The Yoshi Update Preview and current progress:
Hello again to all, it’s been a few weeks since my last post so I thought it was time for a little update.
First off though, I'm glad to see people are excited for the project and it's nice to see praise for it, so thanks for the positive comments, in response to a couple suggestions:
Vanya: Mario's head being a separate sprite wouldn't really change anything as there are almost no colour clash issues being caused by the current graphics, if you mean it would look better with overlayed eyes then I could agree with that, but it's a change that I wouldn't know how to make and I'm not sure adding more sprites to the screen would really be the best idea anyway. As for Yoshi, again I can't overlay anything, but his tail will not be red when Mario is riding him in the final version.
Cartridge ROM: I appreciate the sprite suggestion from Mario Is Missing, however those sprites use overlays to look as colourful as they do and unfortunately that just isn't something I can implement into the game. (Also some of the sprites in that game look kinda weird if you ask me, especially Yoshi's sprites) That world one demo project that someone was working on a while back is actually one I have looked at as there are some changes it makes that I'd like to include in my hack, such as the added background in castle 1 and more unique blocks in stages. As for the different coloured Yoshi idea, I think it could work, the game currently isn't set up to change the Yoshi palette between worlds/stages (I don't think anyway) so it'd need to be looked into, but it shouldn't be too hard.
Now, onto the update!
Yoshi and Objects Update Preview:So, all of object sprites have been redone and implemented into the game as well as some palette applications have been changed to make better use of the colours available, such as shells now having white rims.
Yoshi’s sprites are completed and ready to be put in game, however their implementation has been delayed as there is a change I’d like to make to how object attributes are handled which could save a lot of tiles in the bank with Yoshi in, but we aren’t sure how to make this change yet. Yoshi's idle animation where he opens his mouth whilst bobbing up and down has also been re-implemented into the game, appears as though it was supposed to be there but Hummer made it loop too soon.
(in game the red palette will be applied to the feet and tongue)
Currently the palettes/mirroring data for the in level objects are tied to specific tiles in RAM, so each tile will always display it’s respective colour palette, but I want to change this so that the palettes/mirroring are tied to the sprite object itself, so for example, the lower left sprite tile will always display using palette 01 regardless of what graphic tile is chosen. The game actually does this for the items in your item box, so it is possible, it’s just neither of us know how to alter this, so if anyone happens to have any suggestions or wants to take a look I’m open to help.
Yoshi’s House also has an all new look, rebuilt from the ground up, here is the biggest part of this update:
The version used in the ending is still incomplete, but I’ll worry about that later. (HUD hasn't been updated to the new palette yet either)
Other News:We’ve tweaked the powerup system to match the one found in Mario 3 and the GBA port of SMW. This means that when fire or cape Mario get hit they revert to super Mario rather than just going straight to being small. It’s a small change that deviates from the SNES original, but this system seems to be the preferred one from what I’ve seen and I think it’s a welcome change to the gameplay.
I've also found out that the game seems to perform better in Dendy mode than in NTSC or PAL, there is less slowdown and less frame stuttering for background animations when I switch it to the Dendy timings, so perhaps the game is designed more around these timings than others.
Due to aforementioned technical issue I’ve started work on the enemy sprites to keep things moving.
Koopa Troopas have all new sprites and all of their mappings have been redone to tidy up their graphics banks. All duplicate tiles have also been removed which adds some space to possibly add other colours of koopa, although that’s just an idea. (Super Koopas are still unchanged as of yet) Para Troopas are no longer green, thus fixing the colour change that used to happen when they got hit
As a side note, I’ve found that some unused enemies are actually fully functional, Bullet Bills, Diggin’ Chucks, Spinys and Fish Bones are all programmed in but simply never used, perhaps these could be added to stages in future.
And another mention to the music, any changes to the music will have to be made on the current sound engine, as there isn’t the room for an additional sound driver, (unless someone can write a new engine in place of the old one) and I don’t really know how to write music for it, so if anyone has any knowledge of how to use this sound engine I’d appreciate the insight. (Hummer Team took their sound engine from the game ‘DeBlock’ if that’s any help) I can create music in Famitracker no problem and I actually quite like using the Hummer instruments, with the right composition they can sound quite good, but without knowing how to properly edit that into the game and what limitations I have here it’s not too likely I’ll be able to change the music on my own.
Anyway, as ever, thank you for checking out my project and any feedback or suggestions are welcome
Topic: Super Mario World NES: The Complete Improvement Project (Read 13054 times)