SMBX2 (2.0 Beta 3)

Tiger Festival · Postby **Tiger Festival** » Thu Dec 22, 2016 5:06 am

G-Boy wrote:Sounds great, when do you think the final version will release?

I imagine the final version won't become a thing for a VERY long time. Though thinking about it, it gets me a little excited on what's more to come since the devs are obviously hiding lots of neat stuff from the public.

darkhog · Postby **darkhog** » Thu Dec 22, 2016 11:55 am

Okay, while doing my own world for SMBX, I've came across something that admittedly is a bug. Probably old and known one, but just in case I'll report it anyway. The bug is regarding backgrounds. If you replace some BG, say castle because you don't need one in your current level and make graphic smaller than it was previously, it will render correctly, no problem. But if you try to make it bigger than original bg, it'll clip it. I think this should be looked into and if possible fixed, because it limits my creativity regarding backgrounds (either scale it down or make it replace several backgrounds and fit like jigsaw puzzle) for few custom graphics that I need. Found a workaround, but I'd rather just draw whatever, replacing whatever background object and don't worry about the size.

Fuyu · Postby **Fuyu** » Thu Dec 22, 2016 1:25 pm

I suppose that background you're talking about is the SMB Big Castle background object. If that's the case it's no mystery why it clipped, unlike regular backgrounds, background objects, much like blocks, have a set image size. If you attempt to replace it with an image that is smaller/ bigger than the actual image it may cause problems. If you want to add a bigger/smaller image than the one you're replacing you would need to edit the block/background specs directly from the level by opening it in a text editing program such as note block.

One last thing, if you tried what I think you tried, then it isn't a problem with SMBX 2.0, but SMBX in general.

darkhog · Postby **darkhog** » Thu Dec 22, 2016 5:38 pm

Yeah, thought so. Well, I hope it is fixable, to make SMBX calculate size based on image's size. So it will always render properly. And for the curious, replacing bigger image with smaller renders it correctly. The problem arises when replacing smaller BGO with a bigger image. Then it clips.

Also, BGOs don't have definition files, only NPCs have them. Even asked about these for blocks/BGOs few posts earlier but got reply that they don't have hooks needed and it isn't planned for now.

Fuyu · Postby **Fuyu** » Thu Dec 22, 2016 6:35 pm

BGOs and blocks don't need them because as I said already, you can modify it in the level file. When opening the level file in a text editing program you get to see every element within the level along with its size, which you can customize. It might be fixable, but for the time being it isn't a necessity really.

Emral · Postby **Emral** » Thu Dec 22, 2016 6:39 pm

Intuition wrote:BGOs and blocks don't need them because as I said already, you can modify it in the level file. When opening the level file in a text editing program you get to see every element within the level along with its size, which you can customize. It might be fixable, but for the time being it isn't a necessity really.

Don't do this. There's no need to.
It works for blocks, but PGE does that automatically for you without .lvl file hacks.
It doesn't work for BGOs. However, you can just draw images with lua at the positions of bgos of a certain ID to essentially get larger BGOs.

Fuyu · Postby **Fuyu** » Thu Dec 22, 2016 6:42 pm

Really? I didn't know that.

Emral · Postby **Emral** » Thu Dec 22, 2016 6:43 pm

Intuition wrote:Really? I didn't know that.

Mhm. PGE even displays resized BGOs correctly if their size has been modified to be larger than the original, but unfortunately they still clip in SMBX. Same goes for world map graphics.

darkhog · Postby **darkhog** » Sat Dec 24, 2016 11:11 am

I have a bone to pick up with the PGE released along this version. When creating a script with Script->LunaLua Scripts->Level script it creates luna.lua which isn't processed instead of the correct lunadll.lua, which is.

Emral · Postby **Emral** » Sat Dec 24, 2016 11:32 am

darkhog wrote:I have a bone to pick up with the PGE released along this version. When creating a script with Script->LunaLua Scripts->Level script it creates luna.lua which isn't processed instead of the correct lunadll.lua, which is.

We're hoping to make luna.lua the standard in the next release. Wohlstand kind of speeded ahead without confirming that luna.lua works for this release. Our bad!

darkhog · Postby **darkhog** » Sat Dec 24, 2016 11:38 am

I see. Though I hope you'll also keep interpretting lunadll.lua, otherwise you'll brick a lot of older episodes and levels that aren't vanilla SMBX.

underFlo · Postby **underFlo** » Sat Dec 24, 2016 11:42 am

Yeah, backwards-compatibility will be there of course.

Emral · Postby **Emral** » Sat Dec 24, 2016 11:44 am

darkhog wrote:I see. Though I hope you'll also keep interpretting lunadll.lua, otherwise you'll brick a lot of older episodes and levels that aren't vanilla SMBX.

As Spinda said, lunadll and lunaworld will continue working just fine. The main reasons for this shift are readability and execution order of the files themselves. You're free to use lunadll and lunaworld in the future, but when you get further into coding you'll notice some nasty weirdnesses that make coding for episodes more of a pain than it needs to be with the non-luna.lua system.

darkhog · Postby **darkhog** » Sat Dec 24, 2016 12:11 pm

Yeah, I'll probably switch to new system as soon as it comes out, but it just rubs me the wrong way that the editor creates one file and the engine needs another (like early releases of GoldSrc Hammer did).

//edit: Any chance of supporting LOOPSTART/LOOPLENGTH for OGG files so we can make OGG files that have intro and loop part? Or is it already supported?

Wohlstand · Postby **Wohlstand** » Sat Dec 24, 2016 5:17 pm

darkhog wrote:Yeah, I'll probably switch to new system as soon as it comes out, but it just rubs me the wrong way that the editor creates one file and the engine needs another (like early releases of GoldSrc Hammer did).

//edit: Any chance of supporting LOOPSTART/LOOPLENGTH for OGG files so we can make OGG files that have intro and loop part? Or is it already supported?

PGE itself (Editor and Engine) and LunaLua are using same audio library SDL Mixer X which already supports that (I implemented that myself: code to parse tags and code to jump from loop end into loop start. Supported both variants of an end: "LOOPLENGTH" and "LOOPEND").
Even you can use pre-included PGE MusPlay utility to probe your just-made music. Even I wrote a manual how to make that: http://wohlsoft.ru/pgewiki/How_To:_Looping_music_files

darkhog · Postby **darkhog** » Sun Dec 25, 2016 1:40 pm

Cool, haven't realized this. Will need to read up more of capabilities of SDL Mixer X. Could support for Klystrack Tracker and SunVox's formats be added? They have custom playback libraries, but because they're fully procedural (no samples, unless you really need them), the files are usually only kilobytes long. Don't see these anywhere on the list of supported formats so I'm asking.

Another, unrelated question: Is PNG Alpha Channel fully supported in 2.0? I mean all 256 levels of transparency.

//edit: Suggestion: I'd like if certain number of npc/block/background object slots could be set aside for custom use - when you want to add some custom thing but don't necessarily want to replace existing one. It doesn't even have to be big amount - 5-10 per type would suffice, I think.

Emral · Postby **Emral** » Tue Dec 27, 2016 9:28 am

PNG alpha channel is fully supported already, reserving of slots will become a thing once we got enough to work with. Last discussed was reserving npc-10000 and onwards for personal use. Same could be done for other things once we get the hooks.

Wolfexer · Postby **Wolfexer** » Wed Dec 28, 2016 10:50 am

Actually since 2.0 started i wanted to ask, but forgot. I tought smbx was impossible to modify cause it's not open source. PGE and 1.4 are made from scratch, but seems like 2.0 is on the same engine, how did you achieve that ? Through luna lua ?

Wohlstand · Postby **Wohlstand** » Wed Dec 28, 2016 2:59 pm

Wolfexer wrote:Actually since 2.0 started I wanted to ask, but forgot. I thought smbx was impossible to modify cause it's not open source. PGE and 1.4 are made from scratch, but seems like 2.0 is the same engine, how did you achieve that ? Through luna lua ?

Yes, we are used LunaLua as a core, and then embedded PGE's Editor into it with the own launcher (a code of it you can find in the LunaLua's repo). When PGE Engine will be completely implemented, SMBX 2.0 will move to it and the Legacy Engine will be finally trashed. Therefore for the nearest time, I have to focus on PGE Engine development, and I will temporary pause work on editor except for a bugfixing support.

Sambo · Postby **Sambo** » Wed Dec 28, 2016 7:51 pm

darkhog wrote:Okay, while doing my own world for SMBX, I've came across something that admittedly is a bug. Probably old and known one, but just in case I'll report it anyway. The bug is regarding backgrounds. If you replace some BG, say castle because you don't need one in your current level and make graphic smaller than it was previously, it will render correctly, no problem. But if you try to make it bigger than original bg, it'll clip it. I think this should be looked into and if possible fixed, because it limits my creativity regarding backgrounds (either scale it down or make it replace several backgrounds and fit like jigsaw puzzle) for few custom graphics that I need. Found a workaround, but I'd rather just draw whatever, replacing whatever background object and don't worry about the size.

I made an API that fixes this. You can find it here. All you have to do is load the API and it will do the rest. (It takes a little more work if you want to change the size of animated BGOs, though)
And you would have to have the BGOs in .PNG format.