Super Mario All-Stars Redrawn ( Lost Levels Demo is now Available in the OP )

[pocket]

Demos are found here: https://mega.nz/folder/6CRU3ADY#xV3kUhMufDyreEL_OfErDA
SMB1 and SMBTLL both can be patched to a standard Super Mario All Stars Rom. Both are mostly representative of the final game. I would like to darken the shade of brown outlining Mario and Luigi's skin, and give Luigi a more vibrant shade of green. That in mind, there's still a chance things will change for the final game.  I'd like to make more changes to Lost Levels as well but they're beyond my control for now.

Super Mario Bros 2 demo patch is for Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World (USA) unheadered rom. If you apply it to a regular SMAS rom the graphics will be messed up. Important to note: This Demo does not have any of the planned color pallet changes aside from the unripe turnip on the box art of SMB2, in addition to that, some of the sprites are already outdated as this was the first game I finished working on but I have since gone back to touch up some sprites, so keep that in mind. And heads up, the demo doesn't work on the SNES Mini's native emulator canoe. If you were intending on playing with a SNES Mini, you'll have to use retroarch. Hopefully the full game will work on Canoe.

All of these demos should work on a real Super Nintendo using an FX Pak Pro

If you'd like to help and would like to speak to me more directly, or you simply want to follow smaller updates, DM me for a link to my Discord Server for this project.

Let me preface this by saying I'm extremely new to romhacking and my skillset is pretty limited. I started with just adding music, Some ExGFX, and a bunch of pre-made ASM patches to Super Mario World to make it feel more fresh. It was not that difficult for me since there were so many user friendly tools to help.  reading a lot of the technical stuff though goes right over my head. Hex editing, ASM, coding, it's all way too complex for me, so please keep that in mind when you make suggestions for this project. But onto business...

I started this by wanting to flip Mario and Luigi's overall and shirt colors in SMB2 since that's how Mario looked on the box and most of the art. It was my first time using a graphic editor ( YYCHR ) but after I finished, I realized I could do a lot more than just color swapping. So the project began!

As a kid, I adored the official artwork on the box, in the manuals, and sprinkled through out the Nintendo Power Magazines and Player's guides. I'd pour over them and try to redraw them, wishing they'd make a game in that looked more like the art. A lot of the Mario games in the past looked pretty off the mark from the promo materials. All-Stars in particular was a pretty big step ahead of Super Mario World in the graphics department imo, but they translated some of the sprites a little too faithfully from the NES versions, with weird stuff like bug eyed birdo, white haired Koopalings, and more. It seemed like a real missed opportunity to make the game look the way they were meant to look.  So that's exactly what I'm trying to do here.

I also will be trying to restore some of the things that were lost from the NES and famicom versions of the game to the best of my ability and with the help of people more talented than I am.  Meaning, I will attempt to make the ground tiles in Super Mario Bros look like they did in the NES game, and I will attempt to give Lost Levels it's own unique tiles as well, just like the Famicom version had.  I will also be attempting to change the transformed Kings from Super Mario Bros. 3 back into the things they were originally transformed into.

Super Mario Bros./The Lost Levels Final Sprites
Mario, who's idle stance has been adjusted to look more natural, taking ideas from both the NES version of SMB1 and later games

Luigi, who has a few different poses than Mario based on his personality, and a few more depending on if you're playing SMB1 or Lost Levels

Mushroom Retainer, he sports a red vest in Lost Levels.

King Bowser, I would really like to do something more interesting with him in SMB1, like making him match the box art, while leaving him alone in Lost Levels, but I'll come back to that later, if it's possible at all.

Princess Toadstool

Koopa Troopa and Little Goomba***outdated Koopa Troopa, will update soon

Super Mario Bros. 3 Final Sprites
Frog Suit Mario*** Outdated face in the far right, will update eventually

King of Water Land ( The only king with official art, I will attempt to revert the other Kings back to their NES transformations, as well as updating their sprites to look more like the rest of the work in the game )

OP post is underdoing renovations, anything below this line may be outdated information


Here's what's done ( note, any of these may be altered later on ):


Super Mario Bros.

The original poison mushroom on the famicom looked the exact same as the super mushroom but just a smidgen darker. But I liked the new look for it in All-Stars too much so I kept the purple and the skull. I could not quite get a good looking toothy grin though.



Super Mario Bros. 2



Phanto is an unusual case where the sprite doesn't match the official art not because of a lack of trying, but because they never updated the art from Doki Doki Panic. So instead of basing his art on that, it only took the color scheme.




NOTE: Triclyde is still green in world 6. Thought it would be better than having two of the same color.
There's going to be some cases where characters will barely change, if they change at all. In the case of Fryguy and Clawgrip here, they kinda already match their artwork. All I did with Fryguy was darken his eye mask, narrow his eyes, and make his mouth more animated... Clawgrip... well, aside from squinting eyes, there was nothing to do.



Super Mario Bros. 3








Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels

Since Mario and Luigi play a bit differently in these games, I've decided to give them slightly different poses from one another instead of just being exact copies.

I'm also setting out to restore things that were changed drastically or removed from the original versions of the game ( at least what I feel were changes for the worse ), for example, SMB1's ground tiles are bricks ( From MathUser2929's SMAS NES-ized hack ), and the rustling weed patches were changed back into fluffy bushes. SMB:TLL has updated versions of the unique tilesets from the original game, the Kings in SMB3 will be changed into what they originally were in the NES game instead of random enemies, Yoshi, and DK Junior. Liberties will be taken on things that didn't have artwork.  There may also be tweaks made that have nothing to do with the art but just make sense, such as the King of Grassland, who is dressed like a Sultan, swapping places with the King of Desert Land, who was dressed like a more traditional King.

I want to be clear though, I'm not trying to "modernize" any of these character designs, I want them to look like their official artwork from the time this game came out, so no lanky green haired Iggy, and the SMB2 Bob-ombs will have arms and huge bug-eyes, ect. This project was born from my love of pouring over the old instruction manuals and Nintendo power looking at the games artwork when I was a kid. Emulating the look of the bland New Super Mario Bros series style is the last thing I'd want. 

What's left to do:

• Color Pallet editing of SMB2's title screen
• New variations on SMB1 sprites for SMBTLL
• Small Mario, power-up variants of Mario, and all of Luigi sprites for SMB3
• Battle Mode Enemies in SMB3
• power-ups and all the variants ( mini games, inventory, end of level card icon, in SMB3 )
• Anything at all in Super Mario World for SMAS+W version Super Mario World version is cancelled unless the colors in Koopalings can be changed
• RELIANT ON THE HELP OF OTHERS: Restore the Kings in SMB3 to what they were in the NES version of the game
• RELIANT ON THE HELP OF OTHERS: Restore the Airship's unique colors from the NES version of SMB3

If you want to help in any way:
Leave me feed back. Make mockups or edit what i've done to show me how you'd do it differently, and give me some tips ( But be understanding if I don't take every suggestion I get). And encouragement wouldn't hurt either, it really keeps me going when people like what I'm doing.
If you'd like to help in other ways that are more involved, I'm not really knowledgable about hacking beyond spriting, so here's the stuff I'd like to do that is way beyond my skill level, although I don't consider any of it essential ( unless it's marked top priority ), would just be nice ):

• Change color palettes in Super Mario World for Iggy, Morton, Ludwig, Roy, Larry, and Bowser. TOP PRIORITY

( Would appreciate this done for SMAS+W as well as Stand Alone SMW )

• Change "Clawglip" to "Clawgrip" in the SMB2 ending sequence
  
• New Idle Stances for all games, because holding hands up to the chest like that looks really bad, but their idle stance in SMB2&3 is also used for their walk cycle so I currently can't do anything about it.
• Change title screen to add subtitle of this hack's name ( once I come up with a better one)
• Figure out how to use different graphics for SMB+TLL ( THANK YOU DARKSAMUS993 )
• Use seperate graphics for "Fake Bowser" in SMB1 and TLL while keeping the final Bowser with his true form. Or, at the very least, restore Blue Bowser to Lost Levels )
• If you know how to add new graphics in the game where there were none before, I'd like to put Bowser figureheads on all the airships
• Give Toads different cap colors in every world in SMB1,TLL, and 3
• maaaaybe change Toad to play the same animation in every world in SMB1, the new animations will be used in Lost Levels only
• Change Princess Toadstool into Daisy depending on if the player is Mario or Luigi
• remove drums in the SMB1 and TLL version of the underground theme ( feel like it really ruins the vibe of those levels )
• restore the starry looking cave Backgrounds for SMB3, and possibly add new backgrounds into the game, ideally a new background for the levels set in Dark Land
• Give sledge Bros. their own overworld sprite
• Give Bowser's Castle the glowing "eye" windows from Super Mario Advance
• Restore scenes from the end credits sequence from NES version of SMB3 ( it had several unique sprites not seen in the SNES version )
• Enable the player to choose between Mario or Luigi in SMB1, SMB3, and SMW, if this cannot be achieved without disabling multiplayer, then I would prefer it to be an optional patch, and if possible, I'd like Luigi's Lost Levels Physics to carry over in these cases.
• restore color palettes to SMB3 airships ( If they don't share palettes, I just need to know which values to to change )
• Add Fire, Frog, Tanooki, and Hammer Bros sprites to Mario and Luigi's portrait in the Minigames.

[/li][li]Possibly change the color of the sky in SMB1 to resemble the NES colors a little more[/li]
[/list]

If you want to edit the sprites directly, speak up and i'll drop the files into this Mega Link:
https://mega.nz/#F!Deox0QaJ!QzY1h8QMFx-B0x_nO3rADA!OXoTEIpJ

But please understand if I choose not to use what you come up with. So if you work on a large sheet, give me a preview early on. And most importantly, don't forget, this is not a project about modernizing the characters, I want them to look like the artwork from their respective games. I am willing to go as modern as Super Mario Advance in some cases where the original looks really, really bad ( like Nijis in SMB2 for example ) but I would prefer it if we stick to the SNES era.


Now, if you want to criticize, that's fine, but only do so if you can offer a suggestion on how to improve what you are criticizing.  Just telling me that something looks awful or would be better off programmed from scratch in it's own engine is not helpful.

Lastly, I'm going to repeat one more time, I am not a hacker I do pixel art. I don't understand anything about programming and ASM and hex editing. I'm only able to alter palettes thanks to a very helpful step by step walk-through in this thread.  So please keep that in mind when suggesting new additions to the project.[/list][/list][/list]

[gamingcat02261991]

Looks good so far.

[MathUser2929]

I don't mind you using my ground tiles. But if you go to the cutting room floor they found actual reimagined smb1 tiles. You should use those. I don't really hack anymore so I never updated my hack.

[Elyos03]

Good luck!

[pocket]

Here's a lot more of what I've done, including some more recent versions of things I already shared, like I just touched up Birdo this morning. And here's Iggy, that's three more Koopalings to go.  I've done mostly Super Mario Bros. 2 stuff so far. There's still a few things I'm sure I forgot to include, I do take these screenshots on a time crunch sometimes. Some of these may be really subtle that you may not notice. Like Hoopster.  Also not pictured, the little hedgehog dude, all I did ( so far ) was change his nose from black to red.



Phanto is an odd case because it really doesn't match it's official art at all, but the phanto sprite is way better than the art imo, so I don't know if I want to change it. I will change the colors though.  I can't find the non-enemy Phanto graphics for some reason so they're going to stay gold for now. Maybe it's a good thing that you see one sticking out from the others?


I think it would be boring if I made things too uniform so I won't try to copy how an enemy looks in SMB3 to SMB1. These goombas for instance.  Also more updated Mario idle stance.

The Super Mario Wiki has been really helpful in providing references for how these things are meant to look. There are some SMB2 enemies I didn't even know looked radically different from their sprites.

I don't mind you using my ground tiles. But if you go to the cutting room floor they found actual reimagined smb1 tiles. You should use those. I don't really hack anymore so I never updated my hack.

I saw those and tried using them initially but I think what you did looks a lot better. ( also thanks for the blessing, I really should have asked first tho. My bad. )
January 12, 2020, 02:02:11 PM - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)
Since we learned today that Wart is apparantly not 100% forgotten by Nintendo and he got a brand new piece of art not related to any games at all, I figure now is as good a time as any to show off what I've done with him. I do wish I could make his robe a darker blue but I'm working with what I've got.  I think at this point i'm all done with SMB2, the only thing that's left is Triclyde and I might save him for last, since I want to see if I can't actually change his pallet ( or find someone who can. )






Also, i've added the finalized Koopalings in the OP. The only thing I would change about them at this point is making Roy's shades red rimmed.

[MandatoryPixel]

This is a cool idea! It's looking good so far! I especially like Wart's new look - the tweaks give him a lot more personality.

If I can make a quick suggestion, maybe you could add some comparison images between your sprites and the originals to the opening post? It'd make it easy to see the differences at a glance.

[pleasejust]

This is really cool actually. I like it. So.. I remember SMB1 in All-Stars having messed up brick hit detection or something and I noticed you have a brick fix. I didn't even know there was a hack for it, that's great. Is that the only issue between original SMB1 and all-stars version? Or is there any other gameplay difference?

[Elyos03]

is there any other gameplay difference?

Not quite. Despite the SMB1/LL brick bug, the controls feel natural and accurate enough in comparison to each of the NES originals.

[pocket]

This is a cool idea! It's looking good so far! I especially like Wart's new look - the tweaks give him a lot more personality.

If I can make a quick suggestion, maybe you could add some comparison images between your sprites and the originals to the opening post? It'd make it easy to see the differences at a glance.

That's a good idea, I think i'll spend some time today organizing what i've done so far and make some before and after pictures, with the artwork for good measure. I've added a good comparison picture for Wart in the OP, I'll add more as I make them today.

This is really cool actually. I like it. So.. I remember SMB1 in All-Stars having messed up brick hit detection or something and I noticed you have a brick fix. I didn't even know there was a hack for it, that's great. Is that the only issue between original SMB1 and all-stars version? Or is there any other gameplay difference?

Not as far as I know, each game feels pretty faithful to how they originally did on the NES. Even The Lost Levels has it's subtle differences in the way Mario bounces higher off of an enemy, which was different from SMB1.

That always bothered me about TLL, it looks nearly the same as SMB1 but it plays very differently, and it messes with your expectations. I really wish I could give TLL it's own graphics seperate from SMB1 but alas, any changes made to SMB1 are applied to TLL...

Actually, about that. When I started this project, I was working on these as seperated individual roms using Yoshifanatic's disassembly. I thought having the games individually on my SNES Classic edition menu would be neat, I even made mock-up SNES box art for each game. The plan was to have TLL with it's own graphics too. But then I realized I wouldn't be able to share it, and I couldn't figure out how to make the brick fix patch work for SMB1/TLL on their own anyway, so I just decided to hack All-Stars as a whole instead.

[MathUser2929]

I think some later levels in lost levels let you use some custom graphics.

[pleasejust]

Lemmy koopa's ball is supposed to be yellow with blue stars 

[lexluthermiester]

I gotta say, this looks good. Well done!

[pocket]

Lemmy koopa's ball is supposed to be yellow with blue stars 

Good eye, simple enough to fix, i've updated the OP.  I'm glad you pointed it out, I actually realized there's a few issues I didn't catch when I was making screenshots this morning, so it helps to have extra eyes.

Although there are going to be times when the colors are out of my hands, as i've said in this thread before, I don't know anything about changing a character's pallets. All the changes i've made to the Koopalings use their existing pallets. Right now i've got to decide between keeping Triclyde green, or seeing if he looks good bright orange, since Red is off the table.

[Noside]

Looks fantastic! have to say.

[niuus]

EDIT: The first post is under construction as I organize what I've done up to this point. So if you see me repeating myself or stuff in the wrong spot, that's why.

I'm extremely new to romhacking and my skillset is pretty limited, reading a lot of the technical stuff makes my brains feel like mush, but I still want to get into it. I started by making my idealized version of Super Mario World with a few tweaks here and there with some new music and graphics but I kept it mostly to myself, I started a few other projects but they didn't go very far due to my lack of ASM knowledge.  But recently I took a look at Super Mario All-Stars.  The goal was originally just to flip Mario's overall and shirt colors in SMB2, since it always bothered me that it was red on the box-art but not in-game. 

But then I decided I could do a lot more. So my aim is to make a version of Super Mario All-Stars with sprites that are a lot more faithful to the characters official artwork. Some sprites got translated from the NES a little to faithfully to the SNES when the devs had the chance to really fancy it up, seems like a missed opportunity. So that's what I'm trying to do.

I am already loving your work. Would you make it work with both All-Stars editions? This way it could be hopefully combined with existing projects like Super Mario All-Stars+Super Mario World Redux, which improves things on the Super Mario World game.
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/2778/

[pocket]

Okay, as of now, every enemy in SMB2 is done, and examples are in the OP. I may come back to modify some of them later. I have altered some of the items but those can wait. I don't know if I plan to alter any of the player characters, Mario and Luigi seem fine as they are. Peach could maybe use the whites of her eyes and a dark pink waist band. Toad could use less spots, but make the spots he has bigger... we'll see.  Modifying players isn't as easy as the enemies.

I am already loving your work. Would you make it work with both All-Stars editions? This way it could be hopefully combined with existing projects like Super Mario All-Stars+Super Mario World Redux, which improves things on the Super Mario World game.
https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/2778/

I've been thinking about it, but if I was to do a SMAS+W edition, I'd probably end up doing my own sprites for SMW too.  That might render it incompatible with Redux. I'm not really sure about that though, this is all really new to me.
Actually, part of what inspired this idea was how Yoshi looked in the excellent SMW hack, Just Keef Edition. Bensalot did some subtle tweaks that made Yoshi match the box art a lot better, and I loved the result.

I've even got my own head start there, I've already did my own tweak's to Bowser's face.

For now, there aren't any plans for a SMAS+W version, but never say never.


EDIT: Wow, I actually managed to get the Kappa King into the game, I thought that would have been very hard but as it turns out, the pallet for the Dino Rino just happened to have all the colors I needed.

[NiO]

Really good project you have here.

I like the changes to SMB1 stance.

[DarkSamus993]

Triclyde, lamentably, had no red in his pallet. I don't know how to feel about the orange.  Side note, if anyone who knows how to alter a character's pallet would like to help, red Triclyde is my top priority.

(Step #1) To find the palette in the rom, use a debugging emulator with a palette viewer (I use bsnes-plus).
(1) Go to tools > debugger and from there open S-PPU > tile viewer and palette viewer.
(2) Use the tile viewer to find the correct loaded palette and then use the palette viewer to get the raw color values to search for in the rom (a string of 4 values is usually enough to get a match). The SNES is little-endian so flip the values obtained from the palette viewer (ex: 0x2521, 0x39C4, 0x4E69, 0x630E = [2125 C439 694E 0E63]).
(3) Open tools > memory editor and switch it to cartridge rom. Click the binoculars and input the values from the previous step. The bytes highlighted in blue show the triclyde palette was read from 0xA38FC (world 2 boss). Clicking the forward arrow (next the the binoculars) gets one more match. At 0xA397C there is a copy of the triclyde palette (world 6 boss).


(Step #2) Now that we know where the palette is stored in the rom, we can edit it. I like to use Tile Molester for this.
(1) First open your rom and change the codec settings:

Code Select Expand


for viewing the graphics:
-------------------------
view > codec > 4bpp planar, composite
view > mode > 1-dimensional

for viewing the palettes:
-------------------------
view > codec > 15bpp BGR
view > mode > 2-dimensional

The canvas width can be adjust with shift+left/right and the height with shift+up/down.
(2) The triclyde graphics are stored at 0xBD800, so hit ctrl+G to quickly go there.
(3) To load the palette, go to palette > import from > this file. For the offset put 0xA38FC (without the '0x' prefix) and for the size put the number of colors in the palette (16), then hit ok.


(Step #3) Now it's time to actually edit the palette.
(1) At the bottom you'll see the currently loaded palette. Simply double-click a color to edit it.
(2) When done, click file > save as > your edited rom file.


(Step #4) All done!

[pocket]

(Step #1) To find the palette in the rom, use a debugging emulator with a palette viewer (I use bsnes-plus).
(1) Go to tools > debugger and from there open S-PPU > tile viewer and palette viewer.
(2) Use the tile viewer to find the correct loaded palette and then use the palette viewer to get the raw color values to search for in the rom (a string of 4 values is usually enough to get a match). The SNES is little-endian so flip the values obtained from the palette viewer (ex: 0x2521, 0x39C4, 0x4E69, 0x630E = [2125 C439 694E 0E63]).
(3) Open tools > memory editor and switch it to cartridge rom. Click the binoculars and input the values from the previous step. The bytes highlighted in blue show the triclyde palette was read from 0xA38FC (world 2 boss). Clicking the forward arrow (next the the binoculars) gets one more match. At 0xA397C there is a copy of the triclyde palette (world 6 boss).


(Step #2) Now that we know where the palette is stored in the rom, we can edit it. I like to use Tile Molester for this.
(1) First open your rom and change the codec settings:

Code Select Expand


for viewing the graphics:
-------------------------
view > codec > 4bpp planar, composite
view > mode > 1-dimensional

for viewing the palettes:
-------------------------
view > codec > 15bpp BGR
view > mode > 2-dimensional

The canvas width can be adjust with shift+left/right and the height with shift+up/down.
(2) The triclyde graphics are stored at 0xBD800, so hit ctrl+G to quickly go there.
(3) To load the palette, go to palette > import from > this file. For the offset put 0xA38FC (without the '0x' prefix) and for the size put the number of colors in the palette (16), then hit ok.


(Step #3) Now it's time to actually edit the palette.
(1) At the bottom you'll see the currently loaded palette. Simply double-click a color to edit it.
(2) When done, click file > save as > your edited rom file.


(Step #4) All done!

You're my hero. I'll have to see what else I can do with this later.

[ShadowOne333]

About SMAS+SMW...
I encourage you to make a faithful artwork edition for it, please
The Koopalings are awful in SMW, and your touch on them would be fantastic!

Also, don't worry about compatibility with SMAS+SMW Redux.
If all you do is sprite/palette work, then your changes should be compatible with Redux without any problem at all.