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Lunar Magic suggestions and discussion (LM v3.40)

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Originally posted by FuSoYa
Yes, it's possible. Just hit F2 and place the sprite at the very top of a subscreen. #ab{;)}

Guess I should update that sprite's info. No one really had much reason to bother using it in a horizontal level before LM3.


Ah, I am so relieved that those two commands can be used in a tall horizontal level, thank you for letting me know FuSoYa!

There is one thing I did notice about using either of these two commands on a tall horizontal level though, for some reason there is occasional layer 3 garbage that appears on the screen that moves at the same rate as the layer 2 scroll sideways command in use, as shown in the screenshot below. You think you can fix this, FuSoYa? I don't recall this garbage happening on the old kind of vertical levels using one of those two commands.

Here's the screenshot:


Originally posted by FuSoYa
Though it does mean anyone currently using languages other than English in those files would have to switch their encoding to UTF-8 if this change is made.


For what it's worth, detecting if some text is properly encoded as UTF-8 is quite simple, so if you decide to implement UTF-8, you could simply scan all user-editable texts for to check if they're proper UTF-8, and if not, display a warning dialog.
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Originally posted by Knight of Time
There is one thing I did notice about using either of these two commands on a tall horizontal level though, for some reason there is occasional layer 3 garbage that appears on the screen that moves at the same rate as the layer 2 scroll sideways command in use, as shown in the screenshot below. You think you can fix this, FuSoYa? I don't recall this garbage happening on the old kind of vertical levels using one of those two commands.


That scroll sprite is apparently doing something that it really shouldn't have been doing in the first place. But yes, I can fix it. The fix will be added to the next version of LM.

Originally posted by RPG Hacker
For what it's worth, detecting if some text is properly encoded as UTF-8 is quite simple, so if you decide to implement UTF-8, you could simply scan all user-editable texts for to check if they're proper UTF-8, and if not, display a warning dialog.


Yes, though hopefully just putting it in the update list would be good enough. Supporting both types of encoding is also possible, but that's more work.
Would it be reasonable to add an option to change the Map16 pages of the tiles that the vanilla objects are made out of? I'm thinking that one could put them on page 2 instead and use Lunar Magic's tileset-specific graphics and behavior. (Yes, I realize that you can already change the existing tilemaps, but this would allow them to be more organized and possibly have more options depending on how Lunar Magic handles the tileset.)

----------------

I'm working on a hack! Check it out here. Progress: 64/95 levels.
Originally posted by FuSoYa
That scroll sprite is apparently doing something that it really shouldn't have been doing in the first place. But yes, I can fix it. The fix will be added to the next version of LM.


Awesome, I look forward to seeing that fix. Thank you. :)

Edit: And here I am with another suggestion...would you consider making a small tweak to the change layer 3 settings options, please? I noticed that if you make a tide act like one of the map16 tiles from 0x200 to 0x20A, it affects not only the surface of the tide, but also every row of tide tiles underneath the surface. Could you possibly tweak this so that it's split into two settings (one for the surface only, and one for the rows of tiles underneath the surface), please? That would be awesome to see, especially since I'm very tempted to use the custom block that lets Mini Mario run on water as one of the acts like settings for tides.


Originally posted by Knight of Time
Edit: And here I am with another suggestion...would you consider making a small tweak to the change layer 3 settings options, please? I noticed that if you make a tide act like one of the map16 tiles from 0x200 to 0x20A, it affects not only the surface of the tide, but also every row of tide tiles underneath the surface. Could you possibly tweak this so that it's split into two settings (one for the surface only, and one for the rows of tiles underneath the surface), please? That would be awesome to see, especially since I'm very tempted to use the custom block that lets Mini Mario run on water as one of the acts like settings for tides.

As an alternative you could just edit the custom block's code to account for whether Mario is already in water. Having separate settings I think might be a bit overkill since there's really not *that* many use cases for it.

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Things are coming to a close for 32-bit apps. I think the UI elements (boxes, windows) should get a fresh coat of paint, ditching the dated-Win9x interface in the near future.
Originally posted by imamelia
Would it be reasonable to add an option to change the Map16 pages of the tiles that the vanilla objects are made out of? I'm thinking that one could put them on page 2 instead and use Lunar Magic's tileset-specific graphics and behavior. (Yes, I realize that you can already change the existing tilemaps, but this would allow them to be more organized and possibly have more options depending on how Lunar Magic handles the tileset.)


That's a somewhat strange thing to ask for. Keep in mind that tileset specific page in LM only covers appearances... their "Act as" setting is the same for all tilesets. You wouldn't want to do it for both original pages either, as you only have 1 extra page in LM that can be set tileset specific.

I'm assuming the idea is to make it so that you could use the game's existing slope objects with custom Map16 for as many settings as there are original tilesets? That's probably all it would be good for, as I can't see much practical purpose to just reorganizing them. Nintendo already organized the ones on page 1 mostly according to tile surface behavior.

Originally posted by Knight of Time
Edit: And here I am with another suggestion...would you consider making a small tweak to the change layer 3 settings options, please? I noticed that if you make a tide act like one of the map16 tiles from 0x200 to 0x20A, it affects not only the surface of the tide, but also every row of tide tiles underneath the surface. Could you possibly tweak this so that it's split into two settings (one for the surface only, and one for the rows of tiles underneath the surface), please? That would be awesome to see, especially since I'm very tempted to use the custom block that lets Mini Mario run on water as one of the acts like settings for tides.


Pretty sure I'm with Thomas on that, as I can't think of too many cases for it.

Originally posted by Raymondsze
Things are coming to a close for 32-bit apps. I think the UI elements (boxes, windows) should get a fresh coat of paint, ditching the dated-Win9x interface in the near future.


Er, I think you may be a little confused. Whether or not a program is 32 bit normally has nothing to do with the UI, unless you're comparing to 16 bit programs. 64 bit programs can and often do look exactly the same as 32 bit ones.

In any case, I'm not going to replace the UI just because someone is bored with a particular look. You can always experiment with a 3rd party theme engine for windows if you want to switch things up a bit.

Or if you want to "modernize" things a little... since LM doesn't have an internal manifest file, you can have it use an external one to force the program to use version 6 of the common controls. I don't really recommend it since the newer library is a lot slower at displaying the ExGFX bypass dialog and it doesn't use the specified tooltip background colors, but maybe you won't mind. Just unzip and throw this file into the same folder as LM (although since windows will cache the setting, you may have to rename both LM's exe and the manifest file to get it to work without rebooting... maybe throw a 2 in the filenames or something).
Originally posted by FuSoYa
Originally posted by imamelia
Would it be reasonable to add an option to change the Map16 pages of the tiles that the vanilla objects are made out of? I'm thinking that one could put them on page 2 instead and use Lunar Magic's tileset-specific graphics and behavior. (Yes, I realize that you can already change the existing tilemaps, but this would allow them to be more organized and possibly have more options depending on how Lunar Magic handles the tileset.)


That's a somewhat strange thing to ask for. Keep in mind that tileset specific page in LM only covers appearances... their "Act as" setting is the same for all tilesets. You wouldn't want to do it for both original pages either, as you only have 1 extra page in LM that can be set tileset specific.

I'm assuming the idea is to make it so that you could use the game's existing slope objects with custom Map16 for as many settings as there are original tilesets? That's probably all it would be good for, as I can't see much practical purpose to just reorganizing them. Nintendo already organized the ones on page 1 mostly according to tile surface behavior.

That's part of it (and Nintendo's organization is not entirely intuitive), but I was also thinking about objects that behave the same but don't use the exact same tile arrangement in every tileset, like if something uses 4 unique 8x8 tiles in one tileset but only 2 in another. Definitely for slopes more than anything. (And the only tileset I'm currently using that has gradual slopes has more different Map16 tiles than the original object.)

----------------

I'm working on a hack! Check it out here. Progress: 64/95 levels.
Originally posted by FuSoYa
Pretty sure I'm with Thomas on that, as I can't think of too many cases for it.


I just thought of one. I'm thinking of making a level in my fourth world (forest) that's gonna have a tide that rises and falls, and I want it to act like water to sprites, but poisonous water to Mario. My reasoning for this is, I want the surface to be a custom block that acts like water, but only to sprites (on that note, I tested both kinds of lava with Mini Mario and found he can swim in the top tile of castle lava, basically allowing him to jump in and out of castle lava if he's quick enough; this doesn't work with cave lava however. So for one thing, to ensure Mini Mario has to avoid both kinds of lava, I'm going to use that custom block for the castle lava surface so that he cannot swim in it), while using another custom block for the rows under the surface that acts like water to sprites, but instantly kills Mario.

So yeah, this would probably be the only use I can think of for the suggestion I made.


Originally posted by Knight of Time
I just thought of one. I'm thinking of making a level in my fourth world (forest) that's gonna have a tide that rises and falls, and I want it to act like water to sprites, but poisonous water to Mario. My reasoning for this is, I want the surface to be a custom block that acts like water, but only to sprites (on that note, I tested both kinds of lava with Mini Mario and found he can swim in the top tile of castle lava, basically allowing him to jump in and out of castle lava if he's quick enough; this doesn't work with cave lava however. So for one thing, to ensure Mini Mario has to avoid both kinds of lava, I'm going to use that custom block for the castle lava surface so that he cannot swim in it), while using another custom block for the rows under the surface that acts like water to sprites, but instantly kills Mario.

What exactly prevents you from just using the same tile throughout all the tide? As far as I can tell from that description there's no reason any tiles under the surface would need to act any differently from those on top.

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Originally posted by Thomas
What exactly prevents you from just using the same tile throughout all the tide? As far as I can tell from that description there's no reason any tiles under the surface would need to act any differently from those on top.


It's the thing I mentioned about Mini Mario. Because of his smaller size than even Small Mario, I don't think there's any other way around the issue, especially since I don't want the surface to instantly kill Mario.

I'll make an ASCII image, that I hope will help clear things up.

~~~~
XXXX
XXXX
XXXX

Basically, the X's would represent the part of the poison water that would kill only Mario, while the ~'s would represent the water tiles that would act like air to Mario and water to sprites. Otherwise, Mini Mario would be able to cheese the poison water by jumping in and out of the water, as long as he never touches the deadly part of the water.
Just a small suggestion since it just seems a little out of place.
Would it be possible to allow the Palette Editor and 8x8 Editor to be zoomed in like everything else?
Originally posted by FuSoYa
Or if you want to "modernize" things a little... since LM doesn't have an internal manifest file, you can have it use an external one to force the program to use version 6 of the common controls. I don't really recommend it since the newer library is a lot slower at displaying the ExGFX bypass dialog and it doesn't use the specified tooltip background colors, but maybe you won't mind. Just unzip and throw this file into the same folder as LM (although since windows will cache the setting, you may have to rename both LM's exe and the manifest file to get it to work without rebooting... maybe throw a 2 in the filenames or something).

Interesting! I've been using a near-identical manifest file for years (thrown together by googling), but that didn't allow for spaces in the file name while yours seems like it does.

You're right about the setting being cached - naming the pair "Lunar Magic.exe" won't have any effect, but any other file name will (even one with spaces). It doesn't seem like even a reboot fixes that, though. Do you happen to know where that cache is located so I can clear it (it doesn't seem to be covered by the regular Windows cleanup tool)? This is definitely beyond the scope of LM but I couldn't find anything useful on the rest of the internet.


 
Hi Fusoya,

I wasn't sure if "alternate color gradients" refers to what I'm thinking about, but I was wondering if you have any intention to potentially add a dark mode to Lunar Magic. Also I'd like to say that I really appreciate what you've done for this community. #smrpg{<3}
Originally posted by imamelia
That's part of it (and Nintendo's organization is not entirely intuitive), but I was also thinking about objects that behave the same but don't use the exact same tile arrangement in every tileset, like if something uses 4 unique 8x8 tiles in one tileset but only 2 in another. Definitely for slopes more than anything. (And the only tileset I'm currently using that has gradual slopes has more different Map16 tiles than the original object.)


It sounds like the sort of thing only you and maybe a couple others would care to use though.

Originally posted by Ninja Boy
Just a small suggestion since it just seems a little out of place.
Would it be possible to allow the Palette Editor and 8x8 Editor to be zoomed in like everything else?


I can't imagine why you would want zoom in the palette editor. LM is system DPI aware, so that dialog will scale up as your DPI setting increases.

As for the 8x8 editor, it's pretty old and I'm not really keen on making additions to it. The 8x8 tile selector in the 16x16 editor can be zoomed, so you might want to use that one instead if you're not editing graphics.

Originally posted by WhiteYoshiEgg
You're right about the setting being cached - naming the pair "Lunar Magic.exe" won't have any effect, but any other file name will (even one with spaces). It doesn't seem like even a reboot fixes that, though. Do you happen to know where that cache is located so I can clear it (it doesn't seem to be covered by the regular Windows cleanup tool)? This is definitely beyond the scope of LM but I couldn't find anything useful on the rest of the internet.


I think it's using a memory cache. Make sure to use "Restart" and not "Shutdown", as later versions of Windows tend to redefine shutdown as "pretend to shutdown but really just close all programs then hibernate".

If that doesn't work, there is another way. You just need to change the modified time stamp on the exe to something newer. For that you could throw something like this in a .bat file and run it: copy /b "Lunar Magic.exe" +,,

Originally posted by quietmason
I wasn't sure if "alternate color gradients" refers to what I'm thinking about, but I was wondering if you have any intention to potentially add a dark mode to Lunar Magic.


I assume you mean a dark mode for just the UI elements like some programs have? It'd probably be better to just use a dark OS theme, which would also affect LM.

Originally posted by quietmason
Also I'd like to say that I really appreciate what you've done for this community. #smrpg{<3}


Thanks. #ab{:)}
Hey FuSoYa, I thought I'd give two quality-of-life suggestions for the next version of LM:

1) Let us select multiple copies of the exact same color in the palette editor so that any change we make to any copy of said color applies to the other copies. This is useful for, say, editing the palette of a layer 3 BG where some of the same colors are spread out through different palettes. As of right now, doing so manually is quite confusing.

2) Make it so that all the separate text boxes where you enter the animation or palette frames in both the global and local ExAnimation windows are one giant text box like in the direct Map16 remapping window so that editing, copying, and pasting all our frames will be much quicker. Of course, each frame should be separated by a comma. It would also be even quicker if the color or animation frames we select through the palette or 8x8 tile editors are automatically added to the text box.

I'm sure these would be huge changes. Thanks for reading.
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Originally posted by FuSoYa
Originally posted by Ninja Boy
Just a small suggestion since it just seems a little out of place.
Would it be possible to allow the Palette Editor and 8x8 Editor to be zoomed in like everything else?


I can't imagine why you would want zoom in the palette editor. LM is system DPI aware, so that dialog will scale up as your DPI setting increases.

As for the 8x8 editor, it's pretty old and I'm not really keen on making additions to it. The 8x8 tile selector in the 16x16 editor can be zoomed, so you might want to use that one instead if you're not editing graphics.


If that's the case with the 8x8 editor then that's whatever I just noticed the stand alone one wasn't zoomable.
For the palette editor it's because I like keeping my DPI at 100% but my main monitor is an UWQHD at a resolution of 3440x1440 so the with the palette editor not being able to be zoomed in leaves it rather small. Honestly it's not that bad just thought I'd ask.
I'm not sure if it's feasible, but I would like the 8x8 editor to let me see all the tiles by default. Maybe this was asked before, but I find a bit of a hassle always have to put CTRL + SHIFT + DOWN. If is not possible, why is the reason that we need to put that command to access internal GFX Data? Just out of curiosity.
My only guess is that it may prevent the player to go all the way down if they want to see SP4 for example.

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