SURPRISE!

It’s been a while since the last blog post, aplologies for that. There are a lot of features currently WIP and approaching presentability, but nothing quite ready to be showcased. As we move closer to Beta 4’s release, I will post more blog posts as well, so stay tuned!

Today’s highlights aren’t exactly a recent addition, but I noticed they’re something I haven’t covered before, and they’re really useful features:

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Background Object .txt files

The struggles of handpicking BGOs to be replaced based on dimensions and priority are finally over! Beginning with Beta 4, BGOs will be highly and easily customisable. Its features heavily overlap with those from NPC txt files. Configurable properties are:

• width
• height
• frames
• framespeed
• priority

The only unfamiliar one is “priority”, which lets you set the render priority of the BGO. Here’s  a list of render priority values for reference. Yes, you can have background objects in front of the HUD now. Here’s how a level folder might look like with this new feature:

Oh, one more thing: Notice the highlighted item: background-53. Notice how it’s rather big, without having a .txt file attached. This is because the properties “width” and “height” are set automatically to fit the image’s dimensions! Adding large background objects can’t possibly get easier!

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ParalX2: Magnetic Hustle

People often complain about the necessity in using lunalua to get anything out of SMBX2, and I’m happy to announce that these features are just the beginning of us making features more accessible.

People who’ve used paralx for a while might’ve struggled once or twice with setting all the layers up, loading the images, getting things to align well, etc…

Introducing ParalX2! Now you have to write no lua at all to get a really fancy looking parallax going!

Parallax configurations are now stored in .ini files named after the background which the config should apply to. Please note that Because Redigit there is a difference between the ids in the game and in the editor. Here’s an example of a paralx2 setup:

Looking inside, one will find many layers of parallax individually defined, much like a NPC config file:

And further down in the folder are the textures:

The result is a gorgeous and complex sky setting, accomplished without writing any lua code! Details on the configuration files will be publically available when we release Beta 4.

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And that’s it for today, but I’m not quite done with looking at this level. Expect it to return in a future blog post coming soon. And now…

Rocky’s Cereal

You might’ve seen this video making the rounds, but I figured I should spotlight it in particular. It showcases enhanced camera and animation controls.