Super Mario War by 72dpiarmy (+ Mods & Super Cat Wars!)

[FutureNyanCat]

by 72dpiarmy, Florian Hufsky & Two52

Super Mario War is a Super Mario deathmatch game with small maps, lots of creative game modes, and unlimited customization. I want to promote this game because of the fact development stopped on it since Florian's passing in 2009, and its community is slowly dying due to its obscurity and inactivity.

To get started, here's some information about the game, which you can learn more by watching the video below:


Some basic information about the game below:
- Up to four players deathmatch fun
- a whole bunch of game modes (22) (featuring Chicken, Domination, CTF, ...)
- Comes with a level editor - you can create your own maps...
- ... and a world editor for making custom worlds with maps bundled in them
- More fun than poking a monkey with a stick
- Fully customizable in terms of graphics, music, skins, maps, sounds, and more
- The whole source code of the game is available, for free
- uses SDL and is fully portable to windows, linux, mac, ...
- CPU Players
- will make you happy and gives you a fuzzy feeling

Download: http://smwstuff.net/
72dpiarmy forum: http://72dpiarmy.supersanctuary.net/ind ... ic=10241.0
Development history
Super Mario War was originally developed since 2004 by Florian Hufsky & Michael Schaffer (Two52), based on its MS-DOS cousin, "Mario War" by Samuele Poletto, which was originally released in 2002. Since its development, Super Mario War has been open source (in the C+ language), which allows people to make forks or mods of the game if they so wish.

The 72dpiarmy grew, many skins and maps and mods were made for this game. I was a lurker of the 72dpiarmy community back then, and I enjoyed the game a lot. Though sadly the development of this game stopped at 1.8 Beta 2 because of Florian passing away in late 2009. It has been a rough time for 72dpiarmy as they lost a core developer of the game. This led to the community slowly dwindling in activity, and attempts to bring the game back were unsuccessful.

Open source fork (2.0) by mmatyas
https://github.com/mmatyas/supermariowar

While no further attempts were made to rewrite the game in a format that's actually comfortable to developers, the open-source fork of Super Mario War was developed by mmatyas, a good friend of mine. The entire source code has been ported to GitHub and has been refurnished with bug fixes, a few new features, and more. Here are some notable changes:

- The game now uses SDL Mixer X by Wohlstand, which is the same audio engine used in SMBX2! It might find interesting to you that you can now add SNES SPCs (especially SPCs from SMWCentral and even the ones bundled with SMBX2) that properly loop in the game!
- Toggleable secret orbs (these were annoying and made permanent effects for the rest of the match, including a Dizzy mode that could be bad for photosensitive users)
- Bug fixes
- Some quality of life features (hold up-down to scroll through skins, changing the color of the tilesets background to gray for more visibility, etc.)
- An in-game screenshot feature
- A mod is currently being developed with these builds.

If anyone wishes to continue the development of Super Mario War, feel free to do so by checking out the link above. Please also give credit to the 72dpiarmy community + Two52 and Florian Hufsky for the original game. Thank you!

Super Cat Wars

Super Cat Wars is a mod of Super Mario War developed by Hexelectron (aka. FutureNyanCat) that aims to theme the entirety of SMWar into Super Cat Tales by Neutronized.

You can find out more about the mod using the playlist below:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... y0zQ6A0dlf

----- ABOUT SUPER CAT WARS -----
Ultimate Showdown!

Spoiler: show

The ultimate showdown in Neko Land begins RIGHT NOW! In Super Cat Wars, play as your favorite characters from Super Cat Tales 1 and 2, as well as characters from many indie games developed by Neutronized such as Drop Wizard, Slime Labs, Mineblast (Dyna Boy) and more.

Endless Creativity!

Spoiler: show

The mod features a plethora of new tileset sheets (Over 48+) and new backgrounds with day/night alts to give you more power over what kinds of maps you can make!

A Story Mode...? (+ New bosses in Boss Minigame)

Spoiler: show

Face off against Dark Kallio and his cronies as you and your rivals/friends battle to save the grand prize of the Neutronized Battle Royale Tournament and save the world from impending doom! There's three new boss reskins to fight in Boss Minigame, each with new unique battle arenas.

And some more features:
- Community-contributed content - this is a collaborative effort with members of the SCT community and some current members of the SMWar community
- New music packs - play music from Super Cat Tales, Drop Wizard, Jack the Ripper (by Rakugaki-otoko (DREAMSBELL)), and more!
- Crossovers - there's some crossover content in terms of skins, tilesets, and maps! Featuring Super Fowlst, Dadish, Part Time UFO, Kirby, Super Mario, Just Shapes & Beats, Sonic Robo Blast 2, and more!
- There's an original OST for Story Mode, which I'm working on with the SCW team (DonnieTheGuy, Wowymolly, RazeZX, CindyChan, and me)
- It's still better than poking a monkey with a stick.

NOTE: The download for this mod is not available yet as it's not complete. Please check the SMWar download above if you want to play the original game in the meantime.

SMWar Preservation Project
I'm working with some members of 72dpiarmy to help preserve some assets of Super Mario War, like old SMWStuff content, old SMWar versions, etc. for future-proofing. A lot of 72dpiarmy members have seemingly archived several maps and skins on the new 72dpiarmy forums and the new SMWStuff website, but I'm also looking to preserve even more content that I've obtained throughout the years.

Here's some content of interest you'd like to see:
- SMWStuff Archives Dump (by me) - features old announcers (Jason Derulo, Unreal Tournament, Yoshi), old maps I made as well as old SMWStuff tilesets, maps, worlds, skins, and much more!
https://mega.nz/file/PQwG3YCb#Jgdo-ej0Y ... UCU0IMIObw

- SMWar 1.1 (Preserved by me and sonk_hilltop) - One of the first versions of the game. It may somehow not work on newer versions of Windows, but it's surely a sight to behold.
https://mega.nz/file/aNZkGLIa#0oKPWs-HF ... DhKQCIXVEI

[Wohlstand]

Hello!

Just now I tried this thing in action, and looks funny, good job!

btw:

which is the same audio engine used in SMBX2!

Don't forget the MixerX library since its foundation used at the Moondust Project (formerly PGE Project) and later got been used at LunaLua and SMBX2. Right now next major projects do use MixerX:

• Moondust Project (both Editor and Engine) - since its foundation after replacing the usage of a clunky Qt Multimedia module
• LunaLua and SMBX2 - since 2016'th year
• SMBX-38A uses it after replacing the FModEx module used until the SMBX-38A v1.4.2, there is a special VB6-binding version used
• TheXTech - The modern and extended cross-platform port of the SMBX 1.3
• NSMX - The SkyBlueYoshi's different Mario fan game
• Sonic Robo-Blast 2 - has the MixerX support since some moment

[FutureNyanCat]

Oooh, there's lots more projects that use MixerX. I appreciate the comment Wohlstand

Speaking of which, it'll be great if we could find some dedicated coders who can rewrite the code into the state it is today. According to mmatyas, the spaghetti code prevents SMWar from having proper LUA integration, so rewriting such code will be needed to implement something similar to LunaLUA in SMWar.

(Note: SMBX2 was able to get LunaLUA over the course of five years, and it's still in development. HOWEVER, it uses a different implementation method, where it is hacking the SMBX executable.)

[ShadowXeldron]

Somebody else knows about this game! I first discovered it by reading its Wikipedia article. I found the 2.0 thing by accident when the official Linux build didn't want to work for me.

Actually, I knew nothing about the whole MixerX thing which makes me feel embarrassed about spending a few minutes recording an SPC in PGE MusPlay and converting the output WAV into an OGG for my personal soundpack. That said, I was already aware that the OGGs were loopable because I imported a song ripped directly from Pokemon Uranium and it automatically read it; I thought it was just a coincidence that they were looped the same way. A bit off topic though but I find it annoying how everyone seems to think SPC and Doom MIDIs is the only thing that it can do.

Also, I don't think this game doesn't need Lua or any other scripting functionality. It's fine as it is and a scripting engine would leave you with too many niche features that nothing except for maybe one guy's mod and one of the developers' pet projects would utilize.

Finally, and obligatory self-plug: I've made a custom announcer pack for this game which adds the announcer from Smash Bros.: https://gamebanana.com/sounds/46536

[Wohlstand]

Loop tags you should add into the OGG file yourself: add Vorbis Comments "LOOPSTART" and "LOOPEND" that contain absolute sample position, or, alternatively "LOOPLENGTH" to also make your OGG file be compatible with RPG Maker too. MixerX (the sound library used at Moondust, TheXTech, SMBX2, and SMBX-38A) library supports both ways.

Added in 7 minutes 46 seconds:

According to mmatyas, the spaghetti code prevents SMWar from having proper LUA integration

You can make your own lua integration easily, there are many ways of that. Together with the lua language itself, you were able to add some call bindings to call in-game functions and call certain functions from lua scripts from your game directly, that shouldn't be hard. You don't need to repeat the LunaLua, especially you were don't make one another clone of SMBX.

[FutureNyanCat]

Loop tags you should add into the OGG file yourself: add Vorbis Comments "LOOPSTART" and "LOOPEND" that contain absolute sample position, or, alternatively "LOOPLENGTH" to also make your OGG file be compatible with RPG Maker too. MixerX (the sound library used at Moondust, TheXTech, SMBX2, and SMBX-38A) library supports both ways.

(Quote)

You can make your own lua integration easily, there are many ways of that. Together with the lua language itself, you were able to add some call bindings to call in-game functions and call certain functions from lua scripts from your game directly, that shouldn't be hard. You don't need to repeat the LunaLua, especially you were don't make one another clone of SMBX.

Hey, looping music in SMWar? Hell yeah! I didn't know it actually works for SMWar too as well. I learn a lot...

Also oh, you should probably see SMWar's source code. It's a huge mess. I'm sure mmatyas may have trouble integrating LUA in with that, but hey, not stopping here, I think an idea here is to cooperate with him or get help from dedicated LUA coders here to help him add such integration into SMWar.

EDIT 08-06-2021: Here's mmatyas' response regarding how LUA integration is handled:

[FutureNyanCat]

Here's a new Imgur album showcasing some new maps I've built for SCW's default map line (as well as one new map from Story Mode):
https://imgur.com/a/ci7g6lh

EXAMPLES:

Spoiler: show

I've included some Dadish content in this mod as it uses the same art style as Super Cat Tales (which somehow makes Dadish look more of a ripoff than anything lol, but yeah.)

[FutureNyanCat]

PRESERVATION NEWS
Some stuff from the Super Mario War community has been successfully preserved (almost)!

SMWStuff Wealth of Content
For those who didn't know, I recently discovered a large amount of content I've downloaded off the old SMWStuff website before it crashed and all data was lost. I thought those were lost to my very old computer's dying CPU, but it turns out that I've backed them up in a very odd place on my external hard drive.

This pack includes old stuff like worlds, tilesets, old maps, even maps that I've made as a kid (including Wonder Pets-themed maps), skins, and even announcers for the game like Jason Derulo, Unreal Tournament Announcer, and Yoshi. Those stuff date back to as far as the year 2010, back when SMBX was in a very juvenile state and 72dpiarmy is about to enter dormancy since Florian's passing.

Screenshots featuring preserved content:

Spoiler: show

You can check out the preservation topic over at 72dpiarmy: http://72dpiarmy.supersanctuary.net/ind ... ic=11317.0
Or download from MEGA: https://mega.nz/file/PQwG3YCb#Jgdo-ej0Y ... UCU0IMIObw

Disclaimer: Certain assets do not have credits, like tilesets and worlds. Unfortunately, due to the nature of SMWStuff's archiving on the Wayback Machine, it's near-impossible for me to figure out who made which tileset, world, or even map. Please bear in mind.

SMWar 1.1
The oldest version of Super Mario War that has been preserved is SMWar 1.1, which was successfully archived by sonk_hilltop, a member of the 72dpiarmy community and the Super Cat Wars Discord. I cannot get this to run properly on Windows 10, even with compatibility settings, so I believe this was made to work with older systems. Try it here:
https://mega.nz/file/aNZkGLIa#0oKPWs-HF ... DhKQCIXVEI

Again, special thanks to sonk_hilltop for archiving said version of the game.

SMWar 1.2 and 1.5 Preservation News
I've heard news that 72dpiarmy user and SMBX forum user "4matsy" has the old versions of SMWar 1.2 and 1.5. These are important for preservation of the game's history itself, so I'll be contacting him in the future to allow me to obtain said versions and preserve them for everyone to see. Stay tuned!