Official Newer Update Thread!

[antnee]

Features:

• Over 130 all new levels
• Completely new world map system, redesigned from the ground up
• 8 major worlds and several minor ones, spanning 18 themed areas
• 34 new bonus houses, including two never seen before mini-games
• 21 new titlescreens that show depending on your game progress
• Over 150 new tilesets to enhance the visual appeal of the game
• 39 fresh and new backgrounds to match the world themes
• More than 35 original music tracks to create a memorable Newer score
• And another 20 arranged favourites to bring that Mario zip
• Remixed versions of every song for the 'hurry up' music
• Completely redone User Interface and layouts for every part of the game
• More than 50 completely new sprites, including 14 all new enemies
• Eight new bosses, one for each major world
• Over 200 new appearances for classic enemies, for that updated feel
• And still a couple secrets we’re not ready to tell just yet!

Look forward to it, coming as soon as we can get it out the door!

Last Updated by Tempus, Sun Dec 16, 2012

[antnee]

Hello again from the Newer team!

We are happy to announce that we have a new member! Qwedoo will now be working with us in the graphics department. He is a very talented artist; you can see some of his work here:

http://qwedfgbnm.deviantart.com/ (click BROWSE GALLERY to see more of his work)

Hope everyone is having a nice holiday season!

[Treeki]

We are looking for people who can help us with coding some of the new features we have planned for Newer -- most notably the new world map engine.

Knowledge of C++ is required, since NSMBW is written in C++. GX and/or OpenGL would be helpful as well.
PowerPC ASM knowledge is also useful, but not necessary -- I can take care of the required reverse-engineering myself, but I am the only coder on the team and I cannot do every single thing.

Here's an example of what you would be dealing with: http://pastie.org/private/o4jfc5qdpb0ttteszepia

PM me if you would like to help.

[Pop006]

I posted this in the discussion thread, but thought I should add it here to anyone who is looking for updates:

4 New screen-shots;

http://img156.imageshack.us/img156/516/xxx1.png
http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/8002/xxx2.png
http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/4556/xxx3.png
http://img522.imageshack.us/img522/4136/xxx4.png

[Treeki]

Well, I've been working a lot over the past few days and I now have a functioning prototype of the world map engine. It's missing lots of features, but it's progress :D

To give you an idea of how it's progressing so far, I have these features:
- Pause menu is functional
- All options on Pause menu are functional except for "Star Coins" (which will be changed)
- You can move on preset paths around the map
- You can enter levels
- Your position is saved when you enter a level or save the game

On my to-do list:
- Camera and lighting control
- Unlockable paths
- Better/smoother Mario animations and movement
- Reworking of the 3D engine for various features (most notably, sharing textures between different models)
- HUD

Once I get more of the engine done, I may draw up a simple 3D demo map (so as not to spoil anything in Newer) and record a video to show it off. Hopefully I'll be able to get that done this week.

[Treeki]

It only took a month of on-and-off progress (first commit to the Git repo: 4th February) and about 7000 lines of code .. but here's something I have to show for it, finally.

This is a .NET library for reading/writing NSMBW's BRRES files. It'll be released later. I put together a simple .obj importer over the course of two days, and...

From: http://treeki.rustedlogic.net/brresprogress1.png
To: http://treeki.rustedlogic.net/brresprogress2.png

And no, that's not a real Newer map. It's just a quick test I threw together in Maya with my extremely limited modelling skills and Nintendo's map textures. I'm ditching my custom 3D engine too.

More to come soon.

[Treeki]

I just realised that a pretty huge amount of my coding work for this project is done from 3AM to 6AM. Surprisingly enough, it actually still works. It's 5:24am right now... Also, I wish I had started using git earlier. Branches are amazing.

We are making some really great progress on maps: our first four worlds now all have a basic map terrain layout. (W1 is the one with the most progress, since it has all the decoration added, but it's quite old and needs some tidying up to match various theme edits we've made to the levels since then.)

My .brres importer is now fully functional for simple (no animations) models. The main map is looking really good in-game! It's already very close to a playable prototype. However, camera movement is proving to be a pain in the ass: it's pretty much the only hardcoded thing in the map system right now.

Right now, I'm working on reversing the game's APIs for rendering .brlyt layout files so I can add a HUD to the map. Once I get this working, I'll actually get around to making a simple demo map and posting a video :p

[Treeki]

And here's the demo video I promised.



Before you ask: no, Newer's maps will not look that crappy. It's just a test map I drew up in less than an hour. Yay programmer art!

[Pop006]

Quick little tiny update from me... I'm finally back in the saddle after a long long break due to busy in real life crap. So I've started a new tileset, but this time I am taking a completely new approach. Rather than 100% done in photoshop, this time I am building a 3d tileset, and then rendering it into an image (or bunch of images), which I will then make the tileset out of. Hopefully it helps to keep some things looking really 3d and higher quality than just photoshop itself.
Anyway here is a quick update of that!
New 3D Tileset!

Also here's one more quick screen I thought you guys might enjoy... it's our file servers root... see how much fun you can have speculating about the names of things!
Dropbox Root

[antnee]

And now... The moment you have all been waiting for:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u1pyzf7VTo

[Skawo]

New Trailer.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oP09xiQ0vs


And New Website: http://www.newerteam.com

[antnee]

Oh snap you guys, it's time for an update!

First of all, we would like to welcome Void007 to the Newer team! He will be helping us to wrap up levels, test, and generally be awesome. Welcome Void!

We have been finalizing levels lately, and still cranking out hacks, custom sprites, and all sorts of goodies! So far, we are happy to announce that worlds 1 and 2 are DONE! No, really. Pinky swear!

So, stay tuned!

[JasonP27]

Here is list of features and hacks that are known* to be in Newer:

Features:

Over 130 custom levels over several Worlds
Dozens of custom tilesets
All new original music
All new 2D Map engine with custom maps
New enemies
New bosses
New mini-games
New sprites (blocks, controllers)
New effects... and MORE!

Also includes an old mechanic from the days of the NES!


Hacks:

Music Hack - Instead of just replacing the original songs, you can have up to 100 songs without drums (IDs 100-199) and 56 songs with drums (IDs 200-255). However, these particular limits are easy to change as long as the ID stays between 0 and 255.

Tile God hack - You will be able to spawn/destroy almost any tile from any tileset being used in the Area... and on any layer as well!

Connected Pipes - will work properly

Tileset Slot Hack - Ability to use any Pa1,2,3 tileset in any Pa1,2,3 slot

Animated Tilesets - Ability to create and use animated tiles. The whole tileset can be animated.

Sprite Retexture Hack - Multiple versions/colors/textures etc of the same sprite, loaded all at once in your level. You can have a rainbow assortment of Goombas or ? Switches for example. "It's a hack that lets us use multiple textures at the same time".

Sprite Resize Hack - "We can scale up (and actually down) any enemy to any size we want."

Randomised Tiles Hack - Allows the game to randomly choose terrain tiles like it does for original tilesets.


Confirmed Sprites/Enemies:

Angry Sun - Making its return is the Angry Sun from SMB3!

Re-Coloured Enemies - Blue Goombas for underground levels, Blue turtles for snow levels

Sprite 169 - Custom sprite... contains the word "magic"...

tag_thunder - Custom sprite which contains at least 7 different uses.

Custom Boss - King/Mega Fuzzy

Yellow Coin Rings - "are like the ones in Another, just re-skinned to be yellow. Collect all 30 during a coaster ride in Newer to unlock the last star coin."

Fake Star Coins - Haha, fooled you!


Tools:
(To be released some time after Newer)

Reggie! v4 - an updated version of Reggie! that will have the Newer Hacks integrated.

Koopatlas - The map equivalent to Reggie!. You will be able to create brand new [2D] maps, from scratch... it doesnt edit existing 3D world maps. You can make whatever pattern you like, and the game can handle up to 42 levels a world in up to 10 worlds - but a bunch of those slots are reserved. If you stick to the slots before that (1-19) and skip a couple of the regular levels that have hardcoded behaviour you get around 187 levels. So you can have way more (or less) than retail if you so desire.

Koopuzzle - The map equivalent to Puzzle. It is used to set properties of tiles for your maps, and to create Objects for easy pasting of multiple tiles.

LayoutStudio - For working with brlan/brlyt animations. (Unfinished)

* Information subject to change. Some facts may be purposely misleading or false to keep some things secret or a surprise for when Newer releases