Following advice from Krissy and others, I have implemented this Modern Item Drop for TheXTech. The basic workflow is that (1) the item quickly slides to be 160px above the player, (2) follows the player for 45 frames, and (3) then it drops using the normal SMBX 1.3 routine. To prevent excessive griefing in multiplayer and Battle Mode, the item cannot be grabbed until stage 3. The goal of this mechanism is to slightly slow down the player (like SMBX 1.3 item drop does), but to reduce differences based on screen size or player count. For compatibility purposes (such as cutscenes that force the player to lose their item), the SMBX 1.3 behavior is used during cutscenes.
Here's a screen recording of Modern Item Drop in action. If you want to test it out yourself, please download a current CI build of the Config Branch, and play in Modern Mode.
Before finalizing this, I want approval from the community. My plan is for the feature to be enabled for all players playing SMBX 1.3 episodes in Modern Mode, so it needs to work well for nearly everyone. I'm running this poll for a week. If it gets >2/3 approval with at least 10 community members voting, we'll use this implementation in TheXTech 1.3.7 and later versions. Otherwise, I'll make changes based on the community's feedback and run another poll.
