The Tale of Elementia

Extra Files:

instruction_manual (raw text).txt

==This is a copy of The Tale of Elementia - Demo 2 Instruction Manual,
for those who are not able to open the Microsoft Word Document.==

Hello, I'm Supertails, the creator of The Tale of Elementia - Demo 2. 
I've been on Super Mario World Central for over two years now, joining 
back in January 2007. Since then, I've made many new friends and my 
hacking skills have grown. In March of 2008, I was finally able to pull
together my first serious effort as a SMW Hack - The Tale of Elementia.
I created a one-world demo you will find in the ZIP as "old_demo.ips."
Though it only contained seven levels, the first demo of Elementia 
was warmly received. For some time, it ranked on the Top 5 list of 
hacks and received a perfect score from a video review. Nevertheless,
the hack was plagued with a few issues, such as some Map16 errors, 
a rather unforgiving difficulty curve, some confusing level designs, 
a story that had a few plot holes, and graphical clashes. While the 
constructive criticism may have hurt at first, what it ultimately 
did was strengthen my effort to make the second demo I intended to 
release, containing three worlds, to be better than the first in 
every way.
Indeed, I hoped to smooth the difficulty, have the level designs 
themselves make more sense, and provide a new, hand-drawn graphical 
style. At the same time, I realized the hack was praised for its 
creative level design, so I set out to make each of the new levels 
creative and fun, each with its own twist so as not to make any of 
them seem "filler."
The road the second demo's release was long and hard, a lot longer 
and harder than expected. At points, I struggled with depression, 
nearly abandoning it all together, but pulled through thanks to the 
encouragement of friends. When I was chosen as a staff member in summer
 of 2008, I found that the work sometimes made me unable to continue 
 with the hack as quickly as I wanted.
But at last, almost exactly a year after the first demo's release, the 
second is here! It contains over twenty brand-new levels along with the 
seven ones from the previous demo (which have been revamped) and plenty 
of changes to make it the best it could be. I hope you enjoy it!

---

It is a calm, peaceful day in the Mushroom Kingdom. Bowser and his forces 
appear to be nowhere in sight, and nothing seems wrong... except the economy.

Blame the cause on whatever you'd like, but the Mushroom Kingdom's economy 
isn't so great. We were seeing signs of this way back in Mario & Luigi: 
Superstar Saga, when the value of the Mushroom Kingdom continued to decrease 
through their adventure. Now, at an all-time low, Princess Peach and her 
advisor, Toadsworth, hope to resolve this situation. They want to talk 
directly to the leader of the neighboring Beanbean Kingdom in the hopes 
that they can provide some advice and relief to them.
If they're leaving, who will take care of the castle? Clearly, in the past, 
Toads haven't done so well with that. So, they send for Mario, a hero who 
could certainly protect the castle from intruders while they're gone. Mario 
arrives and happily takes the job, but everything's not as it seems.
Mario wanders through the castle, and suddenly discovers a strange locked 
door. Curious, he finds a key and opens it, revealing an entrance to a 
basement. In this basement is a book, one Mario has never seen before. 
As he begins to read, Mario finds himself in a completely new world.

---

To return home, Mario finds that he must free the four Elemental Spirits, 
the creators of the world he entered through the book, Elementia. However, 
a sorceress has imprisoned each of them, sealing them in a far corner of 
Elementia. They're each being held in a temple, heavily guarded by her forces.
It's up to Mario to free all of them.
The Tale of Elementia - Demo 2 is designed in such a way that you can tackle 
the three available worlds in whatever order you'd like. At the end of each 
of them is a temple containing an Elemental Spirit to free. And what are 
these worlds...?

---

Mario's adventure begins in a house near the center of Elementia. From there, 
he can travel to three distinct worlds.
To the west is Greenleaf Forest, home to the Earth Spirit. Mario will have to 
bounce across mushrooms, drain a lake, climb a giant tree, and even travel through 
time to reach the Earth Temple.
South leads to Sandswipe Desert. In this arid world, Mario will face mirages, bring 
back the dead in a ghost house, navigate through ruins at night, and discover how to 
ascend a tall mountain. At the end of this world waits the Fire Spirit in the Fire 
Temple.
North leads to a cluster of islands, the two largest of which are known as the 
Solunar Islands. Strangely, it is always sunny in Solar Island, and always nighttime 
in Lunar Island. Mario collects doubloons in the sea, eats hallucinogenic mushrooms 
on an island, and can choose either the Solar or Lunar Island to travel through on 
the way to the Water Temple.

---

In certain areas during his adventure, Mario will discover a dotted outline. These 
outlines are for Elemental Tablets, and come in green, red, and blue to represent 
the Earth, Fire, and Water Spirits respectively. When the Earth Spirit is freed, 
for example, all of the green tablets will be filled in.
When Mario touches a filled tablet, he can summon the power of an Elemental Spirit 
to help him. They allow him to break rocks, conjure rain clouds, and even let him 
shrink. Using these summons, Mario can reach special bonus areas, and even discover 
new shortcuts and paths.

---


Q: How can I contact you?
A: You can either PM me on http://www.smwcentral.net, (you must have an account 
registered though) email me at [email protected], or send a message to 
"supertails61" on Youtube.

Q: How can I play the hack?
A: Apply the hack to a clean, unmodified Super Mario World [U] ROM (search Google) 
then use Lunar IPS (available in SMWC's Tool section) to apply the hack to the ROM.

Q: The hack doesn't seem to work correctly! Mario goes in a completely white level and dies!
A: This is a strange issue known to be in ZSNES v.1.42, and perhaps other 1.4 
versions. Try an earlier or later version of the emulator, or perhaps a different 
emulator altogether and it'll work.

Q: I can't find all the exits! Help!
A: Keep looking. Sometimes freeing an Elemental Spirit and activating their tablets 
opens up new areas in older levels.

Q: What happens when you get all the exits?
A: You'll just have to wait and see. ;)

Q: What's up with the sound when Mario gets a Fire Flower?
A: This is a strange bug I was unable to fix for the demo. It ends up playing the SFX 
for when Mario hits an item box, and the sound when he gets an item, at the same time. 
Nevertheless, they actually sound somewhat nice together, and it is far better than 
a previous glitch, which caused Fire Flowers to freeze the game entirely.

changelog and notes.txt

Changelog:

- Fixed a little typo in Ezan's message at Ezan's Residence (changed 'ot' to 'to').

- Corrected cutoff in the overworld, located nearby the bottom-right isle.

- Corrected spacing in a few cutscene screens where there were two 8x8s of space
in-between words instead of one.

- Made a change to overworld events so the paths leading to the Water Temple are
revealed only after a certain event is run, as opposed to being always revealed. This
was made to avoid confusion, since it's not possible to walk to these directions if
you don't come from warp pipes first.

- Made minor level design change at Mushroom Woods, as the first Elemental Coin was
placed between sub-screen boundaries. It's been moved one tile down. Could've used a
patch but whatever lol.

- Made some minor level design changes at Desert Pipelines, as it was possible to get
softlocked in screen 03 of sublevels 9 and 75 by doing the duck spinjump at the 1-tile
gap, at screen 00 of sublevel 77 by shelljumping, and also made it so screen doesn't
scroll past screen 0A on sublevels 9 and 75, which caused cutoff.

- Made minor level design change at Bluega's Bay, as it was possible to get softlocked
in sublevels 1F0 and 1F1 if going above the ceiling. A row of teleport blocks was added
in screen 00 of sublevel 1F1 to prevent this, and solid blocks were placed on screen 02
of 1F0. Also corrected miscolored water palette in the main sublevel, 3.

- Made some minor level design changes at Haunted Library, as some parts of crate
objects originally had an unintended teleporting behavior, due to them sharing the same
Direct Map16 tiles used for Switch Palace blocks that use this property. Custom solid
Map16 tiles were placed in place of these.

- Made minor level design changes to most vertical sublevels with no horizontal scroll,
so they use the horizontal Layer 2 scroll generator instead of a custom one. Plus,
tweaked backgrounds in some so they don't have cutoff.

- Fixed sprite palettes in sublevels 1DD and 1E0 from Solar Station, as fireballs and
the fire flower sprite were noticeably miscolored when spawned.

- Corrected item box SFX bug (a random SFX used to play together with the collected
powerup one if you collected a powerup while big/fiery).

- Changed the palette properties of the Rope mechanism because its graphics used Mario's
colors. If Mario collected/lost a Fire Flower, the color of this sprite would also be
affected.

- Converted AM4 songs to AMK, thus fixing music break. Thanks to Vitor Vilela for
MassAM404, and Mirann for providing it. Without it, porting all songs would have been a
lot more painful. And, of course, thanks to Kipernal, Medic, 6646 and Codec for AMK
versions made so far.

- Remade custom blocks from scratch and inserted using GPS. Thanks to p4plus2 for the
tool.

- Added Cutscene Mode uberASM code to cutscenes to disallow pausing and jumping SFX
during them.

- Recoded and exchanged NPC sprites, and modified message handling at Nomadi Village, so
all is done via uberASM now, while it keeps the same functionality. More thanks to Vitor 
Vilela for uberASMtool.

- Thanks to Parasyte for Recover Lunar Magic. Without it, porting the ROM would have
been a lot more painful.

- Fixed overlooked on/off lava blocks that weren't inserted at all, as reported by Eevee.

- Since the ROM was entirely ported to a new one, its size got reduced from 4MB to 3MB.

--- NEW from latest update (August 21st, 2017) ---

- Fixed overlooked Piranha Plant vines in a few more sublevels, as reported by scratch.

- Fixed random teleporing/softlock issue that happened in the last sewer section of
Shining Rapids, as reported by scratch. The very bottom row of layer 2 waterfalls behaved
like teleport blocks for no reason, thus they were replaced with tiles with corrected
properties.

----------

Small notes:

- The first demo of TToE was not modified. Same thing applies to the instruction manual
files. Some of the issues present in the original version that were mentioned and fixed
in the new one are still mentioned there.

- If any issues are found in this version, you can report to Blind Devil via PM on SMWC
or DM via Discord. SMWC's user ID is 9964, and Discord Tag is BlindDevil#9323.