Super Mario World NES: The Complete Improvement Project

[Quick Curly]

Those graphics and colours look amazing! Keep it up! You can do it!

[Vanya]

Great stuff! This is exactly the sort of thing I meant in my earlier post.

[Googie]

I joined your discord server for support.

I'm really liking how everything is coming along, this'll be cool to play once it's done. 

[DavidtheIdeaMan]

Im curious,will the music of this project will be remade?

[RealGaea]

Hello again to all, I'm back at it again and this time things look quite different, some aspects of the project are being reworked and how I'm working on this has also changed a bit. So, onto the new SMW NES Improvement update:

On the technical side, progress on the disassembly is good, 6 banks have been fully disassembled so far and PalaceSwitcher has been working hard to understand this game's inner workings, finding many useful RAM addresses that the game uses for various things. The disassembly can be found here: https://github.com/palaceswitcher/SMW-NES-Disassembly and there is also a Discord server (https://discord.gg/3rJSuzqzmE) for those who would like to help out with the project. We would much appreciate any technical assistance you could lend to us if you would like to do so as it would speed up the disassembly process if there were more people working on it as it is currently only PalaceSwitcher working on this task.

Now onto the graphical side of things, there are 3 main changes to how this is being designed now, 1; completely new and more flexible palette sets, 2; Graphics are now being organised in ROMs ready for later insertion, and 3; I'm aiming for a far more legitimate looking game than before.
Here are Some sprites in the new art style:

As promised, Bowser has also been worked on:

And here are all the stage objects I have drawn so far:

As you can see, things are looking a little prettier now, we have a more diverse colour set and, like some of you asked for, Mario now uses only one palette just as he did in the real NES games. This new set of palettes will not only allow for the graphics to appear more accurate to the SNES originals as a whole, but also prevent any palette clash issues when playing as the Luigi or when riding a non-green Yoshi.
Following this new art direction, PalaceSwitcher and I have officially merged projects, so I am now the lead artist of the project as a whole.
The reason that graphics are now being organised and arranged into graphics ROMs is because we realised that all of the work done to the Mapper 90 version of the game will later have to be transferred over to the MMC5 version (as that will be a conversion of the base game) and also, with the MMC5 version we should be able to achieve a far greater level of accuracy with more frames and more memory, so continuing to graphically improve the mapper 90 version seems pointless. Instead all graphics used in the game will be drawn in colourised and ready to insert form, including banking design for said graphics, meaning that when the MMC5 version is ready, we will be able to insert everything as needed.

Anyway, that's it for this update, I hope you like the changes we've made and I look forward to hearing your thoughts,
Thanks for reading and take care everybody!

An unique Luigi... Can't ask for more! Keep it up!

[spotanjo3]

Please keep it up because I really want it. And good work on this project!

[MathUser2929]

Just curious, are you gonna work on the physics of the game? It bugs me that yoshi dont bounce off stuff. He gets hurt instead.

[Somari the Adventurer]

Hello again, just a small post this time to respond to some things and show off the latest sprite progress.
First of all, thankyou all for the warm responses, I'm glad you all like the new art I'm making for the game and that people are interested in the project, your support is what helps us keep working on this
So, to answer the couple questions that were asked ('Will the music be remade? and 'Will the physics be worked on?'), yes, this game is basically being torn apart and once that's done, it'll be rebuilt on the MMC5 with new music, new physics, new enemies, stages and many other improvements, this is a complete overhaul of the game. We would like to make as close to a perfect port as is technically possible, the MMC5 should allow us to achieve this, though due to the size of the project and our small team it will obviously take a fair while to do.
As for sprite progress, here are the latest sprite sets that have been completed:
Standard Koopa sprites and shell (can be palette swapped for each of the four colours)

And Small Mario's in level sprites (missing cutscene specific sprites for now as they are a low priority)

Good progress has also been made on Yoshi's sprites and they are nearly completed, so hopefully I can cross those off the list soon.
On the technical side, PalaceSwitcher has updated the bank 63 labels and has begun work on disassembling bank 50, so there's been a little progress made all round.

Anyway, as ever, thanks for reading and I look forward to hearing your thoughts,
Take care everyone

[Chatterine]

Looking good, keep up the good work!

By the way, some positive feedback on Mario's palette: Can't you make him use pink instead of red? It'd look closer to the original, and it'd affect other sprites as well, which I don't know if is good or not. That'd make him not match him in other Mario games, but that's silly because SMB and SMB2 used brown and brown for his overalls, and I really liked it when Mario used two palettes, althrough I must really admit the new config makes better use of the NES's 4-color palette.

The pink palette I can't decide whether it's good or not, as some sprites in the original SMW had pink palettes (take the bullet bills, for example). Other sprites would have pink-ish palettes, too, but between having it all in red and and having it all in pink It'd look better if all in pink, since Mario, as you stated previously, is your main focus. Using blue instead of black would be bad as other sprites, not just Mario, use it, like Luigi's face. Luigi's face would look ugly with blue details.

[real retro kid knuckles]

Those sprites look amazing! Keep up the good work!

[sics]

At first glance they look great, but I wonder how Yoshi's palette changes will be implemented, since all his versions seem to share palettes with different enemies, on the other hand it would be very useful to see a sprite of Mario and Luigi with the different colors of background that you will use in this project

[Vanya]

I think the sprite work is looking great.
Since the game is being rebuilt, will you be using alternate palettes for stages with black backgrounds?

On the subject of using "pink" instead of red to match the SNES version better...
I'm not sure I'm onboard with that notion, but I would like to see it for comparison if possible.
That deep magenta color on the palette might make a good median.

Keep up the excellent work!

[Supergamerguy]

Hello again, just a small post this time to respond to some things and show off the latest sprite progress.
First of all, thankyou all for the warm responses, I'm glad you all like the new art I'm making for the game and that people are interested in the project, your support is what helps us keep working on this
So, to answer the couple questions that were asked ('Will the music be remade? and 'Will the physics be worked on?'), yes, this game is basically being torn apart and once that's done, it'll be rebuilt on the MMC5 with new music, new physics, new enemies, stages and many other improvements, this is a complete overhaul of the game. We would like to make as close to a perfect port as is technically possible, the MMC5 should allow us to achieve this, though due to the size of the project and our small team it will obviously take a fair while to do.
As for sprite progress, here are the latest sprite sets that have been completed:
Standard Koopa sprites and shell (can be palette swapped for each of the four colours)

And Small Mario's in level sprites (missing cutscene specific sprites for now as they are a low priority)

Good progress has also been made on Yoshi's sprites and they are nearly completed, so hopefully I can cross those off the list soon.
On the technical side, PalaceSwitcher has updated the bank 63 labels and has begun work on disassembling bank 50, so there's been a little progress made all round.

Anyway, as ever, thanks for reading and I look forward to hearing your thoughts,
Take care everyone

I think the red looks perfect! The optimal blend of the Mario 3 palette with Super Mario World graphics is the best fit for the NES. I believe making it pink would taint the look it has now.

[Chatterine]

Well, you're right, but it varies from artist to artist. You can't please everyone. We can give suggestions, but it's up to the owner to decide what to do. Anyway, the NES comes with a color perfect for this job: 0x15. That's the hex for the magenta that'd look perfect without making Mario look too... "girl-y".

Using 0x38 would make his skin color a light yellow and would also make the logo in this color too, it'd be barely noticeable and would not make his sprite palette look bad.

As for Yoshi's palettes, it's intentional. Since the NES can only use four palettes for sprites at a time, the romhacker has to be very smart about how he uses these.

[Supergamerguy]

Well, you're right, but it varies from artist to artist. You can't please everyone. We can give suggestions, but it's up to the owner to decide what to do. Anyway, the NES comes with a color perfect for this job: 0x15. That's the hex for the magenta that'd look perfect without making Mario look too... "girl-y".

Using 0x38 would make his skin color a light yellow and would also make the logo in this color too, it'd be barely noticeable and would not make his sprite palette look bad.

As for Yoshi's palettes, it's intentional. Since the NES can only use four palettes for sprites at a time, the romhacker has to be very smart about how he uses these.

That's completely fair.  In the end, whichever option looks best against backgrounds so that you can easily see Mario at all times is most likely the best one.

[Chatterine]

Then again, it's up to the author to decide what to do.

On a side note, on the previously posted sprite sheets, the sprites for the question mark blocks seem to be using the sprite's palettes. This is kinda silly, as the original SMW Nes used them as backgrounds, and thus they'd need to be reworked to keep that in mind.

[Somari the Adventurer]

Hello, thought I'd respond to some things and show off a couple mockups for the backgrounds of the game.
So first off, some of you have suggested using a pink-ish colour for Mario, this is something I looked at before while drawing these, however I was never a fan at all of how it looked as without the shading it just seemed kinda ugly to me, as well as causing the enemies to become miscoloured. But for the sake of comparison, here's Mario using a pinkish palette:

Spoiler

[close]

Perhaps some of you prefer this look, but personally I think that red is a better fit here and is more inline with the other NES Mario games, but each to their own.
Secondly about Yoshi's colour changes, as Lusofonia pointed out, the 4 sprite palettes I have chosen are very much intentionally designed for this as they will allow for all 4 colours of Yoshi and koopa to be possible at any time without colour clashing. Instead of swapping a single palette dedicated to Yoshi, Yoshi will instead swap between palette mappings selecting one of the 4 palettes for his primary colour, the same is true for the Koopas.

As Sics question got me curious about how this should be handled, here's Mario and Luigi on a black background with a slight palette tweak so they don't disappear and one with their standard palette:

Spoiler

[close]

I think simply switching to using this alternate palette in areas with black backgrounds will be a suitable solution to the issue, there shouldn't be too many instances of this change other than in castles anyway.
And I also made a couple mockups of how the game could look, these only cover the first stage/tile set, but this is my vision for the game:

Spoiler

[close]

(I later noticed I slightly messed up the top of the hills and the HUD isn't perfect in this, but the actual backdrop is as I intend it to be in game. The numbers along the edges are just used for me to keep track of attributes while making these, they aren't a part of the game obviously)
And a larger mockup of the first stage:

Spoiler

[close]

(the final results might look slightly different to this but overall it conveys how the game will look)
And lastly, about the [?] blocks having sprites, the blocks and coins will all be background objects as they are in the other Mario games, the sprite present in the object banks is for when the blocks are hit and get bumped upwards, much like how the real Mario games do it. When hit the blocks will turn into sprites briefly to perform this animation and then return to being background objects. Due to colour limitations the appearance of the blocks may vary slightly in some stages, this mockup shows the least colourful variant, however if a stage were to have a totally black or predominantly white background then additional shading may be possible. (the shading colour has to be omitted in some instances so that the sky colour can be used behind coins and flip blocks)

Anyway, thankyou for all your responses and for reading my posts,
I'll catch you all later, take care!

[Supergamerguy]

This truly looks amazing. I am consistently impressed by how much this project improves and impresses every day. Keep up the good work!

[Chatterine]

This. This is perfect. I wonder if moving the HUD to the top is possible? SMW and SMB1 both used HUDs at the top, not sure why Hummer moved it to the bottom.

Also, is it just me, or that Fire Flower sprite is ugly? I think you shouldn't have used white for darker shading, althrough this technique worked in the green part of it because it looks like lighter shading. Maybe move the shading to the top-left to make it clear where the light is coming from.
Edit: Forgot to say about the ? blocks. The way you've done them here is great.

[Supergamerguy]

This. This is perfect. I wonder if moving the HUD to the top is possible? SMW and SMB1 both used HUDs at the top, not sure why Hummer moved it to the bottom.

Also, is it just me, or that Fire Flower sprite is ugly? I think you shouldn't have used white for darker shading, althrough this technique worked in the green part of it because it looks like lighter shading. Maybe move the shading to the top-left to make it clear where the light is coming from.
Edit: Forgot to say about the ? blocks. The way you've done them here is great.

I think the fire Flower Sprite is fine, the shading does look a bit weird, but in the end I think it fits.