[SM] A few questions...

[Ridley]

I'm planning my first Super Metroid hack right now, but first I'd like to know how feasible my plans are.

First, how difficult would it be to add (NOT replace):
-About 100-150 map squares worth of new rooms
-A couple of new enemies
-A new song
-A new tileset
-A new region name tag
-A new breakable block type
-A new upgrade for Samus to break the new block type

And second,  how difficult would it be to make a new "dummy" clone of a boss that is far weaker (like the first Ridley battle), and then move the original boss and strengthen it?

Finally, what are your favorite ways of preventing wall-jumping access to an area (so that it requires space jump)?

The title of my hack will be Super Metroid: EC Edition. I'll leave you to decipher the acronym, but I'll bet you can figure it out pretty easily. :wink:

[Vismund Cygnus]

-About 100-150 map squares worth of new rooms

[spoiler]Pretty easy if you know what you're doing. Assuming that you don't just use the existing rooms and make them larger (which I doubt you'll need to honestly, the original game is pretty damned big), you're still probably only talking about adding 15-30 rooms maximum, which there should be plenty of space for in bank $8F. These two guides should give you a decent idea of what to do.[/spoiler]

-A couple of new enemies

[spoiler]You'll need to understand how to ASM, assuming you're not just talking about copying enemies. I don't know much ASM myself but I can't imagine this would be too difficult.[/spoiler]

-A new song

[spoiler]Again, this was something I always thought would be interesting to do but never knew how. DSO wrote a pretty extensive guide to Music Hacking, however I'm not sure how complete it is, and you probably need a fair amount of ASM knowledge before you attempt it. You may want to ask around on IRC, but remember to be patient, people aren't there just to answer your questions like a magical hivemind.[/spoiler]

-A new tileset

[spoiler]This one is a cakewalk. Just get the GFX you want, go to the graphics editor, and import the SCE (scenery), .ttb (tiletable) and palette. Assuming you're using someone else's graphics, you're basically done. If you're drawing up your own graphics, you'll have to set up the tiletable yourself as opposed to importing it. That said, if you're drawing your own graphics that shouldn't be too much of a challenge for you. Just make sure you have enough space first! Either repoint the data yourself, or take the much easier route and use DSO's tileset repoint. Remember to give credit for any patch/gfx/asm you use![/spoiler]

-A new region name tag

[spoiler]I'm not 100% sure what you're asking, but if you mean, for example, changing the name of "Brinstar" to "Grasshole", it's super easy. Just go into SMILE's text editor and hit "Area Names".[/spoiler]

-A new breakable block type
-A new upgrade for Samus to break the new block type

[spoiler]The block type shouldn't be too hard, plenty of people make new block types using the available BTS. A new upgrade (I'm assuming you're talking about a beam of some sort) would most likely be insanely difficult, because I imagine you'd need to add interactions with every single enemy type, block type, etc. in the game to make it work correctly. I'm not the one to ask about that though. As far as I know, the only "custom beam" with a public release is @JAM 's Spazer + Plasma beam. He could probably shed a whole lot more light on the subject than I could, as I never looked into it.[/spoiler]

And second,  how difficult would it be to make a new "dummy" clone of a boss that is far weaker (like the first Ridley battle), and then move the original boss and strengthen it?

[spoiler]I imagine this would work similarly to cloning an enemy, though I'm not entirely sure. You'd probably have a few other things to go through, like making sure the "new boss" doesn't trigger any of the event bits that the boss would set by default. As for moving the original boss and strengthening it, that can all be done in SMILE for the most part, I think.[/spoiler]

Finally, what are your favorite ways of preventing wall-jumping access to an area (so that it requires space jump)?

[spoiler]Oh hey, here's one I can answer pretty clearly.
Basically, if you're trying to stop someone from getting somewhere with walljumps, try and do it in a way that makes it look like natural terrain. Don't just throw in a big corner type thing that says "fuck you, you can't go here". I'll point to something I made:
[spoiler][/spoiler]
You'll notice on the right side, the player drops down and then cannot quite jump back up, which I did to stop the player from being able to backtrack until after they had morph ball. The two small platforms near the center-right door serve the purpose of blocking the player from walljumping up, without looking too unnatural. Basically, as long as the terrain looks like it flows nicely, you're probably in the clear.
[/spoiler]

Hopefully I answered all of your questions at least semi-reasonably.

[JAM]

In addition to what Vismund Cygnus said.

First, how difficult would it be to add (NOT replace):
...
-A new song

Will be in future.

-A new tileset

Download SMILE JX. Click on Tools > Super Tools > Add New Graphics Set.
And there will be 30 in total. Repeat if needed.

-A new region name tag

There is a fully unused area called Debug which can be fully used. Download patches SuperMap v1.1 and Ceres & Debug usage v1.2.

-A new breakable block type
-A new upgrade for Samus to break the new block type

Making a new beam in addition to existing ones is possible but very long. I started doing this few months ago and still haven't finished.

[Ridley]

Thanks to both of you for your help! As for the new upgrade, it actually will not be a new beam, but something that is probably slightly easier. It will be called "morph blade," and will basically be the analog of the screw attack for morph ball. I am considering making it only function on the ground to prevent it from being incredibly OP (as you will pick it up before the screw attack, but you will also pick up the spring ball before the screw attack). I'll have to decide whether or not this is necessary.

New question: how compatible is ASM editing with SMILE? I'd prefer not to have to edit the maps using hex.

[personitis]

SMILE has a build-in map editor. No need to edit the maps via raw code/hexadecimal. If there was confusion about the patches JAM was referencing, those don't actually edit the map, but add code to make those sub-maps function properly in-game; Ceres and Debug don't play well by default.

[biospark]

New question: how compatible is ASM editing with SMILE? I'd prefer not to have to edit the maps using hex.

SMILE (and other editors) are used for editing data, whereas asm is generally used for editing code. So they are "compatible" in this sense. However, you have to ensure that new code and new data are kept separate. This is mostly a problem if you try to combine existing patches or asm modifications.