Yoshi's Island - Dropping Walls

[Gate]

Well, I need the spotlight effect that appears on certain dark sections of Yoshi's Island.

Can someone help me with it?

[Kosheh]

I...feel like that was done using the Super FX 2 chip and all done with transparency layers. Like you could probably achieve a similar effect just drawing it yourself within your engine (and it'd probably be less resource-intensive, too)

EDIT: im glad i was incorrect, looks like i got you your spotlight effect rip

[Raccoon Sam]

I'm sure it's a layer 3 effect, so no SuperFX magic here.

step 1. open ZSNES and YI
step 2. go to Extra-4 or any other level with the spotlight
step 3. once in, make a save state
step 4. open vSNES or any other tile viewer that can read the ZST nametables
step 5. find layer 3 map
step 6. gj man

[Deathbringer]

Pretty much is a transparency layer.

[Raccoon Sam]

Wow, you're right.

I ran some tests and there's some interesting color math. If you wish to get a 1:1 effect (I'm in photoshop, but whatever works for you) assume the middle purple as transparent, invert the layer, and finally change the blending mode to Multiply.

[Gate]

Danke both of you

EDIT: Tried it with my own coding

[Gate]

Sorry for the bump, but something in YI caught my eye.

Remember those walls that falls when you pass through on 1-4?, are those sprites and can be ripped or they are a special kind of effect?.

[Raccoon Sam]

they are special effects drawn by HDMA but there's nothing particularly difficult or different about them.

Consider the Platform Ghost in 1-8 – it looks like it's smooth vector graphics on an SNES game. Technically, it is. You can find the coordinate arrays in the ROM.

there are 0x64 bytes per frame, they are in groups of 2 -X-axis and Y-axis, the 3rd byte group also controls the position of the platform.
The data at ROM 0x0375EF SNES 0x06F3EF points to where the data is located, add 0x060000 to each one
0xF40B
0xF46F
0xF4D3
0xF537
0xF59B
0xF5FF
0xF663
0xF6C7
0xF72B
0xF78F
0xF7F3
0xF857
0xF8BB
0xF40B

Here is a render of all the frames

So, the graphics aren't stored in the traditional sense of 8x8 tiles stored in VRAM, but as 2D polygonal frames where the coordinates of the points are loaded from the ROM and displayed on the 256x224 screen.
This has interesting implications, because with displaying the same data with modern engines, you are given an extremely rare chance to not only transform sprites (scale mostly, but sure, rotate and skew or whatever) losslessly but also actually access the in-between frames!

The fall walls in 1-4 are done with a similar technique, but afaik they're never been documented. What I'm saying however is that while there's absolutely nothing wrong with screenshot ripping the walls the traditional way, finding the coordinate arrays is much better because it gives you infinite scalability.
Your game probably won't run in insanely huge resolution or above 60fps though, but that's something to think about ^

[Gate]

So I guess the same thing applies to the bosses Burt the Bashful, Salvo the Slime, Marching Milde and whatever is called that boss from 5-4

[Raccoon Sam]

probably yeah. Also the sewer ghost enemies, the cheese cubes and the carrier ghost in 5-4. probably others i'm missing too

[Deathbringer]

Took me a minute to remember what 1-4 was, at best there might be a texture for the wall but it could just be the triangle used for the bosses.

EDIT: A triangle, but not the same one.