SMBX2 Development Blog

Hey, Rixithechao here! It’s been quite a while, hasn’t it? A ton has happened since the last blog post so here’s a long-overdue overview of the big points.

The current SMBX2 version

First and foremost, the current version of SMBX2 is Beta 5 Patch 4! We recommend you update to it if you haven’t already, it fixes some major security issues with previous versions of Beta 5 (and adds both new tilesets and quality-of-life features to LunaLua. But you really should update because of the vulnerabilities.)

The new team

Secondly, there’s a new development team behind X2! You can read all about that in this thread over on the main English-speaking SMBX forums, but to summarize: most of the original team had moved on so I ended up serving as interim project lead on behalf of Proloe for a bit. We elected a new team of three co-leads, MegaDood, MrDoubleA, and ds-sloth; they have since brought on a fourth member, Supermario1313. All four are extremely capable and sensible developers so this engine is in good hands, and as of Patch 4’s release they are officially in charge! I’m mainly sticking around in a transitional capacity — helping to get them access to everything they need, getting the ball rolling with this blog again, etc.

The upcoming repo restructure

As mentioned in the SMBX forums thread, along with the team shake-up we’ve also been planning a rework to the main development repository to make it more open — a restructured public repo that allows for communal contributions and forks instead of the partial “cathedral” model we’ve been using with only public repos for the binary blob components (the editor, LunaDLL, SDL Mixer X, etc). That’s still planned, but it’s been pushed back until after the team finishes a hotfix for issues introduced in patch 4’s security fixes; once the hotfix is out the new team will begin working on the repo overhaul right away, so the day when everyone will be able to contribute to SMBX2 in the same way as software like Godot and Blender is just beyond the horizon.

An important note about recent misuse of the engine

As much as there is to be excited about in SMBX2’s future, there is one BIG point of concern: it’s been brought to our attention that some people are selling modified copies of SMBX2 and content made for the engine on Tiktok. Let me be crystal clear, on behalf of both the old development team and the new one,

WE DO NOT CONDONE, AFFILIATE WITH, OR OTHERWISE SUPPORT MONETIZING SMBX2, CUSTOM ASSETS, LEVELS, EPISODES, OR ANYTHING ELSE MADE FOR THE ENGINE, IN ANY CAPACITY.

We’ve been developing this engine in our own time and at our own expense for fans of the Super Mario games to enjoy entirely freely, and profiting off of it not only goes against that spirit but puts the both engine and the passionate communities that have been built around it at serious risk.

There’s a more complete report here at the Spanish-speaking forum SMBX Equipo Estelar that goes into more information about the situation and makes some recommendations we STRONGLY encourage everyone to follow (English and Chinese translations are available at the bottom of that thread.) Massive thanks to DavFar, the leader of Equipo Estelar, for all his work in investigating this group and compiling that post.

We’ll be looking into potential deterrents and safeguards against this kind of gross exploitation that we can implement in future versions of SMBX2, but for now we’re aware of discussions in the broader community to develop anti-exploitation features for episodes and levels as well as other methods of dealing with them outside of the basegame. If you’re working on SMBX content yourself, please consider participating in these conversations and/or integrating such measures in your own work.

In conclusion

Apologies for the first blog post in a while taking such a serious turn! For my part, I’m still cautiously optimistic about the future of this engine and its community, but we are at a crossroads right now. Let’s all do what we can to ensure this new era of SMBX is a bright one, and I hope everyone is looking forward to what the new team has in store just as I am!

To leave things on a lighter note, let’s round this post off by spotlighting some recently-released episodes: Project Oil by Blake Izayoi, Wario and the Tower of Garlic by Darkonius and KBM-Quine*, and the Rip Lair’s collab The Rip-Princess Cliché!

*The long-awaited Delightful Adventure 2 is a more recent release by these two but I was also involved in that one so, uh… kind of a conflict of interest there! But I also can’t not mention it, and we are proud of our work on it so we would still greatly appreciate y’all checking it out!!!

https://docs.codehaus.moe/#/

Thank you for your patience! the documentation page is now up-to-date with most of the new features from the update.

We’ll continue to expand the documentation over time, until the codebase is fully documented.

The time for spotlights has ended. Thanks for reading these past 2 weeks. Join us tomorrow, Feb 4th at 9:00AM GMT for the trailer and release of the new update!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15ia-OiEFzQ

The REAL winner of the upcoming patch is the Airship level. With the addition of a plethora of tiles, burner- and cannon-related NPCs, and pretty new night sky backgrounds, this aesthetic is nigh unrecognizable when compared to a vanilla airship level from any prior version.

Customizable rotation, scale, projectile and angle make every one of those elements a major threat in and of itself. But add to that the threat of being so enamored by the cuteness of the Burner Beetle, or the allure of the Step-Activated Burner, and Mario (or Luigi (or Peach (or Toad (or Link (or someone else))))) stands no chance against Bowser’s newest artillery.

The frightening fish that eats you whole makes a splash in SMBX2. Here to add a constant threat to your water levels, this fish comes with options for automatic respawn, similar to its friend, the Magikoopa.

Boss Bass comes with a ton of NPC config variables to help them feel just at home in your level. Don’t like instakill? Set nohurt to false. Want the player to hitch a ride? eatingkillsplayer is for you. Between jumpspeedx/y, canjump, followsplayer, eatsound, alwayseats, hitbox configurations and the ability to hold them to use them as a weapon that eats other NPCs, what might appear to be a shallow NPC on the surface ends up having a lot of depth.

We’re all familiar with the infinite grass generator. Especially in boss fights, it is often used to provide the player with ammunition against the foe at hand. But sometimes you want ammo without the quirks of SMBX’s generators. Sometimes, all you want is to give them as much as they want. Enter, the Clear Vase.

The replenishable stack of items held in the clear vase can be set to only show the item itself. The primary use case for this is to allow the newly added Clawgrip to pull an infinite stack of rocks from his stash. But you can put anything into clear vases, even Luigi. And I mean, honestly? You should.

Line guides are incredibly versatile components that lend themselves well to a variety of use cases ranging from hard platforming segments to aesthetic flourishes. But what if you were able to stop things along the track…? Meet: The line stop, a new background object you can place along your line guides to stop any guided NPCs moving across the track.

With a configurable timer, this BGO makes a whole new range of line guided shenanigans possible. Offsetting NPCs on different tracks goes without saying, but if you want to park your car (NPC), you can set the timer to 0 seconds (which is interpreted as infinity), and it will stay put until something hides the line stop.

One of the new NPCs coming in the new update is the Twister! First introduced in Super Mario Maker 2, and later ported to SMBX by KateBun, this NPC provides a silly new way for players and NPCs alike to get around.

Whether you use them as a makeshift wind turbine or merely a particle generator, these little guys are sure to “up” the ante in your levels.

Added field collisionGroup – Setting this string variable causes the Block/NPC/Player to ignore collision with all other objects that share the same collisionGroup
Added verletrope as a new standard library for simulating verlet rope physics (used by Chain Chomps)
Added a data table to players, similar to NPCs and blocks
Added xscale and yscale parameters for effect txt files (default: 1, can be a range)
Added inClearPipe and inLaunchBarrel fields for players
Added: A BGO that causes NPCs on a Line Guide to pause

Starting tomorrow, the structure of these will change a little. A more focused highlight of individual additions. See you then!