Should clips be removed from SMBX?

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[MECHDRAGON777]

I mean, quite a few episodes use clips such as Super Talking Time Brothers, Mario Classic, and some of the Valtteri Island episodes. I know some of my Kaizo levels even use the clips in question.

Edit:

Also Case 2: Should the glitch used in MrCaves level be removed from SMBX?
This level uses a glitch where if you're within a player block and bounce on an enemy you clip downwards to the next empty space.
I believe this one should be removed since it's easy to replicate with code, and occurs way too frequently when using character blocks.

I mean, that glitch was used in Icy Mix II, No Hiding in Bullet Heaven, and another Kaizo level I made for a contest.

[Fuyu]

Whenever a game is still being worked on, wether the torch has been passed or it's still being worked on by the original dev, bugs are fated to be fixed as they are not intentional. I personally think it's fine to thrive on them, but if you ask me the sooner these get fixed the better simply because they get in the way whenever someone works on a project that doesn't want to rely on such tricks. To clip through blocks is to make the player behave in a specific way that is wrong, and depending on the level layout when not taken into consideration can lead to softlocks or death.

Or TL;DR because that's not how the Merios behave in official games.

[zioy]

If a coding solution to fixing clip glitches was implemented I doubt it would have a MASSIVE impact, but I’ve always liked the slight jankiness of SMBX. Being able to turn clipping on and off in the editor would be a pretty cool feature honestly, even though it sounds dumb.

[MECHDRAGON777]

If a coding solution to fixing clip glitches was implemented I doubt it would have a MASSIVE impact, but I’ve always liked the slight jankiness of SMBX. Being able to turn clipping on and off in the editor would be a pretty cool feature honestly, even though it sounds dumb.

Honestly, I believe that would be the most ideal solution considering very few people use them, but there are levels that require them.

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[55jedat555]

I think the concern with clips comes from the fact that a lot of people don't know about them (even the basic crouch clip, despite it making many appearances in various levels/episodes), hence why I support Eclipsed's one-minute tech videos and think that more people should see them. The idea of entirely removing zips (even if that's not actually an option in this situation) just feels like taking away possibilities from more experienced players in favour of the portion of the userbase which is completely unaware of their existence and thus doesn't account for them when designing.
On a side note, assuming that the "clip patch" will be a thing in the future, I'm curious as to how different clips/situations would be handled by it.

[DrMekar]

I have to say for myself that I usually don't mind either side of Crouchclips. Aside from the fact that there, like stated rarely happen by Accident, there defenitly fun to watch. NPCs Clips on the other side should be removed in my opnion. Especially in connection to SMB2 Mushroom Blocks or SMB3 Airship Tiles (including the Rocket Plattform especially in concern of Megamans Tanooki Ability) there are mostly just annoying.

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[DrMekar]

I have to say for myself that I usually don't mind either side of Crouchclips. Aside from the fact that there, like stated rarely happen by Accident, there defenitly fun to watch. NPCs Clips on the other side should be removed in my opnion. Especially in connection to SMB2 Mushroom Blocks or SMB3 Airship Tiles (including the Rocket Plattform especially in concern of Megamans Tanooki Ability) there are mostly just annoying.

The powerups of Megaman are slated to be changed in the future. And I agree the SMB2 Mushroom Blocks are just mostly annoying, and it has use cases, but I think that one when you clip downwards with the mushroom block, specifically is really awkward to deal with. It'd be cool if there where mushroom blocks added you could only stand on but pass through the sides and bottom of.

Added in 11 minutes 14 seconds:

just feels like taking away possibilities from more experienced players in favour of the portion of the userbase which is completely unaware of their existence and thus doesn't account for them when designing.
On a side note, assuming that the "clip patch" will be a thing in the future, I'm curious as to how different clips/situations would be handled by it.

In essence that just becomes an added minority of a minority of a minority of a minority of the SMBX player base

Okay, then. That's a relief. The idea with the Mushroom Blocks is Good, as long as the old ones stay, because they can still make a blockade for instance to move away while dodging Enemies or somethink.

[Reign]

I'm not sure if it's considered clipping, but in my opinion, if the player is carrying an npc, walks next to a block and releases the npc inside this block, the npc should always get destroyed instead of illogically teleporting nearby. The shells for example already get destroyed in this case, but mushroom blocks and keys do not.

Actually a better solution would be, if the player's hitbox grew when carrying an item. This way you could not even position the carryable npc inside a block.

[Enjl]

I agree with what Reign says, although I would make it so that non-hostile items and shells are forced back out of the wall like in Super Mario World. In SMBX, every time I try to position a spring or a shell, I have to be overly cautious of the death barrier that is the wall. In my wip episode I made it so that springs/keys/switches can respawn even when onscreen, to prevent players from softlocking themselves by dropping it next to a wall, forcing it to fall through the floor. That's super silly.


For the claim that zipping is hard to do, and rarely happens accidentally, here are a few items that are very limited or borderline invalidated by zips as the anti-stuck code. For all of them designers have to essentially engrave into their minds to never put them anywhere near a wall, which is pretty limiting. Especially for the skull raft, which always needs some sort of safe container or pit to fall into into which the player cannot follow:

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[Enjl]

You're putting words in my mouth I think. I don't recall ever ruling out the possibility of having both legacy and on/off at the same time, outside of my lack of knowledge about whether either would even be possible. The legacy system, to my knowledge, would be less of a hassle to make.

In either case I'm not the one making the decisions, I just have opinions as well, and my opinion is that zips are a broken mess and hinder design across the board when looking at the 99% who aren't trying their hardest to break the engine's underlying systems. An on/off toggle, in my opinion, would bring about the mario multiverse problem where it's impossible to tell at any given moment how the game behaves. "How was I supposed to know the path forward is through this unmarked wall with an inconspicuous math platform beside it?" Next level: "I'll try that thing from last level...." 2 hours later, no success.

There was a minor outrage from like 0.1% of the smm community after stuff like stacked pipes and wall-walking was patched for the sake of the 99.9%. If you enjoy the brokenness of unmodified redigit code, more power to you. 1.3 is available. But I personally would be thrilled to see this engine actually get more robust as time goes on.

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[Animebryan]

I don't really care about most of the less common clipping tricks/glitches, but as long as you leave the crouch zip alone I'm fine with it. I honestly don't think the crouch zip is a bug, but rather a reference to the wall zip from SMB1 which you can do to either climb to the top of an underground brick wall or the infamous wall zip that gets you into -1. I'm working on a level right now that uses it to get into a secluded area with a switch block to solve a puzzle. Its a very intuitive trick as long as you hint at it in your levels/episodes.

As for it happening by accident, just make sure you don't leave 1 block gaps near your walls, its not that hard really.

[Fuyu]

I can't understand how you people are fine with this being a thing. If you must have it, an on/off toggle option could be useful so long as Enjl's concerns are addressed. But the question then becomes if it is easy or even possible to implement something like what you refer to Eclipsed. Either way, this sounds like a hassle that in my opinion is not worth going through with for the sake of the minority.

As for it happening by accident, just make sure you don't leave 1 block gaps near your walls, its not that hard really.

It's not a matter of it being hard, it's just annoying to take something as bad-looking as that into consideration just because it is a thing. I love to have natural looking terrain on my levels, and having this cursed clip is a pain in the ass, which is especially noticeable when placing pipes.

[55jedat555]

Is it really worth the effort to even take on the task of removing clipping altogether? I think the bigger problem here is that people aren't aware of their existence, because if one is aware it takes literally no effort to prevent them from happening, especially in less convoluded set-ups (if we're talking in terms of casual levels). Furthermore, there are ways to prevent it that are equally as simple and don't tamper the aesthetic feel of the level, if one is concerned about that (e.g. overlapping invisible insta-kill blocks with the walls, killing off platforms or skull rafts with an npc remover (requires ~3 lines of lua code) or detecting when a player is clipping through lua and either force them out of the wall or kill them). Items clipping into walls don't really have a whole lot of functionality to them, so generally speaking their removal wouldn't be too drastic, however patching that out would make other clips easier to perform (such as a solid item clipping the player through blocks when dropped onto him). And as Eclipsed stated in his original post, even if clips get patched, people who'd still want to abuse and use them would just keep using an outdated version for purposes of speedrunning etc.
In short, I will acknowledge that patching out clips would be a convenience to most of the userbase, but to me it just feels like supporting laziness and limiting design possibilities (most notably to more experienced players).

[cato]

The problem is, it could be a level gimmick. Some level in the Kaizo X contest commonly used multiple glitches.
Another problem is, some poor level makers would make the player lose power-ups over a 1 by 1 gap.
Taking examples from New Super Mario Bros Ds, when you clip through the wall, it moves slower and in opposite direction than SMBX.
Taking another example from Mario Maker, you have to spam jumping and move right to move. The harshest example would be dropping down from a higher platform to a lower one, in a 1 by 1 "chimney", then go to the right with a 1 by 1 hallway. This would be impossible without clips since you don't enough space to create momentum for you to spam jump and right.
Besides, why take away what Redigit has given us?

[Fuyu]

@55jedat555: So essentialy the majority of the userbase should accomodate to the minority. That's what your entire post boils down to. And since you asked a question, Yes, yes it's worth the effort to remove clips, fixing bugs should always be a priority when it comes to the development of any kind of software.