (and maybe another one for giant games?).  if your ROM is 24 Megabits as some are, it just gets reported as 32 in the data. in contrast, the header data is far more specific about the ROM image size, which might help it be loaded faster than it would be if the size had to be recalculated every time?