Let's hack NSMB! (To be exact, a level viewer.)

Noooo, about half the thread was killed.

I've readded the latest screenshot and download to the first post.

edit: Oh yeah, to Sonicandfails: I did get the download you posted, so don't worry about reuploading it.

____________________

I'll put something here later.

Yaaay, new version! 1.4, to be exact.

What's new:
+ Sonicandfails's pack of definitions (with some slight modifications by me) is now included
+ Support for BGDAT files has been removed: now ROMs can be directly loaded/edited
+ Descriptions can now be used for object definitions. See Help for details!
+ Some other minor fixes.

Go to first post for download! (If you got it in the small period before I took it down, please redownload, as it has a rather annoying bug I fixed!)

____________________

I'll put something here later.

Posted by Sonicandfails
Castle side extension is actually what Mario goes behind when you beat a level I believe. Didn't test it too much but it's what it seems like.

It is, that's why I mentioned it's necessary. (Having used an ARDS with "always Mega Mario" code and having Mega Mario be hidden only by that object kinda gives it away!)

____________________

I'll put something here later.

^{[citation needed]}

____________________

I'll put something here later.

Posted by Sonicandfails
I tried my best but that header file refuses to load. It's as if it tries to load graphics data that isn't there so it crashes. With the level two tileset though it works pretty much ok, but you cannot see the ground because the camera is wonky. If we could select all objects and move them at the same time this would be alot easier. Which reminds me...Is there anything in the game that when you get it it makes sparkles around you quickly and gives you about 1000 points? Something invisible in the level was giving me that right before a pink spinning log. The ground is composed of mostly normal ground tiles but some of them are really messed up and are angled wrong and everything. Theres even parts with massive chunks of the floor missing.

Nope.. I don't think there's any of that..
I tried all the different unused levels. Some weren't accessible; some were. It would be a lot easier if it was possible to use the headers, since then the correct graphics would be loaded, etc, and it would play just like a normal level.

Posted by Sonicandfails
I took the level 2 code because it was a little bigger then the mysterious level and used Translhextion to select all the bytes needed to be used by the last level and then Filled Selection with File and loaded up the last level. All of it's bytes overwrote the ones previously in level 2, and from what it seems after loading it in the editor all of the level data was completely removed from level 2 and even some enemies were replaced, but of course, there was a few lines of hex left which are most likely other enemies (From the overwritten level 2) from what I can guess. I also found that if you take a clean rom and overwrite it with part of a repacked NDS file (After NDStool) making it the same filesize, it still crashes in No$ and other emulators because it seems NSMB has some sort of checksum that it runs through in the beginning after the Nintendo logo. If we can find a way to kill the check or even simulate another checksum (If that is possible) then we could expand levels as far as we want.

There's lots of free space in the NSMB ROM!
NDSTool seems to not work on NSMB; repacked ROMs fail to run.
It is possible to place unused levels (layout, at least) into slots for bigger levels, since a tile of type "255 255" signals the end of a level (no other information is given. just a straight "FF FF" end to the file) and no more objects are read after that. But I don't think there's something similar for the header files.
Probably our best bet is editing the file system table to point the start/end offsets for the level files to the unused levels. Safest, and more efficient. I may try that later! Just a matter of adding some code to the editor's file system parser so I can tell where these offsets are stored.

Posted by Sonicandfails
Interesting point: 144832> <Tanks> I found that the "put under #102" pipes don't break when you try to run into them with massive mario

Yeah, I do think the put under/over #number pipes are something to do with them breaking with Mega Mario. Since they're only in some levels.. Perhaps the bottom one is the part in the ground (that can't be broken) and the top one is the part that can be broken/stamped down?

____________________

I'll put something here later.

Hmm. I hadn't thought about being able to repack ROMs to create larger levels.
It is possible to make larger levels, as the trimmed ROM is only about 19-20MB. So much expansion is possible. (Don't count on being able to add more levels to the game, though!)
I'm surprised the game still ran once when I tried editing the filename table to swap around the names for one of the unused levels and 1-1 (unsuccessfully- the game still loaded 1-1). Of course, that was quite some time ago. I now know more about the filesystem, so it would probably be better to do it by editing the FAT to point to different (or figgerent, as I almost typed?) levels.

As is probably obvious by looking at the code, my method of loading/saving levels is rather non-technical. I load the filenames, IDs, offsets, etc into an array. For every course file that matches the expression Like "[A-J][0-9][0-9]_[0-9]_b gdat.bin" it is added to a ListBox. Then, the ItemData value of each list item is set to the ID of the file within the various arrays.

The only challenge I would probably face is easily (and efficiently) moving data around in the ROM using VB's Get and Put statements, which aren't very useful when it comes to some things- you can get data and overwrite data, but nothing more! Hopefully, it shouldn't be too hard to find a solution for this. (This is the way of doing things learning programming using QBasic as a 9-year-old has left me with..)

____________________

I'll put something here later.

^{[citation needed]}

____________________

I'll put something here later.