Mari0

dulsi

I generally avoid clones which take copyrighted graphics but I decided to try Mari0. I must say I'm very impressed with this game. I'd love to see the graphics/sounds replaced and new levels made to make it usable without violating copyright. The new levels should ideally use the portal gun to make them more than just Super Mario Brothers.

Unfortunately the mouse isn't available on the arcade machine. If I disable the portal gun, I could get a two player simultaneous SMB but need to fix the copyright problem too.

dulsi

I've started replacing the graphics.I haven't replaced much yet. As a non artist I'm sure some of my replacements won't be good. Probably should add Xs on everything not replaced.

https://github.com/dulsi/mari0/

poVoq

You will probably have to adapt the pixel-art to a common pallette, especially the EGA stuff will otherwise look quite out of place.

Nice effort though, Mari0 looks like a fun game.

dulsi

poVoq I know. It's on my list of things to do at some point.

dulsi

There are two other major forks of Mari0 I've found:

Community Edition
This fork is based off the Special Edition Beta that was released. Stabyourself decided to cancel development of that version.

Alesan's Entities
A mod to Mari0 to add a bunch of enemies and other features.

Both forks are under WTFPL instead of MIT like the original codebase. Not sure why that is. The creators of Mari0 know about them so maybe they had approval for the change.

I intend to keep with the original codebase. The reason is that I already have a lot of work to replace the graphics, sounds and levels. These forks have even more content that would need to be replaced.

dulsi

I've replaced all the graphics on the first level except Mario.
Screenshot1
Screenshot2

dulsi

I took a look at Mega Mario. It is another SMB1 like game. It has new levels so I wondered if they could be used as non copyright infringing levels for Mari0. Unfortunately they can't easily be used. Mega Mario has greater height. If you go towards the top of the screen it scrolls up. Depending on much this is used the levels might still be usable but not as simple as I hoped.

I ran the game in a VM which might have affected how it played. It didn't feel right to me. Mario didn't stop quickly enough.

Peter

Can't the sprite be used which is the OGA logo? You know, that blonde girl?

dulsi

Sara would be a fine character to use but there are no existing artwork that can be easily put into Mari0. It needs a same and big form. The artwork needs to be about the same size as the existing sprite. The way the game does multiplayer is that each color of Mario is a separate sprite. Each player can customize his/her colors. If you have more colors than the existing Mario you need to either reduce the colors, modify the code to handle more colors/sprites, or have some colors that can't be modified (which might not be doable as it might still alter them to the color of that sprite and adding an extra sprite for not alterable colors would need code changes).

I have looked at using https://opengameart.org/content/super-miyamoto. It has most of frames needed. But I haven't had the time to try and convert him.

dulsi

I replaced the turtles with snails. Since Bowser is a dragon turtle, I figured I should make a dragon snail. I started with 64x64 so that I could use it in Pixel Critters and then scale it down to 32x32 for Mari0. That was a ugly. I did make a 32x32 version which is in github. It's still ugly but can work as a temporary replacement.

I kept thinking of the Pixel Critters version so I decided to try again. I changed the angle slightly so that you aren't looking at the side. I much prefer this version.
Dragon Snail

EDIT: For those who think this Pixel Critters version still isn't very good pixel art, you are right. I know I'm not a great pixel artist. I did all the monster art for Pixel Critters so that it was homemade even if I could get better artwork from opengameart.

dulsi

Mario image has been replaced. A lot of music/sounds have been replaced as well. I still haven't done anything about creating original levels.