A present for Sala

[Aile~♥]

Toad could possibly be fixed by removing that odd spot of pink before the red circles on his head. Yeah, Bowser has too many colours as well. I count 2 shades of grey just for the visible bit of his shell, and two other shades of grey for the horns. Hint: Use the same greys for the shell and the horns. I think there might be yet another grey for the eyes. Just recycle the same greys in various areas and you could end up with 15 colours! I also think there might be yet ANOTHER grey for the teeth. I think you may have used too many shades of green.

Yeah, I'll swear there are like 7 shades of grey in this thing. And two or three shades of green. Basically, remove 4 of those shades of grey and a few other duplicate shades. I think there are also two shades of dark beige.

[Salanewt]

Well, I did notice some extra shades of gray on Bowser, but his shell and horns should use the same shades (I even double checked by applying pixels on top). However, I did notice that there were a few similar shades of extremely dark gray. I suppose I aught to fix these up first, but some of these duplicate colours are difficult to see. Basically, it comes down to this: Please ignore shades that seem to be nearly identical (especially since I fixed almost all of the dark shades of gray, if not all). This is because I will make a new topic for portraits and sprites for Mario based hacks.

I did notice an extra pixel on Toad's left spot (his right), and that was an extra colour. I just removed it though, but I have yet to reupload any of the edits.

Have a nice day.

[Rolina]

Yeah, with the whole colors thing... this is why I said to try and be more true to Mario than to GS for the art.  It'd probably be easier on you, while at the same time keeping more true to the series we're working with.  Keep up the good job with the face portraits, though!  They look really nice.

Anywho, have we decided on the elements?

I still see that the SMRPG elements is the direction to go here.  Not only do we have precedent, to me it'd be hard as heck to pull off a Star Element proper.  If nothing else, we could say that non-elemental attacks are star element, though.  I figure that'd work well for that.

I mean, to counter you, leaf:  What element do you think pretty much all aquatic enemies are?  Cheep Cheeps, Bloopers, Boss Bass, etc...?  I'd assume Water/Ice.  Since, you know... it just fits for them.  Then you have all the flying enemies that'd work pretty well for Wind/Lightning...

However, remember that this isn't golden sun - not everything has an elemental affinity.  Goombas are WEAK to the Jump element, but not necessarily anything else (you could say their resists are 50 for Jump, 100 for everything else or something).  The brilliance that comes with GS's battle system is that you can pick and choose what elemental power and resistances each thing has.  So it's not as simple as 'this thing is that element, that thing is this'.  Cheep Cheeps resist Ice, and possibly Fire.  But for Lightning?  Weak as heck.  You know, stuff like that.

[Atrius (He/They)]

Yeah, with the whole colors thing... this is why I said to try and be more true to Mario than to GS for the art.  It'd probably be easier on you, while at the same time keeping more true to the series we're working with.  Keep up the good job with the face portraits, though!  They look really nice.

Regardless of what style is used, if it's going to be a GS hack the data format's limitation is still 15 colors you choose, and 1 transparent one if you want to use it.

[Aile~♥]

@Sala: No, I mean, I didn't use a program to count colours, I used my EYES!

@Role: Yeah, and a Cheep Cheep's attacks would probably be non-elemental, or "star" if you want.

@leaf: You're thinking in Pokemon terms. Don't. This isn't Pokemon or GS, this is Mario, remember?

[leaf]

Role: Yeah, I already conceded on the star element thing. Assuming we keep those other elements, it would prob be best as the non-elemental. But... it just doesn't make much sense for mario characters to have elemental affinities in the first place >_>

If using a party of say... mario/luigi/yoshi/peach, what would yoshi and peach be? Neither ice nor shock really have healing connotations, which is gonna be peach's specialty, and neither really work for yoshi, either. I think we're gonna have to stray from traditional elements a bit here to fit within the mario universe. Fire and jump elementals are fine, but we're gonna need something else for the last two. What about hammers? In this system, what would they be? Non-elemental? So much for doing super damage to spiky foes. So... here's my new suggestion:

Mario - Fire
Luigi - Jump
Yoshi - Coin
Peach - Heart/Star

Yes, I just added coin and heart elementals, and I'm still throwing star out there as a possible element. Hear me out here. "Coin" elemental would do superdamage against spiky foes, but generally do poor damage against flying foes. Essentially, it's the hammer element, but since yoshi has been established to be able to eat spiky foes, it also makes sense for him to have it. "Heart/Star" elemental would be what most healing attacks are based in, but it's also for generic magic attacks that aren't fire-based. Non-magic attacks would generally be either jump or coin elemental. Each character would be able to have some attacks of other elements in their base class (ie. the mario bros each getting a coin elemental in the form of hammers, as well as a jump elemental, even though luigi would have stronger jumps). Given this system, we would need a lot of fire attacks to justify having a whole fire element, but given how many things in the mario universe have fire, that doesn't seem too far fetched.

The main problem I see is that the mario universe just doesn't lend itself well to having elements like this. They have attacks that have certain "elemental" properties, like hammers being unable to hit fliers but doing a lot of damage against spiky foes, or jumps causing the bros to hurt themselves if done against a spiky foe. They even do have fire, ice, shock, or other elements with certain foes taking reduced or negated damage, or healing from these types of attacks. But, the playable characters never explicitly have these inherent properties. In fact, without equippable items, the bros are entirely unaffected by the element system when being attacked in any game. It's usually their own attacks that have the elemental properties, and anything that isn't either jump or hammer elemental is usually a result of some badge or something, that you wouldn't normally see in gameplay without it.

@Jamie: I'm not thinking in pokemon terms at all. I'm just trying to find a way to fit the mario system in the GS system, here.

[Aile~♥]

Problem: Mario has a LOT of Shock attacks in it's RPGs.

Healing moves could quite possibly be Shock elemental, or non-elemental. Heck, even Ice or Fire could work for healing. Mario RPGs, or at least Paper Mario 2, also have a good number of Ice moves, so I think they're still in. For Jump magic abilities, we'd probably have to resort to Chi-style attacks or Shadow Clone Jutsu-style moves. As is, with the SMRPG system, most elements have the possibility of having Magic attacks, and as Role said, we don't want to end up with Mage Elements and Fighter Elements. Every element needs to be as close to even as possible between Magic/Fighting. I'm still not sure how to do Jump healing though. Maybe a Chi-based healing move, or would that be non-elemental?

[Salanewt]

Thanks Role, but I still have to try to fix up the palettes a bit more, since there are some extra colours that are difficult for me to see. Also, I might make Luigi's portrait soon.

I know Jamie, but that was just generally to anybody.

Mario - Fire
Luigi - Jump
Yoshi - Coin
Peach - Heart/Star

Some minor modifications. If this were to be the final selection for characters, Luigi would be Hammer instead of Jump because Yoshi can get an even better range while jumping (especially with Flutter Jump, which can get him around twice as far as a regular jump), and also because Coin is currency... It would be a bit odd to have an affinity based on a currency. As for Peach, she should at most be Heart, since Star not only reminds me of Starman, but also reminds me of Mario saving Peach by collecting stars himself. Nice idea anyway.

Mario - Fire
Luigi - Hammer/Shock
Yoshi - Jump
Peach - Heart


I do like the idea of including Ice/Water though, and Luigi to Shock comes from Superstar Saga.

Have a nice day.

[leaf]

Ah, good point. I could see that, actually. Fire, shock, jump, and heart. Although yoshi isn't really that much of a jumper... he can go far, but not high. Maybe something else for yoshi? Cloud elemental? Or something like that, anyway... We could always use attack flags to make jump/hammer work right.

[Aile~♥]

@leaf: You're forgetting that in Mario and Luigi Superstar Saga, the bros. get Fire/Shock attacks, and in Paper Mario, all the partners have various other attacks. I'd like to point to Madame Flurries again, for an Ice elemental.

Remember that we have to at least somewhat adopt GS's system to work it right.

Another ability idea for Luigi, which at least some people here should recognise:

Missile: Luigi fires himself like a missile at a target, burning the target. 50 power, range 1, 10 FP (probably more like 3 FP if it were in Paper Mario), may do double damage. If double damage occurs, Luigi has an explosive launch and flies through the air twice as fast.

Green Missile: Luigi fires himself like a missile at a faster speed than Missile, creating a Blast (Nova)-like explosion on impact. 100 Power, range 3 (diminishing), 21 FP (probably more like 7 FP if it were in a Mario game), may do double damage. If double damage occurs, Luigi has an explosive launch and flies through the air twice as fast.

Super L Missile: Luigi fires himself like a missile at a faster speed than Green Missile, creating a Nova-like explosion on impact. 200 Power, range 5 (diminishing), 43 FP (probably more like 14 FP if it were in a Mario game), may do double damage. If double damage occurs, Luigi has an explosive launch and flies through the air twice as fast.

The Missile series is Jump elemental, because it's available in his base class.

I'd also suggest colourswapping the Beam series to be yellow and changing it to Shock elemental.

Also, leaf, we have power-ups available to give them abilities of other elements.

Mario's strongest Shine upgrade ability:

Mario Finale: Remember Mario's Final Smash? Well, this is it. 2300 Power, range 11, 500 FP (probably more like 165 FP if it were in Paper Mario). Basically, it does massive damage at the cost of his entire FP meter.

How about instead of Jump we have Air? it doesn't sound as cool, but it works for guys who don't jump as much.

[Salanewt]

Ah, good point. I could see that, actually. Fire, shock, jump, and heart. Although yoshi isn't really that much of a jumper... he can go far, but not high. Maybe something else for yoshi? Cloud elemental? Or something like that, anyway... We could always use attack flags to make jump/hammer work right.

Technically, in some games, he can jump higher than Mario, like in Super Mario World, Super Mario 64, and even in Super Mario Sunshine. However, Egg/Shell could go for Yoshi, although he is a very good jumper too (pretty much rivals Mario, although Mario is better for things like Spin Jump). He is also speedy, as is seen in the Olympic games with him (never played one, but one of my friends own the games). Are we using Yoshi as a usable character in this hack? I thought he was transportation, but I suppose it could go either way (hard to say).

Jamie... Interesting ideas, but some of these animations could be more difficuly to implement. Also, for Mario's finale at that much power? Unless we play around with the formula, that would probably be strong enough to take a head off of Doom Dragon right away (something like that could be around 300-400 power(?), but I am not fully sure if we are using Golden Sun's damage formulas). As for range, there can rarely be more than 4-5 enemies on the opposite team, due to hardware limitations. I know that the limit for Superstar Saga seems to be 8 sprites, excluding all of the menus and block sprite to hit, etc., but I am not sure of Golden Sun can handle it (I seem to remember a glitched fight with 4-5 Slayers...).

Well, have a nice day.

[leaf]

@Jamie: Uh... no... I'm not forgetting that. I think I very obviously acknowledged that the mario bros do attack with elemental attacks in their games, but it's only through new skills or items. But when elemental attacks are used against them, it's never "critical" damage, and it's never reduced damage, either. In fact, I think the fact that I just agreed with making luigi shock elemental should make that doubly obvious that I acknowledge they can use elemental attacks.

Anyway...

Mario: Fire
Luigi: Shock
Yoshi: ???
Peach: Heart

Jump and Hammer as attack flags.

Are we using Yoshi as a usable character in this hack? I thought he was transportation, but I suppose it could go either way (hard to say).

That's still to be decided. I haven't seen a more compelling group, though. Bowser could just as easily take the place of yoshi, although it'd be hard to not have a carbon copy of the SMRPG plot with a team like that.

[Salanewt]

That's still to be decided. I haven't seen a more compelling group, though. Bowser could just as easily take the place of yoshi, although it'd be hard to not have a carbon copy of the SMRPG plot with a team like that.

Not to mention Super Paper Mario (Wii), since all of those characters make up a full team of four. However, that is more like a platform than it is an RPG.

If it still have to be decided whether he is a character or transportation... He could be both. Of course, there are some other things to think about if he is both... Such as making his travel limited in certain ways, so one does not go through the rest of the game riding him everywhere. Something to affect Special Points/Flower Points?

Have a nice day.

[Aile~♥]

@Sala (earlier): Yes, but there are still abilities with range 11. It helps hit all enemies when you've killed off the middle one(s) and the two on the sides are still alive. Also, the Mario final smash I designed is INCREDIBLY inefficient. 5 power for 1 PP? That's a horrible rate, actually. And it costs like 500 PP. Come on, that's kinda hard to come up with if you plan on using Mario at all later. It's actually also designed to help bosses be quicker, yet with still the same difficulty. And don't be surprised if bosses just drain your FP before you can use it.

@leaf: Huh, I still kinda like Role's system, but I guess that works too. And honestly, if we're gonna include Peach and Yoshi, then we need a second party of partner characters, you know, people with some actual personality. Remember we have powerups for classes, and editing GS's system to remove classes would be rather difficult, so we're going to end up with elemental power and resist coming into play for the main characters anyway.

@Sala: You mean kinda like Hover for the Winged Boat?

[Salanewt]

That could be done, but since Role thought of this hack, she should decide which ideas she likes (unless we decide to make a spin-off with these ideas).

You mean kinda like Hover for the Winged Boat?

Sort of... Basically, Yoshi would only lose his own PP, since the others are riding him. Flying Yoshi would drain all of their PP, since Yoshi need it, and the others can help him stay in the air.

As for your ability idea... I guess that works. You might want to nerf it just a tiny bit though?

Oh yeah, how does everyone like my Luigi portrait? I made a new topic so focus would not be taken from the topic of this conversation.

Have a nice day.

[Rolina]

@Sala: No, I mean, I didn't use a program to count colours, I used my EYES!

@Role: Yeah, and a Cheep Cheep's attacks would probably be non-elemental, or "star" if you want.

@leaf: You're thinking in Pokemon terms. Don't. This isn't Pokemon or GS, this is Mario, remember?

I figure the attacks would mostly be physical, and the occasional 'ice' elemental "water squirt" attack or something.  I could SWEAR there's a Mario game where they spit out water.  Anyone wanna back me up/correct me?

Mario: Fire
Luigi: Shock
Yoshi: ???
Peach: Heart

Wait... When did the player characters change?!

I mean, my original idea was to take it from NSMB Wii, and go Mario, Luigi, Blue Toad, and Yellow Toad (Fire, Jump, Ice, and Shock respectively, all nice and color coded for your convenience.)

Then Sala said he didn't like the toads (who does?), so I suggested taking it purely from Mario RPG along with the elements - this led to:

Mario, Luigi, Mallow, Geno (Fire, Jump, Shock, and Ice).

Peach was the person you were having to save (we can say Geno's on vacation, and that Mallow somehow got involved or was visiting as a Prince from the Cloud Kingdom when the kidnapping happened), Bowser's the bad guy, you've got the Koopalings and Bowser Jr being the bosses sent to stop you along the way, and with Bowser ultimately being the Final Boss, Yoshi is your main source of Transport and/or Kraden (there, talks, doesn't fight)...

The whole reason I'm using the system I am is because it's been used before, and with great success.  NSMBWii had the general scenerio, SMRPG had the Elements and the Characters...

So... where'd the other guys come from?

Or are we actually doing the 8-person party thing?  I figured we'd be fine with just 4...  Hmm... If we do 8 member party, then...

Mario and Luigi are the party leaders, and are Jump Element.
Mallow and Geno remain on a party, probably Mario's due to their familiarity.
Yoshi is known to shoot fireballs in several games, so He'd be Fire Element.  Again, probably Mario's team.  There's also the fact that he's the a member of the most awesome dragon species ever...
And now we need three more characters...
Perhaps one is a Toad, but what of the other two?  Wario and Waluigi are out, if anything, you fight them... Perhaps Daisy or Rosalina could be one of them...  Sala, you know more about Mario, who else could we have?

@Sala:  Oh!  Nice call on calling it Flower Points!  We totally have to use that terminology.  Also, could you make a centralized place for your portraits?  How about your first post in the topic? HAHA DISREGARD THAT I DIDN'T SEE THE NEW TOPIC!

Bowser is awesome but completely the wrong style for GS.

PERFECT!  The whole point of this idea was to have something so NOT GS that you'd not even think it was, yet using the battle system and the like flawlessly.  How'd I not notice that comment earlier?

[Salanewt]

Well, I think there was a conversation between Leaf and Jamie about having 1-off characters to either be usable or only cameo, so I think one of them came up with that idea (for the characters).

Thanks, but technically, someone else first used FP, as those are Flower Points from the Paper Mario games.

As for the second party of four...

We could throw Donkey Kong in there, since his universe coexists with Mario's universe (in fact, I think they would both be on the same planet). Do not know what element he would be, but there is a chance that he could go in with Jump (though I do know of better jumpers). I will have to think about it though, since my Lunch break is almost over.

Water Squirt? Well, I know that some Cheep Cheep variants use it in Yoshi's Story and Yoshi's Island, to try to move Yoshi. The do not damage though, but they are powerful for moving him/her (at least in Yoshi's Story, and there are multiple Yoshis in both).

Have a nice day.

[Rolina]

Yeah!  Only, given that this is an RPG, they'd do damage.

Now, first thing is first...

Are we going to have 4 characters, or 8?  We are not going to do any 'one shot' characters or anything like that, simply because it wouldn't work with GS's system due to how the elemental nature of things works.

If we do 4 characters, we have to choose which Mario brother is Jump, and which is Fire.  If we do 8, we should make them both Jump elemental, and then come up with the rest of the characters.

[leaf]

Role: Those characters came from here:

Anyway, I'm actually not a big fan of using mallow/geno here, mostly because they're strictly from SMRPG, rather than the mario universe as a whole. I could see any of yoshi, peach, or even bowser filling in the last two spots. Actually... perhaps all three... Start off with just mario/luigi, who quickly get into a routine encounter with bowser, but get interrupted by some third party (fawful?), causing all three of them to be sent flying into some forest/sanctuary or something. The puzzles here are too much for bowser and the enemies are too much for the mario bros, so the three are forced to team up to get out. During this segment, bowser can't be given or use items and such, and acts more or less like a jeigen to get you through enemies that have gobs of HP compared to your damage output. When you get out of the situation you're in and finally make it back to peach's castle, after finding some strange object where you were sent to, bowser betrays you (cue hopeless boss fight), steals the object, kidnaps peach, and flees. Yoshi joins you after seeing what happened with bowser, and you have a party of three for the next quarter or so of the game until you reach bowser's castle, defeat him, and rescue peach, who joins you as your fourth character. Fawful briefly takes bowser's place as the primary antagonist, using bowser's defeat as his chance to set up his own evil plan by taking the strange object before the bros can get it. Using this object, fawful summons some new dark being that taints the land, springing up seven new bosses, each guarding a major area. However, he quickly loses control of it and becomes a far less significant character. This necessitates the party to traverse the entirety of the mushroom kingdom (including areas they had already been through but couldn't get to the deeper parts of them due to a lack of abilities) to defeat the bosses and obtain their macguffins (dark essence?), which when united allow the heroes to reach the dark being's realm and defeat it.

Pretty standard fare RPG plot, but w/e.

Threw the plot together in about 5 min just as a plausible scenario in which you'd end up with this party. The main point I wanted to make was that we shouldn't use characters that have only been in one mario RPG as main characters, like geno or goombella; the main characters should all be recurring characters, and non-recurring characters should only be included as cameos, maybe with a side-quest devoted to them or something. These are just the four characters that stood out the most to me for being playable, so if you have any better ideas, feel free to share.

I'm really not a fan of using a "jump" element, either. Especially if we're not also using a "hammer" element. I think they'd be better off as attack flags. We (will) have complete control over the GS system, which includes both what its stats do and the battle formulas. We could change luck to be a whole new stat that works as a special modifier when certain attack types are used, and the attack flags would determine if this gets applied in the damage formula (things that previously depended on luck would now have fixed probabilities of working). Not to mention that saying "this character hurts you if you jump on it and takes no damage in the process" would probably be a lot easier to do with attack flags than some sort of element>200 thing.

[Aile~♥]

As for not using Geno and Mallow, that's why I suggested we keep Peach and Yoshi, and add a second party entirely consisting of "partner characters" created specifically for this game. Partner character party would probably consist of:

a Goomba: Jump
one of those thundercloud enemies from Paper Mario: Shock
a Fairy, like the one in Super Paper Mario: Fire
a Penguin-enemy thing, whatever the Mario universe calls them: Ice

Of course, they'd need personalities too. Maybe the thundercloud could be mister sarcasm, filling the role of Goombella in the second Paper Mario. The fairy could be a sort of high and mighty-type character, for the fun of killing stereotypes. Not sure what to do with the Goomba or Penguin though. We could have the Goomba be a Large ham, also for the fun of destroying stereotypes.

Also, leaf, remember that the characters have to have elemental preferences, otherwise everyone would have the same base class, and we do NOT want that. Remember that GS still has the class system, removing it would be really difficult, and probably not worth our time. And besides, we want our Mario game to be unique compared to other Mario RPGs.