Branches of Super Mario Bros. X
Super Mario Bros. X - (commonly known as "SMBX"', see the main article) is a Mario fan game engine, originally written by Andrew "Redigit" Spinks in 2009 on Visual Basic 6 (VB6). After the game's development was stopped, several attempts to develop a successor started independently from each other.
Main branches
These are the main branches of the game: all them are in active development and maintenance (except Redigit's original branch, which was abandoned in 2011).
Super Mario Bros. X 1.3
(Also known as Vanilla) This is the main branch of the game, the origin for all other game branches. It was released in 2009 and supported until 2011 (the last version of the game was out in October 2010). This game defines the SMBX64 standard used to maintain the compatibility between different branches of SMBX. Until February 2, 2020, the game's source-code remained closed. With time, the game has attracted various modders and hackers who developed their own extensions and modifications of the game's executable file. The most notable of these modifications is the LunaDLL library made by Kil and published on the Talkhaus community forum. Later, the LunaDLL library has improved and extended by Kevsoft who added the lua scripting language into it. The library has been renamed into LunaLua, and became the base of the SMBX2-project later.
Note: SMBX 1.3.0.1 is a minor graphical update released in 2013 by the SuperMarioBrosX.org staff. The engine is the same as SMBX 1.3, only game resources and some of the embedded pictures were changed.
Moondust Project
Moondust Project / Platform Game Engine Project - It's not an actually a branch of SMBX. This is the project by Wohlstand founded in February 2014 after finishing the initial SMBX64 research. It consists of a game engine and a development kit for it. This is the first SMBX successor project which provides full compatibility with the original SMBX's stuff and can work with SMBX specific stuff natively: The Moondust Editor can open, edit, and play SMBX levels and episodes with TheXTech or the experimental Moondust Engine. You can edit and create new levels, world maps, NPC configs and use them in the original SMBX. The project itself has a focus on making brand new games from the ground up using the functionality of the Engine rather than being just another clone of the SMBX game. Unlike previous SMBX successors, Moondust is coded in C++ and aims to be cross-platform: It supports Linux, Windows and Mac OS X, and later Android. Unlike SMBX, Moondust is going for a multi-component system that includes Editor, Engine, and additional tools. While the engine is in a development state, the editor is using by the community as a more advanced alternate editing toolset to work with SMBX levels and episodes.
Super Mario Bros. X by 38A
SMBX-38A, also known as SMBX 1.4 - is a Mario fan game engine, written by 5438A38A as an unofficial successor to the original Super Mario Bros. X by Redigit, developed from the ground up as a clone of SMBX with the addition of several new features. Initially it was thought to be fake. On September 13, 2015, Snoopy Tour made a post with a link to Baidu where an unofficial "SMBX 1.4.1" was published, but people did not believe him. Kevsoft looked for a download link and finally found it, downloaded a recent build from Baidu Pan, and tried to test it on Windows 7 x64, but failed. When he sent this build to Wohlstand, he found a way to run it in Windows XP using VirtualBox[1]. Later Wohlstand contacted the original author and cooperated with him. This project adds many in-game elements, majorly extends the world map functionality, and introduces its own scripting system called TeaScript which uses a VB-like language for the code.
Super Mario Bros. X2
Super Mario Bros. X2 (SMBX2) - is an extension mod of SMBX 1.3, combining the LunaLua framework with the Moondust Devkit (formerly known as PGE) (mainly for using its Editor) and adding a brand-new launcher which based on Qt and WebKit (eventually replaced by QWebEngine). It was founded by Horikawa Otane in December 2015 (before that there were early preparation works done in secret). It's positioning itself as a mainstream SMBX that aims to make SMBX 1.3 obsolete, aside from its executable which is used as its core, being enhanced with hacks, extensions, and mods based on the LunaLua framework. Since SMBX2 was founded, LunaLua is no longer releasing as a standalone framework, as it was fully integrated into the SMBX2-project as its main counterpart. This game gives you a lot of new in-game elements and a powerful and flexible lua scripting system that gives a lot of customization abilities.
TheXTech
TheXTech - a platform game engine written in C++, is a full port of SMBX 1.3's source-code which was originally written in Visual Basic 6. Created by Wohlstand one month after the original SMBX's source code has been opened. It was released to the public on March 14, 2020, and has two purposes: providing a free and open-source, cross-platform, and accurate implementation of the SMBX Engine that allows playing old levels and episodes created for the original game by reproducing its behavior; get a more convenient research model for developing the Moondust Engine. Additionally, it has many functional extensions and improvements such as PNG support, GIF recording, LVLX, and WLDX formats support, using the MixerX audio library, sounds.ini and music.ini support, custom player calibrations support, fixing a bunch of vanilla bugs while providing the option to re-enable them back if needed, etc. Unlike the original game, it has support for multiple platforms and operating systems other than Windows such as Linux, macOS, Haiku, Emscripten, and Android. Windows x86_64, and ARM64 builds were also provided.
Episodes compatibility
Most branches have their own set of incompatible features with others. However, there are episodes built with the SMBX64 standard following that will properly work on every branch. The case of incompatibility between each branch requires playing certain episodes on the branch for which it was targeted. Playing episodes on the incompatible engine may also cause odd gameplay behaviour and unexpected appearances of elements (for example, the SMBX2 and SMBX-38A do have their different and incompatible item sets; on the other hand, Moondust Engine is able to use different configuration packages which can provide any different and incompatible item sets to play levels and episodes as expected).
| Episode/Engine | SMBX 1.3 | SMBX-38A | Moondust Engine | SMBX2 | TheXTech |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SMBX64 episode (SMBX 1.3) |
Native | Partially, glitches |
Partially, glitches, missing functionality |
Native | Native |
| Pre-SMBX64 episode (old SMBX versions) |
Partially, glitches[xtra 1] |
Partially, glitches |
Partially, glitches, missing functionality |
Partially, glitches[xtra 1] |
Native with exceptions [xtra 2] |
| SMBX-38A episode | No | Native | Partially, glitches, missing functionality |
No | Partially, glitches, missing functionality, missing items [xtra 3] |
| Moondust Engine episode | No | No | Native | No | Partially, glitches, missing functionality, missing items |
| SMBX2 episode | No | No | Partially, glitches, missing functionality |
Native | Partially, glitches, missing functionality, missing items [xtra 4] |
| TheXTech episode | No | No | Partially, glitches, missing functionality |
No | Native |
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 The first episode of "The Invasion" series will glitch on water levels (the BGO expected to be foreground gets shown as background), and the Bowser battle will be unbeatable because of the disabled section expansion functionality. It got repaired at TheXTech to allow playing old pre-1.3 episodes with no glitches.
- ↑ SMBX versions older than 1.3 had several bugs that were fixed. There may exist some episodes built on these bugs, they may not work, or work incorrectly at SMBX 1.3 and TheXTech.
- ↑ TheXTech doesn't support the TeaScript system and doesn't support a lot of SMBX-38A functionality, however, some levels and episodes saved in the SMBX-38A format may be playable if they follow the SMBX64 standard except the file formats they were saved.
- ↑ TheXTech doesn't support lua scripting and doesn't contain a ton of new-added elements (all non-SMBX64 elements will be turned into goombas and dummy blocks when opening the level). However, TheXTech does support several features supported by Moondust Engine and SMBX2.
Cancelled branches
There are notable early attempts to reconstruct the game but ended up being canceled or abandoned by their developers.
Super Mario Bros: Remastered
Super Mario Bros: Remastered (originally named New Super Mario Bros. X, NSMBX, also known as Super Mario Bros. X Remastered, SMB:R and SMBX:R) was one of the first attempts to continue SMBX after Redigit canceled it. SMB:R had the most publicity in the months of June-September 2011, so it developed the largest community of the smaller spin-off forums (later merged with Cloud's forum), despite not having much progress beyond what was publicized. Unfortunately, Project has been canceled in January of 2012. NSMBX Forums were kept as a backup discussion platform which was sometimes used while the official SMBX forums server went down.
Visual Super Mario Bros. X
Visual Super Mario Bros. X - project by Aero (also known as AeroMatter or GhostHawk) founded in March/April of 2012. The project was made using VisualBasic.NET on .NET Framework 4. The goal of VSMBX was to first recreate SMBX and then add on new features and content with far more flexibility. Starting December 25th of the 2014 year, the source code for VSMBX has been published for everyone. Since August 4 2016, AeroMatter announced discontinuing on the official discussion thread[2].
Super Mario ReInvent
Super Mario ReInvent (formerly known as New Super Mario Bros. X) is an open-source Mario fan-game developed by Core. Initially, it was created as a fork of TheXTech (a C++ port of the original Super Mario Bros. X, and backward-compatible to these engines). And later, the project was put on the road to be rebuilt into Lua using LÖVE 2D[3]. On the state of March 2023, the project is no longer actively maintained for a while.
Other projects
In addition to the projects described above, there are other less significant projects was existed.
- Super Mario Bros. X 1.4 (Don't confuse with SMBX-38A) - Was a fake project made by DuckJohnn as a joke, notable around YouTube. He made a set of fake screenshots using MS-Paint and published them on the SMBX Facebook group around 2011. It was started to be a reason people were too skeptical of any future attempts to make the SMBX successor until some major projects got success later.
- Radish Engine by warioeagle - The SMBX Engine remake project announced by warioeagle at Talkhaus forum on June 3, 2011.[4] Initially project was planned to be built using the C# language and the XNA library. However, later the plan was changed to use the Game Maker 8.1 or Java. The discussion was continued up to the 2012'th year, however, no working demos and results weren't presented. Later, on July 5, 2015, warioeagle wrote to Wohlstand (the creator of Moondust Project, formerly known as PGE Project) to collaborate both projects. However, the conversation wasn't long, then, warioeagle has disappeared.
- SMBX Rebuild by SkyBlueYoshi - The short demo published by SkyBlueYoshi at the SMBX forum on February 11, 2015.[5] The game was made using the Clickteam Fusion 2.5 engine.
- MonoSMBX by darkhog - One another project of the SMBX remake announced on 16'th of December, 2016. It was planned to be written in C# using Mono. There was a short discussion that was ended up quickly and no longer resumed.[6]
- Super Mario Bros. X Java Edition - Was the planned project announced by Chanceux on YouTube and was been planned to be released on April 2021.[7] However, the project has been canceled. No actual working demos and showcases have been released. The author explained the reason for having trouble with using Java.[8]
References
- ↑ Wohlstand's footage of Chinese SMBX 1.4.1 by 5438A38A
- ↑ http://www.smbxgame.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=232724#p232724
- ↑ https://www.smbxgame.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=69&t=25623&start=160#p380917
- ↑ Radish Engine (SMBX Engine Remake) by warioeagle
- ↑ A SMBX Rebuild project by SkyBlueYoshi
- ↑ MonoSMBX (far future)
- ↑ Super Mario Bros X Java Edition Trailer
- ↑ SMBX Java Edition Discontinued
| Super Mario Bros. X |
|---|
Successors: Based on Original Code: Remakes: Further Reading: History of SMBX • Editors comparison • Branches of Super Mario Bros. X |