What's new

• Jelectro - Still

Thanks to Bryce for finding this one

Happy new year!

The new levels page is now live. It is now easier to find levels that interest you. You can also link directly to certain levels, for example here are the most popular kaizo levels.

Happy holidays everyone!

I just added simple creator pages. On the levels page, click on a user's name to go to their page. It will show a listing of their levels. For example, here are my levels.

I am going to take a break from Smaghetti. Not sure how long, thinking I'll hop back on sometime in December. I'll be back for sure. Finishing Smaghetti and making it super awesome is important to me.

Want to keep chatting Smaghetti? Check out the Discord server

A new entity, Underwater Water, was just added. This makes it a bit easier to make an underwater level. Truthfully making underwater levels is pretty painful, here are some tips to help out.

Making underwater levels much easier to build is on the todo list. But at least it is possible!

• Line Track Pulley (in decorations)

When testing your level, you can now turn the audio on with the button at the bottom of the screen.

Audio works best in Chrome, but that is true of the emulator in general.

• Boo - Choose its speed

Down in the lower right of the editor is this beaker icon . If you click it you can try out some experimental and unfinished features.

A new experiment is game audio. If you turn it on, when testing your level you'll get sound effects and music. But it will probably be scratchy, slow and kinda junky. That is why it is experimental for now.

• Jungle No Sky

These two backgrounds had the wrong background color set. This has now been fixed. If your level uses these backgrounds, to get the fix you need to change the background to something else, then back again.

You can now configure your keyboard and gamepad when testing your level in the GBA emulator. When playing your level, click on "configure" down at the bottom.

The config is saved to your browser, so if you later use Smaghetti on a different computer, you may need to configure your buttons again.

You can now choose "silence" for a room's music.

• Blank
• Blue and Green Stars
• Colorful Brick Wall
• Far Away Hills in Clouds
• Tall Hills But Shorter
• Underground Cave

Thanks again, Bryce

It is possible to set a giant pipe as an exit. When you do this, Mario exits a bit on the left side.

Smaghetti now allows this, be sure to set the exit point here on a giant pipe

You can't use downward airship pipes to start a warp to someplace else, but you can use them as a warp destination. Yesterday Smaghetti didn't quite support that, but now it does.

The downward airship pipe is now in the "Warps" section in the entity chooser.

• Desert Brick Wall

• Pipe Airship - Down
• Pipe Vertical - Double Ended
• Tan Metal Brick - Large
• Tan Metal Brick - Medium

You guessed it, Bryce yet again

• Blooper Nanny - Four Way
• Dolphin - Horizontal
• Dolphin - Vertical
• Snow Covered Grass Floor
• Wood Floor - Giant Left End Cap
• Wood Floor - Giant Right End Cap

Props to Bryce yet again, and Maikli Messes as well

• Jungle
• Toad House

For Toad House, it is only big enough for a single screen room. So a bit limiting, but with a scroll stop in place it can be used.

Again thanks to Bryce for locating these

• Boomerang Bro - Drops Boomerang
• Bullet Bill - Targeting Generator
• Nipper Plant - Shooting
• Nipper Plant - Walking
• P-Wing
• Para Beetle Generator
• Platform Wood - Bobs

Thanks to Bryce for finding these! The Para Beetle generator generates "green" para beetles! Except they are brown...

The waterfall background no longer has the invisible water nor the weird blue tint. It is now just a normal background.

• Hills in Clouds

Despite the lack of updates, I have been working on Smaghetti. But lately it has been a lot of behind the scenes stuff. Eventually this work will allow for some cool things.

• Cloud Platform - Thicc

The warning list now shows errors and warnings.

• Errors: This really breaks your level in a significant way, such as very garbled graphics, soft locks or crashes the game. You definitely want to fix these.
• Warnings: These likely mess up your level and cause strangeness, but you can still play for the most part. These should be fixed too, but if you miss one, it's not the end of the world.

I am considering not allow publishing levels that have errors, but still debating on that one.

There is now a footer at the bottom of the editor. It shows two things:

• A warning count. If you have warnings, click on this to see them in detail. You can then click on an individual warning to be taken to the entity causing the warning.
• Level size meter. If your level gets too big, it will crash the game, more info here.

Soon, some types of warnings will show up as errors instead. An error is something that will definitely cause a problem in your level and should be fixed, where as a warning might cause a problem or it might not.

If your level has a buried veggy with an e-coin inside of it, it could cause sprites (enemies, power ups, etc) to not spawn. This has now been fixed. Those dang e-coins :)

The E-coin editor had a bug in it that could cause it to be totally blank. That has now been fixed.

If you still find your E-coin is blank, deleting it then re-adding it again will fix it.

• Bubble, new payloads: Hammer Bro Suit and Boomerang
• Buried Vegetable: E-Coin payload
• Buried Vegetable - Monty Mole (in terrain)
• Chest, new payloads: Hammer Bro Suit, Music Box, One Up, Three Up
• Classic Column (in decorations)
• Stairs - Down Right (in terrain)
• Stairs - Up Right (in terrain)
• Stalagmite (in terrain)
• Wood Ramp - Down Right (in terrain)
• Wood Ramp - Up Right (in terrain)

Monty Mole as a Buried Vegetable payload was separated out into its own entity because it has different compatibility from all other Buried Vegetable payloads.

After you collect the E-coin in your level, it will now show up correctly in the E-coin castle.

NOTE: When testing your level inside Smaghetti, you can only go into the E-coin castle once. If you go into it again, the game will glitch out. This bug only happens in Smaghetti. If you take your save file and play it on a real GBA or in a normal emulator, this problem doesn't happen. I will see if I can get this fixed, but at least it only happens inside Smaghetti.

After collecting an e-coin in a Smaghetti level, if you go to the castle, it will look like this

I think I know why and I am working on a fix. I can't promise I'll pull this off, but I think seeing Smaghetti e-coins in the castle should be doable.

You can now design your own e-coins. You can either use the built in drawing pad to draw a simple coin, or import an image file. Here are some tips on using image files.

• E-Coin (in objects)

So far the E-Coin has the Smaghetti logo on it. But letting you draw your own coin is coming.

• Spin Platform (in gizmos)

Snake Block still needs to let you choose how fast it is and what its initial direction will be. But since it works other than that, I moved it out of unfinished.

• Snake Block

Snake Block is in the unfinished section because there are still a few things to figure out with it yet. But it is currently usable, so check it out, it's a fun entity. I hope to get Snake Block totally finished by this weekend.

• Platform - Wood, Moves Left, Fall on Touch
• Platform - Wood, Move Right on Touch

• Platform Rope Support
• Muncher: greatly increased compatibility

Muncher is now compatible with pretty much everything except airship entities. They come in many colors, so what color your munchers end up being is pretty random. But a strange colored muncher is better than no muncher at all!

• Bolt Head: Can now face up
• Stalactite - Single

I don't think Nintendo made Bolt Heads in the other directions (left and down)

• Green Mountains

There are supposed to be clouds that go with these mountains. But so far they are proving elusive. So for now at least, some mountains.

• Bill Blaster Burner: can now be turned upside down

• Bill Blaster: can now be turned upside down
• Fire Snake

You will be able to turn Bill Blaster Burners upside down too, just haven't gotten to implementing that just yet.

It's a mystery why Fire Snake ends up purple in Smaghetti levels. Still much to figure out...

• Fortress Lamp
• Wood Platform - Giant

• Grass Floor
• Pipe - Horizontal, Mini, Double Ended
• Platform - Blue/White Checkered

• Cloud Platform - Aero, Moving
• Nipper Plant

• Quicksand

Quicksand is a bit of a turning point entity, as it is the first entity added to Smaghetti by reverse engineering the main game instead of e-reader levels. Reverse engineering of the main game is my main focus now.

• Airship Platform: now supports the upper window "hatch", um, thing :)
• Para Bobomb Canceler
• Para Galoomba Canceler

• Pipes

• Bill Blaster - Burner

All liquid terrains are now done using a drag handle, similar to how things like Colorful Metal Box work. The old way of "painting" the tiles is not good enough for these entities, as in more complex scenarios Smaghetti was unable to figure out how you wanted your liquid to work. For example, Smaghetti would build bodies of water that looked like this:

With the new way liquid entities are handled, you can now get the expected result:

But! If Smaghetti was making bad liquid for you before, you will need to go into your level and fix it using the new entities. The old liquid tiles will be replaced automatically for you, but the bad scenarios can not be automatically fixed. In other words, the above scenario will first look like this in the editor:

And you will need to manually fix up your level to get the correct water.

The impacted entities are:

• Choppy Water
• Lava
• Pool of Water
• Waterfall

Giant Piranha can be made to fit in a giant pipe after all. You can now choose whether it should be positioned for a regular or giant pipe by clicking its hammer button. Thanks again to NintyAlex for figuring this out.

• Pipe - Vertical Giant
• Wood Floor - Giant

Why don't giant piranha plants fit properly inside giant pipes?!

• Bolt - Down
• Bolt - Up
• Cloud Floor
• Pipe - Vertical Mini Muncher

Bolts have been moved to terrain, in the airship section.

Turns out vertical mini pipes must have munchers inside them. It's very strange how Nintendo implemented them O_o. Smaghetti has shown me many strange things Nintendo did, but this one takes the cake so far!

• Airship Crate
• Airship Metal Plate
• Magikoopa
• Piranha Plant - Giant
• Stalactite: now fully compatible with everything
• Surprise Donut Lift

No giant pipes yet, but giant Piranhas do fit in normal pipes!

• Checkered Block
• Checkered Inner Corner - Upper Left
• Checkered Inner Corner - Upper Right
• Stalactite - Falling

There are still 13 Checkered Terrain entities that need to be added. I have also found that the checkered terrain can behave weird in some layouts. Eventually (and it won't be for quite a while) I will add a checkered terrain auto-tiler. Where you just draw with a "checkered terrain brush" and Smaghetti figures out the tiles for you.

• Bowser's Castle

• Ghost Player
• Ace Coin: You can now choose the position for Ace Coins

The Ghost Player lets you put Mario in a temporary starting spot for testing purposes. More details on the tips page.

Ace Coins have a specific position associated with them. For example, if a coin has position #2, when the player gets that coin, the second Ace Coin up in the HUD will get filled in. Before Smaghetti picked these positions automatically, and did a bad job. Now you can pick them yourself. This is helpful as you can now arrange it so Ace Coins generally get picked up in order.

• Waterfalls

• Bill Blaster
• Bullet Bill - Targeting
• Burner: can now shoot flames up or down
• Platform Wood - Left/Right

The previous Bill Blaster was a special one meant only for airship levels. It is still available in the enemies airship section. That one can not have a body.

This new Bill Blaster is the general one that can be used in any level, and it can have a body of whatever height you choose. Thanks to NintyAlex for working these out.

Bill Blasters can shoot various things, but so far Smaghetti only supports normal Bullet Bills. The other payloads will get added eventually.

Found a level on the levels page you liked? Click on the heart!

• Piranha Plant - Facing Left, Red
• Piranha Plant - Facing Left, Red, Fire
• Piranha Plant - Facing Right, Red
• Piranha Plant - Facing Right, Red, Fire

I needed to rename Horizontal Piranha Plant. So if it is in your levels, you will find it is now missing. You need to re-add it, sorry about that.

Renames like this should be very rare, Horizontal Piranha Plant was one of the first entities in Smaghetti and I didn't think through its name very well in those early days.

When you go to play your level, you will start in whatever room the editor is currently focused on.

So if you are working on room 2, and go to test your level, you will start in room 2. The entire level will still be available. So for example if you have a warp that goes from room 2 to room 1, it will still work.

When starting in a room other than 1, you start wherever Mario is positioned in that room. Make sure to move him to where it makes sense.

If you want to test your level from the beginning, just return to room 1 before testing.

• Piranha Plant - Fire
• Piranha Plant - Red
• Piranha Plant - Red, Fire
• Piranha Plant - Upside Down, Red
• Piranha Plant - Upside Down, Red, Fire
• Piranha Plant - Upside Down, Red, Short

• Inside Airship
• Mountains

• Basement Dungeon
• Pyramids
• Stone Wall

The pyramids background is so cool!

• Angry Sun (see entry below)
• Burner
• Cheep Cheep - Jumping
• Note Block Warp
• Platform - Pullied
• Upward Water Current - Narrow
• Wood Floor - Snow Covered
• Wood Window Frame

Turns out the Angry Sun does work. It just takes a long time. If you put it in a level, it won't chase Mario until he has traveled quite a ways.

• Pipe Vertical - Mini (unfinished)
• Bolt Head

You can now tag your levels such as "traditional" or "kaizo". Find the tags in the same place you name your level. Tags will show up on the levels page.

• Platform - Wood Up/Down

There was a bug preventing levels that had Stone Supports in them from saving. That has now been fixed.

• Spiny Cheep Cheep Generator

• Platform - Left/Right

• Platform - Basic
• Platform - Up/Down
• Platform - Wrap Around

Find them under gizmos in the new platforms subcategory

The previous camera settings really pushed the camera up and you could not see much below you. I have tweaked them to be more balanced.

Ultimately Smaghetti will let you configure the camera so that it makes sense for your level. But that probably won't be for a long time, as there is still a lot of work needed to pull that off.

• Airship Propeller
• Cannon - Rotating
• Giant Cannon Ball
• Pipe Cannon - Mini
• Wall Mounted Cannon

Almost all airship entities are now in Smaghetti. Sadly Smaghetti still can't do any kind of autoscrolling yet, so can't quite make a traditional airship level. But it is getting there!

• Stormy Clouds

• Airship Platform
• Porthole
• Rocky Wrench
• Wood Column

Airship Platform can be configured in many ways

Why is Wood Column so weird and limited? You'll have to ask Nintendo :)

Cannons can now be configured to face in all four directions. In other words, ceiling cannons are now possible.

• Rope

Rope is a cool entity because unlike vines you have complete control over its height. It is also fully compatible with everything, so you can put them in any room you want.

• Bill Blaster
• Bullet Bill Generator Canceler

You can now limit bullet bill generators to sections of a level.

Bill Blasters need more work. So far they have no body and can only shoot Bullet Bills. Stay tuned for more.

• Pipe Corner Transition
• Tan Metal Bricks - Pyramid

• Flying Cheep Cheep Generator

• Bullet Bill Generator - Cardinal
• Bullet Bill Generator - Diagonal

• Bowser Fireball
• Bowser Fire Generator
• Giant Question Block: Hammer Bro suit payload
• Para Bobomb Generator
• Para Galoomba Generator

Giant Question Block has been stuck in the unfinished tab for ages. But not anymore! More giant stuff should be coming as well, stay tuned.

Weirdly, it doesn't work with giant enemies :( Need to figure out why...

• Checkered Ceiling
• Checkered Inner Corner - Lower Left
• Checkered Inner Corner - Lower Right
• Checkered Interior
• Checkered Outer Corner - Lower Left
• Checkered Outer Corner - Lower Right
• Checkered Outer Corner - Upper Left
• Checkered Outer Corner - Upper Right
• Checkered Platform - Center
• Checkered Platform - Left Cap
• Checkered Platform - Right Cap
• Checkered Wall - Left
• Checkered Wall - Right

Checkered terrain has its own subcategory in the item choose now, because there is a ton of different ones. I'll be adding all the checkered terrain gradually over the coming days. Go make those bonus rooms! Thanks to NintyAlex for figuring out the details on these.

Cannons can now shoot either bobombs or cannon balls

There was a bug that would cause items about 4 tiles above Mario to not render when first starting a level. That has now been fixed. Sorry about that, it made some levels really strange.

This bug is also what was causing the confusion with Grass Chutes. So Grass Chutes have been moved out of the unfinished tab and are fully usable now.

• Grass Chute - Down Left (unfinished)
• Grass Chute - Down Right (unfinished)

• Cannon

The first airship entity. But so far, it can only fire bobombs.

• Podoboo (aka Lava Bubble)
• Podoboo - Ceiling

When you select some entities then drag them some place else, you can make a copy of them by holding down the shift key while dragging.

You can now place Mario anywhere you'd like in your level. You can also resize a room to any size you want, so this can open up some cooler level types like starting way at the top of a tall level

On the levels page, you can now choose to save up to 30 levels into a save file. You can then load that save file into a Game Boy using a flash cart, or into an emulator, and try out all the levels you chose.

Doing this on your own levels inside the editor is coming

• Background Hills - Striped, Large
• Background Hills - Textured, Large
• Background Hills - Textured, Medium
• Background Hills - Textured, Small

All hill backgrounds are now extracted

You can now publish your levels to let other people try them.

Published levels will show up on the levels page. People can load your published levels into the editor and play with them, but they can't save them, not even a copy. I might loosen that restriction later, what do you prefer?

• Spike Top

• Night Sky

• Checkered Floor - Perspective
• Grass Plateau
• Pipe - Horizontal Mini
• Seaweed
• Snow Plateau

You can now set how tall a room is. Find it in the "manage rooms" mode, same place as background and music settings.

Still need to figure out how to position Mario. Also be careful with really large rooms, you can make a level that is too big to fit in a save file. Eventually Smaghetti will warn when you do that, but for now, just be careful if you make really big rooms with lots of stuff in them.

• Crystal Underground
• Hills at Night

• Cloud Platform - Aero
• Cloud Platform - Thin
• Stone Support
• Warp Area
• Wiggler

• Stone Floor
• Tanooki Block

• Metal Brick

You can now set how wide a room is. Find it in the "manage rooms" mode, same place as background and music settings.

Level height and positioning Mario are coming, but they are proving harder to figure out.

• Background Hills - Striped, Small
• Grass Slope - 30° Up Left
• Grass Slope - 30° Up Right
• Grass Staircase - Up Left
• Grass Staircase - Up Right
• Palm Tree
• Roto Disc

There are more Roto Disc variants, so far only one the simple one has been brought in.

• Winter

• Background Hills - Striped, Medium
• Colorful Metal Box
• Scroll Stop - Horizontal

Underwater floor and wood floor were not implemented well. It was possible to use them in such a way your level would get corrupted. So I redid how they work. They now behave more like pipes and conveyor belts in that you have to size them with a drag handle.

If your level had underwater or wood floor in it, they will be removed the next time you load the level. You will need to re-add them using the new approach. Sorry about that, but breaking changes like this are inevitable during early preview.

• Bonus Room
• Desert
• Ghost House
• Plains
• Tall Hills*
• Tetris Room*

Mario can finally get some fresh air

Tall Hills and Tetris Room are unused assets in the game

• Goomba Generator

Hanging out in its own subcategory in the palette because this game has a lot of generators, many more to come.

You can now choose what music a room plays. It's in the same spot as choosing the background graphic.

Why can you choose any song? Like credits, game over, etc? Because the game lets you do it :) So if you want strange music in your levels, go for it.

Originally Stretch Boo was one entity and Smaghetti would choose to make it upside down or upright depending on how you placed it in your level. This is convenient, but it is also limiting. It would mean you couldn't position a Stretch Boo how you wanted it in some situations.

So now Stretch Boo comes in upright and upside down variants and you need to choose the right one for the situation.

This is the same reason spiny and buzzy beetle come in separate ceiling versions.

• Checkered Floor

This is the first entity in the "checkered terrain series", once all are added, you'll be able to construct entire rooms in a checkered motif

• Hot Foot
• Hot Foot - Shy
• Lava Lotus
• Stretch Boo
• Stretch Boo platform

After warping to a different room, did you notice missing graphics and things seemed glitchy?

I believe I tracked down the problem and levels are working a lot better now after you warp.

You can now pick how big to make a flag pole just like pipes

• Airship Pipe
• Blue Coin
• Coral Donut Block
• Monty Mole
• Underwater Floor

• Bomb
• Bumpty
• Bumpty - Aggressive
• Jelectro
• P-Switch Door
• Porcupo
• Rip Van Fish
• Rotating Checkered Block - Large
• Rotating Checkered Block - Small

• Blooper Nanny
• Galoomba - Parachute

Press the L key to toggle which layers are locked. Each time you press 'l' it works through locking actors, locking stage, locking none.

• Note Block - Three Way

Now shoots lasers.

So far this is not optional, debating whether to make this a config or not...

• Amazing Flyin' Hammer Bro
• Clapping Chuck
• Dolphin Pod
• Green Para Troopa - Patrolling
• Ice Block - Coin
• Ice Block - Muncher
• Ice Block - Small
• Piranha Plant - Horizontal Red
• Wood Platform
• Wood Support

Horizontal pipe is now ready for use

• Iggy
• Larry
• Lemmy
• Morton
• Roy
• Wendy

All Koopalings!

You can now configure how many fireballs it takes to kill Ludwig, as well as how many stomps it takes.

Thanks to NintyAlex for figuring this out. He also figured out more info on Bowser, Boom Boom, as well as other Koopalings, which will get added to Smaghetti eventually.

• Beach Ball
• See Saw Platform

Beach Ball is an unused item in the game and it's pretty cool!

Vertical pipes are now ready to use. Find them in the warp section in the palette. They are still a bit raw and will get better as I work on them more.

• Pipe - Vertical (unfinished)
• Piranha Plant

Vertical pipes are close, but still some things to figure out. You can try one out by grabbing it from the Unfinished tab in the palette.

Technically piranha plants can work without pipes, but they look broken. To stick it in a pipe, just drop it on top of the pipe with its mouth just below the pipe's lip. Remember you can lock either the stage or actor layers as needed to make this easier.

Conveyor belts now have a more intuitive and easier way to set them up. Still rougher than I ultimately want, but a good first step. Making Smaghetti really easy to use is a top priority.

Here is a quick video showing the before and after.

• Flag Pole
• Rope Railing

• Amazing Flyin' Hammer Bro (unfinished)
• Big Bass
• Big Bertha
• Blooper
• Bolts and Bolt Lifts
• Flame Chomp
• Flurry
• Porcu-Puffer
• Swooper

You can now set your level's timer. In the upper right corner, click the pencil to go into management mode. Once there, you can change the level name, timer and add/delete rooms

• Homing Fireball
• Hoopster
• Ptooie Potted Piranha Plant
• Ptooie Walking Piranha Plant

The fireball is an enemy from Yoshi's island. It is unused in SMA4, now available to add to levels for the first time.

• Wood Floor
• Pool of Water renamed to Choppy Water
• new Pool of Water which is still/sparkly water

Conveyor belts can now be configured to go in either direction

Thwomp's pursuit direction can now be configured

• Flying Piranha Plant
• Grass - Horizontal
• Grass - Upper Left Corner
• Grass - Upper Right Corner
• Grass - Vertical Left
• Grass - Vertical Right

When editing one of your levels, the save button now has an option to save a copy.

• Pool of Water
• Vine
• Waterfall

You can now decide how many coins a Coin Challenge will require the player to collect.

Fire Bar can now be fully configured.

• Rotate clockwise or counter-clockwise
• Pivot point at the end or in the center
• Number of fireballs

The details pane is pretty ugly, but that's true of all detail panes :) Making them look nicer is on the TODO list.

• Hopping Bowser Statue

The editor is now divided into two layers: actors and stage

Often these layers don't matter much, but they become important when working with large objects such as the black backdrop at the end of levels and large terrain. The layers enable working with these large entities without smaller things like enemies getting in the way, and vice versa

Now that layers are in place, large terrain is the next thing to add

• Ceiling Buzzy Beetle
• Ceiling Spiny

Lakitu can now be set to either throw an orange egg, which becomes a spiny upon landing. Or a green egg, which stays an egg upon landing and is more aggressive than spinies.

Possibly can configure Lakitu to throw coins as well, but so far have not been able to find that setting.

• Fluffy Cloud

If the palette says an entity can't be added, it's because that entity is not compatible with another entity you've already added to the room. Now if you click on the "see compatibility chart" link in the palette, it will show you a breakdown of which entities work and don't work together. For example, here is Grand Goomba's compatibility page.

Smaghetti now understands object sets. That means it knows which objects can be in the same room together and how to load them.

With object sets now in place, these new entities have now been added:

• Cactus
• Cement Block
• Flower Bush
• Lakitu Cloud

• Beached Cheep Cheep
• Fishbone
• Galoomba
• Invisible Block
• One Way Door
• River Cheep Cheep
• Winged Platform
• Baby Cheep Cheep
• Bowser Fire Statue
• Dolphin Pod
• Fall Away Spike
• Flutter
• Hothead
• Water Cheep Cheep

Fishbone and Flutter are unused entities, now usable for the first time in SMA4!

Both of these are unused entities that Nintendo left in the game, now usable for the first time in SMA4!

• Floating Block
• Arrow Lift