Gonna ask for some suggestions here. I figured a good way to utilize the empty bottom screen space was to use the Boo animation from the Ghost Houses in some way- but they're difficult to use because of the following:

-The Boo is a symmetrical image, so any kind of replacement image also has to be symmetrical.
-It appears twice on the Bottom Screen on the left and right of the screen.
-It "flashes" by changing color.

Originally I wanted to use the Endless Earth symbol, but I already knew that wasn't possible.
Then I though about making an 'E', so it'll appear as "E E" for Endless Earth. But E isn't symmetrical so it won't work.
Finally I thought about some sort of Mario symbol. A Mushroom, Mario's Face, Fire Flower, Star, etc., but I'm still unsure because I only have one color to work with.

Any suggestions for a symmetrical image that I can use to replace the Boos on the Bottom Screen? It'd be great if I was able to take advantage of the waving arms on the Boo model, but it's not necessary.

Pic of the Week - Week 9



A first look at the Desert environment, which I'm dubbing "Yoshi's Sunset Sands". I always lamented the fact that Yoshi never appeared in New Super Mario Bros., and I always wanted to do something to acknowledge him. The music that'll play in this area is a desert-style cover of the Athletic Theme from Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island. The tileset was actually a huge issue for me. I didn't want to re-use an asset I already used for New Super Mario Bros. 5: Clone Tag Team 2, but Desert tilesets are especially annoying for me, and damned if New Super Mario Bros. U's desert tileset wasn't just dandy. Ultimately I compromised by using the same New Super Mario Bros. U tileset but added a whole lot of extra content in comparison to the one in New Super Mario Bros. 5: Clone Tag Team 2. The background is mostly custom made and was a right pain to get to a passable NSMB quality.

Another screenshot just 'cuz.



An update on the progress of the Bottom Screen. Thanks to  MeroMero for the idea for using the lemniscate as a replacement for the Boo image, and the rest was my idea. I had to keep it in line with the Mario series, so I added the Mushroom icon that's used as the Mario series Emblem in Smash Bros. in addition to my own little design. I gotta say, designing tribals is so easy it's practically a cop-out.

The background took a lot of time and many steps to make- I wish I would have made a time lapse while making it. The Yoshi Sphinx was ripped from a background in Mario Kart: Super Circuit, and I recoloured it and re-shaded it for NSMB. The sky uses a simple gradient from red to yellow, which unfortunately didn't import into the ROM properly so I had to edit the background tile-by-tile in the 2D Texture Editor. The sand in the bottom layer was made up of a basic noise effect that I blurred to make the appearance of grainy sand.

The sand in the top layer was a long process. I drew a template for the shape of the hills. And added the shading manually. Then I made the image transparent. I found a sandy texture online and I re-sized it so it would loop perfectly for every 128x128 block. I then placed the texture behind by shaded hills I made, and to make the texture appear less repetitive I warped the texture to give it a ripple effect. Then I flattened the image, merging everything together, and made adjustments to colour and saturation until I was happy with it.

The emblem was very easy to make. The patterns I designed to compliment the Mushroom and Lemniscate only took me about 40 seconds to create, and the only setback I had importing it into the game was that the Lemniscate was slightly too big to fit in the boundaries of the Boo image, which was easily solved by slightly altering the design.

I'm fine with rounding out the mushrooms. When I made the original image it was the middle of the night and I just scaled down the emblem from Smash Bros. and I don't think I cleaned it up very well. I can do better.

Pic of the Week - Week 10



Rest assured, this is a tentative background. Since the image was taken the background has been altered to produce a night time effect, which I think works best for Snow areas. You may notice that this is the first time I've ever made use of the zoom sprite. I wasn't going to use it originally, but there was a problem in the testing phase which made most of the jumps in this particular spot blind. Even with the zoom sprite, this is still a rather challenging point of interest. Mario better watch out!

EDIT: Also, ever notice that in many of my posted screenshots Mario's walking left? What's up with that?

Pic of the Week - Week 11



Looks like Mario's traveled so far he's scaling mountains! In this area, you'll come across Bullet Bills, Whomps, Mushrooms, Spinies, and more! I first used this background in Bugfix v1.2 of my second hack, New Super Mario Bros. 5: Clone Tag Team, so I thought it would be alright to bring it back, however it wasn't my original choice. I wanted the mountains background from New Super Mario Bros. Wii but I couldn't find a good enough background rip. You'll notice that in this version of the background, the sky has been recoloured aqua-green, in an attempt to differentiate it from Clone Tag Team's.

By the way, we're getting ever closer to the demo release! I have officially finished all of the map that there is to tread in the demo. There's a total of 106 screens of the overworld to explore, which equates of only 5.2% of the full overworld, and that's not including all the areas that aren't even part of the overworld! I'd say that this is only about 3% of the content that will be in the full game, but that's just an estimation. I can't release the demo yet. There's still a few hurdles to overcome before it's ready- but it's time I gave a real update.

EDIT: Oh, and I'll be uploading a complete playthrough video of the demo when it's released to showcase the open world concept. I'm hoping it'll make things more clear to people who haven't fully grasped the concept yet.

Pic of the Week - Week 12



Since we've all been so talkative around here, have something else to fuel the conversation. The Snow background has been edited to take place at night now- I think it fits better for snow levels to take place at night. Daytime snow levels are too bright, in my opinion.

Yeah, that's all I've got this week.