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How do you guys keep your interest in SMW Rom Hacking or other hobbies?

I created an account in this site and started playing and making SMW levels in May of 2018. I was active for some time, mainly on Twitch and Discord, but then, seemingly out of nowhere, I lost interest and enjoyment in SMW Rom Hacking and it sucked. It sucked because I still like all this and I see people who have been active for 8, 9, 10 or even more years. How can you keep interested and passionate about this one very particular thing for so long? I think it's a personality thing or something. I don't think I can learn to be different. Would you agree?
I just do it whenever I feel like it.
I've been interested in SMW hacking for many years now (like 2008/2009 or so) and I've worked around with many projects, but never released any full hack yet because my ideas just get too ambitious and complicated, which makes working a little tiring for an early hack.

I'm working on a smaller hack now, with the sole purpose of being simple and basic so I can actually get it done, it would make me pretty happy, honestly.

The thing that keeps me interested is watching raocow play any SMW hack that can give me the feeling of "hey, I could do something like that".
Stuff with cool ideas, or just plain fun, the problem though is that I totally lose my mood for that if there's not anything going on that motivates me.
Хуй войне!

桐生会FOREVER #ThankYouCoco / Rest in peace, Near, thank you for everything
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6 users online: o imamelia, o o FPzero, o bebn legg, o Nameless, o Major Flare, o o Scrydan - Guests: 69 - Bots: 160Users: 69,666 (9,999 active)
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Tip:
It really is the matter of a few things.

First of all, preventing burn out. Do some different things in between. Learn new things! Working hard on a rom hack or any project for too long can cause you to think of it as a chore or just not feel as interesting. Be sure to take some healthy breaks or find something to stir that interest!

The next thing you might do is find others to share your passions with! If you got something you love then talking to folks can be the way to keep it alive and even evolve that love further. Even if you do lose that passion or burn out, hang out with folks! Seeing their work might just give you the push you need.


And if you lose that desire then that's perfectly okay. There's plenty here who despite no longer being active in the scene still hang out because of the community and/or the things they work on. There is so much that really is quite amazing when it comes to the advancements made here!


I still have desire myself, although my priorities currently have me working on other projects. I probably will get into ASM more one of these days besides knowing just basics...

It's a mixed bag.

I feel like the quarantine and being burned out from doing other things that I enjoy are the biggest factor in why I took it up again. Outside of COVID-19 related reasons, being able to share my creations for people to enjoy is the biggest factor. I don't do this for completely nothing. Sure, it's for my enjoyment and wellbeing but knowing that people like my work is a great thing for me. It's also, as you said, a personality thing. I absolutely love any game where you can make your own stuff and express your creativity. It's also why I downloaded a ton of Mario Maker fangames and VVVVVV Make & Play edition. I even suggested a leel editor for Color Switch, of all games!
Hello.
i have aspergers and it's a special interest of mine. im not joking lol

though if you're allistic (i.e. not in the spectrum), what scrydan said should help you retain that hacking mood and basically any other hobby. find a non-toxic community or close friends that share an interest (you've already done that, though whether smwc is toxic or not depends on the person lol) and try to vary your hobbies + not pushing yourself too hard, so as to prevent burn out. it's basically what i'm doing, minus the not pushing myself (it's a problem of mine)
HackPortsASM"Uploader"

I didn't think too much about this question, why do I carry on romhacking.

It's a very old interest of mine, which started on a French community of video gaming in the late 2000s; right after I'd discover acmlm's domain and mushroom kingdom website. Just because at the time I was searching for tricks to finish SMAS and SMW on my SNES.

I made some dear friends, notably in the persons of Lexator or Lunartoad.

Eventually I didn't keep up too much with technology and theory, since I was too busy in studies, work abroad, it really was a mess, and I quit for some time. I wasn't able to do a proper hack release. I deleted my old hacking folder last summer to make a clean start with all the updated tools and resources. I tried again because I visited one of my friends and it triggered the interest again.

I have mixed feelings now. I do romhacking of SMW because it makes me feel good, it makes me work creatively within a process I've been familiar with for quite some years. Now that I've discovered music porting it's even better because I can communicate on some music specific interests. But also sometimes it's hard because I'd see no demand meeting my offer. I am rusty, some of the processes that are trendy at the moment (in example layer 3 gfx, and parallax scrolling) are not in my skillset, so I need to fight to produce anything that sparks interest. Also a lot of the stuff produced by non-top notch hackers seems to age quite fast. Therefore the admiration for our most productive community members, who got to master high difficulty code through consistent hard work. Anyways, to keep claiming my presence, I never miss a call for a contest.

So yeah, my main reasons : feel good expressing creatively something new; and learning and/or improving stuff I know. And hoping I will not be left out. It's all a matter of faith.
I've literally always wanted to do this. I designed maps and levels with pencil and paper a decade before Lunar Magic was invented. This is living a dream for me. I won't ever not want to finish what I've started.
GANYMEDE

Chapter Two: Land of No Shame
I tend to drift in and out of it throughout the years. Mario is probably my favorite video game series ever (to play) and designing iterations of it is always a fun sounding concept because I can't help but make shit in whatever facet of my life.

When I am active in SMW hacking I goal for short projects. 13 levels or so perhaps; something that won't be worked on forever, only to never see fruition. That gets old for me and causes burn out real fast.
My layout has removed you.
i don't, not with super mario world hacking at least. i suddenly get a burst of inspiration, start a bunch of levels, finish a couple, then get burnt out within a week, then stare at my unfinished levels desperately trying to think how to finish them for months afterwards maybe adding a couple screens. not very healthy and at least i've learned just to make levels as long as what feels right and not force it. doesn't help now though that since I updated my os, lunar magic and snes9x won't run.

super mario world: alexandrite edition coming never
Originally posted by Poppy
doesn't help now though that since I updated my os, lunar magic and snes9x won't run.

you sure that's not your os malfunctioning
HackPortsASM"Uploader"

Originally posted by lion
you sure that's not your os malfunctioning

uhhhhh not sure. i'm running lunar magic through wine so that might be part of it.
TL,DR - I can't afford new consoles and games or a new PC, so all I can play are simple free games, homebrews, fan games and of course, ROM hacks. This being a thing for such a long time now too has also shaped my interests in a way that makes me just find SMW hacks and the like really exciting.

(This whole thing is color-coded for a better reading, too much text of the same color looks consistent and all, but it makes reading more tiring and makes the whole thing feel too messy, this helps keeping things better segmented and organized, also giving focus to some of the more important parts, making it easier and faster for you to read individual sentences, it's more dynamic, even if it looks a bit too childish).

My previous comment was a bit too simplified, and I feel like it didn't really go over why I enjoy SMW hacking so much. Deep down, I don't think I'll ever have much of a concrete answer, because it's a complex feeling, but...

I really like how SMW controls, and not only that, but my taste in platformers and games in general has been largely shaped by SMW hacks, fan games and old indie stuff, things that I could get for free on my very basic PC.
When I was a kid, I played a lot on consoles, on many types of consoles
(many of them not being mine), but as time passed on, things got just too expensive for me or even anyone I knew to keep up with (PS3 era and onwards basically), and it led to me exploring free games (although some were just pirated/emulated). Although it's worth nothing that during my whole life, I've been pretty acquainted with handhelds, due to them being cheaper and more likely for a friend or even my dad to have one (Example, I don't own a PSP or a 3DS, but I've played games on those systems).

Anyway, back to young me playing on PC.
Early on, back when I had a PC without internet (and also during a bit of the time where I first got internet but wasn't used to it yet) I didn't play games on it, like at all.

But with internet, I just used to look up stuff I liked, or just see where I could find games that I didn't have to pay for. It's how I found a lot of fan games, amateur indie and flash games, browser games, RPG Maker games, but also at some point, it led to me finding emulators and ROM hacks.

So yeah, due to me living like that, even nowadays to a lesser extent, I have a pretty limited awareness of what's even going on in the mainstream gaming sphere, and I've also grown to not care about most of it, due to my interests being too specific now.

I mean, SMW hacks have shaped my taste for Mario so damn much, that I'd say that I keep being interested in it because there's hardly anything like them out there. The official 2D Mario games are surely not like most hacks (and the ones that try too hard to be like an official game aren't generally of my interest).

And of course, I don't find it a problem at all, I understand that Nintendo caters to a more modern and accesible style, as opposed to the craziness and uniqueness or difficulty and creativity of something like JUMP ½, Nachos and Fried Oreos, slurdgery, 2 Mice Walk Into a Bar... or even something older like Mario Gives Up 2, VIP5, TSRPR2, SMW: The After Years and EVW, or whatever else, not to count the many hacks that play very differently from regular Mario, while still having enough of that SMW DNA, at this point, I'm just spoiled, to the point that a real Mario game naturally feels like common ground.
(Although I enjoy revisiting the games I grew up with and whatnot, as I have a lot nostalgia for them)

My interest in SMW also goes hand-in-hand with something else that really interests me in the video game world. As I mentioned, I don't even play new big games, it's always a basic indie, a fan game or a ROM hack, right? Yes, pretty much. It must get boring not having many new things to look forward to in consoles and whatnot, right? Well... no. Simply because I've grown to appreciate homebrews, console modding (expansions and whatnot), and that type stuff a lot, and this solidifies my excitement for ROM hacks, in fact, I'd say it's this type of stuff that makes me go crazy happy.
C3 is my E3 (kinda), homebrew announcements are my "hype train" and so on. Everytime I see something crazy and new being done on an old console I grew up with, well, I just glee like a little girl again.
And SMW hacking is part of that, I'm always finding some new source of wonder and excitement with these things, I remember when I first found that you could play some hacks on real hardware, putting them on a real cartridge... I just got so excited!


And there's always something going on to make me feel like that, and I find it really satisfying that it's not out of my league like an expensive PC or console. The idea that someday, I could just have a friend or someone at my house, and turn on a SNES/SFC and not only play some old nostalgic games, but also something like a SMW hack, it's just so nice. Especially imagining just having a person who doesn't even know what's going on, that'd be so fun, seeing their reaction and whatnot.

It's familiar enough to be comfortable and a bit nostalgic, yet new enough to be exciting. It's like a perfect blend.

That's a lot of text, that's a real Y.Y. comment, wow.
Хуй войне!

桐生会FOREVER #ThankYouCoco / Rest in peace, Near, thank you for everything
Just came to say your post really looks cute, I loved reading all that fierce passion, and you rock.
Actually, I don't always focusing on one hobby in a long period; I may be active when I want to.

So that's why you would see sometimes I submit a lot of stuff to the site, and sometimes I just keeping silence for months.
i don't. typically i end up burnt out after a few months/years of obsessing over one thing and move on to another.

over the past decade i've been through minecraft, smw hacking, super smash bros, and currently i'm at puyo puyo tetris.

i would like to get back into smw hacking (or even just porting music), but i'm extremely insecure and self-criticizing, in a way that makes it borderline impossible for me to create without throwing it out or abandoning it because i'm not satisfied with it. fun to spend hours on something and then feel utterly indifferent towards it
To be fair I'm not as interested in SMW hacking as I was in my novice years, but interest bursts in when I am motivated and inspired.
I'm now just thinking about segments I sense are fitting and putting the pieces together. It's not like I'm going to spend the entire day on a single level only to end up burnt out at this point.
Windowless ride, feeling alive
Are you alive or just breathing?
To be honest, it comes in bursts for me. I spent months creating the best OW I could possibly design in 2018 and wrote down several level ideas, then just never made the levels. But I know one of these days I'm going to get a burst of inspiration again and finish the hack up.

I don't speak for everyone on this site, but a lot of the people who've been registered here for years just enjoy coming back and reliving the experience. This site is like a relic of the past, it still looks exactly the same as it did when I first registered (more or less) and it's a wave of nostalgia. Lunar Magic still looks the exact same too. Of course SMW is also exactly the same game as it was in 1990.

For me, the passion usually returns when I replay vanilla SMW. The game is so good that it reminds you why this community exists 30 years after SMW's release.

Originally posted by Poppy
uhhhhh not sure. i'm running lunar magic through wine so that might be part of it.


If you switched to Catalina, a lot of programs will end up having issues. BSNES won't work either. You'll need to use OpenEmu. You can't use Crossover or Wine for Windows programs because...

Originally posted by Wine
32-bit support is removed in Catalina, which is a critical part of the macOS system that almost all of Wine relies on


You'll need to invest the money (or not if you're a pirate) into a good VM. Either that, or you need to revert back to Mojave.

There are quite a few things that help me keep my interest in SMW hacking; one of them is testing various resources I want to use in my upcoming hack (along with making occasional tweaks to them since my hack is gonna have SA-1) to make sure everything works.

There is also a bunch of text files I have, which help me record important information related to SMW hacking, like the people I'll credit for the various resources I'm using (or want to use), as well as notes about some resources (some resources are a little harder for me to keep my mental grasp on than others, so having my own personal notes about those resources is quite convenient for me. This is especially handy for tracking the freeram areas I use with some stuff, as one of those text files helps me keep track of what formerly empty freeram areas I'm using). One of the text files I have has various ideas for levels I might make in my hack, that are all separated by what world the level ideas may be in (for example, I plan to have a desert level with the Para-Goombas that drop Micro Goombas).

I also have a Paint file with various object and sprite GFX (most of them are taken from other Mario games, as well as Yoshi's Island) that I am either planning to use at some point in my hack, or may end up using. It's very helpful for having any of the stuff I may want to put in an ExGFX file in one easy to find place.

So yeah, I think I have plenty of stuff to keep my interest in SMW hacking going strong.