TheXTech: the modern port of SMBX engine [Support moved] (Cross-platform SMBX is here!)

[Wohlstand]

Hello!

This is a small bugfix release:

Changes for 1.3.2.1: show

• Reworked joysticks support
• Added a workaround for case-sensitive file systems
• The 1up sound now playing multiple times if the player has got more than 1 life (for example, a 3-up moon)
• Fixed a broken work of magic potion warp packed inside of a grass container
• Fixed a minor inaccuracy of the moving layers system
• Fixed an incorrect process of blocked playable characters while loaiding the episodes list

All download links at the WohlSoft page.

[Wohlstand]

Hello!

A hotfix for the previous release:

Changes for 1.3.2.2: show

• Fixed an incorrect computation of effect sizes, caused by a missing part of code

All download links at the WohlSoft page.

[Wohlstand]

Hello!

A bugfix release:

Changes for 1.3.2.4: show

• Allow music change for outro level (if outro level has non-silent music, it will be played instead of built-in)
• Allow unlimited count of episodes and battle levels
• Fixed an incorrect effect frames count rounding, caused glitches at the death effect for a Hammer Bros.
• Corrected the sensitivity of axes-based sticks of game-pads to prevent the mystery, caused by value errors

All download links at the WohlSoft page.

[Wohlstand]

Hello!

I present a the next release with a bonus inside (see changelog for details)!

Changes for 1.3.3: show

• Added the "gameinfo.ini" to give the support for the partial customization of internals (window/game title, character names in menu, credits, etc.)
• Added an ability to globally override NPC settings by placing of npc-*.txt file into graphics/npc directlry of assets
• Added an ability to run executable with a different assets directory specified
• Added the support for playable character custom INI calibrations
• Message box line breaking algorithm has been improved, added support for new-line characters
• Settings now can remember the initial state of the frame-skip and show-fps options
• Added an option to make use the Alt-Run key for Yoshi's Ground-Pound ([gameplay] section and 'ground-pound-by-alt-run' boolean field)

All download links at the WohlSoft page.

[Wohlstand]

Hello!

It's a small bugfix release together with adding support for new platforms: Windows for ARM and macOS for the new Apple Silicon processors!

Changes for 1.3.3.1: show

Changes for 1.3.3.1

• Fixed a crash, caused by the incremental locked warps counter that leads BGO array exciting
• Added support for Windows ARM64 target architecture
• Added support for Apple Silicon target architecture
• Fixed the inability to enter levels through warp were extension is missing

All download links at the WohlSoft page.

One small note that the builds I made for Windows and Apple Silicon platforms aren't well tested. Please report to me any possible problems regarding them.

[IcyGuidance]

desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu

[Wohlstand]

It's a bigger update than usual: it contains bugfixes for the most annoying vanilla bugs and several new features! (Don't worry, if you have some episodes or individual levels built on bugs, you always can re-enable them using the compat.ini file to repair the work of those levels back!)

* Added the Speed-Running system: run the game by giving special command-line arguments to enable the next features: level and episode stopwatch, displaying of pressed keys states, global adjusting of specific limits and bugs-features depending on a chosen speed-run mode.
* The frame-rate controller accuracy has been improved, and the frame-skip hell has been resolved!
* Added the "compat.ini" to adjust the bugs compatibility per levels and per episode. You can find the manual here.
* Tuned the work of the credits screen.
* The work of the game loading screen now is smoother!
* Resolved the problem of a level restarting after player faults when auto-run events won't work at all.

And more other fixes:

Changes for 1.3.4: show

Changes for 1.3.4

• Fixed the inability to use any custom sounds and custom music at the level's custom data directory
• Added an ability to change sound setup (sample rate, channels, sample format, and the buffer size) via the [sound] INI section
• Optimized the work of a lazy-decompression algorithm workflow
• At credits, the bible quote has been replaced with a meme
• Fixed the vanilla bug: free-falling platforms getting confused when the player changes their power-up state
• Fixed an inability to autostart events when "restart level after death" mode is enabled on the world map
• Fixed the case when Pokey getting collapsed during walking on slopes
• Fixed an unwanted player bounce by a filter block after NPC stomp
• Added the "compat.ini" support for episode and level specific to enable/disable certain bugs of the old game
• Fixed the vanilla bug: the player can get clipped into the floor while standing on a block of a down-moving layer
• Fixed the vanilla bug: NPC can get clipped into the floor while standing on a block of a down-moving layer
• Fence BGOs now can move player together with a moving layer as vine NPCs does
• Fixed the vanilla bug: attempt of a player to jump from NPC standing together with getting pushed into the wall causes the clipping
• Fixed the vanilla bug: resolved an incorrect behavior of skull raft cells that makes the raft being squished when reaching a barrier wall
• Credits look and performance has been improved
• Fixed the vanilla bug: Peach can't escape the running shell surf
• Loading screen now goes smoother (except Emscripten)
• Level testing will quit on successful completion of a level
• Improved the framerate controller behavior, added the guarantee of the 65.1025 FPS on almost all supported platforms
• Added the Speed-Runner mode which can be enabled via the --speed-run-mode <mode> command line argument
• Fixed a wrong FPS while the key-hole exit is in process
• Improved the frame-skip logic

All download links at the WohlSoft page.

[FanofSMBX]

Hello!

A bugfix release:

Changes for 1.3.2.4: show

• Allow music change for outro level (if outro level has non-silent music, it will be played instead of built-in)
• Allow unlimited count of episodes and battle levels
• Fixed an incorrect effect frames count rounding, caused glitches at the death effect for a Hammer Bros.
• Corrected the sensitivity of axes-based sticks of game-pads to prevent the mystery, caused by value errors

All download links at the WohlSoft page.

Also a fix for the missing 2 pixels on Pokey's head death effect, and does platforms accelerating while player is powering also apply for grinders?

Also, reminder for the rest of my 1.3 bug fixes.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/114N ... sp=sharing
Some features may only be appropriate for SMR, but still some compatibility ideas contained.

[Wohlstand]

Also a fix for the missing 2 pixels on Pokey's head death effect

Didn't payd attention on this, I'll check some later

does platforms accelerating while player is powering also apply for grinders?

This mess I fixed since 1.3.4

Also, reminder for the rest of my 1.3 bug fixes.

Gradually depending on my free time and the mood I'll reply on every thing as a comment to the line

Some features may only be appropriate for SMR, but still some compatibility ideas contained.

There are some functional fixes made on the main branch, however, to help people to deal with the compatibility issues regarding levels built on bugs, I made the "compat.ini" system, you can always re-enable certain bug or disable some random special feature of the game. Those features and fixes were making the casual playthrough of normally-made levels and episodes. However, because of several levels (or even episodes) built on bugs, they will require the "compat.ini" with specific features and bugfixes being disabled.

[Superfrancybros]

Thank You!

[Wohlstand]

Thank You!

I'm glad you like my works

[Wohlstand]

This is another bigger update with a dozen of important changes.

• This version features the first mobile version of the SMBX game developed for the Android platform!
• The gamepads support has been upgraded and exchanged, now it supports the hot re-plugging and auto-mapping for the gamepads and joysticks. Also, here you will be able to use both D-Pad and the left analog stick to control the movement of a playable character.
• In addition, there are other vanilla bugs that have been fixed such as the mortal bug that kills Link riding the Clown Car gets touched by the vine.
• To address compatibility issues with some levels the ability to restore the old behavior of checkpoints has been added into `compat.ini`. The Speedrun modes 2 and 3 will also restore the old checkpoints behavior back.
• The macOS version of the game now has the universal build that will run well on both x86_64 and the arm64 architectures (Thanks to @kode54 for the guidance on how to make it).
• Here you can copy and delete game saves from the game menu directly!
• And many other fixes and additions...

Changes for 1.3.5: show

Changes for 1.3.5

• Fixed the gamepad control stuck because of axes returned value that doesn't equal the initial state on some devices
• Fixed the invalid conversion of old sprites with a mask that is smaller than the front
• Implemented usage of the SDL_GameController with some extras like using the rumble and the battery status (Render of the status is not implemented yet)
• Player now can quit the credits screen by pressing the Start button on the gamepad
• Fixed the glitched rendering of the first frame at the main menu and the world map when frame-skip is enabled
• Every gamepad model will keep its individual settings per player
• Added the "Reset to default" menu item to reset controls
• Resolved the slow work of the world map on weak devices
• Added the performance debug printing that you can activate by the F3 key
• Automatically select the gamepad on startup if the user didn't manually set up the keyboard usage
• Added the ability of the hot connection and disconnection of game controllers
• Control mappings have been moved into the "controls.ini" to keep the "thextech.ini" file being human-friendly
• Swooper can play the flap sound if presented at the assets pack
• Iceball may have the individual shoot sound of sounds.ini enables that
• Fixed an unexpected ability of Peach to spin-jump from off vines and on pressing of the ALT-JUMP while the JUMP key is held
• Fixed the GFX shaking of the upside-down piranha plants when they got customized in some cases
• NPC freezing sound got an individual sound instead of the shell hit
• Frozen NPC breaking got an individual sound
• Added an ability to put the silence instead of the actual sound file by specifying the "silent=true" field instead of the "file=..."
• Thwomps will slightly shake the screen on their fall
• Yoshi's ground pound will slightly shake the screen
• Sprout vine from blocks got an individual sound
• Fixed an incorrect word wrapping at message boxes
• Fixed the vanilla GFX bug: the thwomp's ground pound dirt effect being improperly aligned
• Bowser III'rd will shake the screen on his ground pound
• Fixed the vanilla bug: Link may die when attempting to use the Clown Car being in a fairy form, and when flying up on the Clown Car while any vines behind him
• Avoided the ability to switch the playable character by the Clown Car at the top of a player switch block
• Added an ability to restore old checkpoints behavior of the SMBX 1.3 using the "compat.ini" file
• Fixed the vanilla GFX bug: an incorrect Link's alignment at the Clown Car after being transformed from anybody who rides Yoshi
• Fixed the skull raft getting stuck at the ceiling slope blocks
• Fixed the vanilla GFX bug: the unexpected water splash effect appearance at BGOs
• Fixed the inability to set up the jump button on gamepads in some conditions
• Fixed the vanilla bug: inability to set the autoscrolling for any non-zero section
• Added the support for the simple-style per-section autoscrolling setup from the SMBX-38A specification
• Fixed the vanilla crash when NPC being located far off the screen, tries to find blocks
• Added an ability to copy and delete game saves from the game menu
• Fixed the missing "Game Beaten" flag while loading the game save

All downloads at the Official Project Page!

[ShadowXeldron]

Nice, an update. Now I have to groan and transfer over my custom music.ini again.

Also, that rumble support sounds cool. When/how is it used by the game, or is it exclusive to forks?

[Wohlstand]

Nice, an update.

Thanks!

Now I have to groan and transfer over my custom music.ini again.

You can download the engine-only update without replacing any game resources, which will simplify your life (find the "plain runtime" section on this page: https://github.com/Wohlstand/TheXTech/w ... vel-builds, on a current moment when I wrote this message, devel builds are matching to the release version).
I do keep my engine to be compatible with all asset versions to allow the game updates without necessary to update assets even they adding new things like some of the new SFX, if you'll keep old assets, the old sound's behavior will work.

Also, that rumble support sounds cool. When/how is it used by the game, or is it exclusive to forks?

It's used for bomb explosions right now in the mainstream build. Also, I kept the ability to disable some of what is not wanted
(explanation for all settings at "settings/thextech.ini" file: https://github.com/Wohlstand/TheXTech/w ... e-settings)

[ShadowXeldron]

Nice, an update.

Thanks!

Now I have to groan and transfer over my custom music.ini again.

You can download the engine-only update without replacing any game resources, which will simplify your life (find the "plain runtime" section on this page: https://github.com/Wohlstand/TheXTech/w ... vel-builds, on a current moment when I wrote this message, devel builds are matching to the release version).
I do keep my engine to be compatible with all asset versions to allow the game updates without necessary to update assets even they adding new things like some of the new SFX, if you'll keep old assets, the old sound's behavior will work.

Also, that rumble support sounds cool. When/how is it used by the game, or is it exclusive to forks?

It's used for bomb explosions right now in the mainstream build. Also, I kept the ability to disable some of what is not wanted
(explanation for all settings at "settings/thextech.ini" file: https://github.com/Wohlstand/TheXTech/w ... e-settings)

You're welcome! I wish I'd known about that runtime build before. That would have made updating MUCH quicker. Thanks for the tip!

[Wohlstand]

Anyway, I gonna add the plain runtime links at the downloads page to let users be noticed about the quick update ability.

[FanofSMBX]

Some bugfixes which I forgot until now:

1. Banzai Bill when in a projectile generator has two issues. The first is that the player's presence will not block it. The second is that it cannot be hit with a raccoon tail.
2. Bloopers, if stomped when jumphurt=0, uses Rex stomped image.

And now a request, for the .gif recording - 256 fixed colors. This means that the colors are not used per-frame, but for every frame. This can lead to less-accurate colors in some images, but consistent colors throughout the entire .gif for moving/animated elements like the player and enemies.

[Wohlstand]

1. Banzai Bill when in a projectile generator has two issues. The first is that the player's presence will not block it. The second is that it cannot be hit with a raccoon tail.

Didn't pay attention, I need to check some on vanilla

EDIT: I did a check, player presence at the generator literally blocks them fine on both vanilla (always 1.3) and TheXTech

2. Bloopers, if stomped when jumphurt=0, uses Rex stomped image.

Odd bug, again, I need to check some first...
EDIT: Checked, lol, looks like Redigit forgot to fix that. I guess I should use the falling blooper effect instead.

And now a request, for the .gif recording - 256 fixed colors. This means that the colors are not used per-frame, but for every frame. This can lead to less-accurate colors in some images, but consistent colors throughout the entire .gif for moving/animated elements like the player and enemies.

This also would lead to higher load and bigger file size. Real-time GIF creation is a tricky thing, and yeah, there was an attempt to keep the same 256 colors palette for entire GIF, but result didn't became better, I hard remind, but you probably need to ask Rednaxela for that.

[FanofSMBX]

1. Banzai Bill when in a projectile generator has two issues. The first is that the player's presence will not block it. The second is that it cannot be hit with a raccoon tail.

Didn't pay attention, I need to check some on vanilla

EDIT: I did a check, player presence at the generator literally blocks them fine on both vanilla (always 1.3) and TheXTech

Are you sure, using both warping and projectile generator? Also, does generators only blocked standing on the 32x32 square, or by standing in Banzai Bill's entire 128x128 spawning space (which is an issue if it projectile-spawns on top of player)?

Another bug fix introduced by Derpy that I forgot: friendly npc-97 and npc-198 should not be counted by warps' display of the stars count for a level.

A few more ideas:

Simple:
Rumble effect when POW block is dead. Maybe Banzai Bill spawning, too?
Flag in event that can enable "Game Beaten" flag in save file (to allow episodes that do not need default credits to get 100%)
Add % sign to save file menu (to prevent confusion of how SMW shows exits integer amount instead of percentage), and maybe decimal completion percentage as well?
Flag in events that can enable/disable the 5 players in the .sav file, for switching them on the world map. This allows for "unlocking" or "removing" players from the player's roster as unlockables or for the story.
Flag in events - swap yellow, green, blue, red blocks' states (easy switch palace imitation for "level-loading-trigger-events" below)

Hard:
More NPC's immunities - I will try to compile a list if you are interested in adding this.
Events that can add and remove names from the level-loading-trigger events list, for that .sav file. This means that I make an event that adds the name "Show Creator Commentary Box" to the list, from then on, every level will load the event named "Show Creator Commentary Box" upon starting the level, if it has an event of that name. (For the technical side, this might be easily done by putting the added names from events in the .sav file and comparing it to the level's event names upon loading. When an event removes the name, it is deleted from the .sav's list.)
Event disabling (this allows to set an event to "forbid" another event from running, breaking event loops such as looping sound effects. This is not saved, and only lasts for the rest of the level. A permanent "named" event, as above, can be used to make this forbidding event always run at level-load and become permanent.)
Multiple stars per section (perhaps doable by the creator sets each star to have an ID, that can be saved to the .sav and will be checked to see if star of ID #x in y.lvlx got collected.)

Very hard:
Peach/Toad/Link's enabling to slide slopes, ride shoes and Yoshi?

I will probably make an episode with TheXTech if this gets added. These are the most important things I found are missing from SMBX 1.3.

[Wohlstand]

This is the bugfix update that was made before starting the future big work.

Changes for 1.3.5.1: show

Changes for 1.3.5.1

• Episodes and battle levels lists now loading in the separated thread with a progress showing
• Fixed the regression that caused world map music not to be switched properly
• Added an ability to control the intro scene activity on the level by `gameinfo.ini`: set maximum number of running players, and enable/disable the activity at all
• Fixed an inability to copy the game save based on old files at episode directory
• Fixed the vanilla bug: incorrect blooper effect when stomped (needed an npc-*.txt with the "jumphurt=0" flag being set)
• Changed the default compat.ini value "fix-autoscroll-speed" into "false" to prevent possible glitches from invalid setup given by several old levels
• The "Checkpoint" sound will be played when selecting the "Save and Continue" menu item at the pause menu
• Fixed a minor glitch at the game save a copy and erase menu while moving the mouse under menu block
• Fixed the bullet bill getting stuck after it got unfrozen (Thanks to the @ds-sloth for the contribution!)
• Updated an inter-process protocol with adding new commands
• Fixed the vanilla bug: The dragon coin has avoided being turned into the block by the P-Switch activation

All downloads at the official page of the project!

Tip: Please use the plain application package at the bottom of the page if you want to quickly update your existing engine without taking any assets updates (for example, if you has the modded assets you made yourself and you don't want to re-apply all your patches again).

Also, you may visit the official TheXTech documentation to learn more about the TheXTech:
https://github.com/Wohlstand/TheXTech/wiki