Previously I had been documenting all five of my current hacks in one thread to avoid cluttering the forums, but I've come to realize that was a terrible idea because the thread itself was cluttered and often seemed to confuse users as if it were all part of one hack, and I've seen other users maintaining multiple threads here so I figured I should let Stella Somnium branch off into its own thread. I may do the same with the others in the future, but I'd rather wait until I have new stuff to contribute to them.
Anyway, for those of you who are unfamiliar, this is my 'main' hacking project, Stella Somnium. So far, I am aiming for this to give a unique experience by drawing(or occasionally porting) my own graphics with the intent of replacing everything visually. I want to give each level a good and unique aesthetic, since one thing I have always enjoyed the most about video games is the feeling of exploring locations. I wanted to recreate this feeling of truly being immersed in the locations. The slower running speed could also help players feel more grounded to/immersed in the levels. I also plan for it to be very story-based, but I don't have all that much decided on the story yet.
Now, where else to start but level screenshots?
Inversion Frame (name subject to change)
This is the first level I began for Stella Somnium. The tileset was designed so the ground tiles were sorta upside-down smaller versions of a background with hills, mountains and stars visible and the background meant to resemble a large upside-down generic grass tile, though that's less noticeable with the new palette. Still looks neat in my opinion. The level itself has a sort of theme of using these robots(goomba reskins) to hit otherwise inaccessible quantum clusters(? block reskins), which ended up actually being pretty fun.
An area more packed with blocks. The yellow and gray quantum clusters are turn block replacements.
An ambush of X9 robots(chuck replacements).
The second half of the level is when the wind picks up. When the wind starts, aside from the leaves flying by, the windmills start turning and the background bends in the wind. Of course, there's also the added challenge of a constant force pushing you to the left.
The Silent Desert
Some of you may recognize the background from F-Zero's Silence track. This is my first ripped background, and I made the foreground on my own based on the appearance of the background(with the exception of the dirt, which is highly based off F-Zero's dirt tiles). This level is designed to be spacious like a desert but not to the extent of being boring.
Some ruins and a currently-unedited venus fire plant which I still need to make new graphics for.
Unnamed
This is the newest level of the game, quite obviously very early in progress. I'll probably experiment with the ground a bit more as it looks quite empty, but I'm content with the pool of water, palm tree(well, not the right leaf anyway), and the thing to the left which is something that will fling the player into the air upon contact to help navigate the level. The jump thing and pool of water are both animated, and the pool has layer priority so it seems like you truly go in the water. I plan to use the custom 'sprite seed' sprites, which you will need to bring to the pools to grow.. something. I also still need a background, of course. Any ideas/suggestions are welcome since I haven't decided anything yet.
Here is a slightly outdated video showing the unfinished Inversion Frame and Silent Desert levels.
And now more on the story aspect, there will be # characters, most of which initially shown only as silhouettes but gradually revealed throughout the story.
These are all the characters' silhouettes(aside from the main character,
and here are two of the initially revealed characters(who are also present in the silhouettes, because I didn't decide they'd start off revealed until after I took the previous picture)
And lastly, I have a bit of a problem. Today I switched over to AddmusicK because a lot of songs didn't work with Addmusic 4. This meant porting everything to a new ROM as it was incompatible with something, which turned out being a patch, specifically the one to give a custom "Nintendo Presents" palette, and it now runs. I am still having a problem though; whenever the player dies via falling(or running out of time, but time probably won't be used in this hack), the ROM simply crashes or freezes up.
In case it would help identify the problem, the patches I am using so far include Disable Spin Jump, SMB2 HP, disable running, uberASM(only for gradient backgrounds so far) and VWF dialogues. Of course, using insta-kill blocks instead of bottomless pits could work, but I imagine it would feel a bit awkward. So if anyone has an idea how to fix this issue, help would be greatly appreciated. Also P-switch music plays indefinitely but I may have a simple workaround to that.
oh and here's a userbar and stuff if any of you want to support it
Anyway, for those of you who are unfamiliar, this is my 'main' hacking project, Stella Somnium. So far, I am aiming for this to give a unique experience by drawing(or occasionally porting) my own graphics with the intent of replacing everything visually. I want to give each level a good and unique aesthetic, since one thing I have always enjoyed the most about video games is the feeling of exploring locations. I wanted to recreate this feeling of truly being immersed in the locations. The slower running speed could also help players feel more grounded to/immersed in the levels. I also plan for it to be very story-based, but I don't have all that much decided on the story yet.
Now, where else to start but level screenshots?
Inversion Frame (name subject to change)
This is the first level I began for Stella Somnium. The tileset was designed so the ground tiles were sorta upside-down smaller versions of a background with hills, mountains and stars visible and the background meant to resemble a large upside-down generic grass tile, though that's less noticeable with the new palette. Still looks neat in my opinion. The level itself has a sort of theme of using these robots(goomba reskins) to hit otherwise inaccessible quantum clusters(? block reskins), which ended up actually being pretty fun.
An area more packed with blocks. The yellow and gray quantum clusters are turn block replacements.
An ambush of X9 robots(chuck replacements).
The second half of the level is when the wind picks up. When the wind starts, aside from the leaves flying by, the windmills start turning and the background bends in the wind. Of course, there's also the added challenge of a constant force pushing you to the left.
The Silent Desert
Some of you may recognize the background from F-Zero's Silence track. This is my first ripped background, and I made the foreground on my own based on the appearance of the background(with the exception of the dirt, which is highly based off F-Zero's dirt tiles). This level is designed to be spacious like a desert but not to the extent of being boring.
Some ruins and a currently-unedited venus fire plant which I still need to make new graphics for.
Unnamed
This is the newest level of the game, quite obviously very early in progress. I'll probably experiment with the ground a bit more as it looks quite empty, but I'm content with the pool of water, palm tree(well, not the right leaf anyway), and the thing to the left which is something that will fling the player into the air upon contact to help navigate the level. The jump thing and pool of water are both animated, and the pool has layer priority so it seems like you truly go in the water. I plan to use the custom 'sprite seed' sprites, which you will need to bring to the pools to grow.. something. I also still need a background, of course. Any ideas/suggestions are welcome since I haven't decided anything yet.
Here is a slightly outdated video showing the unfinished Inversion Frame and Silent Desert levels.
And now more on the story aspect, there will be # characters, most of which initially shown only as silhouettes but gradually revealed throughout the story.
These are all the characters' silhouettes(aside from the main character,
and here are two of the initially revealed characters(who are also present in the silhouettes, because I didn't decide they'd start off revealed until after I took the previous picture)
And lastly, I have a bit of a problem. Today I switched over to AddmusicK because a lot of songs didn't work with Addmusic 4. This meant porting everything to a new ROM as it was incompatible with something, which turned out being a patch, specifically the one to give a custom "Nintendo Presents" palette, and it now runs. I am still having a problem though; whenever the player dies via falling(or running out of time, but time probably won't be used in this hack), the ROM simply crashes or freezes up.
In case it would help identify the problem, the patches I am using so far include Disable Spin Jump, SMB2 HP, disable running, uberASM(only for gradient backgrounds so far) and VWF dialogues. Of course, using insta-kill blocks instead of bottomless pits could work, but I imagine it would feel a bit awkward. So if anyone has an idea how to fix this issue, help would be greatly appreciated. Also P-switch music plays indefinitely but I may have a simple workaround to that.
oh and here's a userbar and stuff if any of you want to support it
Code
<a href="http://www.smwcentral.net/?p=viewthread&t=74935">[img]http://i.imgur.com/quTBZC0.png[/img]</a>