Woah, been a while, hasn't it?
Glad to see new version of EE

Time to update!

I'm also back at hacking SMK once again (to finish my hack once and for all)

I wonder, is it possible to change the assigned palette for the battle balloon object?
Just noted when changing the piranha plant color (at least on choco island), it also changed the balloon color!

Tried to change the blue one, but the color is shared with Mario's palette.

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I wonder, how do the ghost pillars work?

I see that they are not editable directly. Kinda want to move them around, but seems like it's a part the game is picky about.

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Posted by Stifu

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They're not easily editable in the original game, but Epic Edit actually resaves them in a simpler format with a static size (from 0x80331 to 0x85D30).

Here's what smkdan told me back when we were working on this together, but I don't know how useful it will be to you:

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I thought this may as well be the time to figure out Ghost Valley pillars and I see how it works now. For the other courses I suppose you don't have to relocate the object positions since every course, even Ghost Valley, has 64 bytes of reserved space whether or not they use the objects. The object *zones* for all courses however I will relocate.

Ghost Valley pillars are more flexible and it works in a completely different way from the others. Instead of having ranges of checkpoints where one of four object zones are applied, it has a table with an entry for every checkpoint on the course. Each checkpoint is assigned a starting index where pillars will be loaded. It will then load the 4 pillars starting from that point. The starting index is into a variable length array of 2byte positions similar to what normal courses use.

for sake of documentation or if you want to mess around with it:
4DB83: 16bit pointers for each GV in order they appear (bank byte is $84)

Each pointer points to:
2 bytes: 2 byte pointer to checkpoint assigned table I just mentioned. The checkpoint # is used as the index.
2 bytes * n: the pillar positions, assume it's the same 7bit positioning other objects use. The checkpoint assignment *2 is used as an index into this data. Load 4 pillars starting from the given index.

Easiest way to make this more flexible is to assign some fixed number of bytes for all 20 tracks that could potentially be used for ghost valley pillars in the expanded ROM. 2 bytes are required to position a pillar, so say 256 bytes per course is enough for 128 pillars in a single course. There is no fixed number of pillars in GV, for every checkpoint you can potentially loaded up to 4 unique pillars. 128 checkpoints max means 512 possible pillars but that's really excessive. There is also the checkpoint assignment table that has to be stored.

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Interesting read! I suppose we really can't move them around in Epic Edit since it seems to use another mode for objects that would break the current UI for the other modes (?). INstead, I think I wanna ask something. I've been having trouble on Ghost Valley 3 when pillars are loaded. When they are set as the pillars routine, I get this inexplicable invisble block on a section of my track. It's annoying since it's right in the middle. I double checked within the editor and I put entirely flat road and I still got that issue.

I tried using the pipe routine, but it seems that the ghost pillar graphics isn't suited for other routines, since it scrambles up. Any ideas?

(also I wonder, is there any sort of SMK Discord server? Or whatever live chat people interested in SMK are in 👀 I fear the day that this board will be gone and all the discussion on this thread will be lost :< Perhaps if we can document some other stuff too, like the palette pages and where they are used. I used to remember where, but forgot now :<)

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Posted by Stifu

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You could move pillars manually if you know what you're doing. Then you could add support for them in Epic Edit. Or send me notes about how they work.
First time I hear about this invisible block thing. Maybe you could send me your ROM so I have a quick look? I'm also not sure what you're really trying to achieve.

There is an SMK Discord, although I did not join it. Dirtbag is part of it and sent me an invite last year. I don't know more.

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Ok, Cool. Thanks. I'll give it a try once I finish the new ghost valley theme. I wonder, which hex editor do you recommend to poke around with these things?
I''m just trying to move them around, as I plan to use them as decoration. Since the invisible block thing seems to happen only when I set the routine as a pillar. My other alternative was to import another Chost Valley theme, but I noted that we can't export/import AI boxes individually, so I'll try that as a last resort.

I'll see if I can find that Discord then 🤔 I think someone sent me one long ago, but can't remember who :< (or if the server is still up and it's public, the invite link should work)



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Posted by Stifu

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At first I was using Hex Workshop, but then I moved to 010 Editor. It's nice but not free. I thought it was worth the money. Any hex editor can do, I guess.

If you only want to import/export the AI, then export the whole track and manually tweak the smk files, copying the wanted section(s) from one track file to another. They're plain text files, and should be easy to figure out.

I just tried the Discord invite link I received back in July, and it has expired, unsurprisingly. Anyway, I could PM you the e-mail address of the person who invited me, if you want.

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Ok, thanks. Interesting, will surely poke around the file format then! Will look up unto that hex editor.
And sure, can we discuss Discord via PM? 👀

Also, sent you the ROM for revision 🙏🏻



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