Vanilla Engine

Vanilla Engine
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Developer:	Xykij
Programs used:	Multimedia Fusion Developer 2
Is public?	No
Last version:	Unknown

Vanilla Engine is a Mario Forever engine developed by Xykij, created with Multimedia Fusion Developer 2.

Etymology

"Vanilla", as the informatic term implies, stands for its lack of customization. Vanilla Engine is based on marioforevereditorv1.0.cca file left in Mario Worker 1.0 folder, it mostly keeps the codes of that source material with minimal change. Unlike many more engines, it doesn't feature custom elements.

Evolution

First Build

Vanilla Engine was firstly Xykij's private engine that he started developing around 2013. It was unnamed until he decided to publicly release it in 2020. It first existed in two different editions : for Multimedia Fusion 1.5 and Multimedia Fusion Developer 2. The former is strongly based on the original Mario Forever, with the possibility to properly use transitions. It works the same as the original game without fail. The latter, however, was also developed in parallel because his author had interest in using visual eye-candies seen in newer versions of Mario Forever. Multimedia Fusion 1.5, on the other hand, is unable to manage such type of alpha-transparent graphics because of how old it is.

Major upgrades

In 2014 and 2015, when Xykij was creating Mario Forever : Extra Levels, he first used Multimedia Fusion 1.5. But, the limited options provided by this version of the software wasn't enough to fulfill the author's intentions with his project. So he moved Multimedia Fusion 2. A few years later, in 2017, he reused Multimedia Fusion 1.5 to begin his new series, Mario Forever : Katakana Letter Worlds Series. The first three worlds were made with, then he again moved back to Multimedia Fusion 2 starting from the fourth world, and subsequently published it, along with the fifth some months later.

The impossibility to change the Frame Per Second rate, the rare but yet inexplicable glitches and crashes, the impossibility to add alpha-transparent graphics, the difficulty to set up Multimedia Fusion 1.5 and especially DMC2 extension, as well as the primitiveness of the software over the more recent versions, made Xykij definitely relinquish Multimedia Fusion 1.5. He would focus exclusively on Multimedia Fusion 2 and further develop his engine and adding a lot of options, optimizations and improvements over the following months, even trying to implement complex mechanics that were yet not possible to replicate.

Xykij's perfectionnism made him revamping the engine multiple times from 2018 to 2023.

From private to public status

The author decided to make it public by the final days of 2020, shortly after the release of the biggest and yet last game demo of Mario Forever : Katakana Letter Worlds Series.

He had the idea to make it public, a little reluctantly though, after the multiplication of fangames he considered poorly-executed mainly because of the fact that the most famous engines were too complex, with heavy file sizes and that most of amateur level designers can't seem to use properly. Moreover, such engines most of the time, got low-quality mods.

In 2021 and onwards, the engine's development has been extremely inconsistent and jagged, the author was experimenting a lot with the outcomes, trying to fix as many issues as possible first, then progressively tried to move towards more customizable options. Later, he would try to simplify the coding with qualifiers. Then, he would abandon the idea because of inflexible they are under Multimedia Fusion 2. A ridiculous amount of additions and removes were done during the years 2021 and 2022. Each version would be sometimes drastically different, using for instance completely different qualifiers.

The end of engine's life

By the end of 2023, when Mario Forever Tournament : 20th Anniversary Edition was out, Xykij has been reported with various dysfunctions such as timer freeze, coin count not restarting after reaching 99, SFX not playing. Few users had none of these issues, few more had only one, and some had all of them at once. All of these aforementioned problems, plus the common glitches and personal reasons drove its author to move to Clickteam Fusion 2.5+ in early 2024 and upgrade Vanilla into a more reliable engine, called Grzybek Engine.

Specifics

• Fairly light-sized, an empty level frame contains slightly less than 200 objects ( Older builds had a little over 200 ) and each time, the number of events was reduced ( From around 1900 to roughly 1500 ).
• Engine is written in Polish, the same way marioforevereditorv1.0.cca is.
• Sprites reworked a bit to look better ( Removing pixels off, keeping consistency in between enemies variations, simplifying colour palettes ).
• Brighter colours in general.
• Some comments indicating what could be manually edited, the meaning of some global values, as well as qualifiers.
• Events dedicated to "layering", in other words, to ensure that objects are placed the right way accordingly to the others ( For instance, particle effects going in front, decoration going behind, et cetera ).
• Features Polish and English languages.
• Features the possibility to play with the traditional Mario Forever display ( From version 1.16 to version 4.4 ) or with a mode with numerous graphical effects ( From version 5.0 to latest version ).
• Features the possibility to play with 50 FPS or 60 FPS.
• Greatly enhanced the warp pipe system, with two qualifiers and a few alterable values only, ending up removing plenty of events ( The system made by Xykij was later added to Cloud Engine ).
• Created more advanced alpha-transparent effects ( E.g. fireball's glowing flare ).
• Improved a lot the interaction between enemies and player's projectiles, star shield, shells.
• Stopper-less Red Koopa Troopa algorithm.
• Several enemies existing in various colours created as full-fledged objects, to remove some markers and patching glitching out.
• Brick block's sprite containing brown and grey colour, and easy colour switch.
• Springboard GFX edited for Softendo's Mario Worker look ( See below ), adding a small layer of brick beneath.
• Added the Ice Flower and the Superball Flower ( The latter was later replaced with the Great Vegetable ).
• You can switch in between regular Piranha Plant movement or its slower movement ( Like in Mario Forever's Worlds 1 to 5 ).
• Added special unlockable options.
• Unlockable option : Choice of enabling Check-points or not.
• Unlockable option : Choice of enabling unlimited continues or not.
• Unlockable option : Play with regular Mario Forever look, or with Softendo's Mario Worker look.
• Added Anti-cheat System ( Against hack of lives, coins and timer ).

Versions

A lot of versions were released starting from when the engine became public. However, it's hard to keep track of all of the releases, because while a few versions were uploaded, plenty more were unofficial releases and were distributed to one person, or just a few.

Moreover, most of the release announcements were merely Discord messages, and are removed for a long time, which completely erases off the history of the engine.

Glitch Reports

This game engine had its share of controversies, especially regarding the anti-cheat system, that was brought under several revisions to be a counter-measure against players cheating lives. The first versions of such system, under rare occurrences, could have been wrongly triggered. When triggered, the anti-cheat system forces the game to close. Few players were unfortunate enough to witness this outcome while legitimately playing. Since, Xykij has made another version of the anti-cheat system, first introduced in Mario Forever Tournament : 20th Anniversary Edition. Unlike its previous installations, this system, once triggered, bounces back the value of the timer, coins and lives back to what they were before the modifications.