5 ms·

Remaking Super Mario World in Godot

147 points by codetrotter 3y ago

dartharva 3y ago
Probably shouldn't have cloned Mario.. even though this is fair use, Nintendo is infamous for its tendency of throwing predatory lawsuits intended to run you down.
- karim79 3y ago
  ID software used Carmack's Adaptive Tile Refresh[0] to make a Super Mario Bros 3 clone for PC, and tried to sell it to Nintendo. Nintendo basically said "no". We got Commander Keen instead. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_tile_refresh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_tile_refresh
  - kevingadd 3y ago
    I've always found this funny since there were home PC releases of Mario games. So Nintendo was at one point not opposed to that sort of thing, and the ports that did come out were atrocious. The alternate timeline where Nintendo games come out on PC and use idTech has to be a strange one.
    - pipes 3y ago
      I didn't know this! Mario dos games? Officially licensed??
      - kiritanpo 3y ago
        They are all educational games of middling quality released in the first half of the 90s. Released for DOS, Mac and Windows. Some of the most known: * Mario Teaches Typing * Super Mario Bros. Print World * Mario is Missing! (also released on SNES) * Mario's Time Machine (also released on SNES) * Mario's Early Years! Fun with Letters There are also (bad) Donkey Kong ports for home computers of the 80s such as Atari 800XL, IBM DOS, VIC-20, Commodore 64. Full list and more details here: https://www.mariowiki.com/List_of_games#PC https://www.mariowiki.com/List_of_games#PC
        pipes 3y ago
        Thanks :)
    - jkoudys 3y ago
      There are so many shit ports that have been left on the ash heap of history. The Atari 2600 port of Pac-man was pretty infamous. The worst offenders all ignored the technical requirements and were clearly led by the marketing/business side.
  - jkoudys 3y ago
    Only us olds really appreciate how groundbreaking Commander Keen was. The NES or Game Boy, with its graphics organized into tiles and layers, could give an extremely smooth experience for a certain kind of game. PC games in the pre-gpu era were extremely limited. Especially since researching and discussing development was much slower, too. The whole history of gaming could've gone very differently if adaptive tile refresh were the standard used early by everyone.
    - karim79 3y ago
      I couldn't agree with this comment more. If my memory serves me correctly, the next step up for me, in terms of being blown away, was when my dad gave me a Sound Blaster card (the very first one released, which was 8 bits, from Creative Labs as they were called back in the day). I hooked up a couple of really crappy analog speakers to the 286SX with an EGA card and monitor. That was the first time I experienced non BEEP BOP crappy sound on a PC. ...There were those games from Access Software which touted their Realsound tech, or whatever it was called. The Sound Blaster was, for me, the beginning of a newfound respect for PC hardware; I was no longer jealous of my friends who had their Amigas. I really miss the awe and wonder of those days. The days where every seemingly minor advancement actually served as a huge leap in terms of the experiential qualities of games. These days people whine about ray-tracing performance and having to play stuff at < 120FPS. I get it - I just really miss the "before times". Like the first time seeing an image rendered in full 256 colour VGA. </end oldtimer rant>
karim79 3y ago
Regardless of how far we've come with game engines and dev kits, RAD tools, open-source engines which deal in 2D/3D, sound and music creation frameworks etc etc, I can't help but admire the hell out of the people who can actually sit down and get something done properly and even go further to tutorialise it. I've sat through a few game development tutorials - mostly Unity and Godot ones, because one day I'd love to create the game which puts the Monkey Island series to shame. Upon witnessing how much work it is to actually get something to happen in a single scene, to get things to behave in a non-broken way using one of these engines, I'm not sure I'll ever have the patience to get there. I don't imagine having much of a problem coding the game logic (character says "Yes" door unlocks and becomes interactable etc) but having everything from the art style, scenes, sprites, and applying it all in a non-sucky, tasteful way? That's high art. And yet game devs are inexplicably being fired like there's no tomorrow. No justice, I say. None whatsoever.
- glimshe 3y ago
  I think your chosen genre is among the easier ones to get things to work. If you had good artists at your disposal, you could fairly easily build a clone of the classic Monkey Island on a modern engine. Great artwork feels like something impossible to deliver, but artists think exactly the same about code. I say this after witnessing how quickly one of my friends creates great looking art while being impressed by some trivially easy programming feats.
- jkoudys 3y ago
  How appropriate, you fight like a cow.
  - fragmede 3y ago
    How appropriate, you fight like a dairy farmer.
- slazaro 3y ago
  I'm not knowledgeable about that specific subgenre, but if you're going to be more or less following the traditional rules of older graphic adventures, I think there are plugins for Unity/Godot that automate most of the common stuff and you can focus on the art and game logic, dialogue, etc. So instead of trying to learn how to develop games, try to look for specific tools to develop graphic adventures, you might find that part of the boring hard work is avoidable!
wkirby 3y ago
For anyone interested in starting their own Godot journey, it’s hard to go wrong with Heartbeast. He just posted a new video this week to get a game done _today_! https://youtu.be/PjN9w_egTeA?si=evG941ZWrwNYi4X0 https://youtu.be/PjN9w_egTeA?si=evG941ZWrwNYi4X0
- imiric 3y ago
  I wonder if there's even a point in learning game programming today, when the whole industry is about to be changed. Why bother with laborious programming and traditional modeling and rendering techniques, when AI can generate playable photo realistic worlds in seconds based on prompts by the player itself? Tech like Google's Genie is still primitive in comparison, but we're a few short generations away from surpassing what can be done with traditional game programming. Personalized media and interactive experiences are just around the corner, which is both scary and exciting.
  - magic_hamster 3y ago
    Two things to say here. First, an AI might be great for some things but we are a very long way from AI having an artistic vision, let alone understand why games are fun, how to create new mechanics, innovate, and come up with a unique art style. Second, you assume players know what they want to play so they can prompt it. You also assume this in a broader sense on all "personalized content". I think that the value of totally AI created media is completely unproven - if you only get what you can describe, it's going to a boring time. We like content envisioned by other people. For an AI to actually create a meaningful, full length game, movie or series - we might be decades away if this is even possible without AGI. Tl;dr: learn programming.
    - posix86 3y ago
      Disagree, it might be 2 years away. You can give a prompt to a game dev team and they'll create a unique art style game that you like, so your argument that users don't know what they want is useless. ChatGPT came out a bit more than 1 year. Now we have 60 second highly realistic and creative videos generated. Movies aren't that far out. Games aren't either.
MathMonkeyMan 3y ago
"If you enjoyed this video, then you're a freakin' nerd." Guy knows his audience.
CM30 3y ago
It's worth noting the person working on this remake previously worked on an absolutely amazing Super Mario World hack called A Plumber For All Seasons: https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=section&a=details&id=28856 https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=section&a=details&id=28856 And created enough resources for that game that they basically know the engine inside and out. They definitely have the knowledge to finish a remake like this, and it'll be interesting to see how it goes. My one worry however is that remaking any sort of finished game as a fan project tends not to end too well. If there's one type of fan game that companies tend to shut down, its remakes, with ones that clone the original game 1:1 being the primary target (see the Link's Awakening DX PC port recently). So I'm also not sure how long this project will last.
- mcronce 3y ago
  A Plumber for All Seasons is a top-tier standard romhack. Very cool to see the creator working on something even more ambitious.
- Wowfunhappy 3y ago
  Thank you so much for the rom hack link. I just started playing it; the graphics, music, and level design are excellent. I also really appreciate that it isn't too difficult, at least in the early levels I'm playing right now. If you have any other SMW hack recommendations, please share!
  - CM30 3y ago
    Hmm, what's your experience level with 2D platformers and difficulty? Because there are some hacks I'd recommend if you're pretty experienced with tough games, but which would probably be too much if played casually (JUMP/JUMP 1/2/YUMP/Send Your Regards to the Czar) For something a tad less punishing (but still tricky towards the end), The Second Reality Project Reloaded and The Second Reality Project 2 Reloaded are excellent choices: https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=section&a=details&id=16696 https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=section&a=details&id=16696 https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=section&a=details&id=9543 https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=section&a=details&id=9543 And SMW2+3: The Essence Star is pretty good if you want a more relaxed (albeit story driven) experience: https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=section&a=details&id=25235 https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=section&a=details&id=25235
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

147 points by codetrotter 3y ago

Probably shouldn't have cloned Mario.. even though this is fair use, Nintendo is infamous for its tendency of throwing predatory lawsuits intended to run you down.

karim79 3y ago
ID software used Carmack's Adaptive Tile Refresh[0] to make a Super Mario Bros 3 clone for PC, and tried to sell it to Nintendo. Nintendo basically said "no". We got Commander Keen instead. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_tile_refresh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_tile_refresh
- kevingadd 3y ago
  I've always found this funny since there were home PC releases of Mario games. So Nintendo was at one point not opposed to that sort of thing, and the ports that did come out were atrocious. The alternate timeline where Nintendo games come out on PC and use idTech has to be a strange one.
  - pipes 3y ago
    I didn't know this! Mario dos games? Officially licensed??
    - kiritanpo 3y ago
      They are all educational games of middling quality released in the first half of the 90s. Released for DOS, Mac and Windows. Some of the most known: * Mario Teaches Typing * Super Mario Bros. Print World * Mario is Missing! (also released on SNES) * Mario's Time Machine (also released on SNES) * Mario's Early Years! Fun with Letters There are also (bad) Donkey Kong ports for home computers of the 80s such as Atari 800XL, IBM DOS, VIC-20, Commodore 64. Full list and more details here: https://www.mariowiki.com/List_of_games#PC https://www.mariowiki.com/List_of_games#PC
      - pipes 3y ago
        Thanks :)
  - jkoudys 3y ago
    There are so many shit ports that have been left on the ash heap of history. The Atari 2600 port of Pac-man was pretty infamous. The worst offenders all ignored the technical requirements and were clearly led by the marketing/business side.
- jkoudys 3y ago
  Only us olds really appreciate how groundbreaking Commander Keen was. The NES or Game Boy, with its graphics organized into tiles and layers, could give an extremely smooth experience for a certain kind of game. PC games in the pre-gpu era were extremely limited. Especially since researching and discussing development was much slower, too. The whole history of gaming could've gone very differently if adaptive tile refresh were the standard used early by everyone.
  - karim79 3y ago
    I couldn't agree with this comment more. If my memory serves me correctly, the next step up for me, in terms of being blown away, was when my dad gave me a Sound Blaster card (the very first one released, which was 8 bits, from Creative Labs as they were called back in the day). I hooked up a couple of really crappy analog speakers to the 286SX with an EGA card and monitor. That was the first time I experienced non BEEP BOP crappy sound on a PC. ...There were those games from Access Software which touted their Realsound tech, or whatever it was called. The Sound Blaster was, for me, the beginning of a newfound respect for PC hardware; I was no longer jealous of my friends who had their Amigas. I really miss the awe and wonder of those days. The days where every seemingly minor advancement actually served as a huge leap in terms of the experiential qualities of games. These days people whine about ray-tracing performance and having to play stuff at < 120FPS. I get it - I just really miss the "before times". Like the first time seeing an image rendered in full 256 colour VGA. </end oldtimer rant>

karim79 3y ago

Regardless of how far we've come with game engines and dev kits, RAD tools, open-source engines which deal in 2D/3D, sound and music creation frameworks etc etc, I can't help but admire the hell out of the people who can actually sit down and get something done properly and even go further to tutorialise it. I've sat through a few game development tutorials - mostly Unity and Godot ones, because one day I'd love to create the game which puts the Monkey Island series to shame. Upon witnessing how much work it is to actually get something to happen in a single scene, to get things to behave in a non-broken way using one of these engines, I'm not sure I'll ever have the patience to get there. I don't imagine having much of a problem coding the game logic (character says "Yes" door unlocks and becomes interactable etc) but having everything from the art style, scenes, sprites, and applying it all in a non-sucky, tasteful way? That's high art. And yet game devs are inexplicably being fired like there's no tomorrow. No justice, I say. None whatsoever.

glimshe 3y ago
I think your chosen genre is among the easier ones to get things to work. If you had good artists at your disposal, you could fairly easily build a clone of the classic Monkey Island on a modern engine. Great artwork feels like something impossible to deliver, but artists think exactly the same about code. I say this after witnessing how quickly one of my friends creates great looking art while being impressed by some trivially easy programming feats.
jkoudys 3y ago
How appropriate, you fight like a cow.
- fragmede 3y ago
  How appropriate, you fight like a dairy farmer.
slazaro 3y ago
I'm not knowledgeable about that specific subgenre, but if you're going to be more or less following the traditional rules of older graphic adventures, I think there are plugins for Unity/Godot that automate most of the common stuff and you can focus on the art and game logic, dialogue, etc. So instead of trying to learn how to develop games, try to look for specific tools to develop graphic adventures, you might find that part of the boring hard work is avoidable!

wkirby 3y ago

For anyone interested in starting their own Godot journey, it’s hard to go wrong with Heartbeast. He just posted a new video this week to get a game done _today_! https://youtu.be/PjN9w_egTeA?si=evG941ZWrwNYi4X0 https://youtu.be/PjN9w_egTeA?si=evG941ZWrwNYi4X0

imiric 3y ago
I wonder if there's even a point in learning game programming today, when the whole industry is about to be changed. Why bother with laborious programming and traditional modeling and rendering techniques, when AI can generate playable photo realistic worlds in seconds based on prompts by the player itself? Tech like Google's Genie is still primitive in comparison, but we're a few short generations away from surpassing what can be done with traditional game programming. Personalized media and interactive experiences are just around the corner, which is both scary and exciting.
- magic_hamster 3y ago
  Two things to say here. First, an AI might be great for some things but we are a very long way from AI having an artistic vision, let alone understand why games are fun, how to create new mechanics, innovate, and come up with a unique art style. Second, you assume players know what they want to play so they can prompt it. You also assume this in a broader sense on all "personalized content". I think that the value of totally AI created media is completely unproven - if you only get what you can describe, it's going to a boring time. We like content envisioned by other people. For an AI to actually create a meaningful, full length game, movie or series - we might be decades away if this is even possible without AGI. Tl;dr: learn programming.
  - posix86 3y ago
    Disagree, it might be 2 years away. You can give a prompt to a game dev team and they'll create a unique art style game that you like, so your argument that users don't know what they want is useless. ChatGPT came out a bit more than 1 year. Now we have 60 second highly realistic and creative videos generated. Movies aren't that far out. Games aren't either.

MathMonkeyMan 3y ago

"If you enjoyed this video, then you're a freakin' nerd." Guy knows his audience.

CM30 3y ago

It's worth noting the person working on this remake previously worked on an absolutely amazing Super Mario World hack called A Plumber For All Seasons: https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=section&a=details&id=28856 https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=section&a=details&id=28856 And created enough resources for that game that they basically know the engine inside and out. They definitely have the knowledge to finish a remake like this, and it'll be interesting to see how it goes. My one worry however is that remaking any sort of finished game as a fan project tends not to end too well. If there's one type of fan game that companies tend to shut down, its remakes, with ones that clone the original game 1:1 being the primary target (see the Link's Awakening DX PC port recently). So I'm also not sure how long this project will last.

mcronce 3y ago
A Plumber for All Seasons is a top-tier standard romhack. Very cool to see the creator working on something even more ambitious.
Wowfunhappy 3y ago
Thank you so much for the rom hack link. I just started playing it; the graphics, music, and level design are excellent. I also really appreciate that it isn't too difficult, at least in the early levels I'm playing right now. If you have any other SMW hack recommendations, please share!
- CM30 3y ago
  Hmm, what's your experience level with 2D platformers and difficulty? Because there are some hacks I'd recommend if you're pretty experienced with tough games, but which would probably be too much if played casually (JUMP/JUMP 1/2/YUMP/Send Your Regards to the Czar) For something a tad less punishing (but still tricky towards the end), The Second Reality Project Reloaded and The Second Reality Project 2 Reloaded are excellent choices: https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=section&a=details&id=16696 https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=section&a=details&id=16696 https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=section&a=details&id=9543 https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=section&a=details&id=9543 And SMW2+3: The Essence Star is pretty good if you want a more relaxed (albeit story driven) experience: https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=section&a=details&id=25235 https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=section&a=details&id=25235

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]