8 ms·

Mari0=Mario + Portal ..Open source game

406 points by rjim86 15y ago

wsxiaoys 15y ago
It's developed in love2d(https://love2d.org/ https://love2d.org/), a 2d game framework in lua.
beloch 15y ago
Interesting mashup. Rad advert. How long before it gets taken down by lawyers and will the programmer wind up working at Nintendo or Valve?
- JoshTriplett 15y ago
  Ideally someone will create a FOSS tileset for it that transparently substitutes for the current Mario set. The gameplay itself seems fine; platformers seem perfectly safe as long as they don't use Mario graphics, and as for the portal mechanic, that has plenty of precedent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_hole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_hole
  - rplnt 15y ago
    You cannot patent game-play mechanics. But then... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tetris_Company#Legal_enforcement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tetris_Company#Legal_enforc...
  - city41 15y ago
    They would possibly need to redo all the levels too, as they are tile for tile taken from Super Mario Bros.
- toyg 15y ago
  I was actually surprised it came out, they had some teasers on Reddit a few days ago and I thought Nintendo laywers would have showed up by now. Copying game mechanics is not a big deal, but reusing trademarked and copyrighted sprites (of the main franchise from one of the richest companies on the planet!) is a bit too much.
  - bermanoid 15y ago
    Yeah, this seems like an awful lot of work to be throwing at something that is crystal clear copyright and trademark infringement. In all likelihood, all that will happen is he'll get a C+D letter, but it's dangerous territory, he's wide open to be sued for real money here, and this sort of case is a slam-dunk.
    - Raphael 15y ago
      Nintendo has a history of looking the other way at non-commercial fan games.
      - toyg 15y ago
        As much as this stance could be considered admirable, it opens them up to a possible loss of trademark the first time they try to sue a commercial game.
randyburden 15y ago
Whoa, that's pretty cool and happens to be two of my favorite games :)
dbbo 15y ago
Has anyone figured out how to throw fireballs yet?
drivebyacct2 15y ago
This is a really cool concept, I love that it's open source and Lua adds a fun kick. I'll be honest, I'm awful at it though. It's extremely hard for me to control mario and the portal gun. It's strange because I love classic mario and like to think I'm pretty good at solving Portal fast. Maybe I just need to practice more? Does anyone here feel proficient? I've seen videos of people doing some crazy things with it already, I'm jealous.
- fceccon 15y ago
  I've been playing Super Mario World for 15 years and I died a couple of times in the first level. I think running and jumping does not "feel right" as in SMW. I've just tried to compare the controls and they seems to behave exactly the same, so I don't know what it is — probably it's because I play this kind of game better with a controller.
  - saurik 15y ago
    I thought you were able to control Mario more while he was in the air than you seem to be able to in this rendition.
    - fceccon 15y ago
      Indeed you are right, in the original Mario you can change direction while jumping, in this version you can't.
  - tommorris 15y ago
    No, it's not just that. I've played the NES and SNES versions of Mario on an emulator. The controls on Mari0 do feel rather clunky in comparsion. I can't quite put my finger on exactly what it is though.
    - rosstafarian 15y ago
      yup control's are one of the most important aspects in a platformer of this type. Look at a game like super meat boy, which imo has control's even better then the mario games(which is saying quite a bit.) They spent A LOT of time just experimenting and fine tuning because they completely make or break the game. Anyone that played super meat boy knows exactly what i'm talking about the, the game would just be too frustrating if the control's wheren't so tight. As an aside i think a good setup for this type of game would be using an xbox360/ps3 controller, the directional pad to control mario, shoulder button L1 to jump and L2 to run/shoot fireballs, the right analog stick to control the portal gun and shoulder buttons R1/R2 to shoot the portal gun
a3_nm 15y ago
Just a small detail, but the license is Creative Commons BY-NC-SA, so this is not really open source (not OSI-compliant).
- pygy_ 15y ago
  You can do opens source without being OSI compliant. They don't own the concept. As long as the source is readable, it is open, even if you can't redistribute it, or distribute a binary built out of it. In this case: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/ says that You are free: * to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work * to Remix — to adapt the work Provided that you (paraphrased): * (BY) — give proper credit to the original the author, * (NC) — don't use it commercially, * (SA) — publish your modifications with the same license. Beside the non-commercial clause, when applied to source code, it is roughly equivalent to a BSD/MIT license.
  - bnr 15y ago
    > Beside the non-commercial clause, when applied to source code, it is roughly equivalent to a BSD/MIT license. More like the GPL, SA is CC's copyleft.
  - mseebach 15y ago
    The BSD and MIT licenses make no mention of commercial usage? The NC clause is exactly what makes it incompatible with all FOSS licenses.
  - rmc 15y ago
    Yes, "open source" is not a protected term, nor a trademarked term, so anyone can call anything "open source". However for lots of people who deal with software, calling this "open source" is highly misleading and at worst disingenuous. Within the open source software (and wider software world), it's quite clear and non-subjective whether software is open source. There are numerous, nearly entirely harmonious definitions of "open source". Under those rules, within that community, this is not "open source".
jawr 15y ago
Loving the mashup, awesome idea. Also thanks for the link to love2d, looks like a brilliant framework.
ranit8 15y ago
The former submission with links to other Portal mashups: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2939097 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2939097 Not played Mari0 yet, but I loved Not Tetris from the same authors.
omega32 15y ago
I remember I always wanted to play Mario when I was little but I couldn't because I was too poor. So, I do love that if I don't do ANYTHING with the Portal gun, it's actually just the original. (But, of course I'm still using the portal gun)
GoodIntentions 15y ago
The author should put his talent to work on something that _won't_ get him sued. :( Wondering how long till that domain renders an ICE homepage.
- missing_cipher 15y ago
  I don't see him asking for money anywhere, so at most he'll get a cease and desist. Of course if he doesn't comply then things would get worse. Plus from what I understand Nintendo has been pretty lax with these sort of projects lately and I don't think Valve would do anything either.
  - GoodIntentions 15y ago
    Really? That's cool if you're right. It's obviously something done for the love of doing it and doesn't portray the original projects in a bad light. Hopefully they don't pull the plug on him.
  - icebraining 15y ago
    I don't see him asking for money anywhere, so at most he'll get a cease and desist. Neither was Jammie Thomas-Rasset, and yet she was still convicted and ordered to pay $222000 (now it has dropped to $54000).
    - JamesLeonis 15y ago
      This isn't necessarily an apples to apples comparison. For the JTR case to be fairly, one would have to compare ROM or warez distribution, downloading and the resulting litigation. This seems to be closer to the concept of mashups and remix culture for music, where the copyright and trademarks are not as clear cut.
INTPenis 15y ago
Lots of lag on Mac OS Lion. Can't even play through because of it. But I think you'd be able to get used to the controls given some practice.
- rbxbx 15y ago
  According to their forums, disabling sound (ie: turning the volume all the way down), fixes lag/stutter. In practice that seems to be mostly true. Still find the controls slightly unintuitive (but I imagine with an external mouse things would be better).
nitrogen 15y ago
A note for Ubuntu users: there is a PPA for the unreleased 0.8.0 version of LÖVE: https://launchpad.net/~bartbes/+archive/love-unstable/ https://launchpad.net/~bartbes/+archive/love-unstable/. Google failed me today while trying to find the syntax for adding a PPA from the command line (largely because Google will not search for punctuation, even inside of quotation marks), so after a long search trying to avoid pages about human colons and professional associations (eventually settling on the query "ubuntu ppa apt-add-repository"), I'm posting this here (ref: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Repositories/CommandLine https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Repositories/CommandLine): sudo apt-add-repository ppa:bartbes/love-unstable Followed by the obvious: sudo aptitude update sudo aptitude install love-unstable love-unstable mari0_1.2.love
fictorial 15y ago
Fantastic! I can't say I'm enjoying the source code much but nice things are often quite messy under the covers. Nice work!
firefoxman1 15y ago
I think his license is the best one I've seen yet. In main.lua it says... * NOT COPYRIGHT STABYOURSELF.NET NO RIGHTS RESERVED STEAL MY SHIT AND I'LL FUCK YOU UP PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING BY MAURICE GUÉGAN AND IF SOMETHING ISN'T BY ME THEN IT SHOULD BE OBVIOUS OR NOBODY CARES THIS AWESOME PIECE OF CELESTIAL AMBROSIA IS RELEASED AS NON-COMMERCIAL, SHARE ALIKE, WHATEVER. YOU MAY PRINT OUT THIS CODES AND USE IT AS WALLPAPER IN YOUR BATHROOM. FOR SPECIFIC LICENSE (I know you linux users get a hard on when it comes to licenses) SEE http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ NOW GO AWAY (or stay and modify shit. I don't care as long as you stick to the above license.)*

406 points by rjim86 15y ago

It's developed in love2d(https://love2d.org/ https://love2d.org/), a 2d game framework in lua.

Interesting mashup. Rad advert. How long before it gets taken down by lawyers and will the programmer wind up working at Nintendo or Valve?

JoshTriplett 15y ago
Ideally someone will create a FOSS tileset for it that transparently substitutes for the current Mario set. The gameplay itself seems fine; platformers seem perfectly safe as long as they don't use Mario graphics, and as for the portal mechanic, that has plenty of precedent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_hole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_hole
- rplnt 15y ago
  You cannot patent game-play mechanics. But then... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tetris_Company#Legal_enforcement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tetris_Company#Legal_enforc...
- city41 15y ago
  They would possibly need to redo all the levels too, as they are tile for tile taken from Super Mario Bros.
toyg 15y ago
I was actually surprised it came out, they had some teasers on Reddit a few days ago and I thought Nintendo laywers would have showed up by now. Copying game mechanics is not a big deal, but reusing trademarked and copyrighted sprites (of the main franchise from one of the richest companies on the planet!) is a bit too much.
- bermanoid 15y ago
  Yeah, this seems like an awful lot of work to be throwing at something that is crystal clear copyright and trademark infringement. In all likelihood, all that will happen is he'll get a C+D letter, but it's dangerous territory, he's wide open to be sued for real money here, and this sort of case is a slam-dunk.
  - Raphael 15y ago
    Nintendo has a history of looking the other way at non-commercial fan games.
    - toyg 15y ago
      As much as this stance could be considered admirable, it opens them up to a possible loss of trademark the first time they try to sue a commercial game.

randyburden 15y ago

Whoa, that's pretty cool and happens to be two of my favorite games :)

dbbo 15y ago

Has anyone figured out how to throw fireballs yet?

drivebyacct2 15y ago

This is a really cool concept, I love that it's open source and Lua adds a fun kick. I'll be honest, I'm awful at it though. It's extremely hard for me to control mario and the portal gun. It's strange because I love classic mario and like to think I'm pretty good at solving Portal fast. Maybe I just need to practice more? Does anyone here feel proficient? I've seen videos of people doing some crazy things with it already, I'm jealous.

fceccon 15y ago
I've been playing Super Mario World for 15 years and I died a couple of times in the first level. I think running and jumping does not "feel right" as in SMW. I've just tried to compare the controls and they seems to behave exactly the same, so I don't know what it is — probably it's because I play this kind of game better with a controller.
- saurik 15y ago
  I thought you were able to control Mario more while he was in the air than you seem to be able to in this rendition.
  - fceccon 15y ago
    Indeed you are right, in the original Mario you can change direction while jumping, in this version you can't.
- tommorris 15y ago
  No, it's not just that. I've played the NES and SNES versions of Mario on an emulator. The controls on Mari0 do feel rather clunky in comparsion. I can't quite put my finger on exactly what it is though.
  - rosstafarian 15y ago
    yup control's are one of the most important aspects in a platformer of this type. Look at a game like super meat boy, which imo has control's even better then the mario games(which is saying quite a bit.) They spent A LOT of time just experimenting and fine tuning because they completely make or break the game. Anyone that played super meat boy knows exactly what i'm talking about the, the game would just be too frustrating if the control's wheren't so tight. As an aside i think a good setup for this type of game would be using an xbox360/ps3 controller, the directional pad to control mario, shoulder button L1 to jump and L2 to run/shoot fireballs, the right analog stick to control the portal gun and shoulder buttons R1/R2 to shoot the portal gun

a3_nm 15y ago

Just a small detail, but the license is Creative Commons BY-NC-SA, so this is not really open source (not OSI-compliant).

pygy_ 15y ago
You can do opens source without being OSI compliant. They don't own the concept. As long as the source is readable, it is open, even if you can't redistribute it, or distribute a binary built out of it. In this case: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/ says that You are free: * to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work * to Remix — to adapt the work Provided that you (paraphrased): * (BY) — give proper credit to the original the author, * (NC) — don't use it commercially, * (SA) — publish your modifications with the same license. Beside the non-commercial clause, when applied to source code, it is roughly equivalent to a BSD/MIT license.
- bnr 15y ago
  > Beside the non-commercial clause, when applied to source code, it is roughly equivalent to a BSD/MIT license. More like the GPL, SA is CC's copyleft.
- mseebach 15y ago
  The BSD and MIT licenses make no mention of commercial usage? The NC clause is exactly what makes it incompatible with all FOSS licenses.
- rmc 15y ago
  Yes, "open source" is not a protected term, nor a trademarked term, so anyone can call anything "open source". However for lots of people who deal with software, calling this "open source" is highly misleading and at worst disingenuous. Within the open source software (and wider software world), it's quite clear and non-subjective whether software is open source. There are numerous, nearly entirely harmonious definitions of "open source". Under those rules, within that community, this is not "open source".

jawr 15y ago

Loving the mashup, awesome idea. Also thanks for the link to love2d, looks like a brilliant framework.

ranit8 15y ago

The former submission with links to other Portal mashups: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2939097 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2939097 Not played Mari0 yet, but I loved Not Tetris from the same authors.

omega32 15y ago

I remember I always wanted to play Mario when I was little but I couldn't because I was too poor. So, I do love that if I don't do ANYTHING with the Portal gun, it's actually just the original. (But, of course I'm still using the portal gun)

GoodIntentions 15y ago

The author should put his talent to work on something that _won't_ get him sued. :( Wondering how long till that domain renders an ICE homepage.

missing_cipher 15y ago
I don't see him asking for money anywhere, so at most he'll get a cease and desist. Of course if he doesn't comply then things would get worse. Plus from what I understand Nintendo has been pretty lax with these sort of projects lately and I don't think Valve would do anything either.
- GoodIntentions 15y ago
  Really? That's cool if you're right. It's obviously something done for the love of doing it and doesn't portray the original projects in a bad light. Hopefully they don't pull the plug on him.
- icebraining 15y ago
  I don't see him asking for money anywhere, so at most he'll get a cease and desist. Neither was Jammie Thomas-Rasset, and yet she was still convicted and ordered to pay $222000 (now it has dropped to $54000).
  - JamesLeonis 15y ago
    This isn't necessarily an apples to apples comparison. For the JTR case to be fairly, one would have to compare ROM or warez distribution, downloading and the resulting litigation. This seems to be closer to the concept of mashups and remix culture for music, where the copyright and trademarks are not as clear cut.

INTPenis 15y ago

Lots of lag on Mac OS Lion. Can't even play through because of it. But I think you'd be able to get used to the controls given some practice.

rbxbx 15y ago
According to their forums, disabling sound (ie: turning the volume all the way down), fixes lag/stutter. In practice that seems to be mostly true. Still find the controls slightly unintuitive (but I imagine with an external mouse things would be better).

nitrogen 15y ago

A note for Ubuntu users: there is a PPA for the unreleased 0.8.0 version of LÖVE: https://launchpad.net/~bartbes/+archive/love-unstable/ https://launchpad.net/~bartbes/+archive/love-unstable/. Google failed me today while trying to find the syntax for adding a PPA from the command line (largely because Google will not search for punctuation, even inside of quotation marks), so after a long search trying to avoid pages about human colons and professional associations (eventually settling on the query "ubuntu ppa apt-add-repository"), I'm posting this here (ref: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Repositories/CommandLine https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Repositories/CommandLine): sudo apt-add-repository ppa:bartbes/love-unstable Followed by the obvious: sudo aptitude update sudo aptitude install love-unstable love-unstable mari0_1.2.love

fictorial 15y ago

Fantastic! I can't say I'm enjoying the source code much but nice things are often quite messy under the covers. Nice work!

firefoxman1 15y ago

I think his license is the best one I've seen yet. In main.lua it says... * NOT COPYRIGHT STABYOURSELF.NET NO RIGHTS RESERVED STEAL MY SHIT AND I'LL FUCK YOU UP PRETTY MUCH EVERYTHING BY MAURICE GUÉGAN AND IF SOMETHING ISN'T BY ME THEN IT SHOULD BE OBVIOUS OR NOBODY CARES THIS AWESOME PIECE OF CELESTIAL AMBROSIA IS RELEASED AS NON-COMMERCIAL, SHARE ALIKE, WHATEVER. YOU MAY PRINT OUT THIS CODES AND USE IT AS WALLPAPER IN YOUR BATHROOM. FOR SPECIFIC LICENSE (I know you linux users get a hard on when it comes to licenses) SEE http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ NOW GO AWAY (or stay and modify shit. I don't care as long as you stick to the above license.)*