Super Metroid/SMILE Help Thread

Cardweaver

Edit history:

Cardweaver: 2008-07-25 11:07:30 pm

2008-07-25 10:48:16 pm

Ok, so I tried to understand that WOT, but... it just gave me a headache. Acheron ol' buddy grin new

, could you walk me (and probably some other people too) through the fix for it step by step?
Cider depends on your knowledge!

Also, I've run into something interesting. If you try to change the layer 2 background of Sporespawns room, it lets you, but the one spot where spore spawn normally rests remains black no matter what I do. The room already has a bg pointer and layer 2 scroll pointer of 0000, so I'm assuming its part of Sporespawn's data. Is this true, and if it is, is there a quick way to fix it? As of right now it doesn't look too bad, but I can think of one other thing that'll look better if I can get rid of the 2x2 square of blackness.

One more question for now: When changing fx1 palette blends, why is there a line break in the room for some of the palettes (like in the red water rooms in soup)? How would I go about removing the break to make it a seamless transition between the water/lava/acid and the air?

edit: Now I'm having a different sort of trouble. I have a set up at the moment when the room at the top of an elevator leads to another room, and in this second room, one of my doors keeps opening the wrong direction, but only If I come in through the elevator side. If I use the problem door to exit, then reenter: no problems. Why is this happening? I already checked all the tiles' BTS values, and they all match up perfectly to working doors.

Ok, so I tried to understand that WOT, but... it just gave me a headache. Acheron ol' buddy  :grinnew:, could you walk me (and probably some other people too) through the fix for it step by step? 
Cider depends on your knowledge!

Also, I've run into something interesting. If you try to change the layer 2 background of Sporespawns room, it lets you, but the one spot where spore spawn normally rests remains black no matter what I do. The room already has a bg pointer and layer 2 scroll pointer of 0000, so I'm assuming its part of Sporespawn's data. Is this true, and if it is, is there a quick way to fix it? As of right now it doesn't look too bad, but I can think of one other thing that'll look better if I can get rid of the 2x2 square of blackness.

One more question for now: When changing fx1 palette blends, why is there a line break in the room for some of the palettes (like in the red water rooms in soup)? How would I go about removing the break to make it a seamless transition between the water/lava/acid and the air?

edit: Now I'm having a different sort of trouble. I have a set up at the moment when the room at the top of an elevator leads to another room, and in this second room, one of my doors keeps opening the wrong direction, but only If I come in through the elevator side. If I use the problem door to exit, then reenter: no problems. Why is this happening? I already checked all the tiles' BTS values, and they all match up perfectly to working doors.

Acheron

2008-07-25 11:07:27 pm

Acclaimed Threshold

Constant Sorrows

Quote from Cardweaver:

Ok, so I tried to understand that WOT, but... it just gave me a headache. Acheron ol' buddy grin new

, could you walk me (and probably some other people too) through the fix for it step by step?
Cider depends on your knowledge!

Also, I've run into something interesting. If you try to change the layer 2 background of Sporespawns room, it lets you, but the one spot where spore spawn normally rests remains black no matter what I do. The room already has a bg pointer and layer 2 scroll pointer of 0000, so I'm assuming its part of Sporespawn's data. Is this true, and if it is, is there a quick way to fix it? As of right now it doesn't look too bad, but I can think of one other thing that'll look better if I can get rid of the 2x2 square of blackness.

One more question for now: When changing fx1 palette blends, why is there a line break in the room for some of the palettes (like in the red water rooms in soup)? How would I go about removing the break to make it a seamless transition between the water/lava/acid and the air?

I think spore spawn does that. You could try removing him from the room in a backup to double-check.

FX1 palettes... excellent question. I'm not sure myself. I will look into that.

I can try to help with the tutorial but it's already pretty basic; ask me specifically what's confusing and I'll try to help out though.

[quote="Cardweaver"]
Ok, so I tried to understand that WOT, but... it just gave me a headache. Acheron ol' buddy  :grinnew:, could you walk me (and probably some other people too) through the fix for it step by step? 
Cider depends on your knowledge!

Also, I've run into something interesting. If you try to change the layer 2 background of Sporespawns room, it lets you, but the one spot where spore spawn normally rests remains black no matter what I do. The room already has a bg pointer and layer 2 scroll pointer of 0000, so I'm assuming its part of Sporespawn's data. Is this true, and if it is, is there a quick way to fix it? As of right now it doesn't look too bad, but I can think of one other thing that'll look better if I can get rid of the 2x2 square of blackness.

One more question for now: When changing fx1 palette blends, why is there a line break in the room for some of the palettes (like in the red water rooms in soup)? How would I go about removing the break to make it a seamless transition between the water/lava/acid and the air?
[/quote]

I think spore spawn does that. You could try removing him from the room in a backup to double-check.

FX1 palettes... excellent question. I'm not sure myself. I will look into that.

I can try to help with the tutorial but it's already pretty basic; ask me specifically what's confusing and I'll try to help out though.

Cardweaver

2008-07-25 11:20:38 pm

Well, the door problem turned out to be a corrupted savestate, so no more problems there. It is sporespawn that makes that hole unfortunately.

As for the understanding the scrolling sky fix, I think what I'm not getting is what exactly I'm changing. I think what I'm supposed to do is use a hex editor to change certain bytes of the door to match that of the ones already connected to the ss rooms, and if this is the case, the things I don't quite understand are: what I'm changing, where I find it, and what to change it to. If that's not the case, then consider me completely lost. :(

Bolognab

2008-07-25 11:23:34 pm

I don't think anyone actually liked persay Impossible's difficulty; rather they wanted to prove that they were good at super metroid. (well at least for me anyway)

Acheron

2008-07-25 11:42:54 pm

Acclaimed Threshold

Constant Sorrows

Quote from Cardweaver:

Well, the door problem turned out to be a corrupted savestate, so no more problems there. It is sporespawn that makes that hole unfortunately.

As for the understanding the scrolling sky fix, I think what I'm not getting is what exactly I'm changing. I think what I'm supposed to do is use a hex editor to change certain bytes of the door to match that of the ones already connected to the ss rooms, and if this is the case, the things I don't quite understand are: what I'm changing, where I find it, and what to change it to. If that's not the case, then consider me completely lost. :(

Oh, THAT. I thought you meant the thing I posted. Let me mess around with it some first.

Cardweaver

2008-07-26 12:17:58 am

Quote from Acheron86:

I thought you meant the thing I posted. Let me mess around with it some first.

Of course not. That particular bit of tutorial is rather well explained. (And probably very useful for later.)

Deep_Space_Observer

2008-07-26 12:44:01 am

Got a big problem now. I was going to open my Hex Editor for the first time and it doesn't work because I have Windows x64 edition. I downloaded a few others which didn't work, and now I'm having trouble finding a good one for the SNES that supports Windows x64. Any suggestions?

Acheron

2008-07-26 12:45:22 am

Acclaimed Threshold

Constant Sorrows

Quote from Deep_Space_Observer:

Got a big problem now. I was going to open my Hex Editor for the first time and it doesn't work because I have Windows x64 edition. I downloaded a few others which didn't work, and now I'm having trouble finding a good one for the SNES that supports Windows x64. Any suggestions?

Well, ANY hex editor will work for SNES stuff pretty much, you don't need a particular hex editor.

But uh, I dunno shit about x64, except that it's really annoying and limited. Sorry dude or lady.

Deep_Space_Observer

Edit history:

Deep_Space_Observer: 2008-07-26 01:56:54 am

2008-07-26 01:36:35 am

I found one that works, now comes the fun part of having no clue as to what I'm doing. I used SMILE to create a new bank, and in the editor it opened up from 300000 to 307ff0. Every bank is "FF FF FF FF" everywhere (everywhere from 300000 to 307ff0) on all bytes, which was the case with 2f51c0, so I assume that there was free space already at the end of the rom?

Okay, I tried pointing the level data to E08000, and got the "room takes up too much space" warning message saying "Warning, you have used 255 of your -4096 bytes!". I didn't save, in case there's some other step I'm missing I need to do first.

Also, SMILE seems to protest being used at the same time with my hex editor. Is this normal?

Edit: more trouble. Smile refuses to load said room I was trying to repoint now, even though I did not repoint it. Whenever I try to enter the room in SMILE, I get the message "Run time error 9' subscript out of range" and SMILE shuts down completely. However, the room works just fine right as I left it for SNES9x. What's up with SMILE?

I found one that works, now comes the fun part of having no clue as to what I'm doing. I used SMILE to create a new bank, and in the editor it opened up from 300000 to 307ff0. Every bank is "FF FF FF FF" everywhere (everywhere from 300000 to 307ff0) on all bytes, which was the case with 2f51c0, so I assume that there was free space already at the end of the rom?

Okay, I tried pointing the level data to E08000, and got the "room takes up too much space" warning message saying "Warning, you have used 255 of your -4096 bytes!". I didn't save, in case there's some other step I'm missing I need to do first.

Also, SMILE seems to protest being used at the same time with my hex editor. Is this normal?

Edit: more trouble. Smile refuses to load said room I was trying to repoint now, even though I did not repoint it. Whenever I try to enter the room in SMILE, I get the message "Run time error 9' subscript out of range" and SMILE shuts down completely. However, the room works just fine right as I left it for SNES9x. What's up with SMILE?

Kejardon

2008-07-26 02:04:24 am

Embarrasing Fact: Power suit made by lowest bidder

Acheron wanted a new message box, and I happened to have recently expanded the message box routine for more things. On the off chance someone else wants it (and because it's an easy place to upload to) here's the xkas file for using it. All you need is xkas and notepad to add new message boxes.
Of course, you'll still need to be comfortable with a hex editor to make PLMs use new message boxes.

attachment:

MessageBoxExpansion.asm

DMantra

(user is banned)

2008-07-26 02:09:31 am

Breathe in the Future, Breathe out the Past

Quote from Bolognab:

I don't think anyone actually liked persay Impossible's difficulty; rather they wanted to prove that they were good at super metroid. (well at least for me anyway)

I agree with that statement. Pulling off perfect jumps to avoid spikes, which often entails midair morphing, and sometimes even demorphing to get that extra bit of air can be fun, but when it's in most every room, all you're really doing is save state abuse.

In the end, it's all about if you can actually beat it and tell people your time and %, and I think most people can with enough motivation, so it's not exactly hard. Hard is doing a series of moves without enough time to even ss yourself into a comfort zone mid challenge. Like in RBO Impossible, when getting to the original xray room, I had to switch to supers while grappled, free fall shooting the yapping maws, switching to grapple and catching a hook before falling on the spikes. I liked that.. sorta.

Acheron

2008-07-26 02:09:39 am

Acclaimed Threshold

Constant Sorrows

Quote from Deep_Space_Observer:

Okay, I tried pointing the level data to E08000, and got the "room takes up too much space" warning message saying "Warning, you have used 255 of your -4096 bytes!". I didn't save, in case there's some other step I'm missing I need to do first.

Quote:

There is one more thing you should do, though, and that's add this room to the "level_entries" text file for SMILE, stored under the Smile/files folder. Add its hex location (300000) at the end of the file. This will make sure that SMILE keeps you from overwriting other rooms.

You should be doing this. It will keep you from making mistakes in overwriting files, and it also gets rid of the SMILE message. The only reason you get that message is because SMILE doesn't know there's level data there yet. You should be fine to save.

Quote:

Also, SMILE seems to protest being used at the same time with my hex editor. Is this normal?

Edit: more trouble. Smile refuses to load said room I was trying to repoint now, even though I did not repoint it. Whenever I try to enter the room in SMILE, I get the message "Run time error 9' subscript out of range" and SMILE shuts down completely. However, the room works just fine right as I left it for SNES9x. What's up with SMILE?

SMILE doesn't like sharing with a hex editor. Just close the file when you aren't hexing it.

[quote="Deep_Space_Observer"]
Okay, I tried pointing the level data to E08000, and got the "room takes up too much space" warning message saying "Warning, you have used 255 of your -4096 bytes!". I didn't save, in case there's some other step I'm missing I need to do first.[/quote]

[quote author=Acheron86]There is one more thing you should do, though, and that's add this room to the "level_entries" text file for SMILE, stored under the Smile/files folder. Add its hex location (300000) at the end of the file. This will make sure that SMILE keeps you from overwriting other rooms.[/quote]

You should be doing this. It will keep you from making mistakes in overwriting files, and it also gets rid of the SMILE message. The only reason you get that message is because SMILE doesn't know there's level data there yet. You should be fine to save.

[quote]Also, SMILE seems to protest being used at the same time with my hex editor. Is this normal?

Edit: more trouble. Smile refuses to load said room I was trying to repoint now, even though I did not repoint it. Whenever I try to enter the room in SMILE, I get the message "Run time error 9' subscript out of range" and SMILE shuts down completely. However, the room works just fine right as I left it for SNES9x. What's up with SMILE?
[/quote]

SMILE doesn't like sharing with a hex editor. Just close the file when you aren't hexing it.

Cardweaver

2008-07-26 02:14:11 am

Quote from Acheron86:

The only reason you get that message is because SMILE doesn't know there's level data there yet. You should be fine to save.

Is this why the fireflea room in LN (as well as one of the escape rooms in tourian) keeps telling me that I'm trying to save 784 out of -180000? For said rooms, would I need to repoint the level data, or would I just need to change the SMILE document?

Xaggoth

2008-07-26 02:26:04 am

I'm wondering if there is a good way of triggering the 'ceres is exploding' trigger like the one for the zebes explosion. I looked at it already and I'm thinking that Ridley triggers it (this would suck)? I want to keep the intro text, but not have Ridley and wtf-a-metroid-this-has-nothing-to-do-with-the-plot out of it.

Acheron

2008-07-26 02:36:18 am

Acclaimed Threshold

Constant Sorrows

Quote from Cardweaver:

Is this why the fireflea room in LN (as well as one of the escape rooms in tourian) keeps telling me that I'm trying to save 784 out of -180000? For said rooms, would I need to repoint the level data, or would I just need to change the SMILE document?

I imagine it's probably that yes. If SMILE has it right already and nothing shows up it might be because there's just a lot of free space after it, but generally negative free space means SMILE doesn't have it in its level entries.

Quote from Xaggoth:

I'm wondering if there is a good way of triggering the 'ceres is exploding' trigger like the one for the zebes explosion. I looked at it already and I'm thinking that Ridley triggers it (this would suck)? I want to keep the intro text, but not have Ridley and wtf-a-metroid-this-has-nothing-to-do-with-the-plot out of it.

Proooobably not without some serious disassembling of what Ridley's AI does when it retreats. Might just want to not use Ceres, you can still start in Ceres if you copy tileset stuff over I guess. BT did it, flood him with messages asking how, he loves that stuff.

[quote="Cardweaver"]
Is this why the fireflea room in LN (as well as one of the escape rooms in tourian) keeps telling me that I'm trying to save 784 out of -180000? For said rooms, would I need to repoint the level data, or would I just need to change the SMILE document?
[/quote]

I imagine it's probably that yes. If SMILE has it right already and nothing shows up it might be because there's just a lot of free space after it, but generally negative free space means SMILE doesn't have it in its level entries.

[quote="Xaggoth"]
I'm wondering if there is a good way of triggering the 'ceres is exploding' trigger like the one for the zebes explosion.  I looked at it already and I'm thinking that Ridley triggers it (this would suck)?  I want to keep the intro text, but not have Ridley and wtf-a-metroid-this-has-[i]nothing[/i]-to-do-with-the-plot out of it.  
[/quote]

Proooobably not without some serious disassembling of what Ridley's AI does when it retreats. Might just want to not use Ceres, you can still start in Ceres if you copy tileset stuff over I guess. BT did it, flood him with messages asking how, he loves that stuff.

Deep_Space_Observer

Edit history:

Deep_Space_Observer: 2008-07-26 03:23:45 am

2008-07-26 03:08:33 am

Quote from Acheron86:

Quote:

There is one more thing you should do, though, and that's add this room to the "level_entries" text file for SMILE, stored under the Smile/files folder. Add its hex location (300000) at the end of the file. This will make sure that SMILE keeps you from overwriting other rooms.

You should be doing this. It will keep you from making mistakes in overwriting files, and it also gets rid of the SMILE message. The only reason you get that message is because SMILE doesn't know there's level data there yet. You should be fine to save.

SMILE doesn't like sharing with a hex editor. Just close the file when you aren't hexing it.

Alright, you're getting a room dedicated to your tribute in my hack, because you've probably spent more time answering my questions than it would take for me to make the tribute room lol. Of course, more questions coming.

Will the scrolling sky background fix work for a tileset 2 room?

Smile hasn't complained to me about tilespace when saving yet, but my expanded room has -3145728 bytes of free space. (Yes, I added its pointer into the level_data file) Should I be concerned or no?

Edit: Xaggoth is awesomesauce

[quote="Acheron86"]

[quote author=Acheron86]There is one more thing you should do, though, and that's add this room to the "level_entries" text file for SMILE, stored under the Smile/files folder. Add its hex location (300000) at the end of the file. This will make sure that SMILE keeps you from overwriting other rooms.[/quote]

You should be doing this. It will keep you from making mistakes in overwriting files, and it also gets rid of the SMILE message. The only reason you get that message is because SMILE doesn't know there's level data there yet. You should be fine to save.

SMILE doesn't like sharing with a hex editor. Just close the file when you aren't hexing it.
[/quote]

Alright, you're getting a room dedicated to your tribute in my hack, because you've probably spent more time answering my questions than it would take for me to make the tribute room lol. Of course, more questions coming.

Will the scrolling sky background fix work for a tileset 2 room?

Smile hasn't complained to me about tilespace when saving yet, but my expanded room has -3145728 bytes of free space. (Yes, I added its pointer into the level_data file) Should I be concerned or no?

Edit: Xaggoth is awesomesauce

Xaggoth

Edit history:

Xaggoth: 2008-07-26 03:23:31 am

2008-07-26 03:19:45 am

Quote from Deep_Space_Observer:

[Block of text]

Those two rooms have separate states. Just use the drag down in the upper right of SMILE. The default trigger for these states is the 'Zebes is Awake.' It's kind of weird, since in the original game it wasn't possible to reach the chozo statue without awakening zebes.

Deep_Space_Observer

2008-07-26 03:29:44 am

Um...

SMILE is now giving me the "protected rom" message.

Acheron

2008-07-26 04:05:48 am

Acclaimed Threshold

Constant Sorrows

Quote from Deep_Space_Observer:

Um...

SMILE is now giving me the "protected rom" message.

Durh hurh. I don't remember what byte does this but it's uhm... really rare that you did that yourself. Sure you opened the right file? And make sure you're not using the European ROM, it wouldn't be the first person tonight that made that mistake. The right ROM says (JU) [!] somewhere in the file name. (E) would be bad.

Cardweaver

2008-07-26 05:21:09 am

Quote from Acheron86:

Quote from Deep_Space_Observer:

Um...

SMILE is now giving me the "protected rom" message.

Durh hurh. I don't remember what byte does this but it's uhm... really rare that you did that yourself.

So that's how you protect the rom! I've been wondering for a long, long time. I'm definitely gonna need to find that byte before Cider is released.

P.JMan

2008-07-26 06:27:08 am

I like Big Butts and I can not lie

Quote from Cardweaver:

Quote from Acheron86:

Quote from Deep_Space_Observer:

Um...

SMILE is now giving me the "protected rom" message.

Durh hurh. I don't remember what byte does this but it's uhm... really rare that you did that yourself.

So that's how you protect the rom! I've been wondering for a long, long time. I'm definitely gonna need to find that byte before Cider is released.

Well, there are lots of bytes you can change. That same message always comes up when SMILE doesn't recognize the game as Super Metroid, it doesn't just check a single byte, but changing a single byte can make SMILE not recognize the game as Super Metroid

Black Telomeres

2008-07-26 09:57:51 am

Quote from Bolognab:

I don't think anyone actually liked persay Impossible's difficulty; rather they wanted to prove that they were good at super metroid. (well at least for me anyway)

Um, then that makes even less sense. So it's an e-recognition thing? If it's not fun, why do it? All that's really being proven is your ability to withstand insane tedium.

reaper901

2008-07-26 11:22:29 am

the metroid is a lie !

is there a way that i can give different areas different fx and mix fx1 between areas?

Acheron

2008-07-26 12:09:07 pm

Acclaimed Threshold

Constant Sorrows

Quote from phantomhacker:

is there a way that i can give different areas different fx and mix fx1 between areas?

Well, you can add new FX sets if you find some free space in bank $83 (and there's lots of free space there). Otherwise no, not easily.

Bolognab

2008-07-26 12:13:32 pm

Quote from Black Telomeres:

Quote from Bolognab:

I don't think anyone actually liked persay Impossible's difficulty; rather they wanted to prove that they were good at super metroid. (well at least for me anyway)

Um, then that makes even less sense. So it's an e-recognition thing? If it's not fun, why do it? All that's really being proven is your ability to withstand insane tedium.

I think I'll shutup now. Embarassed