I want to make the entire game into one continuous level with no breaks in between. Where one starts, the next one will begin exactly as it is in the vanilla game. Bowser levels will just involve getting past him and then the first stage of the next world will begin, with 8-4 being the only exception. There are some issues such as cycles though. I am not sure how these things are loaded into the game, do the cycles start as soon as the level loads, or is it based on your position on the screen like a lot of other NES games? I'm also concerned that every Bowser and bullet bill will simultaneously fire from the beginning rather than waiting until you get to the "beginning" of each stage.
I'm also not sure what the best way of putting this together is. I downloaded a Japanese editor called SMB Utility. I'm not quite sure how to use it properly yet, but it looks ok. I'm still not sure if what I want will be possible with this thing though.
Edit: Warp pipes will also have to be changed. This will be fine with things like the coin room in 1-1, but if the pipes warp to another level, the exit point will obviously need to be updated.
The levels will be exactly the same, with the exception of Bowser and maybe the water levels. I suppose it would double up as speedrun practice, but my main intention is to make something that is a better run than vanilla smb1. A while ago I remember seeing a discussion about games that have the most amount of "dead time" in a run, and smb1 was one of the games that got frequently mentioned. It is kind of similar to a version of sm64 where stars do not pause the game or send you anywhere when collected, I think it might be called sm64 non stop. I guess warp pipes would be an option, but the goal is to have something that doesn't stop at all until 8-4.
I like the lua idea a lot more than warp pipes or using something that is not fully based on the original ROM. As far as lives go, dying at any point would just reset you to 1-1, as the main goal would be to speedrun it anyway, not play it casually. I'd also quite like to be able to just start with the base game rather than recreate it from scratch in an editor, if that's possible.