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The Hacker's Legacy

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Every hacker has a story. That's the groove that makes the hacking world spin it's circle. It's our diversity and uniqueness.

This thread is the place to tell your story. How did you get into the SMW hacking scene? What draws you to it, and continues to empower you with the desire to hack this game? How brightly do your memories, passion and dreams of SMW burn?

.....

Further boosting our diversity, besides each strand in the Web of the Past that forms SMW Central, is our abilities in the Present. Some of us are pro level designers. Some of us excel in the graphics aspect. Still some of us are just great at helping other hackers realize THEIR potential. There seems to be no such thing as a nonexistant skill in the hacking scene.

So tell us, what provide YOUR wings in the SMW hacking business? What is your best skill, in your opinion? What legacy do you choose to be known by? What will be your downfall-- your worst skill in SMW hacking (also your opinion)? How have you improved, are improving, will improve?

.....

I ask you these two questions in the holy name of The Schwa. Answer them proudly and truthfully, and realize now that we, as hackers, are all immortal in our own, distant, complex, diverse, universal way.

:D
It's me!!

High on life is the best high.
-How I got into hacking-
Well, I was playing Super Mario World on a usual day, and then thought, "Hey, it would be great if I could make my own levels for this!". So, I searched on Google and found Lunar Magic. Then, I was told that I needed a ROM and an emulator. This was back before the ESA was around, so I downloaded a ROM and an emulator and edited away.

I was always good with level design. Whenever there was something wrong, I always figured things out on my own after a while and then made a new level or two with that concept so it could sink in. I learned first making exits and entrances, and then editing backgrounds and editing miscellaneous stuff about levels. I tried to learn ExGFX, but I didn't do so well because I didn't know the file format of a SMW graphics file at that time. The overworld was the last primary hurdle I cleared, and with that out of the way, I attempted to create some complete SMW hacks.

My first hack was called SMW - The Next Adventure. It had basically new levels and a new overworld. However, it was tossed aside after I found that I could do better.

Then, I found that there were Super Mario World videos on Youtube. I registered there and posted a few of my creations. After looking at one user's profile, I came across SMW Central, and downloaded loads of stuff to use. After downloading an ExGFX file, I finally found what an ExGFX file was supposed to be, and figured that out. With all main hurdles cleared, I started my second hack of Super Mario World, unnamed.

I finished the overworld, but then cancelled it. I started a third hack, called SMW - The Lost Lands. I registered simply so I could release the demo, and then I released the first demo without any prior showing of the hack. This was before the wipe, and the wipe sent it into a void during moderation. Then, I submitted it again, and it got messed up due to a site glitch. I submitted it a third time, and it made it through.

After working on it for a while, I made a thread about it. People seemed to like it, though my testers pointed out way too many glitches. I then froze that hack, when it was around half-way done. My fourth hack, called the Seven Magical Yoshi Eggs, never made the intertubez, because it was cancelled within one world.

All this time, I was also downloading hacks from SMW Central's Hacks section. Most of them had ExGFX, custom blocks, custom sprites, and, when it became easy to implement, custom music. However, after a while, I got tired of seeing some of these hacks fail at level design. I thought to myself, "I should make a hack with good level design...nothing else."

That thought became my fifth hack, Mario's Ultimate Journey. It has no ExGFX, custom blocks, custom sprites, or custom music, and according to some people, I'm doing a hell of a good job with my level and overworld design. :D

Meanwhile, I've learned simple ASM and more random stuff.

-My Hacking Specialty-
My hacking specialty has always been level design. Good, old level design. It was the first thing I did, and the best at that. I just seem to have a knack for it. Maybe it was because I would always draw out Mario levels on paper when I was younger. Maybe it was because I would try to create my own games in Microsoft Excel before I knew how to program. Maybe it was because I'm just a creative person. Maybe it was because I wanted to make a fun game and thrived to create good levels. I'm not sure...but however much I improve in other areas to become more of an all-around hacker, my best skill will always be level design.

It took me 20 minutes to think out and type that post
Your layout has been removed.

I like to make hacks that make people say "Now that's awesome." That's what keeps me going strong.

- How I got into Lunar Magic -

One day I was browsing on YouTube when I typed in "Super Mario World" in the search bar. I saw kajillions of hack videos and found Lunar Magic. After toying around with it, I started on a hack. I'm working on that very same hack today, and I've grown much better since then.

There.


AS IF I KNOW WHAT TO PUT HERE.

Hack Status: Cat Adventure Deluxe
-100% Undone
Derp.
Since 2006

IMO my best hacking skill is: Level Design
How I got into hacking SMW.

I was playing with a game maker but it gave me a virus, and my computer broke. I got a new one, and my brother showed me roms about a year later. because the game maker was a virus, I was thinking of hacking a rom. I was on google and searched for smb3 hacking tools. I was searching for a while, but I found lunar magic. I made some terrinble levels.first one I ever made was level 105 with a lot of giant bullet bills. I was searching for levels on youtube, and came across "mortonandroy"'s video, and at that time it inspired me to make great levels. I came onto google and searched something. I forgot what it was :P. I clicked on a link, and found smwcentral. I posted pictures, and people didn't much like them, so I played some featured hacks and got better at hacking. Now I'm great with levels.
How To Design a Good Overworld
I've posted my life story many times before...

tl;dr: Late 2005, found out about LM thru Wikipedia, downloaded it from Panicus.
Downloaded RtDL from TMK, a Mario website that I used to visit.
Early 2006: Saw Demo World: TLC on FuSoYa's site, and when I finished it, I looked on YouTube for a solution to finding the secret world. Then I googled it and found this site. At first, I thought that it was useless since it had no guides (bullshit). I hung around, and I was a non-poster (this was before the wipe). I hated the admin's guts back then, but I don't now. I joined Neolight Board, posted a bit there. Then the wipe happened, and I didn't hate the admins anymore for some reason. I also started posting more here.
Here I am now, knowing how to put in blocks and ExGFX and other stuff.
Why I like it: It's fun, and I wanted to edit SMW ever since I was young. I like level and OW design, and making FG GFX.
That was too long.
Eh... it's a little fuzzy...


A few years ago, after worshipping several games for their great level design, I sought to create my own levels, which is where roller coaster tycoon came in. I had a very basic understading of how it worked, and when i found tha it was open source, allowing for anything to be put in, I got right started on the fad. I adventually got bored of it, but continued to play games.
I was still desperate to find something to edit, something to call my own. I searched for ever, "Mario edit" "Mairo level edit" "Mario Change" all entered into google with no avail. Then.. hey what is this thing? "Lunar Magic?" A mario game editor! awesome! I downloaded it off and.. I know what you're thinking. But actually, I had no idea what game "Lunar Magic" was for. Hrrrph.
All this time I was hearing about the "good old mario bros" and such. Figuring that there would very likely be no way to get a hold on the classics, I returned to the great internet and hey, it has everything. Including roms! I started playing SMB3, and was impressed by the game's interesing inovations. After getting a little tired of the game, I wondered if there were any way to edit the levels- and there were! I got right started, but the idea soon died after I found the interface too confusing and let it drop out of my life.
Enter the Wii and Virtual Constole. At last, a way to download all those old games- and I fully had to face the facts that ROMs were illegal, now that these games were being sold again. I got rid of any SMB3 things I had. I began to find a way to download EVERY mario game ever released. But i had to start slow, and SMW was said to be a good game. I played it out, and found it all to be over-the-top excellent.
My level design tendenices found the best of me and I had downloaded and legally owned the game, so I found myself a SMW rom and searched. Hey! It's that "Lunar Magic" thing again! and it edits the game! Wow! That is good to know! I started editing the levels and I found that they mostly suck, but I had a plot and everything- "Mario and Luigi In: The Yoshi's Curse!" Where Yoshi's island had been transformed into chaos. To put it plainly... ew. Search it up on Youtube, it was terrible. I set my eyes on some other magnificent games, and Super Mario Odyssey caught my glance. I played it, compaired it to my hack, and.. EW. Mine was terrible. So I restarted. I got all the way to the end of the second world on this one, then took a retrospective and found it was pretty lame too. So I restarted... again. This one wasn't too bad, I had at last learned effectively ExGFX and custom blocks. I took a retrospective and said no, but I kept the feeling of serveral levels to be used in the next version- my plot was finally taking shape. I learned ASM to a basic amount, and custom sprites. Here I am.. with nothing to show for it, even! I want my first hack submitted to get "Featured Hack" worthy. When I find it good, I'll start posting progress. THEN i'll get feedback til other people think it is good. Then.. I might get the ok from myself and go for it.

My specailty? I don't think I have one.

Good idea for a thread!
I downloaded Mario Forever 4.0 (October 2006) so excited because it had a level editor (Mario Worker) and I always wanted to make my own levels. I later found out it was strewn with bugs and the fixed version won't be coming for a long time. So I searched the internet high and low trying to find a way to make my own Mario levels then I stumbled upon Lunar Magic on FuSoYa's site and saw Demo World and looked at all the great things it could do. Then I realised I needed a ROM and an emulator which back then was pretty easy even though it took me 3 days to find a good clean SMW ROM.
So I started playing around with it and I got really good at making levels so I then became one of the first SMW hackers on the Buziol site with a thread about 7-8 pages long showing all the hacks I made. The problem was my hacks were too hard and I had to tone the levels down a bit.
Meanwhile I noticed a 600ish member community called SMW Central (back then it did have 600ish members) so I learnt from the pros (while not becoming a member) and played their hacks till my brain burst with knowledge.
I then finally joined the site as the 999th member (why I did that I have no idea) but it felt much bigger from that small world of the Buziol site with all its annoying bots and noobs asking how to get past 2-4 in Mario Forever. It took me quite a while to fit in and understand this site more but it seems to be that I've fit in quite nicely by now.
Though while SMW hacking continues to grow in inovations such as Custom Music and Bosses it seems to me that while all the members on this site seem to want un-linear levels with tons of secrets left, right and center I still look to Mario Forever for great level design tips. It plays like a proper Mario game and feels like a Mario game because of its linear level design (6-2 springs to mind as the only level in the game which is un-linear) and great gimmicks.
So that is why I like doing the level design and just leave all that fancy ASM stuff to the people that do it.

Note: Maxx please remove your layout it is breaking the tables!
I'm a rubberducky in the shape of a 2 ain't life grand!
Looking forward to NSMBWii, SMG2, Pokèmon HG/SS, Mario Forever 4.4 and Gran Turismo 5
Currently playing:
Mario Forever Advance, Mario Kart Wii, TSRPR
Well, I have always wanted to make levels, things people could play. Ever since 2nd grade I had been doodling levels in pieces of paper. (But those were more like side scrolling dungeons o_O) Eventually in 6th grade, I bought Macromedia Flash 8. At first I made animations, but then I started to make (rather crappy) flash games. (Which you can see here. :3) However, coding a game was time consuming, and it's not really what I had dreamed of. Then one day, while snooping around http://themushroomkingdom.net/ I found the emulation section. I had no idea what emulation was, and was overjoyed when I saw the "Level Editors" link, which led mw to FuSoYa's site! I quickly downloaded it, ZSNES, and a SMW Rom. Fu's site pointed me here, and I lurked a bit, and downloaded other assorted tools. I learned Sprite and Block Tool within 2 weeks, and ExGFX earlier than that. Then, I got bored with it, and stopped hacking for a few months. Then, one day while digging through my files, I stumbled back on to my Lunar Magic stuff. I decided to start again, and I started on my first hack, SMW: Constellation Islands, using SMW Redrawn as a base. It's now frozen, and I hope to get back to it eventually. I forgot how to use Sprite and Block Tool (heh) and had to relearn. Eventually after getting tired of Constellation Islands, I started on a new hack, a little bit after we had learned how to insert custom music. Unfortunately, Mikeyk hadn't released his addmusic-compatible Sprite Tool, and that became corrupt. Then I started on the hack that would become SM & TSOD, and am still working on it now.

I continue hacking because it is a great fun for me to play the levels I create, and because I want other people to enjoy my stuff too. I like to show off my talents and solve problems I run into. It's a challenge to me, and if it wasn't I wouldn't be hacking it today.
I was extremely bored one night last October so I was just looking on YouTube and I found some videos of Custom Levels for SMW. I thought "I wanna learn how to do this!"

So I downloaded ZSNES and Lunar Magic, and a SMW ROM. (Which, I sould mention, was a PAIN IN THE ASS to find!)

So then I got obsessed with SMW hacking.

Around a month later I found smwcentral, and joined it!

So that's my "legacy".

I'd say my best "skill" is Beta Testing. If I find ONE unfair point (Takes me more than a few times to get past) in my levels, I go and change it to something easier, or just slightly modify it to make it easier.
Like every other day, I was on Nintendos website in the Community in hope to find something funny. There was a link to Youtube with a Super Mario 64 color change. I watched it and realized a "Custom Mario World" video on the right in that little "Similar videos" box. The first video was by AtomicShroom. I was amazed and watched more until I found in a comment that it was made with Lunar Magic. So I googled it, found and downloaded it and started to editing. I don't knew much so I went back to Youtube in hope to find some infos. And voilá, AtomicShrooms video description had a link to SMWcentral. I visited this site and looked up each little thing. I don't knew how to use ExGFX which I really wanted so I decided to join. I joined, asked many questions in the forum, got all answers and became better and better. I decided to stay here because here are many friendly people. My "Legacy". :)
-How I got into SMW hacking-
Well one day I was on Youtube. I was watching some random vids my friends were sending to me. One of the was a hacked version of a nes game. So i searched google and came across the Lunar Magic website. It wasn't for nes but snes! XD it showed screens of demo world and other stuff so I downloaded the program, an emu, and googled the rom.
-My noobness-
At first I didnt know what the hell i was doing. So i sent tons of email's to Fusoya, who helped me a bunch. Then I went back on to the LM site and found SMWcentral in the links... from there on I started to become pro :)
Thank god i wrote down all this in my wiki!

When i was about 14 i loved every kind of level editor like Heroes and Warcraft III and so on but i kinda think they didn´t gave me the freedom sometimes.
A friend of me hinted about Youtube in Mars, so i checked it out.
As the first thing he searched for was Mario, he found some interesting results like Megaman765's Super Mario 64 Bloopers.
After finding some interesting results, i suddenly found a Super Mario World hack and then he was like "OMG! WOW!" (luckily i didn´t have a Youtube account that time as the first one i saw was crappy!).

I decided to find and get the hacking tool and show off videos on Youtube, and soon he become much better than a lot of SMW hackers on Youtube, and he believed he was one of the best hackers ever (no joke), and that only Megaman765 and FuSoYa was better than him.(:P) His thoughts about that got destroyed when he heard about SMW Central and joined and saw that i was a big newbie compared to a lot of other hackers.
I lost his self-confidence and planned to quit SMW hacking but got back to it and announced my first hack Super Xtreme World,

Super Xtreme World got OK feedback for a while, but then a lot of people complained about his self-drawn graphics like KPhoenix and Joshua, so he retired from it a while after he released a demo. Once again he lost his self-confidence and planned to quit SMW hacking.

In the early summer i announced yet another hack, SMW - The Next Generation, with a demo but it got A LOT of complaints about that i had had not made a custom overworld,(yep A LOT) thus i retired from that hack just like Super Xtreme World, but this time i didn't lose his self-confidence (that much....) as i had shortly after joined a collaboration hack called Bowser's Mercenaries.(good times, good times...)

I was a active member of Bowser's Mercenaries and his work was popular there. I worked hard on it, but when some active members disappeared and the big wipe came the collaboration hack died.

He announced some hacks but he quickly lost motivation to work on them like Mario 16.

Somewhere in September i saw some "automatic Mario" videos, showing levels in Super Mario World being played by themselves, and decided to make one himself. He made Ice Forest, and it was a big success, and it got very popular. (yet another glory moment)

In November he posted some screenshots of his newest hack. He hasn't posted any information regarding its plot or name, but he may do sometime in the future.(I think i going to retire that hack....)

In December i posted the lost Bowser's Mercenaries and it got quite popular and i currenly recruiting members to keep it´s as a beam hack!

Also to point out things!
Originally posted by AtomicShroom
I like to make hacks that make people say "Now that's awesome." That's what keeps me going strong.

I almost never heard that about my hacks...( manly the old ones:( )...thats why Bowser's Mercenaries and Ice Forest is glory moments!

i also disturbing over OW designing (That i hate with passion hate,hate,hate,hate,hate........) and i still remember supertails saying that OW designing is more important that level design!

In the start i sucked bad at GFX editing but im getting better and better!

Well thats my big long story!
Your layout has been removed.
I was one day looking at the videos being watched now box and one was Atomicshrooms. I looked at more of his videos, and a comment mentioned lunar magic. Searched it, downloaded it, and hacks SMW.
Just back here to browse a bit.
I was randomly looking for SMW Glitches video (I learned plenty <_<), until I saw a faked glitch. People told in the comments that it is made with lunar magic. So I googled it. I arrived at FuSoYa's niche, the old site. So I downloaded Lunar Magic there. I dont remember how I found this place. I was randomly searching for SMW hacking stuff.
So one day, I found an ExGFX inserting tutorial on youtube. After watching it a several times, I learned how to insert ExGFX. When I found Pac's site, I looked at the tutorial how to rip graphics. So yeah, thanks to Pac I learned how to rip Graphics.
One day I applied SMB3 music patch. But I needed to fix the POW music. So I went to n00b SMW hacking, and made a thread. And a single post of BLM, helped me to learn Hex Editing. Because the post was about hex editor and ROM Map. Gosh I figure out stuff fast...
After some few weeks, I found some ASM tutorial on Board 2. I started to read it several times, and I figured out LDA, STA and RTS. ASM basics are easier than the advanced parts.
Then I learned more ASM, made some custom blocks that are not worth to use it as a practise, and so I learned many opcodes (Look at my profile).
My strong points: Hex editing, ASM, overworld (not ExGFX OW), inserting ExGFX in levels.
My weak points: Lack of level design, Palette limitation, Custom music, ripping ExGFX, designing custom GFX, making from-scratch custom sprites.

Although I learned those advanced stuff, I yet need to improve on the basics.
My blog. I could post stuff now and then

My Assembly for the SNES tutorial (it's actually finished now!)
OK, who broke the tables?
It has to be daaa77 because the tables are fine until after it. :P
Your layout has been removed.
(to Airsanio) Geez, that's a hard road to walk... I've been there. (I mean the bit about knowing the advanced stuff before the basics.) Not in hacking, but in other things. Well, if you need a bit of help on level design, you know who to ask, 'cause that's my strong point...

My weak point is graphics. I can rip fine, but am incapable of drawing my own. ASM used to be one of my weaknesses, but I'm slowly getting better. :)

I'll tell you my story of how I got here later. I'm very tired right now-- been hacking for several hours. :)
It's me!!

High on life is the best high.
Acmlm's board? Is that where you're from?
I just realised that I didn't put in what I hate. I hate drawing ExGFX backgrounds (never turn out right), but I love foregrounds.
No, Maxx screwed up the tables.
Originally posted by Haaaaaam
Acmlm's board? Is that where you're from?

Correct. You win a pizza. :D
It's me!!

High on life is the best high.
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