Super Metroid Mod Manual -- READ THIS BEFORE ASKING QUESTIONS

[begrimed]

http://www.metroidconstruction.com/SMMM/

After many years of slowly gathering info and tons of hours of writing and editing, this guide is finally finished! It's really happening! SMMM is an attempt to overwhelmingly teach everything there is to know about editing Super Metroid up to a strong intermediate level. An absolute beginner should be able to do almost anything they want to do with Super Metroid's rooms after reading SMMM, or at least know how to ask the right questions and start teaching themselves the harder stuff. It should replace most or all of the existing 'how-to' guides for Super Metroid for a long time.

Spread this guide around some if you like it, won't ya? Also let me know in this topic if I've made any mistakes, or if you think of something important that should be added in.

[altoiddealer]

Congrats on your release of the guide!

Perhaps one day I will rise up to the challenge, knowing that there is now a solid piece of documentation available.

[P.JBoy]

Looking good; small note, I'm pretty sure I didn't write room_state_disassembly.txt

Wish I could lose all my SMILE knowledge and read that guide to see how good it really is :D

[personitis]

You mean roomstate-disassembly.txt? Originally written and loosely commented by me with, in your case, Kej's event bit array ascii picture dropped in. I might also note that I don't believe there are FF events (as I recall, RAM only has room for up to 6F).

[Quietus]

I'll update this with my full thoughts later, but from what I've read so far, it's great, and would probably warrant a proper announcement on the main site.

Edit: One thing so far that I think could be added to the section on scrolls is the importance of decorating areas even though they can't be reached, as the camera displays them as it pans, and things become visible. In the example below, you can never reach the white orbs, though when dropping down, they are clearly visible to the player.

[spoiler][/spoiler]

[JAM]

Grime
Did you read the PM about the guide? Do it please.

I might also note that I don't believe there are FF events (as I recall, RAM only has room for up to 6F).

Yes, there are.
7E:D820..7D86F are used for them. 1 bit for event happened/not. 8 for byte. Thus, there are space for $280 events in total. Although, when setting and checking for event the top byte is chopped. Of course, the code can be modified to use $280 of them if you want to. =)

By the way, there are already hacks that are using more than 200 (not $200) events. From what I know, they are Redesign and Metroid Mission Rescue.

[personitis]

Ah. Thank you for the correction/clafication on that. Been awhile since I've done any assembly related tasks and managed to let bytes/bits slip my mind. :P

[begrimed]

JAM, I did. What am I missing that urgently needs in, though?

Guide revision: fixed room state disassembly credit, added jSM to SM tools, split ROM hacking tools as its own list, added in a mention of JAM's event patches, added some red foreground scroll info to camera snaps section (thanks Quietus), added Show Current Room Size to Preferences menu section, fixed some typos.

[RealRed]

Yes! This guide has
EVERYTHING!

Congratulations, Grime. I know you've been working on this for a really long time. It will pay off.
This is a compiled version of a lot of work and discovery by a lot of people over the course of a lot of years. This is an excellent information-foundation that can be built upon as needed. Excellent work!

[cynicalCosmozoan]

As a recent initiate into the world of modding Super Metroid, I would have to say this guide has definitely been a great help thus far. But at this time I'm still familiarizing myself with the basics using the tutorial, and I kind of hit a snag. I made sure to follow the instructions each step of the way, double-checking my work and what not, and got up to Step 18 before weird things started to happen.

So at the start of step 18, there's an image of what Cell 3 should currently look like when the play enters it. Acid aside, the room layout uses the same tile and has a black background, which is what I expected from entering the room at this stage to see if it works. Instead, I get met with these:

[spoiler]
Door 00 (Cell 2)


Door 01 (Cell 3)


Door 02 (Cell 1)[/spoiler]

Garbled rooms! I did check the FAQ before posting this and read such a problem can be caused by incorrect scrolling, so I had to double check the previous step to ensure all the right numbers were in place both in SMILE and in the HEX Editor. Everything adds up, yet I keep getting this same room breaking garbage from every side.

I don't know if this is just happening to me or if others encountered this as well; if it's the latter, then clearing this up will prevent headaches for a lot of prospective modders in the future. Any thoughts on what went wrong/what I did wrong? :pwuh:

[JAM]

cynicalCosmozoan
One of this, I guess:
1. You might to set the door destination wrong (i.e. screen to enter in current room).
2. You might to forgot about the room states.
3. You might to forgot to repoint the Level Data.
4. You've set wrong pointer to Level Data.
5. You've resized the room and saved it. Yes, expaning or shrinking the room will ruin the desing, so use backups.

[cynicalCosmozoan]

cynicalCosmozoan
One of this, I guess:
2. You might to forgot about the room states.

Yeah, I opened up the room in SMILE and saw that the test room still had the Event 1 state included, and the values there were causing conflict with everything. Rereading the tutorial, I know that the original room code was chosen BECAUSE it had the extra room state, but the values included in that state are not mentioned again in the various steps I had gone through thus far to build the room. So I was only performing the instructions while in the Standard Room State and left the values in Events 1 entirely, because I wasn't aware I had to do anything with that extra state. I feel a clarification on this in the tutorial could help prevent some headaches for others who would make the same mistake I did.

[begrimed]

So I was only performing the instructions while in the Standard Room State and left the values in Events 1 entirely, because I wasn't aware I had to do anything with that extra state. I feel a clarification on this in the tutorial could help prevent some headaches for others who would make the same mistake I did.

Yeah, I realized near the end that states had basically not been mentioned since near the beginning (hence room states being one of the final steps lol), and that anyone who flipped over to the other room state might have some confusion.

Thanks for mentioning this. I'll add in a clear mention about switching to different room states whenever I update the guide again.

[caauyjdp]

Uhm, is banks section in SMMM entirely correct?
I could easily be wrong, since I've just began learning, but I think every instance of ":0000" needs to be replaced with ":8000", and every instance of ":7FFF" with ":FFFF".

[P.JBoy]

You are correct, that is a mistake. Good spot

[caauyjdp]

Thanks for confirmation. One less thing to doubt in my understanding/guesswork.