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

[AdamDravian]

Regarding the Mario Bros. style battle mode sprites, i'll keep em if a few more people speak up on that.

I'm totally in favor of it.

[DarkSamus993]

I managed to get the dog in by replacing some (unused as best as I can tell) graphics that get loaded with the throne room sprites. When the new graphics are done for the dog, I'll insert them and modify the sprite assembly further if needed. Then I can post the patch/source code for it.

[pocket]

I managed to get the dog in by replacing some (unused as best as I can tell) graphics that get loaded with the throne room sprites. When the new graphics are done for the dog, I'll insert them and modify the sprite assembly further if needed. Then I can post the patch/source code for it.

Very cool!
Now I'll just have to ponder how the dog should look in a theoretical "artwork accurate" style. There's no official art besides the Kappa, and I certainly don't want to base him off that episode of the Mario 3 cartoon 


Well, since I'll be using the dog, I suppose I should show off what I was thinking about using in his place in should he not be possible:


It's based on Hisstocrat, from Super Mario 3D World. I know he's a "modern" Mario character but I always felt like his design evoked classic 2D Mario characters... plus, it's a snake in a crown and a cape, it was too perfect.

That is one thing I'd like to incorporate into all the kings, a little cape and crown, since the Kappa also had a cape in his artwork. Even if we don't end up using him, I do like preserving him in gif form.

EDIT: If we ever get a really user friendly Lunar Magic style level editor for Super Mario All-Stars, perhaps I could use them in my own hack someday.



EDIT: So, Geno's out. The World 6 King has been turned back into a seal. How does he look? A bit small, but the area I had to work with was the size of the Monty mole, and I had to account for where the crown would be placed.

EDIT AGAIN ( I've been burning that midnight oil lately, haha ): The King of the Pipe maze is Yoshi no more. He's now back to being a piranah plant... probably a lot more detailed than the piranah plant enemies will be in the game when I get around to them.  ( also I notice his pipe is flipping highlights on the bottom after I took the video, i've already corrected it )



Since I like sharing cut content so much, I should show that I did end up redrawing Yoshi a tad before I knew what I was going to do with them, because they just kinda slapped the Yoshi's Island sprite into the game but did an awful job of animating it's mouth. ( Also you can see the Kappa here, he got reworked to better match the art. )

[Zimgief]

I'd say the seal is too small. I do not think small when I think about seals.
Transformations for the kings however should be a space of free creativity for you as there are no artworks, so it's a good idea that you replace them.
I suggest you make use of the small sprite to make something that look really weak and goofy.
In fact, I like there original idea of making references to the extended Mario universe! And maybe Geno is already good. Or a babyfied enemy.


Why did you put mushrooms instead of fences? If you keep them, maybe you should tweak them so they seem planted in the soil, not laying on the ground.

[pocket]

I'd say the seal is too small. I do not think small when I think about seals.
Transformations for the kings however should be a space of free creativity for you as there are no artworks, so it's a good idea that you replace them.
I suggest you make use of the small sprite to make something that look really weak and goofy.
In fact, I like there original idea of making references to the extended Mario universe! And maybe Geno is already good. Or a babyfied enemy.


Why did you put mushrooms instead of fences? If you keep them, maybe you should tweak them so they seem planted in the soil, not laying on the ground.

That's how it is in the Lost Levels originally. The game used mostly the same assets from the original SMB but a lot of tiles got reskinned, and the fence posts were reskinned with brown mushrooms. 
This will only appear in Lost levels, and won't affect the original game. I will try out your suggestion to make them look planted though.



As for the seal, I'm open to suggestions. I think the seal fits Ice Land better than a Geno doll, and especially a monty mole. But you're right, it is small, it's the grassland dog all over again.

[Zimgief]

I agree the seal would be the best, if only it was bigger.

For the mushrooms, we can see that it is planted in the ground in the original screenshot (no outline at the bottom). That was what I meant.

EDIT : in the Snes version, light comes from the front, as it seems with the trees and pipes, so the shades should be on the left and right sides of the mushroom? In fact I'm not sure about how source of light are handled. Maybe it's not coherent for all elements. Or it comes from the front but slightly on the left. Which means shades on the left, but more on the right. Sorry if I'm not clear.

[AdamDravian]

EDIT: So, Geno's out. The World 6 King has been turned back into a seal. How does he look? A bit small, but the area I had to work with was the size of the Monty mole, and I had to account for where the crown would be placed.

My issue with the seal is that because of how small and fast it is, I wouldn't have any idea what I was looking at if I didn't already know it was a seal.

Edit: I have a few critiques on various sprites you've showcased in the original post.

• Princess Peach: The solid black line at the bottom of her crown looks odd to me. Perhaps make it less dark?
• Ostro: Perhaps make the beak just a tad smaller.
• Porcupo: I suggest making the spines a little more apparent to make it more obvious that the player will be harmed by jumping on this enemy.
• Thwomp: I'd make him slightly more grey-blue for more of a granite look.

[DarkSamus993]

The seal can be made bigger, there's still room in vram. I can easily make it stand in place too, and not move around.

Just give me the new graphics and I'll handle the rest.

[pocket]

For the mushrooms, we can see that it is planted in the ground in the original screenshot (no outline at the bottom). That was what I meant.

EDIT : in the Snes version, light comes from the front, as it seems with the trees and pipes, so the shades should be on the left and right sides of the mushroom? In fact I'm not sure about how source of light are handled. Maybe it's not coherent for all elements. Or it comes from the front but slightly on the left. Which means shades on the left, but more on the right. Sorry if I'm not clear.

I'll see what I can do.

My issue with the seal is that because of how small and fast it is, I wouldn't have any idea what I was looking at if I didn't already know it was a seal.

I agree, that's why I was apprehensive about using it. Though I guess the same problem existed for the Geno doll.  I just didn't want to stick with Monty Mole. So unfitting.

Edit: I have a few critiques on various sprites you've showcased in the original post.

• Princess Peach: The solid black line at the bottom of her crown looks odd to me. Perhaps make it less dark?
• Ostro: Perhaps make the beak just a tad smaller.
• Porcupo: I suggest making the spines a little more apparent to make it more obvious that the player will be harmed by jumping on this enemy.
• Thwomp: I'd make him slightly more grey-blue for more of a granite look.

Better?  As for thwomp, I had the same thought, but i'm going to save pallet work for later. Every I need to change to a new rom ( which so far has been twice, and i'll likely end up doing it a few more times once I patch in the Kings and the eventual Super Mario All-Stars+World Version ) I have to do all the pallet changes over again.  So i'm going to leave notes on what pallets I hope to change on the OP so I can do those once i'm done.

The seal can be made bigger, there's still room in vram. I can easily make it stand in place too, and not move around.

Just give me the new graphics and I'll handle the rest.

You're such a big help to this project, thank you so much!

Well before I send the graphics, I think it's time for some straw polls.


I used the King of water land to test my Seal. You can see some issues because my seal is still slightly too big to place over the King of Water, and I didn't account for the crown, but for the most part, you get the idea, and it can be tweaked later.
I don't recall any seals ever showing up in the main Mario series so I had to dig into other spinoffs, and based him on clapper the seal from Donkey Kong Country 2. Extra fittig for the King of Ice Land since Clapper has frost breath.

But before we settle on a Seal, how do we feel about Penguins?


Penguins have been a Mario staple ever since Mario 64, which is what I based it's appearance on. My only apprehension about them is that they were introduced after the SNES era, but that would bother me more if it was an individual character rather than animal. ( The crown being in the same spot is a mistake on my part and the whole design would likely be tweaked in the end anyhow )

And next, we're moving onto the dogs. I have two options.



On the right is basically just based on the regular ol' dog from SMB3, just updated a little. And on the left is based on a pretty deep cut, this dog like creature from the Super Mario Bros. Anime movie, which fittingly enough, was actually a Prince transformed into a dog by Bowser.

It's not a complete likeness, since that thing had a caterpillar like body and a rounder head, I thought that would be for the best since not everyone would recognize it, but at least this way you get across that it's a dog.

So, let me know how you feel.
About the Ice Land King: https://strawpoll.com/1z94z7kx
About the Grass Land King: https://strawpoll.com/z3d6gpka

[DarkSamus993]

As for thwomp, I had the same thought, but i'm going to save pallet work for later. Every time I need to change to a new rom (which so far has been twice, and i'll likely end up doing it a few more times once I patch in the Kings and the eventual Super Mario All-Stars+World Version) I have to do all the pallet changes over again.  So i'm going to leave notes on what pallets I hope to change on the OP so I can do those once i'm done.

If you send me a patch of what you have done so far (you can private message me if you don't want to post it publicly in the thread), I can make a build script that inserts all your changes to a clean rom each time you run it so you don't have to keep redoing work manually. It makes life so much easier, and I can't recommend it enough. As an example, you can see the setup I use in the source code folder for the SMBLL unique graphics patch I posted earlier.

[pocket]

I'm sorry for wasting so much time on dumb throw away jokes but I'm having too much fun with this.

...I only wish I could have changed Toad into John Leguizamo's Luigi and replaced his dialogue with a line from the movie, but Pallet alteration is a bit too much work for a throw away joke  ( Also I don't know how to change in game text. Not that I need to for the final hack )

If you send me a patch of what you have done so far (you can private message me if you don't want to post it publicly in the thread), I can make a build script that inserts all your changes to a clean rom each time you run it so you don't have to keep redoing work manually. It makes life so much easier, and I can't recommend it enough. As an example, you can see the setup I use in the source code folder for the SMBLL unique graphics patch I posted earlier.

It turns out I'm a bit of a dummy, I didn't realize exactly what was in that last batch of files you sent me and all I did was use the IPS file provided. I didn't realize that what you actually provided would use ASAR to apply the split Lost Levels graphics without undoing my pallet work. Silly me    I'm sure how new I am to all this is painfully obvious.

In any case, I'll send you the patch and the graphics for the new kings once the straw polls have run their course, in the event that I do need to move to a clean rom agian, it would be nice not to have to re-do the pallet work.

I have a question though, would this also work on SMAS+World?  I'm not going to start on SMW until all the work on base SMAS is done but it would be nice to know ahead of time.


One more question I forgot to mention earlier. When I altered Triclydes pallet, he changed in world 2, but not world 6 ( which i'm fine with since a red and a green tiyclyde seems better than two red ones ), then when I applied changes to Larry Koopa's pallet, those same changes applied to Ludwig as well ( which works out fine since I was planning on that anyway )   What's up with that though? Is there a way to tell what objects share a pallet or not? I would have thought for sure both triclydes would have turned red.

I only ask because there's several objects in both SMB1 and 2 I'd like to change pallets for but they very obviously share pallets with other objects and I don't want to mess those unrelated objects up.

[DarkSamus993]

One more question I forgot to mention earlier. When I altered Triclydes pallet, he changed in world 2, but not world 6 ( which i'm fine with since a red and a green tiyclyde seems better than two red ones ), then when I applied changes to Larry Koopa's pallet, those same changes applied to Ludwig as well ( which works out fine since I was planning on that anyway )   What's up with that though? Is there a way to tell what objects share a pallet or not? I would have thought for sure both triclydes would have turned red.

The boss palettes for SMB2 are stored together in world order, so 0xA38FC (triclyde - world 2 boss) and 0xA397C (triclyde - world 6 boss). It's just how they set it up for easy palette loading I guess. There's no real way to tell if objects share a palette other than checking with a vram viewer and some trial and error. If you need to 'split' a palette into 2 non-shared ones, that should be doable (assuming there is room in color ram). Generally, there are 2 reasons to use a shared palette (1) convenience (objects are already similarly colored) or (2) limited space in color ram (objects share a palette so you can load more colors).

I have a question though, would this also work on SMAS+World?  I'm not going to start on SMW until all the work on base SMAS is done but it would be nice to know ahead of time.

Some offsets might be different (I haven't checked), but that can easily be handled by asar. You can even target both roms if you set conditions in you code. You can do something like:

Code Select Expand


; insert graphics to different address depending on game

if !game == 0  ; SMAS
    org $108000
elseif !game == 1  ; SMAS+W
    org $10A000

incbin some_graphics.bin


[pocket]

Super Mario Bros. 2 player characters are fully changed. They were a lot of work so I hope you like them.
Toad has a little smirk when he's holding an item, it's a nod to how his super speed is activated when he's holding a baddie or a veggie. ( Not a key though for some reason. How lame. Sure would make outrunning Phanto easier for the little guy. ) I tried to make other little subtle things that hint at a character's stats and abilities but I wasn't sure they would read very well.

I kinda think I'd like Luigi's pallet to be a little darker to match the shade in his art, and Peach's dress could maybe be lighter ( though I think that might mess with Birdo. )

Mario and Luigi will look pretty similar to this in SMB1, but I would like to avoid them being TOO similar, to avoid things being too uniform between all four games.

Mario 3 will be a nightmare thanks to all the powerups and the chaotic arrangement of sprites. But I'm committed now, and i'm probably keeping those Mario Bros. Arcade style battle mode sprites.

[mdtauk]

Is it possible for you to change the palette for Toad, so instead of a warm white for his hat, its cool white, to match the artwork.  I think the same applies to the Gloves

[pocket]

Is it possible for you to change the palette for Toad, so instead of a warm white for his hat, its cool white, to match the artwork.  I think the same applies to the Gloves

You read my mind.



Mario and Luigi's gloves will have to stay the same though. It just doesn't look good on Mario with his shirt and overall colors flipped. It blends in too much with the blue on his shirt.  Perhaps I'll be able to oblige for SMB3.

[Zimgief]

I love the personality you injected for Toad, and how big Mario's nose is. So cute!

I think you forgot to recolor Luigi's hair on the three last sprites?

About the Ice Land King: I agree the penguin doesn't exactly fit as it is not an enemy in Mario 64, and can even speak!
About the Grass Land King, I like the idea of the cartoon dog... only if you make it this weird dog-caterpillar creature, or else it would seem a half-baked idea. I'm sure that if you change the strawpoll accordingly, results will be less divisive. :p

[AdamDravian]

Better?

Yes. Great job.

Also, I love the SMB2 player sprites. The only possible critique that comes to mind is I wonder if Toad might look better if his eyes were shifted down one pixel to put a little buffer between his eyes and his mushroom head.

[Ar8temis008]

Super Mario Bros. 2 player characters are fully changed. They were a lot of work so I hope you like them.
Toad has a little smirk when he's holding an item, it's a nod to how his super speed is activated when he's holding a baddie or a veggie. ( Not a key though for some reason. How lame. Sure would make outrunning Phanto easier for the little guy. ) I tried to make other little subtle things that hint at a character's stats and abilities but I wasn't sure they would read very well.

I kinda think I'd like Luigi's pallet to be a little darker to match the shade in his art, and Peach's dress could maybe be lighter ( though I think that might mess with Birdo. )

Mario and Luigi will look pretty similar to this in SMB1, but I would like to avoid them being TOO similar, to avoid things being too uniform between all four games.

Mario 3 will be a nightmare thanks to all the powerups and the chaotic arrangement of sprites. But I'm committed now, and i'm probably keeping those Mario Bros. Arcade style battle mode sprites.

Is there a way to give the Princess her blue jewel thingy or is that too much detail? It feels a bit weird having the sprite so much closer to the art work while still lacking it.

https://mfgg.net/index.php?act=resdb&param=02&c=1&id=35032
Something like this sheet here

[ShadowOne333]

Is there a way to give the Princess her blue jewel thingy or is that too much detail? It feels a bit weird having the sprite so much closer to the art work while still lacking it.

https://mfgg.net/index.php?act=resdb&param=02&c=1&id=35032
Something like this sheet here

Agree
Peach's sprite is in desperate need of a blue colour in her palette.
It could also help to bring some shine to her eyes.

[Domino089]

Is it possible to make Toad's eyes a pixel line farther down for the first two sprites? For others it seems fine because when it has something in his hands it gives the sensation that the mushroom head is lowered by the weight of the vegetable or enemy