How to TheXTechize the old game

What there are packed games? There are several episodes such as "Sarasaland Adventures", "Super Talking Time Brothers", "Yoshi's Archipelago", etc. that get shipped with the modified game assets and have their own SMBX game executable, modded in most cases. You can't simply take the episode from it as it will don't work properly, mainly because every packed game provides the major replacement of global SMBX assets including music and sounds that was been impossible to replace until modern engines allowed that.

This manual will help you to convert the packed game into TheXTech-compatible format. While TheXTech allows you to play old episodes in as-is form without conversion, packed games do require you to convert entire default GFX assets (everything inside the "graphics" sub-directory) into the PNG format. All important hardcoded image resources will be automatically extracted and converted into a compatible format too.

1. Download the conversion kit archive and mix the content with the packed game's root
2. Make sure the old game executable is named "smbx.exe" (or "asmbxt.exe" and "a2mbxt.exe"), otherwise, you will be not able to convert hardcoded resources into the compatible format. If the executable has a different name, please rename it to "smbx.exe" by yourself.
3. Depending on your system, run the conversion script in the terminal (or command line):
   • On Windows, you need to run the gfx-convert-win.cmd script.
   • On Linux, you need to run the bash gfx-convert-lin.sh script.
4. The script will ask you, whether is need to remove all old GIFs while the conversion process or keep them? Press the Y key to remove all old GIFs after conversion, or N to keep. Once the conversion process will finish, you will see the message in the terminal that tells about finishing the conversion process.
5. Find the "plain runtime" section at the downloads page and take the version compatible with your platform. Take the executable file (thextech at Linux archives, or thextech.exe and all DLL files at Windows archives) and put it in the packed game directory. OR, pack the entire directory into the archive and upload it to your Android devices, then unpack it on the device itself. You can use the Andriod version of TheXTech to run the game (select the directory from the Settings menu at the launcher).
6. Try to launch the "thextech" application, the game should work now.
7. Optionally, edit the "gameinfo.ini" file and change the game title and character names for consistency, overlook, and other options.
8. If you met certain unexpected behaviour during a playthrough, it's possible a violation of the bug compatibility. You can re-enable any past bugs using a special compat.ini file, created at the episode or at the level data directory.

Notes

• TheXTech unlike the original SMBX doesn't have any truly hardcoded GFX assets, all previously hardcoded GFX are now located at the graphics/ui directory.

Extra

You can turn the packed game into the full-featured TheXTech assets package, there are the next steps you need to process:

• Optionally, create the individual icon for the game, and update it in the graphics/ui/icon directory. There are versions of the icon for different sizes, and icons for three formats
  • A set of PNG of different sizes
  • ICO for Windows
  • ICNS for macOS
• Create a different logo for the game (Edit the graphics/ui/MenuGFX2.png, or use the different one, specified in the gameinfo.ini file)
• Create a nicer animated background for the Android launcher: You can select any picture as the launcher background, and you can make it animated: your picture should contain set o frames in vertical sequence.
• You can quickly pack the game assets without unnecessary files (game saves, logs, settings, executables) if you run one of two scripts:
  • Bash script create_package.sh to pack the game into the tar.gz or 7z format.
  • CMD script for Windows create_package.cmd to pack the game into the 7z archive. You are required to install the 7-zip on your computer and make sure the 7z.exe is available in the PATH environment.