SA-1 Pack v1.35 Released - Super Mario World is now unlocked!
Added 2020-12-13 01:27:45 +0000 UTCHello y'all! After a long hiatus on releases, I'm glad for releasing a new version of SA-1 Pack for Super Mario World.
As you know, the SA-1 Pack aims both for SNES players interested in playing an optimized gameplay and ROM hackers interested in using SA-1 on their work.
SA-1 Pack v1.35 bring a few interesting changes. For who wants to play the original Super Mario World with the chip, SA-1 Pack now reconfigures all levels's sprite memory header settings to automatically use the SA-1 Pack's More Sprites memory map, which expands the maximum amount of sprites on screen from 4 ~ 10 (depending on the level) to 20!
That feature originally only worked on ROM hacks, because you had to manually enable the feature for each level you edit, but now you can have the "unlocked experience" on the original levels as well!
The effects of bringing this setting on are interesting. Enemies like Lakitu, Digging' chuck and Magikoopa pretty much no longer have limitation on spawning new enemies, which was a not so common situation. The same applies for Splittin' Chucks, which depending on many enemies were on screen, they simply would not split at all or split at most two.
Soda Lake will be more challenging as well, where Torpedo Teds will have pretty much unlimited power to spawn as many torpedos as possible. The blurp fishes will no longer disappear out of sudden if there's just too many on screen.
8 torpedo teds at the same time on screen...with total 12 enemies being rendered at the same time.
For ROM hackers, SA-1 Pack now includes DMA remap, which gives you a additional HDMA channel, allowing for more effects. The DMA remap also fixes a rare bug involving GFX decompression, which LX5 found while debugging his custom powerups pack.
I have also integrated into SA-1 Pack a feature originally implemented on Touhou Mario 2 called "Custom OAM hook". It's a way to expand the maximum amount of tiles on screen by using all unused slots that the SNES lets to. That way we will allow to ROM hacks to push even more the SNES limits just like my video containing 120 enemies on screen:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxBnXpKonnc
In addition, it has a few fixes that affect mostly ROM hacks, such as glitchy game over screens and a memory map corruption issue when SA-1 Pack is reapplied over 6 MB or 8 MB ROMs.
The update was a great way to get me back into SNES, SMW and SA-1 ROM hacking. Now I remember most of the issues and details about the my current work and I now feel confident that I can start working on new SA-1 games and finally release MaxTile for Super Mario World, a feature that will allow users to put up to (for example) six banzai bills on screen or five big ghosts. Pretty much Super Mario World ROM hacks will be able to insert sprites as huge as Super Mario Maker!
What kind of new SA-1 Pack feature are you interested into? Comment below! Ideas and requests are always welcome.
