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[Sapphire Bullet Bill]

gone

[Marioman2007]

When entering a level, the game used to play the "level start" jingle and display how many lives you have left. However, this has been replaced with a silent "X2" logo at the bottom right.

well, that can be achieved by lua.

Attempting to remove the title screen as a whole will only hinder the controller support much further. Instead of simply starting the game, players will need to select the episode or battle stage they want to play on with a mouse. Nothing was stopping the developers from improving the existing main menu.

what if there are too many episodes? the launcher is way better imo and it also has a search function.

Megan. Need I say more?

what's the problem with it?

modern resolutions and widescreen

viewtopic.php?t=16633#p239706

The developers of the 2.0 update failed to address the aforementioned problems because they were insistent on allowing outdated episodes to run on their updated version perfectly. I'm not saying that backwards compatibility is a bad thing, but if they're attempting a 100% compatibility (which has to be impossible at this point), then none of the problems will be fixed, and any potential improvements will never see the light of day.

what's the problem with backwards compatibility? I think it's better to have it, since people don't need to download the old version to play older episodes.

Final Statement

well, with the arrival of lua, it opens many new possibilities - new NPCs, custom libraries and much more!

[TLtimelord]

This "review" comes off as rather bad faithed and entitled if I'm going to be honest with you. SMBX2 builds off of redigit's code, many of your "core features" things feel like nitpicks (especially since things like the koopas are already added as custom NPCs). The playable characters are getting a rewrite and this is repeated on the daily in codehaus.

Yeah I don't know what you were expecting to get out of this post other than chagrin out of most people. Somewhere deep in this post are probably genuine criticisms but you're really just presenting them as a bratty vent piece here.

[Ness-Wednesday]

I read the review and some parts look spoken under the assumption that beta 4 is the final version. Not entirely saying you aren't aware that it isn't, but some of these criticisms can be responded to with quick research. I will like to share some thoughts

Excessive Amount of New Characters

Many people earnestly agree that most of the characters aren't fun to play as. However, the "don't belong in the game" argument" isn't one. Not sure what to tell you about a Mario fangame crossing-over with multiple other games. The devs are going to be reworking the characters, as cited in the progress sheet. Plus, nothing is getting neglected in favor of new characters. If this was the case, we wouldn't be getting new NPCs and blocks alongside them.

Lack of New Built-In Episode

Imagine a child's parents offering them a fresh canvas, palette, and set of paint. No direct orders to follow, just let the kid swim in their mind. What could they paint? A house? A mystical forest they saw in their dreams? You can look for ways to make something more unique than the default episode. The Invasion 2 as a default episode is basically: "You must follow these strict limitations on a chalkboard, have a nice day!" To simplify, having a default episode with SMBX2 would only encourage episodes to follow one project instead of roaming freely with new opportunities to wow players. Legacy SMBX was running dry because it followed what was immediately given, which was... Already somewhat optimized.

Odd Design Choices

Agreed with the Mario Challenge, but it isn't easy to fix this when it requires backtracking your files. Unless if there's something I haven't tested yet? As MarioMan2007 said, you can achieve the level start jingle via Lua. I can't say anything about the controller support.

Megan. Need I say more?

Lol

No Improvements to the Core Game

The Koopas, Mushrooms, and question-mark block timers can be achieved by manipulating them with Lua. I recommend checking the NPC and block classes after watching Enjl's Lunalua tutorials. If you're asking for improvements to the main engine, don't expect anything game-changing. The framerate is fine, at least the game is playable in most scenarios. Furthermore, check the post from Enjl that MarioMan2007 linked.

If you're looking to wait for the next update to intrigue you, you'll be waiting for an incredibly long time. This review generally sounds dependant on major engine changes with unrealistic expectations. Many of the ones suggested here are difficult to get working. Not to mention that neither those nor the characters are currently in their top priority.
I recommend checking the Progress sheet out: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... =568611324
Lastly, if you ever want to learn Lunalua someday, here is Enjl's Lua tutorial playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... eONYCNMzI_

[Yoshi021]

I agree with some things like the excessive new characters. Other than that I believe most of the issues fall l into the category of backwards compatibility. The team decided backwards compatibility is important and what seems a large percentage of the community. The interesting things is that NPCs such as koopas that come out of the shell or ? blocks set on a timer are still possible. I know it can be frustrated to be told to "just code it lol" but right now thats just how it is for the time being.

Also I do believe the extensive work that has been done to the LunaLua API is deserving of the "2.0" deal. It may not seem much to people that are not familiar with the history but it really is honestly been groundbreaking in so many levels for SMBX. The extensive NPC customization, shaders, basegame classes optimization is what has allowed some extremely awesome custom content.

But yeah, thats what I think and dont feel discouraged of sharing what you think!

[Enjl]

The new characters are probably the biggest feature to 2.0

Hard disagree. The biggest feature is the custom range, and by extension, lunalua.

The developers even stated that they would not work on a new episode for the 2.0 update.

SMBX2 is ever-evolving, so it would be difficult for us to maintain a single episode with the purpose of showing "all its features". Ironically, development is also really slow right now precisely because a lot of the devs are working on episodes.

I don't see why this mode benefits the game and it doesn't seem like it would make for a good casual experience either with hard/kaizo levels in the mix.

A lot of people seem to like the feature, going by its use of videos on youtube. If you wanna exclude a level from the challenge, place an empty text file called "nomariochallenge" in the level folder of the levels or episodes you wish to exclude.

When entering a level, the game used to play the "level start" jingle and display how many lives you have left. However, this has been replaced with a silent "X2" logo at the bottom right.

The Mario Challenge in its current implementation predates custom load screens, and since the inclusion of custom load screens, other adjustments to the engine took priority.

Nothing was stopping the developers from improving the existing main menu.

This is extremely false. The main menu is actually really volatile and prone to erasing save data when switching between episodes. It's also not customizable per episode, and wouldn't have allowed us to display achievements, the per-episode progress bar or similar features accessible from the launcher.

No Improvements to the Core Game

A lot of 1.3 crashes and glitches were removed, and the ones that currently remain are features that can be optionally disabled via a few lines of code or a library. Someone else already addressed the resolution argument I believe.

Backwards Compatibility Should Be Lightened

It's still possible to maintain it. So I don't see why we should make years of levels obsolete. Maintaining it isn't a big development cost.

Having been around for the entirety of SMBX's lifecycle, nothing was quite as big an advancement to the scene as the introduction of the custom range. Sure, custom graphics are nice and all, but my god, creativity in recent level contests due to the sheer amount of custom assets absolutely exploded. I recommend playing some levels and episodes designed with SMBX2 in mind, such as A Tiny World Episode, Subzero Heroes, the top 20 entries to the recent chocolate contest, or Waddle's recently released levels.

[rixithechao]

Megan. Need I say more?

You’re right, she is underrepresented! Thanks for bringing this issue to our attention, we’ll make sure to include more of her in the next update.

[deice]

the Mushroom should NEVER move left after hitting a ? block (that's just bullshit and you know it)

you say this like mushroom movement in smbx is random, even though it evidently isn't.

mushrooms don't always move right in all of the offical mario games either (notably smb3 which smbx borrows a lot from), so it seems like a personal preference rather than an "issue" to be addressed.

[Darkonius Mavakar]

This review is kinda funny because like 90% of these points are either nitpicks or things you could just fix yourself if you wanted with lua, and if you don't know how to use lua (like me) there's plenty of pre-made lua codes you can pick and choose.

The characters were never meant to be the "big main feature" of x2, did you forget one of the first showcases of x2 was quite literally a gameboy emulator if i recall correctly, LunaLua is the key feature here, smbx has opened tremendously thanks to it

[Sonya Sanchez]

Is there a reason you dislike X2 all of a sudden? You literally said the golden age was without it! You can still use 1.3 with all its share of bugs and random crashes, lesser npcs and no custom npcs to use like what DoubleA or Core did.

[Wohlstand]

The little fact, having lots of bugs and limitations, people was trickier while developing levels and episodes to get a certain thing, and the game was less heavy, so, more people can easily download and install it (especially if they have low bandwidth and downloading heavy packages is always painfully for them). The SMBX2 in fact is not a fully standalone engine, it's a hack over Redigit's executable blob.

By the way, related article: https://cscalfani.medium.com/why-progra ... 96e1a0a6db, shown several examples of success include "Jaws" movie, while they having lots of limitations in the development process.

Added in 6 hours 28 minutes 5 seconds:

Lack of New Built-In Episode

Imagine a child's parents offering them a fresh canvas, palette, and set of paint. No direct orders to follow, just let the kid swim in their mind. What could they paint? A house? A mystical forest they saw in their dreams? You can look for ways to make something more unique than the default episode. The Invasion 2 as a default episode is basically: "You must follow these strict limitations on a chalkboard, have a nice day!" To simplify, having a default episode with SMBX2 would only encourage episodes to follow one project instead of roaming freely with new opportunities to wow players. Legacy SMBX was running dry because it followed what was immediately given, which was... Already somewhat optimized.

The main goal of these pre-included episodes is showcasing: what game engine is able: showcase the most of game features. The fact, SMBX-38A has the "The Invasion Revolution" which is a mod of "The Invasion 2" where are introduced many 38A-specific extras into the game and other things.

[Hoeloe]

The SMBX2 in fact is not a fully standalone engine, it's a hack over Redigit's executable blob.

This is a completely functionally meaningless statement. While it may be technically accurate, it makes no difference for people actually using the engine. It's not less useful or valuable because it's build as an extension application to Redigits original game, and the implication otherwise is kind of weirdly elitist.

Also the addage "limitation breeds creativity" is only true to a point, and providing more tools and freedom often just produces better work in practice.

[Wohlstand]

The SMBX2 in fact is not a fully standalone engine, it's a hack over Redigit's executable blob.

This is a completely functionally meaningless statement.

I mean in sense, the SMBX2 is not a full source package (it's a mixture of blobs and pieces built not by you), you can't just build the solid and monolithic executable of the game from the sources to work on any other processor than x86 and x86_64 (for example, on ARM, if you just using any translators or emulators of x86 processor, the result will work much slower (approximately 10x times) than natively), and, you won't be able to build the 64-bit game, because it depends on 32-bit blob you can't replace. It contains the fixed blob (the smbx.exe built in October 2010) which is required for the game's work and the development in most of the hacking of that blob on the side.

Also the addage "limitation breeds creativity" is only true to a point, and providing more tools and freedom often just produces better work in practice.

That's right and really depends on the specific situations, where limitations are making a riddle/challenge that will enable your brain to work trickier and make the smarter solution. There is a fact, that while hardware getting more powerful, software developers getting lazier and they won't care about optimizations and stability, etc. As a result, the software product that does absolutely 1:1 same as the analog made 15 years ago for elder hardware, but it eats much more RAM / CPU, takes more disk space, etc. That generally sucks. Why so damned messenger program must have the same size and power hunger as the "Space Engine" universe simulator?

So, while enjoying the powerful computer, why not try to make the game run on a weak ARM board, and just plug your TV and gamepad, and make your own game console where you run the game? So, the MALI400 GPU is a real riddle, because it won't draw stable 60 FPS if you try to draw more than ~250 textures per frame, however, this is possibly a mistake because of the often texture re-binding. However, if you are lazy, just take the sort NVidia Jetson boards, they are really powerful things, I had some at my work where my colleagues used them to build the video processing on them.

[Hoeloe]

I mean in sense, the SMBX2 is not a full source package (it's a mixture of blobs and pieces built not by you), you can't just build the solid and monolithic executable of the game from the sources to work on any other processor than x86 and x86_64 (for example, on ARM, if you just using any translators or emulators of x86 processor, the result will work much slower (approximately 10x times) than natively), and, you won't be able to build the 64-bit game, because it depends on 32-bit blob you can't replace. It contains the fixed blob (the smbx.exe built in October 2010) which is required for the game's work and the development in most of the hacking of that blob on the side.

Okay but this is true of tons of other software too, this is just an arbitrary line you've drawn for some reason, and it's a really bizarre and elitist one to draw.

Also your argument that "creators get lazier as software gets more powerful" is just... not true. As evidenced by... basically the entire existence of humanity. It turns out what's actually true is that when people don't have to spend all their time reinventing the wheel and doing boilerplate work, they actually end up spending more time experimenting with creative endeavours. Hell, even SMBX itself is a testament to that - the quality of episodes being made has SKYROCKETED since the development of SMBX2.

Basically everything you've said in here is... kind of bizarrely specific and not really relevant to end users, and it smacks of a "purity contest" kind of deal, which is just not helpful for anyone. We've given our reasons for the direction we're taking with SMBX2 to you over and over again, I'm not sure anything else really needs to be said.

[Hatsune Blake]

The incredible incorrectness of this opinion is astonishing.

The new characters are probably the biggest feature to 2.0.

No. It's 100% the ability to add your own new blocks, NPCs, HUD elements and other such things, with lua support. The new characters wouldn't of even been possible without lua support.

From my experience, each character is not fun to play as, and/or feel like they don't belong in the game period

I think this is a commonly passed around idea the entire community. They're all getting revamed in the future, so you should expect for them to be at least marginally improved.

Lack of New Built-In Episode

This just sounds like laziness. Just look for episodes on the forums. Times have changed, internet speeds have vastly increased and it's incredibly easy to get what you want.

Mario Challenge is a mode that allows users to play a shuffled set of levels from episodes. I don't see why this mode benefits the game and it doesn't seem like it would make for a good casual experience either with hard/kaizo levels in the mix.

It might not be interesting for you, but it also is interesting to other people. It doesn't have to benefit just you for it to benefit the game; there are people out there that it was made for. It wouldn't be made if it didn't have an appeal.

Attempting to remove the title screen as a whole will only hinder the controller support much further. Instead of simply starting the game, players will need to select the episode or battle stage they want to play on with a mouse.

This literally just screams "I'm lazy and want to select everything with my controller, because I can't be bothered to move my hand to the mouse".

When entering a level, the game used to play the "level start" jingle and display how many lives you have left. However, this has been replaced with a silent "X2" logo at the bottom right.

This is a massive nitpick. You can see your lives in-game anyways, and a single sound effect isn't going to change anything. Loading screens can be customized with lua anyways.

SMBX is over 10 years old at this point, and it's clear that some major improvements should be made, such as make the jump to modern resolutions and widescreen, the framerate being reworked to 60FPS

That would require insane amounts of work for such a minimal payoff + backwards compatibility would be lost with older episodes.
Also, SMBX already runs above 60 FPS.

the Koopa Troopas should come out of their shells after being jumped on, the Mushroom should NEVER move left after hitting a ? block (that's just bullshit and you know it), boxes with multiple coins should be based on a timer rather than a fixed amount, and various other trivial problems and oddities.

This can simply be fixed / changed / added by code made by the community. Take MrDoubleA's Extended Koopa Troopas for example.

but if they're attempting a 100% compatibility (which has to be impossible at this point)

It's literally not impossible. If it were impossible then it wouldn't be done.

then none of the problems will be fixed, and any potential improvements will never see the light of day.

Every "problem" you mentioned is either:
1. Not needed to be fixed.
2. Is able to be fixed by the user of the program.

"SMBX 2.0 is an update that adds unnecessary characters, lacks a new campaign, introduces more problems, and while it makes a few improvements, fails to move forward because of its insistency on backwards compatibility."

This is the most elitist, ungrateful shit I've ever heard about SMBX2.

but I refuse to believe this is an update worthy of the "2.0" name.

What gives you the right to even say this? Do you realize how much effort has been put into SMBX2? All the new custom enemies, blocks, features, and coding support... everything they've added isn't worthy of "2.0"??

so I think it's fair for us, the community, to expect a little more.

A lot of great things have been added in SMBX2, and a lot of great things are to come. Plus the community [not the devs!] have made a LOT of fantastic stuff you can use RIGHT NOW, which you would realize if you just looked around for 5 minutes.

I didn't write this just to rant to the developers; I also wrote this because I enjoyed SMBX and want a reason to come back. Until an actually groundbreaking update comes to SMBX, I have no reason of returning to the scene.

If you can't continue to use SMBX2 despite all the new additions they've made to it, despite the actual MANY great updates they've made to the base SMBX core, despite all the new content that the community has made for use within SMBX2... then I can simply say that this community is not for you. We shouldn't have to give you a reason to use SMBX at all. You make your own reason, no matter if it's creating episodes and levels, creating graphics for everyone to use, or creating new code structures, NPCs and other such stuff for people to utilize. You give SMBX purpose. Not us. If you fail to give SMBX your own purpose then I would suggest for you to move onto different things.

This "critical review" is the complete opposite of what a review should be: it barely mentions anything good that SMBX2 introduced while having either elitist views on certain things, discussing things that can be changed by the user, or just straight up nitpicks.

If you want to do an actual critical review, then look at SMBX2, go through all of it, look at all of the features, and then come back and write a FAIR critical review. Thank you.

[TankOfYah]

Nice review!

[0lhi]

I mean in sense, the SMBX2 is not a full source package (it's a mixture of blobs and pieces built not by you), you can't just build the solid and monolithic executable of the game from the sources to work on any other processor than x86 and x86_64 (for example, on ARM, if you just using any translators or emulators of x86 processor, the result will work much slower (approximately 10x times) than natively), and, you won't be able to build the 64-bit game, because it depends on 32-bit blob you can't replace. It contains the fixed blob (the smbx.exe built in October 2010) which is required for the game's work and the development in most of the hacking of that blob on the side.

Okay but this is true of tons of other software too, this is just an arbitrary line you've drawn for some reason, and it's a really bizarre and elitist one to draw.

Why is it elitist? This is a criticism of X2's inherent lack of accessibility. If anything, that's the opposite of elitism.

Hell, even SMBX itself is a testament to that - the quality of episodes being made has SKYROCKETED since the development of SMBX2.

Debatable. I have yet to play an X2 Episode that surpasses Yoshi's Archipelago.

We've given our reasons for the direction we're taking with SMBX2 to you over and over again, I'm not sure anything else really needs to be said.

Directions entail advantages and disadvantages. Calling out the latter in a Review Thread is absolutely legitimate.

[DisasterMaster]

the Mushroom should NEVER move left after hitting a ? block (that's just bullshit and you know it)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/12FymmB ... sp=sharing

Quick, someone call the Nintendo CEO and have them fix this 30+ year old bug!

But in all seriousness, it's using inaccuracies as "fact" that end up invalidating arguments. Especially when followed up by obscene outbursts that may come off as "being passionate about your argument", but fall flat as just complaining to others.
We knew it was bulls***? We in fact knew the opposite...

[Archived]

Archived

[Hoeloe]

Why is it elitist? This is a criticism of X2's inherent lack of accessibility. If anything, that's the opposite of elitism.

If the criticism were more generally about platform independence that would be one thing, but it's the specific element of "it's only valid if a user can compile it from scratch at source" that's just weird. Also note that "platform independence" is very difficult to do while maintaining the backwards compatibility we have right now. It's probably possible, but it would mean likely a year or longer delay to anything else on the engine, which is not something we're wanting to do at this point.

Debatable. I have yet to play an X2 Episode that surpasses Yoshi's Archipelago.

Sure, this is a subjective point, but also we'd never have seen things like Subzero Heroes without SMBX2's additional capabilities, and some of the levels made by desingers like Waddle (using X2 technology) have been outstanding. There is no reason to force limitations onto people where they aren't necessary.

Directions entail advantages and disadvantages. Calling out the latter in a Review Thread is absolutely legitimate.

Again, sure, but Wohl keeps bringing up the same few points despite the fact we've already answered them all many times, and it's just to do with priorities. The point is that we're trying to keep backwards compatibility in order to ensure that older episodes don't suddenly break. This obviously comes with some downsides, and means we can't make certain changes. We also want to provide new tools, which require certain hardware features like OpenGL support, which very old hardware just won't be able to run. We've discussed all this a lot, and if this were presented as a factual analysis of the downsides to our approach, I'd have fewer issues, but it's been framed as "this is something you should be doing and choose not to", rather than concessions we make in order to make the thing work at all.

In short, SMBX2 has never been about fixing bugs and neatening up 1.3, it's ALWAYS been about expanding (not replacing) the featureset and giving people more freedom to create. Our focus will always be on providing new options to creators, rather than getting bogged down trying to backpedal over what 1.3 already does.