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Making a Pit Hack

Kaizo

Hi. I'm very interested in creating ROM hacks of SMW. I have been lurking on this website for a while but then I decided to create an account. Anyway, I'm interested in Kaizo and Pit hacks more than regular-difficulty hacks. I played a lot of recent kaizo hacks here and they're really fun. I'm very impressed on how creative the hacks were. I wanted to create a Kaizo or Pit hack but I want tutorials. Tutorials that tell you what not to do when creating levels and tips to improve your levels. I majorly need help with the overworld more than anything. I suck at creating the overworld. I'll really like a tutorial on overworlds. Also, I've been practicing glitches on my own but I would like tips on how to corner clip as small Mario because I can corner clip pretty well as big Mario, not really small Mario. I hope you guys give me these tutorials! #tb{^V^}


Hello, and welcome to the site!

Most of the tutorials we have on the site apply to both standard hacking and Kaizo hacking, and you can find a list of all of them here. For level design, this one will probably be most useful to you, and for overworld design, these two are easiest to follow.

For Kaizo hacking in particular, there's a number of different strategies to take for level design, and it mostly comes down to your personal preference and style. For example, there's the "creative compression" style of hacks like Abuse and Die or Hertz Donut, which involves fitting a lot of action (and often puzzles) into a small space. It makes the hacks much more difficult to play, but at the same time more interesting to work out. Alternatively, you can give the player a bit more space while having enough motion in your level to keep the player moving, as seen in the original Kaizos or hacks like Horrifying Mario World and Kaiketsoy Mario. This generally makes for easier playing, but might be a bit easier to design. Of course, you can always take your own approach, and whatever you can do to make your hack stand out from the others will make it that much more enjoyable for people to play.


Lastly, in regards to Kaizo design in general, knowing the distinction between "difficult" and "unfair" is the most necessary thing to know. "Difficult" refers to things that challenge a player's skills, and requires them to react to a situation. "Unfair" refers to things not particularly within the player's control, and are usually there simply to frustrate the player (e.g. unmarked coin blocks, pixel-perfect jumps, strict time limits, etc.). You want to avoid unfair, or "fake", difficulty as much as possible, since most players will see that sort of thing and be instantly turned off from your hack.

The big challenge of Kaizo hacking is creating those interesting, unique, and new ideas that make people want to see what you have to show. Experiment with a new things, or limit yourself to only a few, or do whatever you need to to expand beyond the common ideas that people have seen a thousand times before, and you'll be set.

Professional frame-by-frame time wizard. YouTube - Twitter - SMW Glitch List - SMW Randomizer
Thanks. I feel like the recent kaizo hacks have took all of the creative ideas so now it's going to be difficult to make a kaizo hack when a lot of the creative ideas were used. I feel like I can make a pit hack and TAS it and post a video of it.
Originally posted by Pokemon Fan
I feel like the recent kaizo hacks have took all of the creative ideas so now it's going to be difficult to make a kaizo hack when a lot of the creative ideas were used.

I kinda feel like some of them, while they are pretty creative, kinda all "look the same" to me and at times may feel like they're using the same resources from a small pool of custom resources.
I don't think there are too many Kaizo hacks that I know of that use SA-1. There are probably a lot of set-ups you can do that involve combining sprites together that wouldn't be possible without SA-1.
There is a lot of overlap with regular hacks about 'what not to do'. But you also have to think about massive unintended shortcuts, which are even higher stakes in pit hacks since they have TASers in mind.
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Yeah, you're right, Sokobansolver. I agree with you on the fact that all of the ideas "look the same". I think they all "look the same" is because of the use of custom blocks and custom sprites. Even if users use different blocks, sprites, or anything really, the ideas have that "certain creation". I really don't know how to describe it but the recent ideas all look similar. Probably because of inspiration or taking little pieces of an idea and just mixing it up. But many pit hacks aren't creative, usually they're just about precision and abuses extremely difficult glitches. The pit hacks aren't really puzzling or is it that the pit hack creators think the puzzles won't be difficult enough to consider the hack a "pit hack" because they don't know to make puzzles with the difficult and insane glitches.


Originally posted by Sokobansolver
I don't think there are too many Kaizo hacks that I know of that use SA-1. There are probably a lot of set-ups you can do that involve combining sprites together that wouldn't be possible without SA-1.

Pretty sure C|C Stage 12 is the only Kaizo hack to use SA-1 so far. Part of the reason for that is that SA-1 is kind of hard to use without proper ASM knowledge, so that scares a lot of people away.

I wouldn't say that custom blocks and sprites are limiting hacks from feeling unique, but rather the fact that people are afraid to stray from the few ones known to work well. Just look at Phantos and Metroids, which have both begun to get abused way too often, and while they do provide a good and easy source of difficulty, there's not a lot of interesting things you can do with them. You could easily make a level stand out from all the other Kaizo levels just by basing it around some different custom sprite or block.

not to put any ideas in your head but here

Professional frame-by-frame time wizard. YouTube - Twitter - SMW Glitch List - SMW Randomizer
Thanks, Thomas. I'll try to use a custom block or custom sprite that has been rarely seen and I'll try to make the level creative with it.
Welcome to the club. Creativity is not an easy thing in kaizo hacks now. I'm starting to implement more asm into my hacks now to spice things up.

Also, welcome to SMWC. I hope to see more of you.
I may sound stupid to others but how do I post screenshots from Lunar Magic?
Originally posted by Pokemon Fan
I may sound stupid to others but how do I post screenshots from Lunar Magic?


Two things you can do.

1. Use snipping tool assuming you have windows.

Make a screenshot with snipping tool, save it, and upload it to "My files" on your account.

2. Lunar Magic's in-editor image export.

File/Levels/Export level to image file. Save the image, and upload it to your files.

Hope that helped.
Thanks, SuperAgentYoshi. #tb{:D}



This is the first room of a pit hack I'm working on. I'll make a kaizo hack later on. I don't know how long this hack will be but I'll try not to make it too short. When I finish and test each room, I'll release the IPS file with a TAW to prove that the hack is possible and show solutions to every part if someone is having trouble passing a certain part or room. I'm testing this room right now to see if it is completely possible.
Originally posted by Pokemon Fan
This is the first room of a pit hack I'm working on. I'll make a kaizo hack later on. I don't know how long this hack will be but I'll try not to make it too short. When I finish and test each room, I'll release the IPS file with a TAW to prove that the hack is possible and show solutions to every part if someone is having trouble passing a certain part or room. I'm testing this room right now to see if it is completely possible.


This looks like a pretty good start! The difficulty is definitely pit, and it looks possible to me. The only problem I see is that it may be to plain. There's too many precision jumps through munchers. It's pretty easy to make this unique; you could just make it a ghost house and add the disappearing ghosts to easily spice up the difficulty and make it look less plain. That's just one example, there's a lot of stuff you can do. It still looks great for a first pit hack though, and good luck with this!
Can't the player just walljump at the part with the shell and keep the shell for later?

Other than that it looks decent but it could be more varied. Consider more frame-precise maneuvers to implement into your design.

Good luck.
Thanks, GbreezeSunset. I feel like the room focuses too much on precision jumps and it does look plain. I'll take your advice, I'm going to make it a ghost house and I'll add disappearing ghosts. Also, do you know how to put horizontal munchers in a level?

Also MecuryPenny, you can't walljump on the bullet bill branches because I set the bullet bill branches to act as tile 12F(Muncher). The player will take damage if they try to break the room by walljumping on the bullet bill branches.




This is the first part of the second room, it's very incomplete and I still have to change a lot of things. So you need to block duplicate from a distance to the turn block to get the silver POW. Just in case you didn't know, those outlined blocks, that are under the blocks that are carrying the POW's, act as invisible coin blocks so you can know where they are and to make the difficulty fair instead of unfair.



This is the beginning of the third room.

Kaizo