TheXTech Vita

TheXTech (Super Mario Bros X)
General
Author	Axiom, Wohlstand
Type	Platform
Version	1.3.6-beta-VB3
License	GPL-3.0
Last Updated	2021/10/03
Links
Download
Website
Source
Support Author

TheXTech is a port of an old VB6 engine, purely written in C++. It completely reproduces the old SMBX 1.3 engine (aside from it's Editor), includes many of its logical bugs (critical bugs that lead the game to crash or freeze got fixed).

SMBX (Super Mario Bros. X) is a platformer game originally published in 2009. The game is a fan game based on the Mario series. Game mechanics combines such games of the series as: Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World. There are also in SMBX elements from new games in the series and from other games like Metroid and Legend of Zelda.

Features

• Five playable characters including: Peach, Toad, and Link.
• Over 60 cleverly designed levels in the two default episodes.
• Easy to use, real-time level editor with thousands of objects to choose from.
• Both classic and brand new power ups such as Yoshi and The Billy Gun.
• Two player co-op action with an intelligent camera that splits and combines.
• An intense battle mode that will leave you coming back for more.
• SMBX was made open source by its author Andrew Spinks in 2020, and then ported to C++ by developer Wohlstand, under the name TheXTech.

Installation

While possible to move all assets over FTP, it's much faster and more reliable to mount your Vita over USB or move your Vita2SD to your computer and copy that way.

Before you install, ensure you have extracted libshacccg.suprx (you can use ShaRKBR33D to install).

Extract thextech.zip to ux0:data/TheXTech. It contains the data files from the desktop version.

Install thextech.vpk.

Screenshots

Known issues

• Graphics masks may not currently work for a variety of reasons ranging from:
  • Lack of original masks in graphics directory
  • Lack of masks found in level or world directory
  • Lack of RAM, etc. etc.
• Do not change your input device in settings. Remapping buttons is ok, but if you change input it will be changed to a non-existent keyboard device. If you do this, just force exit the game and settings won’t be saved.
• Mask based graphics (eg: npc-1.gif & npc-1m.gif) currently are not working. The logic is there, but currently the images are not combining.
• Slowdowns may happen.
• Some Midi tracks may kill performance (specifcially: using the libOPNMidi backend. this is pretty rare and midi support through libOPN and libADL are all relatively new to SMBX).
• Cheats currently don’t work.

Changelog

v1.3.6_beta_VitaBuild3

• General improvements & updates from the devel branch have been merged into the Vita branch.
  • Additionally, Vita has officially become a first class platform for TheXTech. [ds_sloth] Objects, layers, events, most strings are now represented by indices which saves about 5mb of RAM.
• [Wohlstand] Sound & Music improvements in SDL_Mixer_X.
• Through the configuration file, the following gameplay additions can be enabled:
  • "Show Collected Stars Per Level at World Map".
  • "New Editor" (WARNING: Though it does render 100% okay on Vita, the controls are rough and need to be specialized for multi-touch devices (instead of just reading SDL's mouse API for rough touch events).
  • "Show Episode Title during gameplay".

([VITA SPECIFIC] Vita renderer adds support for drawing un-filled rects, useful for Editor and other misc. new features.

• [VITA SPECIFIC] Ensure all point normalizations are done against the Screen resolution instead of current viewport resolution.
• [VITA SPECIFIC] Instead of mimicking glOrtho via a CGLM ortho matrix, we are now normalizing all drawn coordinates to -1.0 -> 1.0 (from screen space to OpenGL coordinate space) Before drawing.
  • This has FIXED the floating point imprecisions that plagued the game early on. Backgrounds now stay stitched together.
• [VITA SPECIFIC] Fixed renderRects permanently, ensuring that even the most miniscule ones (Pause screen) are drawn 100% accurately and correctly.
• [VITA SPECIFIC] Removed copywritten material from the livearea (just in case).

External links

• VitaDB - https://vitadb.rinnegatamante.it/#/info/727
• GitHub - https://github.com/suicvne/TheXTech