Trying to complete time trials in Super Mario Galaxy 2 is a frustrating experience, because players do not find out their times until they have been brought back to Starship Mario. With the exception of the Fluzzard races and “speed run” comets, there is no convenient way to gauge one's progress in mid-level. In addition, restarting a time trial means going back to the world map, re-selecting the galaxy/star and having the game reload the level from scratch.
Given that there is now a sizable time-trialing community on Cyberscore, Wii Records, and Japanese forums, I would like to suggest a SMG2 modification/hack that does the following:
1) Add a running timer that is visible on-screen at all times, similar to the ones displayed during the Fluzzard races or the Il Piantissimo races in Mario Sunshine. This timer should agree exactly with the "Clear Time" presented to the player upon obtaining each star. The clear time is stored as the number of frames elapsed during the star mission, including all dialog boxes as well as all cutscenes except the two "loading" scenes. The game runs at 60 frames per second.
2) Add a "Restart Mission" button accessible from the pause screen (next to "Back" and "Return to Map.") The Restart Mission button should restart the player at the very beginning of the mission, disregarding any checkpoint flag(s) that may have been activated. The timer should also restart from 00:00.00. This function would be the equivalent of manually selecting "Return to Map" followed by "Fly to the Galaxy" and selecting the star mission again, except hopefully without the long loading times.
Upon any miss/death, automatically invoke the "Restart Mission" function and restart the player at the very beginning of the level with the timer restarting from 00:00.00. (In contrast, the game does not reset the timer upon each miss.) The lives system is entirely obsolete for time trials, because in order to attain the best times, one must clear every stage on one life with as few mistakes as possible.
This is just for starters. It would be awesome if we could eventually have the ability to record your own (race-able) Ghost Luigi replays and save them to a SD Card/USB drive.
Unfortunately, my knowledge of Wii-hacking is limited. How difficult would it be to implement something like this, sans the ghost replays?
Given that there is now a sizable time-trialing community on Cyberscore, Wii Records, and Japanese forums, I would like to suggest a SMG2 modification/hack that does the following:
1) Add a running timer that is visible on-screen at all times, similar to the ones displayed during the Fluzzard races or the Il Piantissimo races in Mario Sunshine. This timer should agree exactly with the "Clear Time" presented to the player upon obtaining each star. The clear time is stored as the number of frames elapsed during the star mission, including all dialog boxes as well as all cutscenes except the two "loading" scenes. The game runs at 60 frames per second.
2) Add a "Restart Mission" button accessible from the pause screen (next to "Back" and "Return to Map.") The Restart Mission button should restart the player at the very beginning of the mission, disregarding any checkpoint flag(s) that may have been activated. The timer should also restart from 00:00.00. This function would be the equivalent of manually selecting "Return to Map" followed by "Fly to the Galaxy" and selecting the star mission again, except hopefully without the long loading times.
Upon any miss/death, automatically invoke the "Restart Mission" function and restart the player at the very beginning of the level with the timer restarting from 00:00.00. (In contrast, the game does not reset the timer upon each miss.) The lives system is entirely obsolete for time trials, because in order to attain the best times, one must clear every stage on one life with as few mistakes as possible.
This is just for starters. It would be awesome if we could eventually have the ability to record your own (race-able) Ghost Luigi replays and save them to a SD Card/USB drive.
Unfortunately, my knowledge of Wii-hacking is limited. How difficult would it be to implement something like this, sans the ghost replays?
