I hate it when my lack of foresight leads to me having to scrap a level idea.

There's a level I was working on with Clones when I realized that the level in question has only 1 area, so I can't get rid of the clone once it spawns, meaning if I were to reach the flagpole I would die from a "Time Up".

It was a really interesting level too, it was inspired by a level of NSMB2 where there are two alternate versions of the same level with some changes depending on which pipe you choose to enter. One version had the Clone, the other version was a solo level.

If I get a chance I might be able to attempt the same thing with one of my empty World 8 slots. In the meantime, I need to come up with something new for 6-B.

I hadn't considered using the overflow bug, as I've never used it before.

But as a bit of a teaser for a future hack, I'll be using the overflow bug extensively in the future!

Now, I'm not saying that I've started on the Final Castle...


...actually I just lied. I've been doing bits and pieces for the last week or so.
I decided to start working on it now because my Final Castles tend to anti-climax a bit. That would be because by the time I'm at the Final Castle, I'm exhausted and just want to get the hack out.

So this time I'm doing it early, and here's a little something to increase hype.

As I'm getting close to finishing Clone Tag Team 2, I'm starting to play around with Hack #4 now. Don't get me wrong, it'll be a while until you see anything.

What I can tell you is this:

-Clone Tag Team 2 will be my last hack to have Airship levels. I've come to loathe them, they have such a small window for creativity.
-Hack #4 is something that (to my surprise) no NSMB hacker has tried to do before. It's also about killing two birds with one stone- righting some wrongs, and putting an end to something that has been present in all of my hacks so far.
-I've already completed the Desert Tileset for Hack #4. Some tilesets will be borrowed from Clone Tag Team 2.
-There will be no music hacks in this one. Not yet, anyway.
-I prefer to think of it as a minihack, despite the hack having a full 80 levels.
-I've dropped some pretty large hints about this hack in my time at NSMBHD. I was going to make this hack after finishing Clone Tag Team 1, but then I decided to do CTT2 first.

As for Hack #5:
-No comment.

Also, 15 Levels Left!

So here's the deal.

After the 9th of June, I'll be on University break for a whole month, which'll leave me a lot of time to work on levels.

I'm hoping that I have the hack at least 95% finished by this time next month. There are only 14 levels left to develop, and I have a pretty clear indication of what I'm going to do for most of them.

I'm so happy that I'm finally getting close to finishing this hack, it's almost been a full 2 years in the making. NSMB2 took me about 9 months. CTT1 took approximately a year to make when you take out the hiatus I had before announcing the hack. So this has been one of my longest, most challenging hacking projects so far.

I promise, you won't be disappointed by what you see. The trailers don't do the hack much justice.

I come with good news and bad news.

Bad news first.

We all know that Boss Battles are extremely temperamental. It's one of the reasons I opted to use "enemy rooms" to replace them. But for the Bowser battles (which I retained), I can't get music or some sound effects to work for them. This is a big let down for me as it takes away a lot of the intensity of the fight. It sucks that I can't get the music to work even for the Final Boss Battle. Would people be ok with it if the Bowser Battles didn't have music?

Now with the good news:

I received a LOT of requests to fix this bug in CTT1. Well, ask and you shall recieve!



EDIT: Oh yeah! Aside from that, the Final Castle is practically done already. It's definitely one of the longest levels in the game so far, and for once it's not a total cop-out!

Well the only battles affected are the Bowser battles (World 1, and the two in World 8), and they're pretty standard so they'll last less than a minute each.

As for testing, I have Storment as a beta tester, but once the hack is complete I'll be doing my own play through to find any bugs that I missed, then I'll fix them, another play through, release. There are still other things that I have to get done first too.

The credits level images, the overworld textures, and I haven't quite finished the 4-part story video that will be uploaded to youtube. And of course I need to put together a release trailer.

And yeah, it's been almost two years. The first time I mentioned Clone Tag Team 2 was on April 18, 2012. I made a poll thread about Clone Tag Team 2 on August 4, 2012 and officially began Clone Tag Team 2 on the 14th of August.

On topic, I've finally finished naming all of Clone Tag Team 2's 81 levels. They're in the first post, as usual if you want to check them out for an idea of the level.

Right not I'm working on 7-Tower, just under half way through.