raocow's talkhaus

I came up with two proposals on how to handle the issue of game resolution, both Standard Definition and sized so that a single screen view is X number of blocks wide and high precisely.

The first is 320x240:

This will create a view 20 blocks wide and 15 high. By automatically porting it to double size (640x480) we'll avoid the problem where other mario fangames are too tiny in Windowed Mode. For comparison, here's Super Mario World:

And 320x240, ported to double size:


The second is 512x384:

The main advantage is it has the largest display (32 x 24 blocks!) but the sprites look a bit small. If we had the option of hitting F2 or F3 to double the Window size, that's still within modern monitor standards (1024x768) without getting too big. Here's the standard size for 512x384:

And here's Super Mario Bros X for comparison:


My question is, which do you prefer? I like 512 myself as I think it has the biggest potential to level builders by having so much screen real estate, and the large size isn't much of an issue with modern monitors.

The main issue with map paths in SMBX is when you clear a level, all paths connected to that exit are revealed all at once. This means, for instance, the inability to do tricks like in SMW's Chocolate Island 2 which had a normal exit looping back to the level, requiring the secret exit to reveal a path leading through the loop to the next level. In SMBX, revealing one path reveals both, and there's no workaround for that.

My proposal is Path Layers. Essentially, every level has 4 layers associated with it; Layer 1, Layer 2, Layer 3, and the rarely used Layer 0.

When an exit is cleared, it clears the associated Path Layer, revealing any path tiles placed on it. As you can guess by the image, there's the potential for up to four exits per level, but most levels will only ever use one or two. By default Layer 0 is reserved for the path leading to the level, but you can assign an exit to it. If an exit ever opens a path that's already revealed, no animation occurs. If multiple paths lead TO the level (rather than away) they're filled in starting with Layer 0, then 3, 2, 1. Since 4 is the max number of paths leading to or from a level, that's the hard limit for exits, though you can place additional rewards within a level.

Furthermore, since each Layer is independent, they don't care if they cross over.



The cross-sections can be accomplished by making the path segments objects that check for collisions across layers if said layers are revealed, and substitute the appropriate sprite index to show they now cross.

There's even more potential in this system if we allow the editor to freely dictate which layer a path segment belongs to. This can let you make "multi-exit paths" that require finding two or more exits to create a full path to the next level. You would simply put some path segments on, say, Layer 1, and the rest on Layer 2. The player needs to clear both exit 1 and exit 2 to get to the next level. May not be a good idea, but that's game design decisions I'd prefer to leave up to level designers.