Yeah, what you say makes a lot of sense.
If you have the time, please try to make a [.sav] file of the e-reader levels with these requirements:
- has no items in inventory
- has all 32 lvls completed with only Mario
- don't collect any A-coins or e-coins (especially the e-coins because they can only be gotten once per level scan)
- no e-switches activated
- try to get exactly 1,000,000 points or something
(so it sort of looks like 0000000 points)
- small mario on screen
- start with five lives
Well, I don't know how easy getting exactly one million points would be... I was really thinking of getting the minimum number of points possible, to make it seem as though Mario did the least work possible to secure those levels, even though that would actually be harder than just getting a whole lot of points and not caring. I also just realized I should make sure to finish a multiple of 3 levels so that there are no lingering panel cards to match up.
So, are you planning on ever using Luigi to complete any of the e levels? He is pretty good at flying, you know. And do you think it should be a requirement to beat the levels in the order they're listed, or would it be better to allow the runner to play the levels in any order in case it helps to have a certain power for a certain level?
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
I'm not going to use Luigi in any of the levels.
It would be really really hard to get minimum points. When you play the levels, I think you should not care about points until the end and then get just enough points to round off to the next million.
Like if after doing the levels you had 2589400 points, get points until you reach 3000000.
I'm doing the levels in order, EXCEPT the last few.
It will be like this:
- Levels 1 thru 26, in order
- Level 28
- The two promo levels
- Levels 29 and 30
- Play all three mushroom houses
- Level 27
This order is because Levels 29 and 30 are intended to be parts of a single level. Level 29 is an airship that ends in a boom-boom fight, and level 30 starts you off in that same room, and ends with a bowser fight.
Level 27 is a "remake" of Bowser's Castle, so I'm doing that last.
And just for fun, I found out the effects of all the e-switches while surfing the web:
Dark Blue Switch: All 1-up mushrooms become 3-up moons
Orange Switch: Enemies turn into coins when hit with a fireball
Blue-Green Switch: Puts clumps of grass in levels that let you throw turnips, etc.
Yellow Switch: Gives Luigi low gravity (non e-reader lvls only)
Green Switch: Slows down timer
Light Blue Switch: Cuts P-meter in half so you can fly with a shorter run
Red Switch: Replaces enemies with harder to kill versions and gives double points for defeating
Okay, so, I just reminded myself that you can actually store 33 levels, since you can always have one in "temporary" storage. The only downside is that you wouldn't be able to leave the level without finishing it. So I could throw in one of the classic worlds just for kicks, but all they have are Fire Flowers and that one Frog Suit at the end of 1-4.
Also, when I said a multiple of 3 levels, I really meant just playing those levels with the card panels as their goals enough that there wouldn't be any cards left over. I might have to beat one level twice, since I counted 23 of them.
Zowayix wrote:
- Play all three mushroom houses
Ah, I never even thought of just playing the houses to demonstrate them; I only thought of them as a tool to gain lives and power-ups. Do you think it would be worth playing all the different variations of the mini-games as well? Maybe not for the first game, but the second and third have a few different layouts that would be fun to see. Hmm, do you think the level layout determines which power-up you receive?
Zowayix wrote:
This order is because Levels 29 and 30 are intended to be parts of a single level. Level 29 is an airship that ends in a boom-boom fight, and level 30 starts you off in that same room, and ends with a bowser fight.
Level 27 is a "remake" of Bowser's Castle, so I'm doing that last.
Okay, sure, but if you're going for theming, why not group more levels like that? Like putting desert levels together with desert levels, sky levels with sky levels, et cetera.
Zowayix wrote:
Green Switch: Slows down timer
I just found out that this also slows down the card roulette at the end, but the entire effect only lasts for the first 50 game seconds of the level. This is really funny to use in that "60 Seconds" level, though. No pressure!
Zowayix wrote:
Red Switch: Replaces enemies with harder to kill versions and gives double points for defeating
This was the one I thought might be worthwhile because it makes the levels harder, but I now realize that it's like the second quest in the original Super Mario Bros., cutting into enemy variety by replacing a few of the species. Maybe it's better to not mess with the switches and to stick with what the level designers had in mind. (Although sometimes I wonder if they always had Luigi in mind.)
And I think I see what you're saying about the millions of points idea, where it would make it easier to calculate how many points you actually earned while playing.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
4. Yes, [.sav]s made with NO$GBA do work with VBA.
Uh oh, I can't get this to work. I can have NO$GBA load saved games made with VBA just fine, but using a save made by NO$GBA causes the game in VBA to declare the saved data corrupted. And I did make sure to set VBA's save type to Flash 128k. Is there something else I need to do? Do you think I need to change a setting in NO$GBA to make it write differently, or should I change a setting in VBA to make it read differently?
Edit: Well, I think I see the problem. VBA is making the save files 128 kilobytes, while NO$GBA makes them much smaller. I guess this means either there's some compression going on, or NO$GBA isn't saving the 128K Flash memory as it's supposed to, even when I have "FLASH 128K Sanyo" or "FLASH 128K Macronix" selected under "GBA Cartridge Backup Media". What's the deal?
Edit: Okay, I think I found the solution. Apparently NO$GBA's saves really are compressed, and I'll be getting some software to try to convert them. Hope this works!
Whoops, and after reading the documentation, it turns out all I had to do was switch off the compression option in the .INI file. I guess that option wasn't in the GUI. Nice!
Edit: It turns out the uncompressed save files are also unreadable in VBA. Now I'm stuck again.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Hey everyone, I got it figured out. I made a binary patch that converts NO$GBA saves to VBA saves, so I can safely go between emulators now.
Today I realized that leftover points and coins shouldn't be a problem, because I can just get a Game Over to erase them all. However, the game still saves the grand total of coins that you can use to play mini-games.
Since I wanted to make this save file also useful for anyone who wanted to just have everything in World-e on one save file, I got all the Advance Coins on the starred "classic worlds" so that they wouldn't have to be played through to reach 142 Advance Coins if a player couldn't link up to put those levels back in. In doing this, I had to collect 3 coins in "classic" 1-2 because of the line of coins blocking the way to the pipe. (I managed this by using the boomerang to collect the Advance Coin and duck-jumping from coin to coin as Cape Mario.)
Now, you could get rid of these coins by collecting 30 and spending them on a mini-game, but that would require collecting more Advance Coins, and the whole point was to make this save file as clean as possible except for the classic worlds. So I think we should settle for starting with 3 coins, and um... don't play the Mushroom Houses with only 32 coins?
Although if you were going to play those toward the end anyway, Zowayix, then it shouldn't matter. Now, was there a particular SMB1 world (1-1, 1-2, 1-3, 1-4, or 2-2) you wanted me to include as a temporary save just in case you wanted to play through it once?
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Wait...how do you have a level in temporary storage? You can't replay an unbeaten level without rescanning it, and that's not possible in a VBA movie.
Just to let you know, I don't really want any classic worlds on the temporary save. Could you tell me how you linked up the e-reader ROM and SMA4 ROM in no$gba? I can never do it right.
Again, thanks a lot for your effort in making a clean save. I'm putting this TAS on hold until it's done.
No, you can replay it as much as you want until you scan another level, even if you reload the game cartridge. The only differences are that you don't get an instant exit option on the Start menu in an unsaved level, and you get asked whether you want to save it after you beat it.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
All right, it's done: http://www.box.net/shared/h03pc4tvpg
Just rename it to whatever your ROM is called.
Make sure to test all the levels to see if there's anything wrong. And keep a backup in case you need to start over.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Yeah, it's okay. Only twelve of the levels were released in America, so the rest of the levels have Japanese titles displayed in the English font. Any names you find for those levels are all fan-created.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
In the general response for how there was japanese levels scannable in the US game, I was the one responsible for hacking this, back around the time homebrew e-reader cards became possible. The only thing that has stopped me from creating cards with fan translated english names, was the fact that I was unable to create a working level data compressor. (I have decompressed the level data, but not reversed the process.)
----
EDIT: If anybody wishes to take a crack at the compression process, here is working source code for the decompressor. http://phpfi.com/86449
Wow, caitsith2! Thanks for putting those card scans up on your site! Now that you're here, I just have a few questions.
Have you tested the 5 P-Wings power-up card? When I use it in NO$GBA, it not only gives me 5 P-Wings, but continues to fill the inventory with one of every item, including five items that have no use in World-e and an empty space. Well, you can sort-of use the Cloud. Using it in the castle causes a strange glitch that ends in the character dying, then having a cape on the map.
One time after the castle glitch, I got a garbled level selection that included this icon I haven't seen anywhere else:
Also, do you know of any other e-cards for Super Mario Advance 4 that haven't been distributed online yet? I'm just really fascinated by all the official expansions to this game!
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Redownload the power up card set, and retry the card. I found a value I had forgotten to change, that caused the game to use the garbage data in the card as items to put into the list. I fixed it to what it was supposed to be, and re-encoded the card.
stickyman05 wrote:
BoMF, what is that blue thing? Is it some sort of a boomerang? What is it used for/is it in the regular SMB3A? I have never seen it before ?_?
That is a boomerang, just like the boomerang brothers. It allows you to collect coins with it. It is not in the original game, but is an enhancement to this game, and normally is only available as a scanned e-reader card. (Although, unlike the levels, this can be unlocked with an action replay.)
All right, it's done: http://www.filespace.org/BagOfMagicFood/alllevel.sav
Just rename it to whatever your ROM is called.
Make sure to test all the levels to see if there's anything wrong. And keep a backup in case you need to start over.
WOW, thanks a million Bag of Magic Food.
I'll be sure to thank you in my submission when this run is finished.
Wow, caitsith2! Thanks for putting those card scans up on your site! Now that you're here, I just have a few questions.
Have you tested the 5 P-Wings power-up card? When I use it in NO$GBA, it not only gives me 5 P-Wings, but continues to fill the inventory with one of every item, including five items that have no use in World-e and an empty space. Well, you can sort-of use the Cloud. Using it in the castle causes a strange glitch that ends in the character dying, then having a cape on the map.
One time after the castle glitch, I got a garbled level selection that included this icon I haven't seen anywhere else:
Also, do you know of any other e-cards for Super Mario Advance 4 that haven't been distributed online yet? I'm just really fascinated by all the official expansions to this game!
Hey, BoMF, could you make a [.sav] of only the five classic levels? I want to play them just for fun, but I don't want to include them in my submission.
That is a boomerang, just like the boomerang brothers. It allows you to collect coins with it. It is not in the original game, but is an enhancement to this game, and normally is only available as a scanned e-reader card. (Although, unlike the levels, this can be unlocked with an action replay.)
A few e-Reader levels also include a special Boomerang Brother whose boomerang lands on the ground after you defeat him. You can then pick up the boomerang and use it for the rest of the level.
Zowayix wrote:
WHAT?! Oh ****, I forgot about that!! Now I have to re-do the level! Dang! Well, thanks for reminding me.
Yeah, now you'll have to plan out getting the key and everything!
I do have to say that this run looks a lot nicer without all the extra dilly-dallying.
However, it looks as though you could skip part of the Triangle Block maze in Slidin' the Slopes by just flying onto the top. Did you try that? Also, I should think there's a faster way to get the last Advance Coin in Vegetable Volley than pulling up that heavy vegetable. Perhaps you could re-use the shell from earlier?
Finally, you did some nice tricks in the Big Boo fight, but I think you could hit Big Boo a lot sooner if you left some blocks out to give yourself some running room to jump higher or fly up to him. And why did the battle music start over again after you won?
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Could you please tell me exactly how you linked the e-reader and SMA4 in no$gba? I've tried tons of times and it never works...
First off, there is a bug in no$gba, that you have to work around, in terms of the file loading dialog. Specifically, your request to load a cartridge to a specific emulated machine seems to always be ignored, if you set that option from the file load dialog. Instead, go to the file list option, set the desired machine to load the cartridge, then hit OK. Now go into the file load, and load the desired rom. Now back to file list, to set the second machine, then back to file load to load desired rom.
SMA4 has to be in the first machine, and e-Reader in the second.
Now, the next issue, is that the link port in no$gba is not emulated 100%, and as a result, attempts to do the initial loading will NOT succeed. Instead, you have to have an e-reader save file with the SMA4 level loader already present for no$GBA, in order for the linking to function correctly. You can get this save file from http://caitsith2.net/ereader/sma4/sma4%20card%20loader.zip.
Finally, you will need to make very certain that you are using no$gba 2.4b or later, as this is the first version to correctly support ereader emulation. (I donated the e-reader that made this possible btw.)
Bag of Magic Food wrote:
Finally, you did some nice tricks in the Big Boo fight, but I think you could hit Big Boo a lot sooner if you left some blocks out to give yourself some running room to jump higher or fly up to him. And why did the battle music start over again after you won?
Has to do with the fact that he hit that yellow block switch, so that its timer would expire after beating big boo, and the game would then think to restore the music that was playing at the time the switch was hit.
One time after the castle glitch, I got a garbled level selection that included this icon I haven't seen anywhere else:
Also, do you know of any other e-cards for Super Mario Advance 4 that haven't been distributed online yet? I'm just really fascinated by all the official expansions to this game!
