*If I posted this in the wrong area, please move it to the right place*

Hi, I'm new and this will be my first time hacking.  This may be my only topic since this I want to do just one hack and call myself done (and I support the "Super Mario Bros. Special" to NES project)

Anywho, I just LOOOOVE SMA4.  It's my favorite game.  I was upset that the World-e part of the game got canceled in America.  I've done the emulating of getting the e-reader levels, but sometimes it feels limited.  I want to make it easier for others.  Here is what I'm wanting to do:

1) Fix/Edit some Mario and Luigi Poses.
2) Edit enemies from "Super Mario Bros. 2," "Super Mario World," and "Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island" that appear in the game and edit them into SMA4 style
3) Make it so you can save up to 38 World-e levels instead of 32.
4) See if I can find the official names of the 26 e-Reader levels that never made it America and change it to those names (if that fails, I'll give them fan names.  I have strong hope that the names of the Japan only levels have the official English names somewhere in the ROM due to nobody knew about the e-Reader's cancellation and why would someone not finish a game?)
5) Try to find access the e-Reader level PR Ｂダッシュでかけぬけろ！(B Dash de kakenukero, shown below) that's not available in .RAW format and make it available for others.
6) Make it so you can play the World-e levels without a savestate or connecting to e-Reader.

I pretty much have 1 and 2 with no problem since I'm getting help by one called Raccoon Sam (big sprite ripper).

So if you know ANYTHING about what I'm trying to do, any help would be appreciated. And if there is anything on this list that is considered impossible, please tell me.  THIS IS NOT A REQUEST!

I'm a little unclear on what you mean by problems with the e-Reader levels.  You mean getting the data of the card levels?  I have the level cards in .RAW format on my flash drive if that helps.

All I know is that Japanese cards won't work on a US e-Reader unit, and so on.

No idea about linking to e-Reader compatible GBA or GC games.

i'm glad to read about this emulation of the e-reader and the ability to use the cards through the emulator.  i bought like 40 of the cards way back with the game, and i never got an e-reader, so i'm glad to finally see some of these levels.

Heh, a kindred spirit of sorts, SMA4 is my hacking weapon of choice, not to say that I'm good at it at all though, it's just what I like to spend my time on.

I'd be very interested on your progress of 1 and 2.  They would just be some sprite changes, but still finding that data would be good.  You should be aware that if you use the E-reader exclusive enemies in the main game, their graphics don't show, some mapping of some sort would be required.

3 would most likely be an issue of hacking/editing the .sav fike more than the ROM, which the exception of the limit number being somewhere in the ROM.  Your best bet would be to try and trace what areas are being access while the game saves (or tries to save) the level, hoping to find where it assigns it the level number ( from 1 to 32).

4.  As has already been said, no official names exist, your best bet would be to use either translations of the Japanese names, your own names, or one of the two main name schemes around the internet.

5 is pretty much impossible.  The level data information is stored on the card, and there are less than 100 of these cards ever distributed.  Your best bet would be to try to find one on an online auction, and try to get a hold of Caitsith2, or Importaku (the Japanese e-card collector who gave Caitsith2 the other cards to crack).

6....You can play them with just a .sav file, not an actual save state, but in order to play them in the main game  world maps, you would need to either translate the e-reader level onto the ROM level storage, or map the level entries to point to the .sav file.

I have some old html documents and a world map editor from the old days of acmlm, If you'd like I can share them with you, but it's mostly level data, and that doesn't seem to be the area you are looking for.

If you are serious, you may want to try to track down some of the "big names" of SMA4:  Caithsith2 for E-reader stuff, a guy named Sludge created the world map editor, DJ Bouche apparently did some work with the game, and PurpleBridge is the name of the person that posted all the level offset information.

As proof that I kinda know what I'm talking about (and a shamless promotion), here's my youtube account, with some videos of my SMA4 hacking. http://www.youtube.com/user/14159

Some of your responses:

#1, To be exact, I'm just editing some poses that I call having errors, and give them whites in there eyes like they had in SMAS:SMB1
#2, I've actually found ALL sprites in the game, even the e-Reader exclusive stuff (plus some unused crap), thanx to Raccoon Sam ^_^!
#3, OK
#4, I did say I fail to find official names, I'd make 'em up (either my owns, by YouTube's Copyrighthunter, on vgmaps.com, and maybe mixed)
#5, Crud  :'( , I'll try asking those guys (though the place I got those card files on Caitsith's site didn't have it.)  You know if you got a high quality scan of an e-Reader card, it still can be turned into emulation format.
#6, I always for some reason mix up save files and savestates.

I'd like to see some of those docs you're talkin' about.  Plus those promotion video you shown me was cool!


I haven't done major changes yet, but here's what I've been using:

Translhextion (trying to find the text of the level, no luck right now)
Tile Molester
NLZ-GBA Advance (helped me find some compresed sprites)

So, for expanding the save limit, what utility should I use? or is a hex editor good enough? (If hex editor, tell me how to use it)

Oh, and I found Caitsith2's email address and Importaku's email address

EDIT: Well, everytime I try to email Importaku the email is just sent back to me.

1. Please edit your posts instead of doubleposting.
2. You can easily google for that file; when you have it, put it into %SYSTEM32%\\ and, in cmd.exe, do: regsrv32 %SYSTEM32%\\comct232.ocx