Topic: (GBA) Super Mario Advance 4

[Troy Lundin]

Todo: World 1 - World 2 - World 3 - World 4 - World 5 - World 6 - World 7 - World 8

Super Mario Advance 4.zip

[Will]

I think I prefer the second one. The extended cloud layer makes more sense than the blue screen and gives a fine touch to the map. I often extend and elongate backgrounds and parts in various maps for the sake of polishing them up.

[Peardian]

I considered mapping this game earlier, but felt it would be too redundant with SMB3 and SMAS already ripped. I did think of something that would make the maps more unique, but I never acted on it.


So, mind if I make a suggestion/request before you get too much further? One of the e-Reader cards that was released outside of Japan was the Blue Green Switch card (part of series 2), which added vegetable patches from SMB2 to every level in the game, even the original levels. Now, I don't know how possible it would actually be to activate an e-Reader card (as I used save states when mapping) but if you do manage to find a way, it would be great if you could somehow include or denote those vegetables. It would make the maps a lot more useful than just being a copy of SMAS.

[Troy Lundin]

Peardian, you'll enjoy this.

As I was capturing the raw scenes, I noticed some weird bi-colored squares that didn't correlate to anything I could see in-game. You can see them in the attached image. After using a save to access the e-levels, I found out those squares actually indicate where the veggies are at if they are activated.

[Peardian]

Now that is interesting! I never bothered to check the regular level maps, so I never noticed them.

[Troy Lundin]

Those bi-colored squares are in the e-World maps as well.

This game restricts it's camera to certain co-ordinates. This means there must be a place in memory that holds the maximum co-ordinate the camera can get to. I found this place and it let's me scroll the camera to areas previously inaccessible. Take the attachment for example. Three different areas in 5-2 are actually all the same scene.

[Ryan Ferneau]

If you want to play around with the switches, check out the Codebreaker code under "Unused Switch Content" on the Cutting Room Floor page.  Apparently all the effects of all the switches are already programmed into the game and are activated by the bits in that single memory address; all the e-cards do for them is unlock the appropriate colored switches to give you access in game.  I'm sure other kinds of hacking can be used to give you access to the exclusive power-ups and mini-games too, but new levels and level replays must come from the cards themselves.

[Troy Lundin]

So, I was planning on adding in the OBJ layer after capturing all the maps since I couldn't find a suitable way to freeze the NPCs. But, I don't think that can wait after capturing 5-9. Yes, it's magnificent. One thing that I noticed about this level that was kind of neat. As the screen is moving up, it's position is actually resetting a total of five times. It starts out with a y co-ordinate of 272 (110h) and once it gets to 32 (20h) it stops for a second then resets to 272 (110h). The x co-ordinate never resets. So, here it is. The level that contains only 9 unique colors (and 6KB).

[Troy Lundin]

World 8 is finished. Link in original post.