Super Mario World Widescreen - what's left to do?
Added 2021-05-28 02:40:09 +0000 UTCHi! I know some people are pretty excited for SMW Widescreen, either for playing it or for looking for the next SA-1 related projects once SMW is done.
I have initially planned to finish everything on May 31 (around 4 days from this post). I will work intensively for getting this within May 31, but I might postpone in a few days in case I see things are not going smooth as expected. After all, we don't have a Cyperpunk 2077-like release π
Basically, the overworld map is done. Two things are needed to adjust (which I found out recently), which is the [!] blocks disappearing when it's nearly the left border and the windowing effects when the save/don't save and continue/end dialogs appear.
The levels still need more work. I have a still a long list of sprites to update: cluster sprites, regular sprites, quake sprites, bounce sprites, score sprites, extended sprites, shooter sprites, smoke sprites, spinning coin sprites, minor extended sprites and generator sprites. These still malfunction when on the widescreen border, either because they don't render or don't interact as expected with the player.
I'm using Lunar Magic 1.65 (an older version, released in 2009) to edit the original SMW levels and test the possible scenarios. For example, when I jump on the note block, the block is supposed to slight bounce to below. That's a bounce sprite that appears while the block itself (layer 1) is blinking. Currently the block simply blinks on the widescreen area. The same applies with ON/OFF and the glass block. Then I have to make sure the "coins" that appears from "?" blocks appears currently, which currently not. And many more cases...I'm working pretty hard to get all these details done.
Once sprites are fixed, I still have to edit the levels to respect the widescreen area (some may behave oddly like the bonus levels and castle/ghost house entrances). Then the bosses need to be fixed since their scenes are completely hardcoded, such as Morton/Roy rooms, Lemmy/Wendy "pipes" arena and Bowser itself.
I would also like to fix some of the original game bugs to make it look more reliable compared to original. For example the "S" from MARIO START! and possibly the Luigi graphics. I'm open for more suggestions, by the way! I know there's a lot of bugs present on SMW that would be cool to improve with. Of course, there is some 'fun' bugs that wouldn't make sense to fix them, like duplicating blocks or 1-up tricks. Regardless, I still would like to SMW Widescreen be the kind of patch that makes SMW even greater compared to the original, so I'm taking everything in consideration!
So, are you excited for the new patch? Make sure to share your thoughts here on the comments section. Have a great day! π
Comments
This is an interesting question and probably a detailed article will be welcome for most interested people. Imagine you're viewing the original screen. Nearby the borders of the screen, approximately 32 pixels, there's a magic vertical line called spawn column. Once that line hits a sprite that is supposed to spawn, it will create the sprite and it will appear as soon as the camera approaches it. What Widescreen SMW does is moving the vertical line 48 or 96 columns away, so the spawning only happens after the border
Vitor
2021-06-07 22:39:53 +0000 UTCI've been wondering, how does enemies spawning sooner affect gameplay? Do you account for that when they spawn or are they just starting to move sooner or something else? If there is a discussion of how you are designing the changes somewhere I would love to read it.
Stomat
2021-06-07 21:08:10 +0000 UTC
