The 'Shroom:Issue 111/Palette Swap

Director's Notes
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Greetings, everyone, welcome to Issue 111.

As you know, this is our tribute issue to, and we've featured a number of tribute works created in her honor from artists around our community in the gallery. Please take a look at those while you're reading the rest of the issue!

I am very happy to welcome our Statistics Manager,, to the team with his new section, "Take Cover," where he will be looking at music samples from many differing genres! his first section is below, be sure to check it out!

As always, if you'd like to write for us, you can PM Tucayo on the forums with your completed application, or send any questions you may have my way. We're open to new ideas, so if you have an idea for a section you might like to explore, do let us know and we can work something out!

~FunkyK38

Section of the Month
Last month, we had a great turnout! Look at all those votes! A big thank-you to everyone who voted, and please keep voting this month!

With nearly half of our total votes, Adventures of Little Mario cops another win!

The Adventures of Little Mario
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What's on the Box?
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Welcome to a new issue of "What's on the Box?" in which I take a look at some wonderful fan made box arts for already existing games or for games made up by the creator. This time, an artist named Paper has created this piece. Since the new ‘’Legend of Zelda’’ entry for Wii U and NX were revealed last week (well, next week at the time of writing), I’d like to celebrate that with a fan made box art for a different Zelda game for the Wii U. People may have varying opinions on it, but when I got ‘’The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker’’, I thought that it was the best freakin’ game in the world. To start with, the front of the box has several official artworks of the main cast in the center, with 3D model renders of the Deku Tree and Valoo in place of the older, Gamecube artworks. Normally I wouldn’t feature a box consisting of no original art, but upon further inspection, an original version of a Hyrulean map covers ‘’the entire’’ box, and it is very detailed. On the back, the phrase “An evil wind is rising…” is adapted from the original box art (“An evil wind is blowing…”) from the Gamecube, along with a new summary. Very nicely framed screenshots of the game are shown, with each one showing an aspect of the game: fighting enemies, exploring islands, and sailing the ocean. The title logo is crisp and new, and comes with a wooden texture, much like that of the King of Red Lions. The rest of the backgrounds consist of scroll and map themes, with hieroglyphics bordering the sides and with the already mentioned map of Hyrule covering the entire thing. In summary, I really like the layout and theme of this one, but it’s slightly disappointing to see no original character art. However, that doesn’t stop it from being expertly presented. I’ll see you all next month!

Game Mods
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Hello there, this is Baby Luigi, writing for this month's section of Game Mods. Unfortunately, I can't dedicate a mod of as modeling and injecting her model (or even a Common Grackle!) into various games such as Left 4 Dead 2 take a huge chunk out of my free time to accomplish (injecting existing models is already difficult enough). However, I had dedicate some of my time drawing a little comic dedicated to Walkazo's passing, so I highly recommend you check it out that, as well as every other drawing in the Walkazo memorial gallery, as that's my submission to the entire Walkazo's tribute. So instead, I'll just go with standard protocol and talk about a recent development.

So, what to talk about this month? How about modding a game that's been recently released? Like, say, Mario Kart 8? Wait, that was released in 2014, how can it be hacked already??? If you didn't know, a new kernel exploit that is compatible with the the most recent Wii U revision of this day has been released, the Loadiine access gate. I won't go into much detail about how to set up your Wii U to get Cafiine running, but you can look up tutorials online. For now, I'll focus on how to modify your lap count of race-tracks. Normally, the vast majority of Mario Kart race-tracks, with the exception of the Mario Kart Arcade GP titles, have the standard 3 laps. It's a nice and balanced number, so race-tracks don't last too long, or too short. It's also a reason a lot of boss fights require three hits to KO, since over and under three breaches comfortable length time. Occasionally, you get oddballs like Baby Park or Wario Colosseum, where their length breaks the limit and therefore their lap counts are modified. Mario Kart 8 has returned Baby Park, and that's a great thing. No, I'm not talking about the quality of the race-track, even though I do personally like it, that means that you can change the lap counts to up to 7 laps (Baby Park's max lap count) of any track of the game with hacking without crashing. Maybe when you do that, try lapping all CPU opponents, as that's clearly possible!

How do you do this? Mario Kart 8 keeps a file called "course_muunt.byaml" in their track files. BYAML is actually an .xml in binary format, and it keeps track of everything the previous KMP from Mario Kart Wii used to do, with additional features, with lap count being an example. Fortunately, Chadderz, a Mario Kart hacker, has released a tool called yamlconv, which converts the BYAMLs to the editable .xml format. You edit the .xml file, which contains a lot of stuff you can fool around with. This is what it looks like, in the beginning lines:



See the LapNumber="3" line? You can edit the number here to any number you like, HOWEVER you have to be wary of limitations. 7 is the max number you can play with before the game starts to crash. If you have over 7, the game will continue running until you reach the 8th lap, where you'll crash and burn. Let's assume it doesn't crash, though. When it reaches double digits, it won't fit so only the first number will fit. At 256, the number will wrap back around 1, then to 2, and so on. And if you're insane enough to do 2147483648 laps, then sorry, you can't, as yamlconv will crash.

If you do less than 3 laps? 0 laps means the race will never end. If there's only 1 lap, you'll hear the final lap jingle, but normal music will play. 2 laps is pretty normal (it was used in demo kiosks before the release of the game), though Lakitu would display 3/3.

On a final note, 200cc uses a different BYAML than the usual ccs, as Nintendo modified ramp values and such to accommodate for it. It's called course_muunt_200.byaml, and, as it's completely separate, if you wish to modify your lap counts for 200cc mode, you need to follow the same directions as the normal one, or your 200cc course will appear with no changes modified.

This here is very basic modding, but these new discoveries pave way for more modifications to occur, and many ways you can, uh, be creative with your Mario Kart 8. It's always interesting just how far we can take a game before it starts to break, and this hack shows that it's definitely possible to race over 3 laps in any course you like (though still, only Baby Park ups the pitch of the songs!).

This is all I have for this month. Stay tuned to see what I may have cooked up for next month. Maybe I might cover another Mario Kart 8-related thing...hmmmm.

Rest in Peace, Walkazo..............

Ongoing Fan Projects
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Take Cover!
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g685h_NboPM HI, everyone, I'm your musical Statistics Manager, Tucayo, here with a new section called Take Cover! As a great musician from this community said to me recently: "song covers are often underappreciated", and with this section I aim to show you my favorite covers and some more; some may be obscure, others may be live versions, and a few more may be "all-star" versions, but I can guarantee they will all have something that makes them special. As the rest of this issue, this section is dedicated to Walkazo from the heart. I have chosen some of her favorite artists for this section which I hope you enjoy. Thanks go out to Stoob for his input on this section.

Q_SWM4FNTC4 To get us started, we have Vitamin String Quartet's cover of As Tears Go By, which was written and most-famously recorded by The Rolling Stones. Jagger and Richards originally wrote the song for Jagger's then-partner Marianne Faithfull in 1964, and one year later they recorded it themselves. is also worth listening to, but this version by VSQ is simply beautiful. I first heard it on the (a show which Walkazo also liked); the version heard on the episode is actually a mix of The Stones and VSQ's versions and it's.

0079I9MqSNw Next we have a cover of the Fleetwod Mac song Landslide by Choir! Choir! Choir!, an open choir based in Walkazo's hometown, Toronto. Walkazo especially liked the work of Stevie Nicks, and, along with Rhiannon, this was Nicks' first song written for the band. I like reworkings of songs sung by choirs, and this particular cover by C!C!C! has a great sound to it.

To close off this section, we have one of Walkazo's favorite artists covering a song rather than someone else covering him, as was the case with the previous two videos. It's none other than Sir Elton John, with his emotional cover of Queen's The Show Must Go On at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert in 1991 alongside the remaining members of Queen and Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath. Elton John performed the song with Queen again, in what is John Deacon's last live appearance to date, and while it's also a good version, it just doesn't have the emotional weight the 1991 version does. In my humble opinion, this is one of the greatest concerts of all time; a fitting tribute for one of the greatest musicians of all time, just as we humbly hope this issue is a fitting tribute to one of our greatest users of all time.

8-Bit Amphitheater
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Greetings, listeners. Welcome to this month's edition of 8-Bit Amphitheater. Barring any special circumstances in the future, this will be my final edition of this section. That said, I will still be uploading chiptunes to this project's YouTube channel as a hobby, so please subscribe there if you'd like to keep up with any new material.

This month, I only have one chiptune, but it is one of the biggest I have ever done, clocking in at just over ten-and-a-half minutes. It is a track by an artist really liked, and the song itself is one that I found to be an apt farewell. Much time was spent on it, so I hope you enjoy it.