TheXTech and X2: opportunities for improvement
Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2025 7:00 pm
This morning I read an interesting but over-enthusiastic topic about TheXTech and X2. Even though it was a bit biased, I have to say that it made me happy that our work is being appreciated. I'd like to share some of my goals for TheXTech and get some feedback from the community about how it and X2 can help each other grow.
Goals of TheXTech
TheXTech is a source port and continuation of SMBX 1.3. It aims to be the best way to play SMBX 1.3 episodes. At the heart of TheXTech is the goal of allowing the player to customize gameplay to their liking while still maintaining a high degree of polish.
I like to say that X2 is designed to put power in the hands of the content creator and TheXTech is designed to put power in the hands of the player (and I don't see this as a pro or con of either -- just a difference).
It's not clear to me to what extent TheXTech should become its own content standard apart from SMBX 1.3 and X2. I don't want to contribute to fragmentation, but I'd also love to get some new episodes that can be played on all the devices TheXTech supports.
Features of TheXTech
In case you aren't familiar with TheXTech, I'll quickly share some of the big features that have made it into the various TheXTech releases (or that are currently in our dev builds):
I'm not nearly as familiar with X2 as many people in the community, but I want to note that a lot of the above features can also be achieved in X2 (eg, there are scripts for screen transition effects or for non-800x600 resolutions).
Needless to say, X2 also has *much* more flexible scripting than TheXTech, and it has tons of episodes that leverage this scripting to do amazing and unexpected things.
Why this thread?
I'm interested to hear more from the community about how they're using TheXTech. Which features do you appreciate? Which don't you care much about? What do you think is missing?
There will be many more planning threads for X2 later, but I'm also curious to hear about opportunities for TheXTech and X2 to improve by exchanging ideas. Are there features of TheXTech that you miss when playing X2? Any X2 features you think belong in TheXTech?
Goals of TheXTech
TheXTech is a source port and continuation of SMBX 1.3. It aims to be the best way to play SMBX 1.3 episodes. At the heart of TheXTech is the goal of allowing the player to customize gameplay to their liking while still maintaining a high degree of polish.
I like to say that X2 is designed to put power in the hands of the content creator and TheXTech is designed to put power in the hands of the player (and I don't see this as a pro or con of either -- just a difference).
It's not clear to me to what extent TheXTech should become its own content standard apart from SMBX 1.3 and X2. I don't want to contribute to fragmentation, but I'd also love to get some new episodes that can be played on all the devices TheXTech supports.
Features of TheXTech
In case you aren't familiar with TheXTech, I'll quickly share some of the big features that have made it into the various TheXTech releases (or that are currently in our dev builds):
- Console ports: TheXTech supports all sorts of consoles from DSi to Switch. I could write a whole post on the technical work I did to reduce the game's CPU and RAM consumption, but that's not the focus of this thread.
- Autocode support: it's possible to play many Autocode episodes like A2XT1: Analogue Funk or Superb Demo Sisters in TheXTech.
- Bitmask rendering: transparent GIF graphics are drawn exactly the same way you remember them in SMBX 1.3 -- a bit strange, but full of character. For X2-style alpha blending you can convert your transparent graphics to PNG.
- Audiovisual polish: I wouldn't normally have put this on a list of our features, but it was mentioned in the above topic. TheXTech has some nice screen fade transitions and audio effects.
- UI and episode translation: the interface can be displayed in a number of languages. If an episode creator wants to, they can also add translations of the entire episode to multiple languages.
- 4P split/shared screen: up to four players can join in coop or battle mode. The player can choose to play in shared or split screen, and (for big 4K TVs) can even get a full 1280x720 window for each of the four players.
- Dynamic resolution: the player can choose whatever resolution they want to play in. Under the hood the game keeps track of an 800x600 camera and uses it for critical Event-related logic.
- Modern menus: there is an updated character select designed by Savby and an options menu that allows the game to be fully configured on consoles.
- Single-file episodes (dev feature): TheXTech can load compressed episodes from a high-performance archive indexed format based on the ISO and LZ4 standards. This allows episodes to be copied to phones or consoles as a single file, without a slow extraction process.
I'm not nearly as familiar with X2 as many people in the community, but I want to note that a lot of the above features can also be achieved in X2 (eg, there are scripts for screen transition effects or for non-800x600 resolutions).
Needless to say, X2 also has *much* more flexible scripting than TheXTech, and it has tons of episodes that leverage this scripting to do amazing and unexpected things.
Why this thread?
I'm interested to hear more from the community about how they're using TheXTech. Which features do you appreciate? Which don't you care much about? What do you think is missing?
There will be many more planning threads for X2 later, but I'm also curious to hear about opportunities for TheXTech and X2 to improve by exchanging ideas. Are there features of TheXTech that you miss when playing X2? Any X2 features you think belong in TheXTech?