Super Mario World: All-Star Edition: Team Fangame Project

[Mikeystar]

Hello, TSR. My name is Mikeystar, with some good news. You may have seen a recent topic about Super Mario World ASE and the making of it. The old topic was wiped because of the old screenshots and the old in-game content like the developing Prologue idea, so now this is the official topic.

Well, The Super Mario World ASE TFP is now on YouTube! You can check out videos of SMWASE levels and features! We're still polishing the levels and graphics before we upload any videos.



Super Mario World ASE is an awesome fangame constructed with Game Maker 8.0 Pro. The game features most graphics that are in a 16-Bit style with eye catching palletes, with physics that are as close tom Super Mario World as we could get them in some Playable Characters, 6 different colored Yoshis each with their own abilities, 12 different power-ups that vary by character, 5 playable characters (Mario, Luigi, Wario, Toad, and Peach), several variable worlds, well-constructed levels accompanied by interesting cutscenes in plot development, several mounts including... Poochy, the Subpop and Skypop Machine, a Mine Cart
and Rambi A serious storyline, swap-able character skins if you can make skins for the players, enemies that come from Super Mario All-Stars and Super Mario World with several other enemy genres, 8-bit throwbacks to the NES Mario platformers, an MP3 and OGG soundtrack which can also be customized, Donkey Kong-specific levels used to traverse past hard levels, intense boss battles, several "fusion" levels (We are big fans of MKFusion.), and a lot more. The engine we're using, also called the All-Star Engine is literally packed with content, and if the content has not yet been inserted, the graphics have been completed.

Our game has changed drastically since the last time we posted screenshots, which was pretty much last year. We changed several graphics to make it more diverse like Subcon Potions and Grass, and revamped Mario and Luigi, as well as a SMW Yoshi with nice graphics.

And last but not least, here are some screenies!


Amazing, isn't it? Well, this is just a little of what's really in-game. Progress will seriously continue but I can get really lazy when it comes to screenies.
Also, that red bar on the left of the screen is called the DDP Meter, when you grab this large heart called a 'Super Heart', it extends your Hit Points to a maximum of 4. During this state you can get stunned whenever you get hit by obstacles or an enemy, but when you have no more HP in your DDP Meter, you lose it, so you'll have to grab another Super Heart. You also see the DK Hammer Item Tanooki Mario is holding and several SMB2 Enemies and the Blowhard from Yoshi's Island and the Pipe Lakitus that throws Spiny Eggs and Bob-Ombs.

If you guys would like to contribute to ASE in anyway, or if you want to check out the development, go to:
http://s4.zetaboards.com/SMWASE_Reactor/index/

We're in need of level designers, programmers, and spriters. We've been working off a pretty small team, and we always could use some help.

[StrikeForcer]

[MOD EDIT: snip'd huge quote]

You didnt had to post a new topic man. There was that old one that you could of continued on and it wasnt wiped. Anyways, I did design some levels for this fangame and helped with the plot creation.

[Previous]

You didn't have to quote the post man.
Nothing wrong with making a new topic if the old topic is really old and full of outdated content that might distract from the current progress.

---

I think you put too much stuff on the HUD and the "hanging" score looks off. There's so much "weight" on the right compared to the left.
You could remove the "world" and place the score there instead. Aslo, I'm a fan of heading zeros on right-aligned numbers as it avoids the blank space between label and value.
I'd also put the Doki Doki Panic lifebar from the left side up on top to the other HUD elements so it's not that seperated.

[Gors]

also i should add the fact that the sprites clash with each other. Try using an unified style if you have the time. (yes I know you're looking for spriters, I'm just making sure )

[Dazz]

I wish fan games stopped using clashing sprite styles... It really kills it from looking polished.

edit: beaten to it.

[StrikeForcer]

also i should add the fact that the sprites clash with each other. Try using an unified style if you have the time. (yes I know you're looking for spriters, I'm just making sure )

I wish fan games stopped using clashing sprite styles... It really kills it from looking polished.

edit: beaten to it.

Um, in this game, the sprites and tilesets do not and will not clash horribly. OTAKU (aka, ~CaMtEnDo~) have sprited some of the enemies and objects using the 16-bit palette seen in SMAS-SMB3 and SMA4. I and Mikeystar have recolored some of the FG seen in those screenshots using the SMAS-SMB3 palette, but some of them were ripped from Legend-Tony980's SMB3 Recoloured GFX pack on the NSMBX forums and the Knux's SMBX forums.

[Mikeystar]

I think you put too much stuff on the HUD and the "hanging" score looks off. There's so much "weight" on the right compared to the left.
You could remove the "world" and place the score there instead. Aslo, I'm a fan of heading zeros on right-aligned numbers as it avoids the blank space between label and value.
I'd also put the Doki Doki Panic lifebar from the left side up on top to the other HUD elements so it's not that seperated.

I know what you mean, but the HUD will look even more ugly that way, and the HUD wouldn't look as organized as you see in the picture, the HUD is tightly packed enough for the player to see the screen and know where he or she is going. As for the DDP Meter, that can be edited so it won't look too separated from the rest of the HUD, but you can't see it in the screen shots, there is also a Ammo Meter, a Card HUD like in SMB3 when you get a card when clearing a level, and there is a Bonus Star Counter right next to the Card HUD, and a Cash Counter, right above the Bonus Star Counter.

EDIT: I have an idea. We can possibly remove the "world" and just put the score counter there because of the "world" HUD would appear quite redundantly on the World Map and the "Level Start!" Screens, so you'll know what area you are in the game from the things I just mentioned, that way, the score won't look "weighty" toward the whole HUD. Use the HUD I gave down below so I see what you mean clearer.


The entire HUD excluding the Ammo Meter

[alexmach1]

EDIT: I have an idea. We can possibly remove the "world" and just put the score counter there

You could remove the "world" and place the score there

one question i have is why do you have simple clouds in some of the screenshots but you use shaded clouds in the sky area and 2 other areas? same with the 6th and 7th screenshot; why is the ground tileset different from the other ground tilesets?

[Gors]

can I suggest this layout?

Code:

MARIOX99  OOOOO        TIME  0X99
9999999  >>>>>>P [  ]   999  CX99

Changes:

• No one will ever need 999 lives. 99 is more than enough for lives.
  
• Score is put below Mario's name and the label 'SCORE' is omitted. Everyone knows that long string of digits is the score. Also, this being a Mario game, score isn't important at all.
  
• Moved the Ace Coins over the P-meter.
  
• Removed 'ITEM' because it's redundant.
  
• Removed 'WORLD 1-1' because it's redundant.
  
• Other things were kept in place.
  

This way, the HUD gets tidier and aligned. Also I'd mode the HP bar a little higher, because the in the middle, it looks like actual objects instead of HUD icons.

[Iceman404]

Um, in this game, the sprites and tilesets do not and will not clash horribly. OTAKU (aka, ~CaMtEnDo~) have sprited some of the enemies and objects using the 16-bit palette seen in SMAS-SMB3 and SMA4. I and Mikeystar have recolored some of the FG seen in those screenshots using the SMAS-SMB3 palette, but some of them were ripped from Legend-Tony980's SMB3 Recoloured GFX pack on the NSMBX forums and the Knux's SMBX forums.

You can lazily recolor all the shit you want, but unless you get the game's actual art style down in one and not have SMB2 on SMB3 in the same picture, this just looks ugly to say the least.
The game has A LOT of promise, I've never seen such nice and polished things in a Mario fan game before, but the sprites just kill any interest I have for it.

[Ton]

I was hoping to see some gameplay, not a ten-minute unnecessary intro story. By now all we need to know is "Bowser = bad. Here are your characters." Brevity is the soul of wit, after all. Right now we get a lot of exposition on both sides and no action. It immediately tunes me out of the story. We have a 5-minute scene with Bowser and then when he's about to finally do something, we cut away.

Why not open with Bowser transforming Pipe Land or whatever, so we get an example of what the Star can do, then cut to Mario, et al reacting (Maybe they see the sky darken on the horizon and all run off to help), Choose your character, bam.
Then we could get snippets of what the All-Star is as bosses are defeated. It keeps the story going as you progress and lets you jump right into the game. Just an idea.

EDIT: I also stopped making the "clashing sprite styles in Mario games" argument when Nintendo added SMW2 sprites to SMB3 on the GBA and gave zero fucks about sprite style consistency.

[Gors]

just because Nintendo does that doesn't mean fangames need to be unpolished. Also, those SMW2 sprites were e-card extras anyway (afaik) so even if they clashed, they weren't all over the place in the main game (which is the case in this game).

Though yes, clashing sprites is bad and should be avoided.

[Mikeystar]

You can lazily recolor all the shit you want, but unless you get the game's actual art style down in one and not have SMB2 on SMB3 in the same picture, this just looks ugly to say the least.

You have yet failed to realize that this game has graphics coming from Super Mario All-Stars. And not only have you criticized without any things that I can improve on, you just blatantly ignored that this game features SMAS+SMW graphics with nearly the same pallete.

Now this brings up can you make better graphics than Nintendo did when it was first released?

Changes: (A list of changes)
This way, the HUD gets tidier and aligned. Also I'd mode the HP bar a little higher, because the in the middle, it looks like actual objects instead of HUD icons.

This makes the screen more able to be seen, I like your suggestions, I'll see what the team can do in the future.

one question i have is why do you have simple clouds in some of the screenshots but you use shaded clouds in the sky area and 2 other areas? same with the 6th and 7th screenshot; why is the ground tileset different from the other ground tilesets?

About the clouds, I have no idea what you're talking about, the area is supposed to be scenic, you didn't have to judge about why are there clouds in the FG area and the Background.

I was hoping to see some gameplay, not a ten-minute unnecessary intro story. By now all we need to know is "Bowser = bad. Here are your characters." Brevity is the soul of wit, after all. Right now we get a lot of exposition on both sides and no action. It immediately tunes me out of the story. We have a 5-minute scene with Bowser and then when he's about to finally do something, we cut away.

There is only little of what you're seeing, that's not all. Look on YouTube to find more videos of ASE. As for no-action, do you see most of Nintendo's 2-D platformers having a large in-depth story about Bowser's unfolding plot? The prologue is just enough to show what's happening.

Why not open with Bowser transforming Pipe Land or whatever, so we get an example of what the Star can do, then cut to a reaction by Mario, et al reacting (Maybe they see the sky darken on the horizon and all run off to help), Choose your character, bam.
Then we could get snippets of what the All-Star is as bosses are defeated. It keeps the story going as you progress and lets you jump right into the game. Just an idea.

Very nice idea, with Bowser transforming Pipe Land and what-not into a Factory Zone, however, the graphics needed for this area is not 100% Completed.

Out of everything I'm hearing about this fangame in this thread out now, upsetting all the comments are either not a sign of "A job well done" or any people that want to contribute to this project, we've been doing the best we can with graphics. We DON'T have enough people to satisfy everyone's critique about clouds, and everything not coming in the same style which isn't even an issue, Iceman404. You can't expect the best graphics to satisfy you out of a game we've been working on for two years and failed to release a demo because of lagging issues and what-not. Just stay tuned because a demo wasn't released at this point in time.

[alexmach1]

one question i have is why do you have simple clouds in some of the screenshots but you use shaded clouds in the sky area and 2 other areas? same with the 6th and 7th screenshot; why is the ground tileset different from the other ground tilesets?

About the clouds, I have no idea what you're talking about, the area is supposed to be scenic, you didn't have to judge about why are there clouds in the FG area and the Background.

what
all i asked is why you have different looks for the same thing, ie the ground and clouds

just a simple question, not a complaint

[Ton]

I was hoping to see some gameplay, not a ten-minute unnecessary intro story. By now all we need to know is "Bowser = bad. Here are your characters." Brevity is the soul of wit, after all. Right now we get a lot of exposition on both sides and no action. It immediately tunes me out of the story. We have a 5-minute scene with Bowser and then when he's about to finally do something, we cut away.

There is only little of what you're seeing, that's not all. Look on YouTube to find more videos of ASE. As for no-action, do you see most of Nintendo's 2-D platformers having a large in-depth story about Bowser's unfolding plot? The prologue is just enough to show what's happening.

I think you misunderstood me. Having a story is GREAT, but it needs to be A) more entertaining to read, B) Spaced out so the story keeps your attention. You can't have a story dump in the first few minutes of the game. That's not why people play a Mario game. Hell, when I turn on Mario World, that one little balloon that pops up "Welcome to Dinosaur Land!" makes me scream at the TV "I don't give a shit! Where dem Goombas?!"

Not really, but here's a better example; Mario 64. We get Lakitu zooming around, then Mario pops out of the pipe and the game starts. NSMB Wii; The Koopa Kids snatch Peach and take off. The story is quick and you immediately get to play.
Mario 64- You enter the castle, Bowser says "I got yo woman! Bwahaha!" and you get to play. Simple and easy.
The thing, however, that REALLY ruins the intro is all the dialogue between Bowser/Jr/Koopatrol/Kamek that goes on and on and on, and then just as Bowser is about to DO something, it cuts away and get a box that says "Bowser did something." This is telling, not showing, and is the number one thing NOT to do when you want to draw in an audience.