Originally posted by Camewel

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I've found some more kinks in the chain - the game only sends over the necessary files. Can you make a program that fully unpacks narcs instead of just letting you view and replace so i can add the other enemy files in?

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I doubt NSMB would load the others, anyway. They're most likely hard coded to match specific enemy IDs to specific files inside the NARCs. (It references files in the game by ID, not by name.)

Originally posted by Camewel

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I've just found something else, the game does run off the files in ARCHIVE, because that's where the scroll loop files are. If you move them, you can get a scroll loop on standard play. I could do so much with this if you'd make a narc unpacking program

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... scroll loop files? what?

If you're referring to the way some multiplayer levels loop on the sides, I already figured out how it works. (It has nothing to do with the files, it's a byte in the level header - the next editor version has a checkbox for it)

Originally posted by Camewel

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These bin files are irritating, cause i can't even open them to find out what they do on a trial and error basis except some random rubbish on Notepad. You had any sucess with them?

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hex_editor


also, do you really need to quintuple-post? The edit button exists for a reason.

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Originally posted by Camewel

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to treeki: about the enemy data thing, would it not look for the data needed like in normal play if needed? about the scroll loop files, that was just a mistake by me. the sprites are obviously unneeded too, as the ice multiplayer level didn't have them. must have been a beta thing that didn't work. i'm trying the hex editor, but not one bit makes any sence. i'll try and pick it up on the way

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I'm not exactly sure, but this is how I think it works:
In download play mode, it just loads a set of preset files from the NARC. These are hardcoded into the game as far as I know - you can't just add a new file and expect the game to load it into the correct slot.
The same thing happens in the main game - if you change the name of a file or add a new file, it will be ignored. You could name A01_1.bin "THIS_IS_NOT_A_LEVEL.asdf" and it would still be loaded properly by the game.
Since the game relies on file IDs to load files, this is also why repacking NSMB with NDSTool will break it totally - NDSTool recreates the filesystem and assigns everything a new ID. Most games look up files by names; NSMB doesn't.

Originally posted by Camewel

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also, could you not just move a single-player level file to the MvL level file's place to make multiplayer? would have tried it myself but i'm still waiting for a flashcard adapter.

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We've tried it before. It doesn't work, but we're not exactly sure why (there are a lot of things we didn't try)

Originally posted by Camewel

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PPS: is the editor going to stay as a level editor, or will it get more advanced as it goes on to be able to edit all aspects? i'd be happy to help along the way!

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I'll add it as I figure it out.

Originally posted by Camewel

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PPPS: have you found any ways of adding more levels? it will be easier to add levels than to make them playable, unless you add a world editor, or maybe a world adder!

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Possible but not straightforward. I know where the game stores a table that points levels and areas to file numbers - but I just checked; it's impossible to expand without changing where it's stored in RAM.

I also don't have a way to change the map layouts yet. The thing is, there are two things involved in a map: the 3D model (in the file system) and the data that stores the layout of the map itself (levels, paths and so on).
I'm guessing it's stored in the ARM9 binary. I've tried to find it but had no success.

Originally posted by Camewel

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it might be easier to start with the multiplayer levels though, as with them you simply need to add a new button, instead of redrawing the map

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It wouldn't. I'd need to modify the game's code to add a new button.

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Originally posted by Camewel

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the map files are in uiStudio.

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Changing these will change the map overview that shows on the bottom screen, but it won't change how the map behaves.

Originally posted by Camewel

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would it not be possible to reassign id numbers to them and add new id numbers for the game to look for? or is that really tricky.

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It would be quite easy to do by editing the filesystem. (I'm not sure if we'd be able to add new files without relocating the FAT/FNT blocks though. But we could replace existing files - we could change the minigame files and put them to use for extra levels and things, for example.)

Originally posted by Camewel

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the whole id number thing is confusing, as i haven't seen any evidence of id numbers on any of the files.

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Click on a file in the File Browser. The ID will show at the bottom of the window.

Originally posted by Camewel

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download play, i think it just sends over the Dat_* files in the ARCHIVE folder, as thay have all the needed enemy and 'init' flies stored in it, as well as the levels. your game will also use them on download play, but not sure about multicard play

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I think we all knew this..


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4.4 is out - check page 16, as usual.

This version adds Mono support, and a new checkbox in Level Configuration.

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Originally posted by Raccoon Sam

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The link doesn't want to work :<

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Fixed. Apparently Google Pages's redirects are broken (they worked before, and they're still set up in the config panel, so I don't know what's wrong) so it didn't redirect to the proper link.

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So I return to this thread.


After about 2 days, a hacked up version of NDSTool, a custom decompression program and much time spent in No$GBA's debugger, I have a version of NSMB which can accept modified code.

Now, what I'm stuck on: what's the best way to add code to a routine? For example, if a value is read from an I/O port in the original code, I'd like to make it so I can override that with a specific memory address - but I don't see any way to add more without overwriting existing code. Is there a better way to do this?

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CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 (2.4ghz)
Mainboard: Gigabyte P35-S3DL I think (Too lazy to reboot my computer and check)
RAM: 2GB
Graphics card: Nvidia Geforce 8500GT
Hard drive: 500GB, not sure about the manufacturer
OS: XP professional SP2

I got it for Christmas 2007. It works great for everything I do, although Windows is getting very clogged up and needs a reformat.

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Originally posted by Raccoon Sam

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Those are great discoveries! I propose a checklist-like repository for all the sprite bytes and their property values.

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I've actually been thinking about that. I have an app I wrote which should make it easy for me to discover which sprites don't use the extra data.

I may write a quick PHP script for this, or even just a manually updated page - there's a lot of data which could be collected together from the various posts here and other places.

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Originally posted by Shantae

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I used to have a list for various byte edits and what they did to sprites... I may have lost it though...

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That's the thing - everyone has their own lists, many people duplicating work, etc. If the same info was available to everyone it would be a lot better.

I'm working on a script now, but I'm not exactly sure how to allow user editing. Maybe I'll just use MediaWiki or something.. there's other data that could be documented on a NSMB wiki as well.

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Originally posted by Pirahnaplant

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I recently have been trying to discover more on what I call sprite events. Basically this is when Mario touches a sprite, then it activates another sprite. Some examples of this would be the red coin ring, or the orange ? switch. In these events, the first extra bit tells it what sprite to activate.

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I was messing around with these yesterday while making a list of all the sprite data we already know about. I also discovered a few extra bits in the orange ? switch.

Take a look at this for an example of just how flexible it is: http://treeki.shacknet.nu/bossweird.swf (Warning, 11mb Flash video)

I have a very useful program I wrote which lets me find specific data about NSMB by editing the code - I can have it list block 14 from every level, for example (that's how I found the sprite set modifiers which let you define which sprites are available in a specific level - more on that soon) or the sprite data used for every sprite of a specific type.

A few of the weirdest things I found were a few "Brick with ? Switch" sprites which didn't actually do that. A few were placed in inaccessible areas in levels (like below the bottom, or within some ground). One I saw was an ? switch in the actual game, and not a brick.

Originally posted by Pirahnaplant

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While studying this I discovered what another sprite does.

286=Mass event activator
-Bit 1=Event number to activate through
-Bit 2=Activator ID
-Bit 6=Delay between activations

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Going to see if 286 has any loose ends to tie up and then post the sprite data list.


edit: Here's the list: http://treeki.shacknet.nu/nsmbsprites.html
I'm looking into the spiked balls now. They have their own activator system (used in 8-Tower 2) but it doesn't seem to be the same one - it doesn't use bit 1 or 2.
However, they CAN be used with it somehow... it's used in 2-Castle, not sure exactly how it ties into the level though.

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Originally posted by Shantae

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"It's a love story. Baby just say yes..."

ARGH

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I can see why.

Not even living across the ocean from Taylor Swift lets me avoid hearing it ALL. THE. TIME. on the radio.

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Updated version posted.


All of your new definitions are added. I found several other bytes for the water - we've discovered almost everything it uses, except for one byte (which is mentioned on the page).

By the way, if you need help with figuring out a specific sprite, ask me - I can easily get a list of the sprite data for any sprite in the game, which is very useful for finding out which bytes are actually used.
This for example (for 33):

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A02_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000
B03_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000
B08_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000
E02_2.bin: 0000 1000 0000
E10_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000
F09_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000
G09_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000
H09_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000
J07_1.bin: 0000 0100 0000

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Here you go:

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Sprite 55:
B09_2.bin: 0000 0200 0000
E04_1.bin: 0000 0101 0000
E04_1.bin: 0000 0102 0000
E04_1.bin: 0000 0100 0000
F01_1.bin: 0000 0200 0100

---

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Sprite 90:
D04_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000
D04_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000
D04_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000
D04_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000
D04_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000
D04_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000
D04_1.bin: 0000 0000 0010
D04_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000
D04_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000
D04_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000
G03_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000
G03_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000

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Sprite 95: linked (because of length): http://treeki.shacknet.nu/sprite95.txt
Sprite 132: also linked: http://treeki.shacknet.nu/sprite132.txt

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Sprite 228:
A06_2.bin: 0000 0000 0000
C01_2.bin: 0000 0000 0000
C03_3.bin: 0000 0000 0000
C05_2.bin: 0000 0000 0000
C07_2.bin: 0000 0000 0000
C10_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000
D04_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000
E10_1.bin: 0000 0100 0000
F02_1.bin: 0000 0100 0000
F08_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000
G08_2.bin: 0000 0000 0000

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Sprite 290: also linked: http://treeki.shacknet.nu/sprite290.txt

This will probably also be helpful: http://treeki.shacknet.nu/levelnames_readable.txt (It's a file listing which files map to which levels)

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Originally posted by hydraphatphelinez

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Originally posted by Jacob

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Well apparently my computer can't handle it. The VM won't even recognize Direct3D.

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I can't think of a single hypervisor that has support for D3D. I know VBox has support for OpenGL (Linux/Windows guests), but ...

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VMware has it, but it's limited (no DX10 for example) and it only works if you're running XP inside the VM.

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... so am I the only one who doesn't even see how it makes sense?

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There's only really one game I care about that could be shown at E3, and its existence isn't even certain.


.. come on, I'm sure you can guess.



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Originally posted by Pirahnaplant

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22=Moving hammer brother spawn point
-Bit 3=Set to 1X to make hammer bro not appear & is set to X1 sometimes, but appears to do nothing

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I think 1X is so they can appear at the midway point as well - I notice that every level has two; one that doesn't have it set, and one that has it set.

Anyway, here are the sprites you asked for:

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Sprite 73:
F09_2.bin: 0000 0200 0000
F10_2.bin: 0000 0200 0000
H05_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000
H05_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000
H05_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000
H05_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000
H05_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000

---

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Sprite 99:
D07_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000
D07_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000
D07_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000
D07_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000
D07_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000
G07_1.bin: 0000 0000 1000
G07_1.bin: 0000 0000 1000

---

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Sprite 108:
B03_2.bin: 0000 0001 0000
C04_1.bin: 0000 0101 0001
C08_1.bin: 0000 0001 0001
D06_1.bin: 0000 0101 0000
D08_1.bin: 0200 0001 0001
D08_2.bin: 0300 0001 0301
E05_1.bin: 0000 0101 0200
F04_1.bin: 0100 0001 0001

---

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Sprite 144:
F03_1.bin: 0000 0100 0000
F03_1.bin: 0000 0100 0000
F03_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000
F03_1.bin: 0000 0100 0000

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Sprite 174:
A05_2.bin: 0000 0701 2404
C02_1.bin: 0000 0722 2D03
C02_1.bin: 0000 0722 2D03
G06_2.bin: 0000 0701 2404
J08_1.bin: 0000 0822 0004
J08_1.bin: 0000 0F23 0007
J08_1.bin: 0000 0F23 0007

---

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Sprite 183:
B02_1.bin: 0000 0101 0000
F07_1.bin: 0000 0001 0000
F07_1.bin: 0000 0002 0000
F07_1.bin: 0000 0004 0000
F07_1.bin: 0000 0003 0000
F07_1.bin: 0000 0005 0000
F07_1.bin: 0000 0006 0000
F07_1.bin: 0000 0007 0000
F07_1.bin: 0000 0008 0000
J10_1.bin: 0000 0000 0000

---

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Sprite 185:
C01_2.bin: 0000 0001 0000
C01_2.bin: 0000 0102 0000
C01_2.bin: 0000 0000 0000
C01_2.bin: 0000 0103 0000
F05_2.bin: 0000 1100 0000
F05_2.bin: 0000 1101 0000
F05_2.bin: 0000 1102 0000

---

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Sprite 191:
F03_1.bin: 0000 0000 9000
F03_1.bin: 0000 0000 9000

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As for some news on the next version of the editor, I'm planning on including a feature like this (That allows you to grab data about the ROM easily) and a chooser for modifiers - so you can change which sprites are usable in a level.

I managed to find a table in the ROM that contains all the modifiers required for specific sprites, but I still need to get editing working. They seem to work pretty well now that I know how the system works - but it's still confusing.
Not all sets work together either - for example, putting Bowser in 1-Castle made the game crash. I had to disable all the other sprite sets except for one to get him to work. Even then, he was still quite glitchy.

Some of the stuff I want to add eventually but haven't got around to, or don't know enough to do yet: graphics editor, view and path support, inbuilt level hex editing and a hack patching system.

Anyway, I will work on adding those sprites to the page now!

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Well, thanks to the new (currently in work but should be out soon) version of my editor which has the changeable sprite sets, I now have the lost levels fully playable and working!

No videos this time because I'm lazy, but now you get to try them out.

These are all the original levels. The only changes I've made are the sprite sets and the end of the levels (for 4 and 5).
To play them, simply download my editor (any version will work) and import the level file on top of an existing level.

Level 1
This was originally a Mario vs. Luigi grassland level - it contains the star objects, but they're not activated in my version.

It includes the moving mushrooms from NSMB beta which all moved really fast (unlike the ones in the final game). Note that they're all mispositioned due to changes in the game engine. (In beta NSMB, the sprite locations were the actual base of the mushroom. In the final NSMB, they're located based off the top left.)

There are also a few objects which are no longer in the game. (You'll see them as messed up slopes and X's.) I figured out that they were most likely mushrooms.
Object 35 seems to have been a small mushroom stalk. Object 36 was a big mushroom stalk. Objects 21, 20 and 19 (in that order) were the left, middle and right bits of a mushroom respectively (no idea what colour); object 18 was a version which expanded by itself and didn't need to have the sides placed manually.

Download: http://treeki.shacknet.nu/nsmbunused1.nml

Level 2
Another Mario vs. Luigi level. This one is based in a castle - it contains some pillars which never showed up in the final game (They're blank in the editor, because they work like the pipes - they're 2D graphics rendered in 3D for some reason), a giant springboard (also unused, but works perfectly) and unused 2D lava. It also contains a Whomp but that's not really a new find; the main game uses it.

One notable thing about it is that not all the sprites work correctly - due to more changes in the game engine, the flip fences (bottom-left of the level) and Mario Bros platforms (right side of the level) don't both work at the same time. I chose to enable the platforms.

Download: http://treeki.shacknet.nu/nsmbunused2.nml

Level 3
Yet another Mario vs. Luigi level. This one has another minor sprite conflict: there's a seesaw platform (like in 1-2) which won't work at the same time as the moving mushrooms (which this level also uses).

It has a few interesting bits - the level is split up into two areas which are connected at several points by doors. There's also a bonus area which uses objects from the tileset 2. (It's obvious tileset 2 was completely redone - none of the objects are valid any more.)

After reaching a specific spot in the level, the game will have a major crash - everything will freeze up and the background will go crazy. (I'm not exactly sure what causes it, but I suspect the Chain Chomp with sprite data of "00 00 02 00 00 00" near the crash area is at fault - the value 02 is never used in the game, only 00 and 01.)

Download: http://treeki.shacknet.nu/nsmbunused3.nml

Level 4
This is an average-sized desert level. It contains nothing notable other than the lack of a midway point and an insane amount of blocks containing mushrooms. (Yes, just mushrooms - no fire flowers.) There are also a lot of powerups. The start of the level has two powerup blocks on the same screen.

I had to redo the end of this level for it to be completable, so it doesn't match the beta NSMB exactly, but it's as close as I can get. I simply changed the flagpole to the final version, and added a castle.

Download: http://treeki.shacknet.nu/nsmbunused4.nml

Level 5
An EXTREMELY long desert level split into two areas. It also has no midway point. It also has a lot of powerups.

This level might be familiar to you - back at one E3 (I forgot which), it was available as a playable demo. There's a video somewhere, but I couldn't find it.

As with level 4, I had to fix the flagpole and castle. Everything else is just as I found it.

Download: http://treeki.shacknet.nu/nsmbunused5.nml


Have fun with these. If you have any problems, feel free to post here about it. I wish there were more unused levels to discover.

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4.5 is out. Check page 16 as usual.


Now you can change the sprite sets used in a level. There's also a data finder for easier hacking, and the Mono version has fixed graphics.

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