As you might have guessed, I have decided to port my New Paper Mario texture pack onto the Dolphin emulator. (Paper Mario on a dolphin, get it?)
I have thought about this for quite a long time but now I have decided that Dolphin is better suited for the task than N64 emulators. Dolphin still does have some problems, but at least it is still actively being developed.
So, what does this mean?
-Well, unfortunately it means a lot of work since I have to rename practically every texture for it to work with Dolphin.
-However, it also means that once I’m again at the same state of texturing, it will go much faster.
-And it also means that I now have more motivation than ever, now that it’s actually possible for me to finish the pack.
Now... it would be great if some people would like to help me. This time, it’s mainly about playing through the game on Dolphin and dumping and sorting all the textures so I can just focus on retexturing.
So, if you have any experience with Dolphin and how it handles high-res texture packs and would like to help me, send me an email at: npm at nelde dot ch (preferably with the email address that is connected to Dropbox) and I will add you to a Dropbox folder where you can contribute.
I appreciate your help, but please only write if you have some experience.
Thanks!
Is it hot in here, or is it just Mario?
Little reminder, if you want the newest updates on New Paper Mario, be sure to follow me on Twitter, as I most often post stuff there.
In this post I’ll try to answer the questions that I get most frequently about New Paper Mario. If you have a question, please check here first, maybe it’s already answered. I will update this post when I have new information or something changes.
What is New Paper Mario?
-NPM is a texture pack (mod) for the original Paper Mario game for the N64. It will eventually replace all (or most) graphical assets in the game, giving it a brand new look while still keeping the rest of the game intact.
View this answer in image form.
Is New Paper Mario a fan game?
-No. NPM is a texture pack. It’s not a fan game and you will need to have the original game in ROM form to be able to play it. It doesn’t change anything about the game except the graphics.
Will you also replace the music/SFX or dialogue in the game? Will you add other content?
-No. As far as I know, replacing music and sound effects is not possible. Changing the dialogue is, but I probably won’t do it. And for adding other content, no, it’s still just a graphical update, adding new enemies/characters/worlds would involve a lot more hacking and I also don’t know if it’s even possible.
What programs do you use?
-I use Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop to create the graphics themselves. Then I use the 1964 emulator with the Glide64 graphical plugin to load the new textures into the game.
Who is working on it?
-At the moment, it’s a one man project. I’m a game designer from Switzerland and I’m working on it in my free time (sometimes).
Can I help in any way?
-Depends. I don’t need any help in the art department.
On the other hand, if you’re a coding genius that knows a lot about the inner workings of emulators and such, I’d be happy to get some help regarding that part.
Why is it taking so long / is this project dead?
-It’s only a free time project and I don’t have a lot of free time. Besides that, the technical difficulties that I have with the emulator greatly reduces my long time motivation.
Other factors are that there are thousands of textures. Every character has multiple frames for everything they can do. Look at Kooper for example. And it’s also a matter of getting these images. I have to play through the game to the exact moment where they are used in order to get them. And when I have the pictures, I need to sort through them and figure out which pose belongs to what. And to make it worse, some characters are built together from several sliced textures that I have to put together like a jigsaw puzzle.
What will it cost?
-The texture pack will be completely free. I’m not doing this for money and I don’t want to earn anything from it.
Why are you doing this?
-Because I can. ;) And because I really like the original Paper Mario game. And I like the graphical style of the newer Paper Mario games. So, I’m bringing the two together.
When will it come out?
-Short answer: when I’m done. Long answer: I don’t know and I really can’t give an estimate. Besides NPM only beeing a free time project there are technical difficulties which make working on the pack harder and take away my motivation.
Will you release a demo version before the actual release?
-Probably not. I don’t like the idea of releasing something unfinished.
Also, even though I’m going through the game in a chronological way, I still haven’t retextured a lot of stuff from the beginning, so the demo would have a mix of new and old textures, which looks really bad.
How far along are you?
-I’m currently working on Lavalava island. That’s about halfway through the game, I guess. It doesn’t mean, that everything before it is done, however.
I don’t like what you did with [insert character here], can you change it?
-Well, I’m sorry to hear that, but after all it’s still my project that I put a lot of time in. If you don’t like some of the new textures that I made, you are completely free to create your own version that suits your vision better. Once the pack is released you will probably be able to exchange texture on your own, so you can still use the rest of my pack, if you’d like to.
If you want a game that looks like “what the developers actually intended to be in the game” you can still play the original game.
The recent release of Paper Mario Color Splash has made me want to come back to New Paper Mario again. Especially after seeing how much cuter Yoshis are now as opposed to their look in The Thousand Year Door. So I quickly redid the sprite with the shape of the new one but with the shading of TTYD.
I like it and I think I’m going to redo all of the Yoshis that way.
What do you think?
