Ah, that's great to hear. The site could really benefit from some sort of centralization of information and hopefully it'll encourage newbies to continue NSMB hacking.

Wait, do you want to know how to design an icon for your rom hack, or change an icon on your PC? Because those are 2 relatively different things.

well do you need tips for designing one or do you already have one ready and you just need to put it in the game?

well usually you can just scale down a render of marios head, clean it up, and use that as the icon. Alternatively, you can use sprites from other games, like Mario 3 or something, and scale them up to fit the size of the icon. You could also make a sprite of your own, too. To add the icon to your rom pretty sure you have to open the file called banner.bin, select 4bpp mode, and click the import bitmap and recreate palette button.

The icon is 32 pixels in width and height and can only use 16 colours total, one of which is reserved for transparency. You can use any image editor to make the icon, but id recommend one with transparency support. Probably just use the one you made your hack logo with so you dont have to download another program needlessly. Thanks banner.bin file in the rom file browser tab in nsmbe. Its not in any of the folders so it shouldnt be too hard to find.

you double click it in nsmbe. if i recall correctly, that should open it in the graphics editor.

since ktrmambiance already mentioned the model and the in-course item, ill just cover modifying the bottom screen item slot icon. The ncg for it is "UI_O_1P_game_in_d_ncg.bin" and it uses the palette "d_2d_UI_O_1P_game_in_o_ud_ncl.bin", both of which are in the uiStudio folder.

1. Extract the file "UI_O_1P_game_in_d_ncg.bin" as you'll need it for later.

2. Open "UI_O_1P_game_in_d_ncg.bin" as well as the palette "d_2d_UI_O_1P_game_in_o_ud_ncl.bin". Before clicking "Add all" tick the "16 color" box.

3. In nsmbe's graphics editor, tick the "View in 4pbb format" checkbox, set the tile width to 8, and select palette 11. Then click "Export this bitmap".

4. Make the desired edits in your image editor of preference, but make sure your sprite doesn't go into the other sprites. when your're done, remove anything you don't want or isnt part of your powerup sprite (that includes the other powerup and ui related sprites). Save the image.

5. Go back to nsmbe's graphics editor, click "Import this bitmap and recreate palette" and select the edited image you just made. Save the image and exit the graphics editor.

6. In nsmbe's file browser, select the file "UI_O_1P_game_in_d_ncg.bin" and replace it with the one you extracted in step 1.

7. Repeat steps 2. and 3., but when exporting the bitmap be sure to name it something different from the bitmap you edited earlier as to not replace it.

8. Open both exported bitmaps in your image editor of preference, take the powerup icons you made in your edited bitmap and replace the blue shell powerup icon in the bitmap you just exported with it. This time, you should not delete the powerup or ui related sprites. Save the image.

9. Go back to nsmbe's graphics editor, click "Import this bitmap with existing palette" and select the new edited image you just made. Save the image and exit the graphics editor. Thats pretty much it.

Sorry if this is a bit confusing, if it helps I can probably add images later. Unfortunately nsmbe's graphics editor is a bit limited so you kinda have to jump through hoops to replace some things without messing stuff up. also if you want to edit the blue koopa troopa pretty sure your only option is to hand-edit the palette to make it look fitting or just to not use them in levels (or use asm or somethin ig).

yeah, as usual nothing particularly significant has really happened recently. hopefully this community can get some sort of growth sometime soon as itd suck to see nsmbhd go down. Anyway, welcome back. anything interesting happen on your end?

pretty sure soig already made a nsmbe chinese translation, though i'm not sure if it's still up to date. it's in the tools and utilities section of the uploader.

if the progress bar doesnt work you might not've added a progress path to the level

I take it this level is an edit of 1-2?

the orange jyotyu tiles are only really need if you want the camera to enter a 16x16 square with no tiles in it. I'm mainly checking if it's edited from 1-2 as 1-2 has some camera controlling sprites, specifically ones that affect the vertical scrolling. If they're still there, they could be whats causing the camera problem.

Sorry, I wasnt saying kaizo levels are bad- I should've worded it better. I was trying to give an answer to your question

youre not supposed to link nds roms, probs should use an xdelta patch instead

I believe it would be a good idea to put the majority of your focus into levels at the start, since you cant really have much of a hack without em. Also, if you run into trouble, utilize NSMBHD and the NSMB hacking community. The search tool can be very useful if you use it right, and you can always ask around if youre really stuck on something. Plus there are plenty of premade graphic, music, and code resources on the board to fill any kind of skill gap and to keep your hack feeling polished.

might also be worth noting that theres also a code hack that lets you use streamed music, if youre familiar with using code hacks. if you arent, then yeah, youll have to use midis as crook suggested.

If you're using code hacks (aka asm hacks) that use dirbaio's template (which i presume you are) you can more or less follow this guide for it, exept download this instead of the devkitPro download linked.

If youre using code hacks meant for NCPatcher and its template, see here.

Also, yes, there are xdelta patches made for people to let them use code hacks (particularly ones that required additional files added to the rom) more easily, but they dont really allow you to pick which code hacks you want to use specifically, nor use customized ones or ones you made yourself.

you dont have to do anything with that

would be nice if someone backed em up and converted them into xdelta patches before removing em, so they can be archived in a legal and space efficient way. i downloaded a few, but since theres a lot listed im not sure if i have the storage space for it at the moment

very thorough answer, but couldnt you also technically replace the animated tile frames with something blank or their corresponding tiles from the background ncg?