Mario Forever: Community Edition

Mario Forever: Community Edition
The game's logo.
Developer:	See #Credits.
Built with:	Godot Engine
Latest version:	1.1
No. of worlds:	13 (8 main, 5 extras)
No. of levels:	32 main
Download link:	[1] [2]

Mario Forever: Community Edition is a 2024 remake of the game Mario Forever, created by JUE13 and ReflexGURU and developed by the Mario Forever Community Edition Development Team. Unlike most other Mario Forever games made earlier with Clickteam Fusion, it is made in Godot Engine, with physics and controls being as close to the original as possible.

The move to Godot Engine not only adds proper controller support, high FPS support, and compatibility with modern systems, but also makes it easier for the developers to change the core engine and add new features, new tweaks and mechanics with upcoming updates.

Overview

Mario Forever: Community Edition brings the original Mario Forever by Michal Gdaniec to a whole new level, by porting everything to a more modern game engine and adding customizability, a new secret challenge to the whole game, Luigi as a playable character, quality of life features, and slightly improved aesthetics. A notable addition would include a player skin system, which allows a modification of how the in-game character looks and sounds.

Development

The first ever instance of an idea to port Mario Forever to Godot dates back to 2021, but as both JUE13 and ReflexGURU were still new at Godot and the engine quality was still questionable, the idea was postponed for an undetermined amount of time. Instead, both have been working on new projects to both show off the capabilities of Godot and improve the game experience. Since then, JUE13 & ReflexGURU have been learning Godot, improving the Mario Forever template engine they used, starting with Storm Engine on Godot v3.2, which eventually got abandoned with the release of Godot 4.

The development of Thunder Engine has started on December 17th, 2022. On April 7th, 2023, the first technical demo to Thunder Engine using Godot v4.0.2 has been released on Discord, featuring 1-1 in MF v5.0 style, but for the time, it was just an engine showcase. Since that demo was released, Thunder Engine was receiving constant updates and fixes.

The development of MF: Community Edition started on March 30th, 2024, right after releasing an update to the MF project that JUE13 and ReflexGURU took part in, as soon as both have found themselves comfortable to start developing the remake. Initially, the idea was just to port all the levels from MF 4.4 in the same fashion as Mario Forever Remake did it, but with a support for high refresh rate monitors.

After almost all the levels have been ported, SerafimGWS suggested to include toggleable MF 6.0 graphics throughout all of the levels, including extra worlds, which led to the functionality of Quality setting. Eventually, more stuff from newer Mario Forever versions have been added, including the minigames, the lava run section from 1-4, and enemy encounters, all of which could be disabled as a tweak. The idea of tweaks themselves came from the community, as some people liked MF 4.4 and such more than the newer versions, and some felt otherwise. Most of the quality of life features came from the previous games that JUE13 & ReflexGURU developed, like the progress continue and the power-up shop in save room, which came from The Multiverse 2.

There was a point where JUE13 tried to experiment with the online multiplayer part of the engine. The result was playable for the most part, but turned out to be very buggy, and JUE13 did not care enough to fix everything and continue the development, as that would also mean maintaining compatibility with the whole Mario Forever: Community Edition, which was very hard to do. The idea of multiplayer was inspired by Can't Sleep, and this was also when the development of skins system has started.

The release date was initially set on the Christmas holidays, but after an extensive period of beta-testing, it was decided that the project was already stable enough for the first public release. The first version was released on November 28th, 2024, and the release trailer received a surprisingly high amount of attention with a positive feedback. Version 1.1 was released on December 5th, 2024, adding World 9 by Syzxchulun and fixing bugs, along with a native Linux version of the game.

Worlds and Levels

Mario Forever: Community Edition contains eight main story mode worlds from Mario Forever, as well as all the extra worlds and levels seen in Mario Forever up to version 6.0 inclusive. These levels have been ported and tweaked to better fit the overall game, based on the community feedback. Such tweaks can be disabled by the player, bringing the original design of Mario Forever by Michael Gdanietz.

As of Version 1.1, in addition to worlds and levels seen in Mario Forever 6.0, there is only one additional extra level, which is also seen in Mario Forever Remake, and that being a hidden Human Laboratory Tower level by Jeansowaty. MFCE also has the original version of World 9 by Syzxchulun, in addition to Softendo's arrangement of the same world.

The future updates will include more custom worlds.

Mario Minix also gets an upgrade from the original, adding new maps and bringing back some Flash versions of the game as their own maps.

Tweaks

Found as an option in the main menu, the Tweaks can be used to customize the player experience.

The description for the selected tweak can be read in-game by pressing the Space button on keyboard.

General

This is the category that shows up right after entering the Tweaks menu. Other categories can be accesed from here.

• Character - Selection between Mario and Luigi. Luigi accelerates slower and jumps higher than Mario, and also receives a special power-up in place of Green Lui.
• Skin Set - Selection between player skins. The game is bundled with 2 skins that can be treated as examples: the new designs of Mario and Luigi by Heavenice. You can create as many skins as you'd like, the guide for skins can be found here.
  • Note that Skin Set can be changed independently from the Character. If you download the skin from somewhere else, please check with the skin author which character should be used as a base for the skin.
• Enable Console (only available after completing the Story Mode) - Pressing F1 on the keyboard will bring up a console, which you can use to enter cheat commands and have fun. Type help to get a list of commands.
  • Note that with this tweak, you will not be able to get any achievements and play Mario Minix.
  • If you enter a save pipe with this tweak enabled, or any console command was entered during the game session, the entered save pipe will become a "Cheated" save pipe, as it could no longer be used to get achievements. This effect could be erased only by resetting the save pipe and restarting the game.

Note: The following sections will only list a few notable tweaks, however there are much more tweaks in the game.

Gameplay

• Revamp design of some Extra Levels - This option toggles whether the following levels should have a revamped level design or not: Funny Tanks, Goomba Party, Hardcore 1-4 and Hardcore 2-4. If disabled, these levels will have the original design by Michael Gdanietz.
• Suspended Progress (AKA the Progress Continue) - Each time a level gets completed, the player's entire progress, including lives, coins and power, gets saved in a temporary save file, allowing to continue from where they left off.

Aesthetics

• Soundtrack - Can be selected between Mixed, From 2.16 - 4.4, From 5.0, and From 7.02+ to set which version of the game should the soundtrack be based upon. "Mixed" soundtrack is a mix of these versions, which is generally based on the version period between 2.16 - 4.4, but with a few additions from 7.02.
  • The following levels are affected: 2-2, 2-3, 4-3, 6-2, 7-2, Hardcore 1-4, Human Laboratory (all levels), the Mario Minix "Classic" soundtrack type, and all Bowser battles.
• Quality (can also be accessed from Options mid-game) - Selection between Classic (MIN), Modern (MED), and Softendo (MAX). If the difference between "Modern" and "Softendo" can be seen immediately, the difference between "Modern" and "Classic" is a little more subtle:
  • In Modern, which is the default, killed enemies fly off rotating similar to Mario Forever Flash, enclosed areas (Underground, Castles) have echo in sound effects, the Underground and Tank levels have an animated fog in the foreground, and some visual effects are modernized.
  • In Softendo, in addition to the 6.0 graphics in every level, all of the Modern quality effects are also present.
  • In Classic, none of the above is present, effects are more primitive. This is more close to the 2.16 - 4.4 version experience of the game.

Credits

Main contributors and the members of the Mario Forever Community Edition Development Team:

Name	Contribution
JUE13	Project lead, Engine & Project coding, Level porting
ReflexGURU
马里奥X7	Engine coding
CoreSHINOBI124	Level porting, Graphics
Heavenice	Graphics, including new Mario & Luigi skins
SerafimGWS	Level porting, Graphics, Level revamps

Additional contributions:

Name	Contribution
S.Koopa0	Graphics
Anaswael
SuperMany
Bullex738
Jeansowaty
PlayerGuy
SoundWave961	Testing and feedback
Master48
RafaelVitoria
Can't Sleep
ThirdStar248
MJXXX
nekohash9
Niikes
Kavex
Michael Gdanietz	The original game

And everybody (the Community) who suggested new ideas, minor corrections, and tweaks for the game!

Special Thanks

Michał Gdaniec (Buziol Games) for creating Mario Forever, and TheMarioVariable, for creating Mario Forever Remake as the first ever remake of the game. If it wasn't for them, Mario Forever: Community Edition would not exist.

Gallery

• 
  World 1-2 with maximum quality as Luigi.
• 
  The tweaks menu, gameplay category.
• 
  One of the new maps in Mario Minix. A custom skin can also be seen.
• 
  A map for the Human Laboratory World with maximum quality.

See also

• Mario Forever Remake