GIANT ENEMY CRAP

[Pop006]

Well you seen our trailers, that should show off at least SOME of the things we can do. Also keep in mind the first trailer is like 1.5 years old now, imagine how far we've come since then. Even the November trailer is 5 months old and that stuff is (at least what i would consider to be) fairly impressive for a Game Hack Team!

[LuigiFan]

Yes, of course, I'm very, very impressed by what you've done, and thats why I can't wait to play it!

[Reset]

I personally am wondering how good this hack really is, I mean, you guys are really talking it up.

*Sigh* I guess we are gonna have to wait 8 months...

It seems like its gonna be pretty astounding. Remember, Void007 was in the same boat as every non-Newer individual on the form until recently. Now that he's on the team, he has been reminding us of how mind blowing the game was for him. I'd say Void is a good indicator of how awesome this project is gonna be!

That is, if you don't already trust the other Newer Team members as is...

Also, you gotta remember that the tools that'll be released once Newer is completed are really going to add a myriad of possibilities to NSMBWii hacking.

[Pop006]

Just so you guys are aware, we don't plan on releasing Newer and our Tools on the same day. We want people to PLAY out game and beat it, if we release the tools with the game half of you would just ignore the game and start making new levels. I'd say withing a month or two of the game being out we'll send forth all our advanced sourcery and magic we used to make our game.

[LuigiFan]

The thing I'm actually waiting for is the game, not the tools so I hope it will be out soon

[Adrian971226]

What about two weeks or so to release the tools? I can't wait that long... (One month is too much for dedicated fans.)

[megazig]

I don't think a month is long enough, what about 3 months

[max31]

This is the best of NSMBW. I waiting perhaps more 8 months for have, but I will do everything to play .

[TobiasAmaranth]

Or perhaps PM the tools to those that prove they've made it through the game. I'm with the two-weeks guy, I'll be playing and completing this very quickly, and will want to be able to make custom levels with the tools. I'm one of the odd people who has been looking forward to the bug-edits as much as, if not more, than Newer itself. Technological advancements FTW.

(Yes, I look forward to seeing what was accomplished of course. Gotta play with them to figure out how to best use them, just like Nintendo's stuff.)

[Pop006]

Yeah I don't think we intend on waiting long enough for people like you to lose interest or be annoyed Mr Amaranth, but just long enough to ensure that people have seen our hacks in game before they try to make their own hacks with them. Maybe making some tools avaliable to a select few almost as a 'bug testing' phase wouldn't be a bad idea. We'll work out exactly how we will release stuff once we get a bit closer to release of course, then let you guys know

[TobiasAmaranth]

Excellent~ I look forward to crafting a tutorial map for the new hack-pack similar to the Event Training map I did. That one was fairly popular, and I'm sad I couldn't finish it up with a large sprawling level. Stupid Area 4 bugs. Heh.

Oh, right, is there any chance you guys can create a camera settings tutorial with all of the ins and outs of the options? That's probably the biggest thing I've had trouble with for level creation. That and background positioning. By now, I imagine you guys are experts.

[Adrian971226]

Yeah I don't think we intend on waiting long enough for people like you to lose interest or be annoyed Mr Amaranth, but just long enough to ensure that people have seen our hacks in game before they try to make their own hacks with them. Maybe making some tools avaliable to a select few almost as a 'bug testing' phase wouldn't be a bad idea. We'll work out exactly how we will release stuff once we get a bit closer to release of course, then let you guys know

Good, I think it's a good idea for choosing some people for bug-testing. Is there any way that we can apply to be a bug tester?

[antnee]

If someone else doesn't do it before I get home from work, I will explain a bit about the camera and BG stuff later.

[antnee]

Alright, Camera stuff!

In zone settings, there are a couple pertinent values:

X tracking - Makes the camera follow mario horizontally. Uncheck to make the camera not scroll horizontally (useful for vertical levels)

Y tracking - Makes the camera follow mario vertically. Uncheck to make the camera ONLY scroll horizontally.

Zoom level - Controls how close the camera appears. Generally, 1 is the best value to use. 2 is ok if you have to make sure a bit more is visible at a time. 3 is getting out there, and a lot of people have trouble seeing what they are doing when the camera is zoomed out this far. For the love of god, just don't use 4.

Upper Bounds - This controls how high you have to be on the screen before the camera will scroll upwards. Use a positive value in something like a tower, where its useful to be able to see what is coming ahead of time. 30 - 40 is a good value. Use a negative value when you DONT want the screen to scroll upwards easily (like, if theres a secret area JUST out of view that you don't want to be obvious until the player gets close to it.)

Lower Bounds - Same thing, but controls how easily the camera scrolls downwards. Use a positive value when you want to be able to quickly scroll the screen downwards. This is helpful if you have a lot of very high platforming in a level, and there appears to be a lot of blind jumps due to the camera getting "stuck" near the top of the screen.

Unknown - This is actually very useful for Multiplayer. In a tower level, for example, you should set this to "4" Liesss. 2 or 6 to make sure that when a player falls, the player DIES instead of the camera following them down. Believe me, it's better that way. The other values, I am not so sure of what they do.

Different tracking. 0 is tracking the player in front, 1 in the back, 2 on top, 3 on the bottom. But the latest public released Reggie doesn't even HAVE this option. So /Skawo

Backgrounds!

Position X - This is an offset that controls how far left or right the background will be shifted. Not really useful unless you are nitpicky and it is a bonus room that doesnt scroll at all.

Position Y - Much more useful. Use this to shift the background up and down. Positive values will shift the background down. I almost always shift my backgrounds down so that the little dark area at the bottom is only visible in a pit.

Scroll Rate X and Y - This is pretty self explanatory, yet almost everyone misses this. This makes the background actually MOVE with you when the camera is scrolling. For BGA, I almost always use .25x. For BGB, I use .125x. I would not use anything over .5x, as it makes some people dizzy. Of course, there are exceptions.

Zoom - Controls how big the background appears. I hardly ever touch this... It is useful when you have a rather tall zone (385 or so), but eh.

Align to ____ - This one confuses some people. This makes the background align to the screen (yuck) or the zone (yes!). In almost every case, you want to align to zone. The reason for this is that when you align to screen, the background looks very unnatural when the camera zooms (such as in multiplayer, or when the goal flagpole animation plays). The ONLY time I have ever found it useful to align to screen is in a vertical level, IF the background doesnt align itself properly (most of them do.)


Hope this helps!

[LuigiFan]

Wow, sounds awesome

[TobiasAmaranth]

That needs its own topic! And I wonder if the other members can add anything else. Additionally, you went over a lot of it, but what sort of things have you guys learned to "make sure not to do" or to specifically be sure to do when constructing a level suited for 2-4 players?

[antnee]

Hmmmmm... A couple things come off the top of my head.

1) Try to avoid long stretches of "falling" platforms.
2) Try to make sure that any platforming elements are either at least a few tiles wide, or that there is a "backup" platform for other players to land on.
3) Pipe cannons can be dangerous if they shoot you too far offscreen.
4) This isn't an issue now, but one of the fixes in Newer is the Connected Pipe option. Try not to make them too long, as you can scroll offscreen and kill the rest of the players.

Generally, I don't care about making things 4p friendly. It's just too much, and even Nintendo said screw it. I try to make sure that 3p is at LEAST doable. 2p is pretty easy... all you have to do is ask yourself, "could I backtrack and do this part again?"

[TobiasAmaranth]

Here's an odd question, but I'm sitting here thinking of how to pull a 'detect player number' feature off with a bunch of locations and and-switches that pull a trigger at the start of the level, and open the corresponding path before dropping the players down off a platform making it impossible to re-trigger the switch in a different way. (For puzzle maps, having a 1P, 2P, 3P, and 4P path for a single map)

I haven't done much multi-player, do the payers spawn with some distance between them, and what sort of limit is there on Tile God sprites for an area?

[MidiGuyDP]

Unknown - This is actually very useful for Multiplayer. In a tower level, for example, you should set this to "4" Liesss. 2 or 6 to make sure that when a player falls, the player DIES instead of the camera following them down. Believe me, it's better that way. The other values, I am not so sure of what they do.

Different tracking. 0 is tracking the player in front, 1 in the back, 2 on top, 3 on the bottom. But the latest public released Reggie doesn't even HAVE this option. So /Skawo

That feature looks like it would be essential for making levels more multiplayer friendly. I was wondering where that feature was. Is there any other way to do it, besides probably Hex editing at the moment?

[LuigiFan]

Just a question, on Newer main page, it says that it can be played on any homebrew enabled wii. But is it enough if I have Riivolution?