SMBX2 Repository Ownership Discussion Thread

[Rixitic]

Okay, so... I've been talking about this stuff for a while now in the Codehaus and SMBX Discord servers, but for everyone who hasn't been privvy to those posts, here's a quick overview of where we're at.

SMBX2 is an open-source framework built around SMBX, but not in the way a lot of popular open-source software is. Software like Godot and Blender use the bazaar model of development, with a public repository and communal contributions, while we've used the cathedral model: the main development repository is private but releases and the repos for compiled elements (the editor, the music engine, and LunaDLL/LunaLua) are open. In short, one can already take a clean installation of SMBX2 and make that the basis of a new repo that'd resemble the main private one. The things exclusive to the private dev repo are really just the website HTML, files necessary for releases (the changelog and scripts to generate the installers) and individual developers' experimental branches.

With that said, X2 dev is reaching its end under the current development team, with almost all of the core contributors having burned out, quit, moved on, and/or become too busy to contribute regularly. This includes Emral, who left the team early last year; Proloe, the current team lead and owner of the engine's Gitlab repository; and Rednaxela, the primary LunaLua developer. The biggest reason Patch 3 took so long to get out was that we were waiting on Red simply finding the time to finish ASM work that only they were able to do.

I'm currently serving as something of an interim lead trying to facilitate a final Patch 4 (or at least a hotfix), but frankly I am NOT qualified to take over the technical duties and responsibilities of the above people and I've been feeling ready to move on from basegame dev myself. As such, Proloe, Red, and I are looking to make sure the repository is left in capable hands via transferring ownership of the repo to a new project lead and/or making it fully public. The latter WILL happen if the former doesn't, but also if any one person is to inherit the project then we want to make sure the community is able to give their input on the matter.

The initial plan was to have this discussion in either the Codehaus Discord server, the main home of X2's development for the last three betas, or the SMBX Discord server, where a big chunk of the English-speaking SMBX community is. But with the recent rumors of Discord going public and its accelerated enshittification this year, the future of the platform is especially uncertain. And this is too important of a discussion to have in a space closed off from search engines anyway, so we're doing it here on the forums instead.

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Here's roughly what we're looking for: people are free to volunteer to adopt the repo themselves, nominate others, and vouch for existing nominees. Other discussion of X2's development and related subjects is fine, but I'd appreciate it if folks could post the candidate talk first and keep all other stuff as a separate paragraph.

Some additional notes:

• We don't want to just foist the repo on someone who doesn't want it, so in the end we'll only be considering people who volunteer or accept nominations from others. If you don't do either, we'll assume you're not interested.

• If you volunteer or accept a nomination but later change your mind or something comes up, please either say so in a new post or go back and edit that part of your post to cross it out.

• You don't have to be a current or former member of the X2 dev team to be a viable candidate. It helps, but there's a lot of capable people in the SMBX community who were never closely involved with basegame work.

• If you're volunteering without first being nominated yourself, I ask that you also nominate or +1 at least one other person.

• To be clear, this is not an election. The community's preferences will still factor substantially into the final decision, but it's not just a matter of who gets the most votes.

• Again, if we have no candidates by the end, the repo WILL become public by default. Even if it does get a new owner, though, they may choose to switch to bazaar-model development and make it public anyway! So there's a higher likelihood of the repo becoming public than remaining private.

With all that said, we're not trying to be hyper-formal about this stuff! If you don't want to be a repo owner candidate yourself, don't worry too much about the above notes; you should be fine just following the general example of the people that posted before you.

The current plan is to close this thread sometime mid-April; two to three weeks seems like enough time for everyone to say their part. We're open to keeping it going longer if necessary, but it'd be best not to drag things out too much -- ideally we'll be able to read through these discussions and make the final decision in time to transfer/open the repo with Patch 4's launch (or a reasonable time after the hotfix if P4 doesn't happen.)

EDIT:
The closure date is Monday, April 21st.

[MegaDood]

I'd be interested in volunteering myself, as I feel I would keep things safe and organized. Me and a number of folks are part of a server I began called "The Rip Lair", where many projects are run by myself and others, and ensured things go smoothly and are well organized. For example, the online gfx pack and the powerup pack, I feel this would be a decent starting point in terms of managing and such.

As for nominations, I would like to nominate MrDoubleA, as he's very knowledgeable in many fields of computer programming.

[Emral]

whatever happens, my sole thought is that the community is too sparse in visionary programmers with a lot of free time on their hands for the existing development pattern to continue. whoever gets the repo ought to make it public, but also shield it from feature bloat.

i think the best way for the project to proceed would be an increased focus on seamless integration of community assets and not worrying about growing out the core to insanity, as that is what scared all the 2015-2018 devs away who made a half-complete npc and then left when it came time to make sure it doesnt break horribly (at which point i had to fix all of them). better features to focus on would lower the barrier to entry and make the game more intuitive, i think.

[ds-sloth]

I'm happy to help out in a management capacity if the community would value my services here. I've gained quite a few open-source project management skills (knowing when to say no, how to prioritize, etc) through my work as a lead developer of TheXTech since 2023. I don't have any strong vision for X2 myself, so if I were to serve in this capacity I'd want the former team and community to decide on a vision for X2 (see TheXTech's project vision -- I expect X2's to be very different). I can also help out with C++ bugfixes and PGE-FL. Not with Lua, ASM, or the editor.

[Edit] I see the "no volunteer-only posts" message. I'd want to nominate sarn if they are interested in any capacity, though I know they have quite a bit of other stuff on their plate. I think that their experimental VB6 -> C++ work could lead to a very bright future for X2.

[DRACalgar Law]

While I may have at least two years of experience in computer science and video game design, I know I still have ways to go for my skills. Making my own content had been much fun, no matter how challenging or even limited it can become for me. So I'd have no interest in overseeing the repo.

Comparing myself to MegaDood, I know I am behind him and he gladly takes his time whenever he can. He is more prepared than I am, and he even made many stuff that requires organizing and having the knowledge in programming.

Edited: Also nominate MrDoubleA for not only how experienced he is but also how much knowledge he has managed in programming.

[Chipss]

To get this out of the way, I would completely support all three of the current nominations (MegaDood, MrDoubleA, and ds-sloth). I have no interest in managing the repo/project myself, but I would like to give my two cents if that's alright.

Emral already somewhat alluded to it themselves so I won't bother repeating myself too much in this post, but I agree that adding essentially any new NPCs, blocks, BGOs to basegame is largely pointless and would lead to unnecessary bloat. Not only is simply adding things like these to basegame much more of an undertaking than simply releasing content on the forums, especially with the case of anything that utilizes its own custom code in any capacity, there is also the added responsibility of maintaining these things with each subsequent iteration to the engine. The pressure and expectations are much lower with non-basegame content simply because there is no guarantee that it will play nice with every other aspect of the engine.

I think the main focus of someone who takes the reins would be seeing if they can spearhead an integration directly with the engine to install custom content into episodes and levels, rather than having to do manual downloads and file management (since that's difficult for a lot of people these days, apparently). Ideally, this would involve some sort of baked-in GUI within the editor that makes seamlessly curating the assets available to you in the editor without ever leaving the window.

To that same end, I believe we've largely reached a logical conclusion with most aspects of the engine and LunaLua. At least in my projects, I rarely run into scenarios where I "can't" implement something in the way I've envisioned it, and I think Beta 5 was what finally led us to this aforementioned conclusion. Like I hinted at above, the editor itself is probably the most lacking part of the entire package, at least in my opinion. There are a lot of aspects within it that I wish could be more dynamic or just downright different. Some have even suggested starting from scratch and making an entirely new editor, which if that seems like the easier option, I would be all for it.

At any rate, even if nothing ends up happening in the future, I am more than happy with what we have now. I'd also like to personally point out the selflessness and passion of everyone who has worked on/contributed to SMBX2 so far, and those who may contribute in the future. I am beyond thankful for the creative expression that SMBX2 has afforded me and the passion of the community surrounding it, as well as all the delightful experiences I have been lucky to have thanks to everyone else's creations. I guess that is the essence of why this game exists, and what will keep it moving into the future.

[FutureNyanCat]

I'll agree with Chipss on supporting all three nominations so far:
MrDoubleA has already become an X2 dev and has provided some bug fixes, additional NPCs and even helping out with code in my SMBX2 projects, and has a lot of experience in LunaLua which is showcased especially well in his NPC pack, Super Mario and the Rainbow Stars and ATWE. I'd say he could fare a lot well in managing the main repository for SMBX2.

I also nominated MegaDood since he's also very experienced in programming and as he said, there are a lot of places to get started eg. the Rip Lair Powerups Pack and GFX pack. DS-Sloth as well since he also bridges knowledge about the 1.3 source code/TheXTech/Moondust editor with SMBX2, and could be of help in facilitating any possible improvements to the editor.

Also, I'd like to nominate sarn as well, given some advanced stuff was made by him including the addition of semisolid slopes and other things that I thought would be normally impossible, but also I'd like to acknowledge him taking his time on other things in real life, as per the other X2 devs.

I am unable to take responsibility for ownership for the SMBX2 repository, as my coding experience is far from high-level. The most I could do is contribute rewrites of various basegame NPCs which I included in my NPC pack (eg. the Kamikaze/rainbow shells and the Propeller Blocks), but I'd honestly think we don't need anymore NPCs at this point. I could suggest to focus less on addition of new NPCs but rather bug fixes and occasional overhauls to various stuff (like the world map, player framework/custom powerups, and additional SDL Mixer X/music/sound features) which could be feasible for a lot of use cases in future betas.

[Squishy Rex]

It's good to see some really thoughtful discussion being put forward so far, I hope it continues. We've got a lot of talent in this community, and to see the repo become public will allow many users to both show off their skills, but also further develop them and potentially contribute so much more to a game we love. With that said, the continuation of X2 will rely on a solid team of individuals, and with the nominations given thus far, I can wholly agree with all of them. Each nominee so far brings their own skill set and plenty of evidence to back up their capabilities, which is exactly what any form of team needs.

To the list of nominations, I would also like to add MrNameless, for much the same reasons as MegaDood at the very least. Nameless, you're a competent coder and your work on the Power-Up Pack and Wario rewrite alone are perfect proof of it and you're a pleasure to work with in a team setting.

To address the few people who have spoken to me (on Discord) about being part of the dev team in the future. While I don't want to use it as an excuse, I make it no secret that I can't code much of anything, and with the current projects I'm involved in, I'm not sure I can devote the time X2 development requires. I am more than happy to volunteer, at least in what capacity I can, and see what happens, however I just can't guarantee I'd be the best fit for what is needed. That said I do appreciate you suggesting it to me, it means a lot.

Thanks again to the current team for all your hard work on X2 over the last few years, and giving 1.3 the new life it deserved. For some of us, it's the SMBX 1.4 that never was and to see it become what it has is pretty special. None of this would have been possible without you guys.

[FireSeraphim]

I also would like to nominate MrDoubleA, Megadood and ds-sloth as well. I think they would do a better job with the project overall and I wish to air a lingering grievance of mine regarding basegame assets. It seems like the previous team slacked on the little details and bits of polish for certain NPCs (silent boomerang from the Boomerang Bro, I'm looking at you) and then there's certain sets of NPCs that need a rewrite to make them more feature complete and less buggy that I was hoping the previous dev team would eventually go back and either fix or redo (the basegame barrel cannons, there's still issues with them regarding their firing the player and how it's still tied to run speed and the need to hold the run button for max distance in addition to the troublesome interactions between the barrel cannon and the leaf powerup). I know you guys seem to think otherwise but polish is necessary. There's also a certain set of blocks needed for basegame that should have been there but aren't, in this case a variant of the character block that's only solid to the character the player is currently playing as. I hope the new dev team considers my words here at the very least.

[ShadowStarX]

I'd like to suggest the following people and hopefully explain the whys on each as well. Many of them will be repeats, but I'd like to add why I think they're qualified.
These 3 people are those who I'd trust the most:

• MrDoubleA: He is experienced and talented at writing scripts and is part of the SMBX2 dev team, also seems capable of organizing and has explained to me how to use GitHub Desktop.
• Sarn: Her contributions to Beta 4 and 5 have been game changers from what I've seen. Her programming insight seems quite strong, but on her other skills such as organization I think people who actually worked with her know more. Her knowledge on low and medium level programming languages seems more than valuable, and crucial for the SMBX2 engine. She should definitely not be overlooked.
• MegaDood: Seems to be doing a really good job at managing the Rip Lair (people have already gone into detail on that part), has a track record of writing useful scripts and is one of the most engaged members of the community in general with a flexible attitude.

However I'd also like to suggest possibly thinking about having at least 2 backup owners, for safety reasons, in case the new owner would become less active for one reason or another. And for that I'd like to list a few other names who I think would be qualified candidates. Granted going public would probably be preferred.

• Marioman2007: Talented at making custom NPCs and other LunaLua scripts, contributing a lot of useful custom assets to the community.
• DS Sloth: A developer of TheXTech who seems to be experienced in project management.
• Supermario1313: A talented programmer with a super helpful attitude. I also recall him giving decent suggestions on writing documentation for non-SMBX related subjects.
• Kate Bun: Formerly developed a fork for TheXTech with lots of features implemented by her.
• MrNameless: He is quite experienced in writing LunaLua scripts, as are others among the people I listed. Also seems to be managing the powerup pack rather well.
• Lusho: He has a versatile skillset in making custom libraries for SMBX2, though his activity seems somewhat sporadic.

And somewhat related to Emral's points: I don't really see the point of adding new NPCs or blocks/BGOs with unique functionality, as general polish, wrapping up the playables, expanding powerup+mount functionality and making world maps more robust (via WLDX) seem like something that'd inspire users more than 173 additional NPCs with niche applications.

[CALIFAX[1773]]

My deepest support to the developers of SMBX2, I hope they find the capable and responsible staff to take on the role of "game leader" and "programmers".

I'm not very good at Lua, but I do have experience drawing sprites, so maybe I can help with something related to that. Best of luck!

[Master of Disaster]

I can only repeat the fact that I deem the ones who get mentioned here the most, notably MDA, MegaDood and Sarn, but honestly all nominees I've seen here, capable of potentially leading the repo going forward.
One thing to keep in mind though is that MDA, Sarn and MrNameless (and probably some others that were mentioned or are yet to be mentioned) haven't partaken in this discussion yet (to my knowledge). Because of that I think it's best to take their inclusion in this list with a grain of salt, since there's a good chance they doesn't actually want to take over project management, which is absolutely understandable and should be respected. So I'll just hope that they won't be pressured into a decision they aren't satisfied with.

I'm happy to also see concerns of feature bloat in this discussion, because that was a main fear of me as well.
On that topic I think it'd be important to focus on utilities first; libraries like spawnzones.lua and if you ask me, also customCamera.lua are absolutely essential for level design, and while I can see the latter not necessarily being basegame due to reserve item jank for example, spawnzones.lua should absolutely be a block in basegame imo. It's an absolutely crucial utility and it would at least save a slight bit of importing when starting a project, but also help others discovering it's utility.

Having the repo going public is probably the best option going forward. As for myself, while I doubt I am fit for managing the project or being part of the dev team itself, I am still more than happy to help out where I can!

[Emral]

spawnzones.lua should absolutely be a block in basegame imo. It's an absolutely crucial utility and it would at least save a slight bit of importing when starting a project, but also help others discovering it's utility.

What should and shouldn't be basegame is a discussion for a different thread, I think. But to briefly address the claim: Spawnzones never became basegame because they shouldn't be a block or a water zone, but have a dedicated editor button for "zone". The logistics of adding this are to basically rework how liquids are handled by the editor and to rename them to zones, then add a type parameter for liquids to PGE-FL and adjust the ffi_liquids class on smbx side. It's not nothing but it's also not an unknown.
Anecdotally I also haven't used it in my past 200ish levels so I don't think it's super essential. Thankfully it's one of the easiest things to import for those who need it.

[MrDoubleA]

So, I'd be happy to volunteer. To blow my own trumpet a bit: I am one of the few people who know how to do ASM patches and I know a lot about the internals of the engine.

However, I can't say I have much of a "vision" for the engine. With the beta 5 additions (especially resolution changes and collision groups), I'm very happy with the state of SMBX2. There's only a few things off the top of my head that I could say I want: merging some of sarn's changes, automatic window resizing, a handful of bug fixes. Maybe also better online integration, at least something that doesn't require users to manually change their install.

Still, I feel like large-scale system changes like overhauling the character and powerup systems are unlikely to happen on a basegame level any time soon. Possible - especially if people like Nameless, Megadood and Marioman2007 are on the team - but unlikely, still, largely due to the significant number of C++ changes needed and the lack of people to do them.

On that note, I'd also like to nominate ds-sloth. He has incredible C++ experience and probably the best knowledge 1.3's internals out of anybody.

[Benial]

I've talked about it a little on discord before, but I feel as if the engine as a whole is in a pretty solid place at this point, so we can afford to have development kind of ease up a bit naturally and hone in on more specific changes spread out over time. I think sarn's development branch kind of gives a good template for what sort of things make sense for future updates, with a mix of opening up systems that were previously locked down before (in that branch, custom powerups and mounts, going forwards things like a proper zones class) alongside tweaks to existing systems that could do with some attention (megashroom being fun to use there, maybe some better way of handling asset packs that cuts down on all the juggling of file names?). Features smaller than that are better saved as being scripts that creators can choose to install themselves rather than being integrated into the game and then themselves being left without attention - I'm thinking about a breath meter script has lived in the Legacy folder since beta 4. Whoever is picked to inherit the repo, I think project management and being able to properly maintain it in a way that keeps the game healthy long-term is equally important - if not moreso - than practical coding skills and engine familiarity.

All this being said, the people I can think to nominate have all already been brought up, MDA, Nameless, Sarn, ds-sloth, Kate Bun, Megadood, so I feel I'd just be wasting words going over the same justifications already given for them (subject to their own willingness to take it on, of course).

This has been your biennial Benial post on the forums

[DisasterMaster]

I want to first give my thanks to all the X2 devs for your hard work over the years. You've given us one of the most powerful Mario editors because of it. 

I fully support MegaDood, MDA, & ds-sloth to take the reins.
I don't think I can say anything that hasn't been said already. Each would bring their uniquely valuable expertise and could integrate their knowledge to keep X2 improving for years to come.

[Lusho]

seems like things have kind of settled, but I figured I could still give my opinion.
Honestly it's not really different to whats already been said by others, I'd be willing to help on the project, though my knowledge beyond Lua is rather limited.
On the direction on the project, I agree that level elements shouldn't be a priority anymore, we've added as many as is reasonable to add, arguably even too many, and more can always be added via custom range so it's fine. Development focusing on bugfixes and making the project easier for end users seems like a good idea, and more long term there's the world map,playables,c++ port stuff.
I'm definitely happy with the current state of the project since I feel we kinda just can do anything we want in terms of levels, besides specific niche stuff like complex collisions of course.

I think I could nominate MegaDood, Sarn, ds-sloth and MDA due to their knowledge and skill. MegaDood specifically seems very capable from the project management side having done other projects with the rip lair, but the others have a lot of merit too.

[Supermario1313]

I'm volunteering! I think I have enough experience in low level programming and assembly to meaningfully contribute to the more technical side of the engine, which I've already done in the past (see: https://github.com/WohlSoft/LunaLua/com ... rmario1313).

Regarding possible evolutions for the engine, here's a short list of features I have in mind:

• Variant sprites/Alternate GFX
• OpenCL/Compute shaders for GPU programming
• A compatibility mode system to allow playing older episodes with full compatibility (I know it has been mentioned by the current dev team on Codehaus before but I think it's a really good idea)
• Actually finishing making physics defines player-independant
• Maybe fixing certain SMBX 1.3 bugs (I don't have any in mind right now)

As for my nominations, I think MrDoubleA and Sarn would be perfectly qualified to take the helm of the engine. They are already familiar with the project since they're both SMBX2 devs already. Furthermore, they're knowledgeable about both the Lua side and the C++/ASM side of the engine.

[Hoeloe]

[*] OpenCL/Compute shaders for GPU programming

I would be careful of this one - while it would be awesome for a lot of things (like making Particles more performant), it'll also massively increase the minimum required spec to run SMBX2. I'm not saying not to do it, but... it's worth being cautious about!

[Rixitic]

Hey all! Apologies for being absent here after making the thread -- I have been following along, but between trouble logging in on my phone and other stuff going on while I've been at the computer I haven't gotten to responding to anything here.

I'm happy to see as much turnout as there's been here so far, as well as the support for switching to bazaar development! While it's still up to the person who inherits the repo how they handle development going forward, I certainly wouldn't mind seeing SMBX2 shift to community-driven development with future discussion threads here on the forums for a project vision page/document and similar stuff. (I know proloe has recently asked about keeping dev discussions in codehaus in the short term, and we do still have stuff like the Github and Gitlab updates channel in there, but if development does end up being crowdsourced to a greater extent following the transfer then I still think it's worth migrating away from a walled-garden platform that, for all we know, could go bottoms-up within the next year.)

Having backup owners is also a good idea, though it would require coordination between them and the main owner. I'll fork the repo myself after the patch 4 code freeze -- which is still the end of the month for the time being, but I might push it into May or later depending on how much longer the hotfix takes and other factors -- and before we pick the new owner proloe and I will check in with our top 3 or so candidates in case any of them would also be open to maintaining backup forks. Of course, the new owner could also just appoint backup owners themselves, or if anyone here is interested then please say so; if you don't specify what you're volunteering for going forward, we'll assume it's repo ownership.

(To be clear, if the new owner chooses to keep the main repo private I will not make my own backup fork public until a time I'm reasonably certain it's been abandoned. I also can't guarantee everything will make it downstream to my fork in a timely manner, so I'm really hoping it won't be the only one...)

On that note, it's high time I set a proper date for the end of this thread. Does the 19th still count as mid-April? I'm counting it. Let's have this thread locked on the 19th, whatever time is most convenient for the staff member who handles it. That gives folks roughly a week to make further nominations, volunteer, withdraw, or just add to what folks have already said about the repo, basegame, etc.