[SM63] 2017-end-ld01

[Jhynjhiruu]

Whew, things have been crazy recently. Christmas, New Year’s Day, and all the LDCs, other contests, new users, goodbyes…
But the time has come for a few projects we’ve been working on to be released.

#1: LDE
For those of you that don’t know (probably most of you :P), the Level Designer Extender is a project to add more features to SM63’s (and maybe LL:NS’s eventually too) Level Designer. What kind of features, I hear you ask?
Well...

• Respawning! If you install LDE in a level, dying won’t exit to the LD Menu, drastically reducing loading times in big levels, and hopefully improving playability for some of SK’s larger levels. Keep in mind that this is still WIP, so coins you’ve collected will stay collected. This might change in the future, though. If it’s enabled, pressing the R button will immediately respawn Mario at the beginning of the level, or the last...
• Checkpoints! Yes, you read that right: no more hidden pipes and all that. When a player opens a sign with

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  %checkpoint%

  somewhere in it, the respawning coordinates will be updated so that upon death, Mario starts back at the checkpoint! This is still being worked on a little, so expect updates in the future.
• An ingame timer! If this is enabled (more info in a second), pressing the T button ingame will respawn Mario at the beginning of the level, disable checkpoints and start a timer. This timer ignores lag, so no matter how powerful your computer is, you can still get a record time. Opening a sign with

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  %timer%

  in it will stop the timer and display your final time. Of the features of LDE, this one is probably the most WIP, so more functionality will likely be added in the future.

And, of course, to enable much of this functionality, other mods such as LD Saving and stringData are built into LDE - no need to add these on top of it!

So, how do you add LDE to your level? As it happens, it’s incredibly simple:
Take your finished level code, and paste it into a program such as Notepad, MS Word, or any other text editor of your choice, and simply add this level code to the end:

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%3Cimg%20src%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fraw%2Egithubusercontent%2Ecom%2FRunouw%2DModders%2FSM63%2DMods%2Fmaster%2Fpublic%2FLDE%2Eswf%22%3E

“But Jynji! How do I enable the timer you mentioned?” says Kary
Again, this is as simple as adding a little bit of code to the end of your level.

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%3CusesTimer%3Atrue%3E

Simply place a sign near the end of your level, and put

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%timer%

somewhere in it. If someone opens the sign before starting the timer,

Click me: show

Press 'T' to begin timing (This will restart you at the beginning of the level, but your checkpoints will not be lost.)

will be displayed in the sign, instead of any text you put in there. If someone opens the sign after starting the timer, the timer will stop, and your text will be displayed - but

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%timer%

will be replaced with the time on the timer. Nifty, huh?
What if you don’t like our fallback pretimer message? Well, you can change that too. Simply add (yet more) level code to the end of your level:

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%3CpreTimer%3AyourTextHere%3E

Of course, you should replace ‘yourTextHere’ with, well, your text. Keep in mind that, for the best results, it should be ‘URL encoded’ - basically SM63 level code. The easiest way to get this level code right now is to type your text into a sign in the Level Designer, save the level, and copy the text from there.
And if you don’t like people being able to restart with a simple tap of a button? Luckily for you, respawnButton can be disabled. Simply add

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%3CrespawnButton%3Afalse%3E

to the end of your level, and that’s it.
As it is right now, this is enabled by default. I’ve put a poll on this thread, so make sure to tell me what you think.
The full readme is available over on GitHub, so go check that out if you have the time.

#2: Standalone Respawning
So maybe you like the sound of Respawning, but LDE takes too long to load (!) or you just find disabling everything annoying. Well, it’s your lucky day! The Respawning module of LDE is available as a separate mod - no config, just add the level code and you’re set!

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%3Cimg%20src%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fraw%2Egithubusercontent%2Ecom%2FRunouw%2DModders%2FSM63%2DMods%2Fmaster%2Fpublic%2FRespawning%2Eswf%22%3E

The readme is here, check that out if you get the chance.

#3: Custom music
For some, the most exciting: we (I) finally cracked custom music in LD levels! No more YouTube alternative music links, just integrated background music, that plays just like bgmusic in the game. It stops when you collect a star, pauses when you collect a metal cap, and, because of the way the code is injected, exiting the level and reopening it avoids the ~0.5s weirdness experienced when using an offline version of the game. And you know what’s really nice? This works on the LD only version too! Yes, the LD only version is silent no more!
Installation is more complex than LDE or Respawning, but only slightly. Firstly, grab a link to the mp3 of your choice. No, YouTube is not directly supported, but I’m sure you can find a way around that (feel free to DM me and ask for help). You’ll need to convert the URL into a SM63-friendly format - again, a sign is probably your best bet here. Once you’ve got your URL, paste it into a text document for easy access later.
Now, you’ll need to install two mods to get custom sound to work - one is the sound mod itself, and the other is the stringData mod, mostly written by Forgotten. The stringData mod is what allows the music URL to be loaded through the level title, but I didn’t want to include the same code in loads of mods. To make it easier, I’ve put all the code you’ll need into one handy place; just paste this onto the end of your level code:

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%3Cimg%20src%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fraw%2Egithubusercontent%2Ecom%2FRunouw%2DModders%2FSM63%2DMods%2Fmaster%2Fpublic%2FstringData%2Eswf%22%3E%3Cimg%20src%3D%22https%3A%2F%2Fraw%2Egithubusercontent%2Ecom%2FRunouw%2DModders%2FSM63%2DMods%2Fmaster%2Fpublic%2Fsound%2Eswf%22%3E

Now, we need to take that encoded URL from earlier and put it into the level title somehow. But pasting the URL on to the end of the title wouldn’t work and, indeed, would display the URL in the level title! Instead, use this code:

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%3Caudio%3AyourMP3URLHere%3E

You should replace ‘yourMP3URLHere’ with your MP3, encoded, URL.
And that’s it! Give your level a test, and you should hear your beautiful music instead of the bog standard music that you’ve all heard a thousand times before.
Please note: Because Flash is buggy, and we’re loading from the Internet, your song may not load correctly first try - you’ll just get endless silence. If this happens, press Backspace to exit the level and play it again - the music should then load properly. I might look at improving this in the future, but for now… It works most of the time.
The readme for custom music is here and the readme for stringData is here.

Feel free to DM me or any other member of the modding team (basically just Forgotten at this point :P) if you need help, or want to request a mod or something.