[Vectrex33]

Hello! My name is Vectrex! I been in the Emulation community for about 3 years now, and I have somewhat of a understanding of how ROM hacking works. I'm interested in ROM hacking on the NES, SMS, Genesis, and N64.

Now here comes a question: So, I'm working on a SMB 1 Hack, and I've done all the Text Hacking I wanted to do, now I want to edit some of the sprites, and I'm hoping I could make the sprite size for Mario a little bigger, since the character I want to make is bigger, is there any way to do that?

[Dr. Floppy]

I'm hoping I could make the sprite size for Mario a little bigger, since the character I want to make is bigger, is there any way to do that?

Why, yes!

And, if you're the Vectrex I'm familiar with, you'll recognize the value of my verdict.

[Seihen]

You're clearly going about this all wrong. What you should do is make every other sprite in the game smaller.  BAM! Mario is taller.

[Dr. Floppy]

Seihen actually hits upon a legitimate strategy: alter the game to utilize 8x16 spirites, and rearrange the CHR-ROM / sprite coord assignments accordingly.

[Vectrex33]

And, if you're the Vectrex I'm familiar with, you'll recognize the value of my verdict.

Nope, I'm not that guy.

Seihen actually hits upon a legitimate strategy: alter the game to utilize 8x16 spirites, and rearrange the CHR-ROM / sprite coord assignments accordingly.

Seems like a plan. I'LL GET THE BLUEPRINT PAPER!

[Disch]

Here's the thing about Super Mario Bros...

It is pretty "full".  If you take a look at the graphics in a PPU viewer, you can see that there are no free tiles available.  So adding "bigger" or more graphics would require removing some other graphics.

Even switching to 8x16 sprites is difficult because then you cannot have ANY 8x8 sprites... which means all those little sprites like the fireball and the sprite-0 half-coin now take up twice as much space.


So any change to make graphics bigger or add more graphics (without removing any) is going to involve adding a mapper so that graphics can be swapped out.  And unless there's a base hack out there that you can build your hack on top of, this is actually a very big and complicated change.

[Vectrex33]

Here's the thing about Super Mario Bros...

It is pretty "full".  If you take a look at the graphics in a PPU viewer, you can see that there are no free tiles available.  So adding "bigger" or more graphics would require removing some other graphics.

Even switching to 8x16 sprites is difficult because then you cannot have ANY 8x8 sprites... which means all those little sprites like the fireball and the sprite-0 half-coin now take up twice as much space.

So any change to make graphics bigger or add more graphics (without removing any) is going to involve adding a mapper so that graphics can be swapped out.  And unless there's a base hack out there that you can build your hack on top of, this is actually a very big and complicated change.

Yeah... But I realized something. I meant I need the space for mario's graphics to be bigger, but then the representation of the sprite would still be the same. Does that make sense? Basically, have more pixels to design my new character, but the size of the character in game would stay the same. Any way to do THIS?

[Seihen]

Yeah... But I realized something. I meant I need the space for mario's graphics to be bigger, but then the representation of the sprite would still be the same. Does that make sense? Basically, have more pixels to design my new character, but the size of the character in game would stay the same. Any way to do THIS?

What you're saying is that you want to design it at a higher quality (= more pixels) and then have it resized/downscaled to be Mario's size?

Not possible. There are only so many pixels drawn to the screen, so even if you were to draw in more detail at a higher resolution and then downscale using photoshop or something, that detail would be lost.

[M-Tee]

You can make a graphics pack for HDNES, an emulator which displays original art up to 4x the native resolution instead of the game's own graphics.

[Vectrex33]

You can make a graphics pack for HDNES, an emulator which displays original art up to 4x the native resolution instead of the game's own graphics.

Id rather not, I want it to be playable on all emulators. Maybe I could try doing this with Super Mario All Stars, using YY-CHR.