DjrelliK's Mario Bros 3 Engine V7 Beta 2, Second beta, nearly no glitches left

Topic updated December 20th, 2007. Look at second post for more informations

Hi there. Here it is again, my mario bros 3 project. I've been working pretty hard to speed up the game and fix all the glitches. Unlike the last beta, this one has barely any glitch left. It's still in beta state though, because I still have a few things to program that aren't much noticeable (except that you still can't configure your controls). Anyway, the 4 first original levels are fully playable at both difficulties. The rest are either absent or unfinished(but "playable", you'll get a notice for them)

Screenshots:




Gameplay video: (it spoils the levels :P)
Youtube: Near Perfect Replica of Mario Bros 3 with Gamemaker
Direct link:
Mario Bros 3 Engine 7 beta 2 (3.61 mb)

The controls are in the help file (F1). I forgot to put it in the info but you can use your gamepad to play.

Look at the next posts for the extra info and also a link for the older version which is open source, but runs extremely slow for many people.

By the way, this version is not open source but let me know if you need help with anything that you can currently see in the engine.

This post has been edited by djrellik on Dec 20 2007, 09:39 PM

Info about the current engine

Updated December 20th, 2007

Almost every glitches have been fixed and you won't encounter those that are still present in the engine(unless you play the unfinished levels). What are still to be fixed are:

• Enemies will fall through the ground when encountered from above(This, I think, is the only major glitch you will notice)
• Enemies such as the red koopas, buzzy beatles and sparks(mb2 enemy), they have been temporarily removed from the current levels
• P-Switches, also been temporarily removed
• Vertical speed is always higher than it should be(Only really noticeable with the camera)
• Some enemies still aren't respawning at their starting point when out of the view.

If you want to try the open source engine, go there, watch out though, chances are that it will run really slow. You'd might want to use it to learn because not everyone will be able to play it.
http://64digits.com/games/index.php?cmd=view_game&id=62 (Indirect link. Click on download now, you can't miss it) Don't forget to give me 10/10 if you have an account there :P Here's the yoyogames link, in case the first one doesn't work. http://www.yoyogames.com/games/show/1605 Don't forget to give me 6/6 there too :P

What version 7 has that version 6.1 hasn't(yellow = new from beta 2)

• Leaf powerup now fall like in the original game
• Enemies can climb up and down slopes
• Every little things that makes the game run much faster(Up to 250% faster for me on the slowest level)
• Gamepad support
• A nice option screen with ajustable diffuculty and resolution
• Some enemies respawn at their starting point when out of the view.(Still programming it)
• There isn't any solid blocks anymore(thanks to Guinea for giving me an idea on how to do it )

A cool fact, this is the most downloaded and best rated wip on 64digits number1df7.png.
It is also in the top 20 wip on yoyogames. (I guess it's a good thing )

This post has been edited by djrellik on Dec 20 2007, 09:01 PM

edit: This is actually kind of glitchy, 6 beta was better.

This post has been edited by Bigbowsa on Dec 2 2007, 08:48 PM

Nice! This gets better and better!

Yeah sorry but it depends for who. I'm pretty sure that those that were running the other one at 15 fps with a 5 seconds lag between each buttons press will find this one better . Anyway I'm just releasing it because I won't be able to work on it for the next few weeks. Trust me that it will be much better when it will be finished.

I already knew that one.

Meh, things haven't changed much since 2 years ago. I mean, wtf. I know the engine is glitchy but at least Mario's physics are working like at 90%. Does it really worth nothing at all?

Anyway I was thinking that I'll probably stop making it open source. Things are getting too complicated and anyway of the people that try it aren't really experienced enough to understand it anyway. I'll eventually try to get custom sprites, I know people prefer them over the original's. I'll have to eventually find a story too... let me know if anyone have an idea, I've never really been that creative :/

This post has been edited by djrellik on Dec 5 2007, 07:28 PM

Unexpected error occured while running game!

This post has been edited by Kyog Wave on Dec 6 2007, 10:04 PM

You need to fix some of the animated objects, such as coins, bricks, and ?blocks. Apparently you applied the deactivation code to them and as a result, their animation starts when they enter view, thus making their timing with eachother unsynced.

You also need to fix the mushrooms collision, it goes right through brick blocks.

besides those two things, it's darn near perfect.

Thanks a lot for the reply and yeah I already thought about it. Actually I should have done it before releasing, it's really easy to do, kinda forgot And no the mushrooms and any other AI don't have horizontal detection because I have to finish my script that will make them work with the slopes. It was just to give a main idea of the engine anyway. Good to see you liked it.

Why has this not gotten more replies?!


This engine is great. Like, seriously great. Possibly the best Mario fangame engine I've seen. You've got the physics down excellently, as well as the vast majority of the other game mechanics.

But yeah, there are glitches, as you've said, in the current version. I'll post here from time to time if I notice after playing it that there any glitches that still need fixing.


For now:


Aside from the really obvious ones (enemy objects falling through floors, being inside floors, walking through walls, etc.), there are also various moving platform glitches. You've already mentioned one of them yourself, but I feel I should also add that

1) Mario gets suspended in midair whenever he jumps up through one and doesn't make it to the top, so that he can move freely horizontally but can't jump or fall while he's "inside" the platform

2) If Mario walks off a vertical moving platform onto solid ground beside it while the platform's going down, he can get inside the solid ground, where he can move freely horizontally. This can be done easily in part of the desert level.

Believe me, I realize how difficult it is to make working moving platforms. I've made moving platforms that work at least nearly perfectly in an engine I'm working on, except when there are solid blocks nearby (something similar to the second moving platform glitch I mentioned above still happens in my engine >_<).

Have you ever made moving platforms in a previous version of this engine? If not, well, I expect you probably want to learn how yourself so as to keep the engine's programming your own (or at least the important parts), and I understand that way of doing things completely, but in the unlikely event that you would like me to show you how I did my moving platform collision stuff, I'd be happy to share.


Another noticeable glitch is that Mario's sprites behave oddly when he runs against a wall sometimes (it seems he does it whenever he hits a wall at considerable speed and keeps pushing). He seems to rapidly switch between the walking sprite and the jumping sprite, if I'm not mistaken.


Another slight inaccuracy is that Mario sometimes doesn't hit the right blocks above his head. For example, if there are two blocks beside each other and he's standing mostly below the one on the right but would still touch the corner of the left one a bit when he jumps up to them, the block that acts like it's hit is the left one, when it should be the right one that acts like it's hit because he's more directly below that one.

If you've never fully solved this block-punching problem before in an earlier version, then let me assure you that it's not incredibly difficult. I have it resolved fully in the engine I'm making (or at least I'm nearly certain I do). Again, I'd be happy to share my technique if by some chance you were interested.


Here are some questions/suggestions, as opposed to glitch reports:

- It would be good if you could add in the "mushroom goes one way when Mario hits the block on one edge, the other way when he hits the other" feature from SMB3.

- Does this engine have pipes you can go down yet, specifically pipes that lead to a different room? Sorry for the dumb question if it does - I haven't played it all the way through yet. But pipes, especially ones that lead to other rooms, are things that for some reason aren't found in that many games, so they'd be a nifty feature to include in any non-basic engine.

- I would suggest that the springboard's synchronization with Mario's movement be somewhat more accurate-looking - something about it the way it springs up now (likely partly the fact that Mario basically touches the ground when it's at its lowest point) makes it look really... I don't know how to describe it... "loose". Probably a cruddy way to describe it, but I hope you get the idea, at least if you check how it's done in SMB1 or something.


But yeah, all in all this is an unbelievably cool project, and more people really should reply to this thread. >:O

Hey thanks a lot for the criticism. I don't know either why other people aren't replying. If only they would tell me why, I don't think it's about laziness looking at other topics that get a lot more replies. -_- When people see screenshots or videos of this engine, they get all excited and says it's the best thing ever, but when I release something, they all go quiet. Oh well... anyway

Yeah I noticed that too, I don't really know what part of my scripts causes this. I'll have to check this one out in debug mode.

Yeah, my horizontal movement script isn't really working great. The problem is that I'm using this for blocks detection

My moving platforms are using the Jumpthroughblock as their parent so it seems to detect it when I'm walking on one. I still have a lot of work to do on these scripts so this should be fixed eventually.

Yeah thanks, I've noticed that too and again I don't know what causes this >_>. But once again, it's my horizontal movement script that is really messy. If you want an idea, here what I'm using. I've been using something similar in the last version but I've changed most of it to make it work with unsolid blocks.

EDIT: oh forget what I wrote here, I found my mistake, well mistakes actually. I went completly the wrong way. Everythings are going perfectly now. I should even be able to code the enemies' AI soon.

Oh yeah that's true, but yeah go for it if you have something that works better, I'd appreciate, I already have enough things to look at right now heh. What I'm using isn't really complicated, just a simple collision line check above its head. I guess it's taking the first object it finds from the left.

Oh but it already does.

Thanks anyway

Yeah that's something that has been requested a lot. This and the swimming engine. I'll sure include this eventually, this is something great to add for level desing.

Haha yeah, since it wasn't based on something from mario bros 3, I made something really quickly to compensate for my note blocks that weren't working. It's been a long time of that. I'm simply setting an alarm to 6 frames that then set the vertical speed. I'll look into that and I'll also try to make my note blocks work now that I'm using unsolid blocks.

Woah that was one long post, anyway thanks a lot for showing interest in my project. I hope people will eventually stop to be that shy and start posting here too :/ It's kinda disapointing, hopefully that I'm determined to finish this and finally make a game out of it.

This post has been edited by djrellik on Dec 13 2007, 02:34 AM

This is a great engine so far, I'd critique more but I'm only familiar with MMF and I don't really know how to tell you how it could be improved. Apart from the obvious things which you haven't implemented yet that have already been mentioned.
Well done making it run fast, I always have problems with GameMaker games running slowly.

Yeah I also noticed that huge games were running faster on my old 300 mhz when they were made by mmf and such. I guess that it handles objects differently than gamemaker because gamemaker will handle everythings happening in the room at every frames which can causes huge slowdown the bigger your room is and the more objects it has. Well unless you tell it to do it otherwise, which I did. But anyway thanks, I appreciate.

Do you have code in this game that deactivates most instances outside the view and stuff (involving functions such as "instance_activate_all" and "instance_deactivate_region")? I expect you already do, but if not, that would probably help a whole lot. I believe I've heard that Clickteam products perform similar deactivation automatically, and that that's a major reason why they tend to not have much slowdown.

By this I assume you mean it's OK with you if I share my code for the block-punching thing with you. However, I'll send it to you through a forum private message (PM) rather than posting it publicly here, because at this early stage of my engine's development I'd prefer not to share my coding for it universally on the boards yet.

In that case, I'm afraid it isn't quite working the way it's supposed to. I tested it out in the game, and even when I hit a block while noticeably positioned to the right of the place directly underneath it, the shroom still came out toward the right.

Yeah sure no problem, I understand.

Ok yeah that's what I thought, and yeah this is what I use too.

Hmm I don't know then, I'll check this out. I thought it was working correctly. Thanks for letting me know.

kk thanks I got your pm, I'll check this out

I've also found what was causing every single horizontal problems. (Mario not stopping on blocks, slopes not working, moving platform and mario moving through blocks and such) It was quite stupid actually. Now that these are done, I'll be able to code everything else. Not right now because I'm tired but I'll probably be able to release another beta with pretty much every glitches fixed before my holidays.


Oh and sorry if you guys sometime don't quite understand everything I write. As you have probably guessed, english is my second language and I don't have much occasion to practice it :/

Actually, I don't have trouble understanding you. I didn't even think before that English was your second language. So as far as I'm concerned you're fine in that regard.


And great that you might be releasing another beta soon! =D

heh, it's just that sometime I'm really sure that some of my sentences make no sense haha <_<. Maybe just paranoia, but it's great then, I'm not as bad as I think.

Oh well, still have to find what makes that some topics with no engine and barely any info gets tons of replies and that me get barely any. Hmm anyone got a clue?

Meh, anyway, to add something to the topic, I'm almost done coding the AI's. They all handle their vertical speed correctly (Parakoopas, hammerbros,etc) and I'm almost done coding their horizontal speed so they will now work with slopes and of course, detect solid objects.

Enemies on slopes is one thing you can't miss out on. I hope you can pull it off. I haven't checked this beta, but I have downloaded older releases and I must say this is one of the best engines I've ever seen. Oh, and with the enemies, do you use x+=4 or hspeed = 4? I never bothered to check the code.