A few questions

[AtomicChocolate]

First of all, I'm kind of restarting because I haven't played this for months.

1. Why do I have an enemy below my profile picture?

2. What should I use? 1.3.0.1, 1.4.3, or the 2.0 beta?

3. Are there a lot of friendly people here?

4. (opinion question) What do you think is the best, SMBX levels, SMWC levels(rom hacks and such), or Super Mario Maker?

[HeroLinik]

First of all, I'm kind of restarting because I haven't played this for months.

1. Why do I have an enemy below my profile picture?

2. What should I use? 1.3.0.1, 1.4.3, or the 2.0 beta?

3. Are there a lot of friendly people here?

4. (opinion question) What do you think is the best, SMBX levels, SMWC levels(rom hacks and such), or Super Mario Maker?

1. The enemy represents your rank, and this changes as you make more posts in the forum.

2. As of now, SMBX 1.4.x isn't supported. Personally I would first start off with 1.3.0.1, and when you've built up SMBX knowledge, go for the 2.0 beta.

3. Yes! I'm one of them!

4. I don't mind, I like them all. That depends on how well they are designed though.

[PixelPest]

2. Use 2.0. It has some great stuff that'll be really easy to use in the next update and it'd be better to get used to PGE

[Lx Xzit]

What should I use? 1.3.0.1, 1.4.3, or the 2.0 beta?

Use the version your liking. If you want know more the differences between these versions, go here:
http://wohlsoft.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=1101

[Hoeloe]

What should I use? 1.3.0.1, 1.4.3, or the 2.0 beta?

Use the version your liking. If you want know more the differences between these versions, go here:
http://wohlsoft.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=1101

There are some inaccuracies in that post, but it does give a general idea (such as 2.0 being partially closed source - this is not true, the only part that is closed source is the original SMBX engine, and the same is true of the LunaLua patch)

Personally, I would say go for either 1.4 or 2.0, both are one-package installations, and will give you everything you need (especially since a new beta for 2.0 is coming out very soon...)

Keep in mind that 2.0 supports 99.999% of SMXB 1.3 levels (so far only one unsupported level is known, and that's because it uses several GB of animated gifs for a cutscene, so some people can't even run it in 1.3 either), while 1.4.3 has no such guarantee due to using different physics and game mechanics.

As it is, 2.0 is strictly additions and improvements on top of 1.3, so there is no reason not to go for that if you're looking for SMBX, since you lose out on nothing but gain a lot compared to 1.3. As for 1.4, it's a game engine built from the ground up, and is fine as that, but keep in mind that it is a different entity to SMBX as made by redigit.

TL;DR The main competing versions are 1.4 and 2.0. 2.0 is an extension and continuation of the original SMBX, while 1.4 is a custom recreation that adds more things. It's up to you which you prefer.

[Lx Xzit]

WohIstand wrote that part of the post, for my oart, I was unsure if it was completely open source or not. Thanks for clarifying. I will update the post when the beta 3 of SMBX 2.0 be available and I will clarify some other things.

[AtomicChocolate]

Why are there power up icons by my post, such as shell, mushroom, or ice flower?

[bossedit8]

Why are there power up icons by my post, such as shell, mushroom, or ice flower?

Blue P Switches means Announcements while Silver P Switches means Announcements has unread posts.
Green Shell means that the thread is stickied while red shell is the same thing but with unread posts.
Green 1UP Mushrooms are regular topics while the red Mushrooms are topics with unread posts.
Fire Flowers are topics that are popular while Ice Flowers are the same but with unread posts.

[AtomicChocolate]

thanks!