Overview

Custom Characters are effectively skins of the base player. However, unlike resource packs, these will not overwrite any existing characters, and instead can add a new character with its own slot into the character creation screen. They are a little more limited in what you can perform in comparison to resource packs, but are mostly re-applicable and can be easily supplemented by the usage of a resource pack.

A few examples of custom characters made for SMB1R.

Creating a custom character is relatively simple on its own. But depending on your ambition, you can take custom characters very far and implement many additional features to diversify them. This guide will tell you everything you need to know, along with some extra details on advanced character creation.

NOTE: You cannot write your own custom physics / movesets for the characters through these means, for security purposes. You may want to look into modding the game instead if this is what you're looking to accomplish.

Installing Custom Characters

In order to install typical custom characters, do the following:

Do whatever you need to in order to extract the character folder from where you downloaded it.
Go to the application data folder for Super Mario Bros. Remastered. The exact location will vary depending on your operating system. On Linux or macOS, the ~ in the path refers to the home directory.
- Windows: %APPDATA%\SMB1R
- Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/SMB1R
- Linux: ~/SMB1R
If you have portable mode enabled, the folders for your content should be present in the same folder as the executable for SMB1R itself.
Place the folder you extracted into your custom_characters folder.

If you followed these steps correctly, you should have successfully installed a custom character and will see it appear in the character selection menu the next time you play the game!

Creating Custom Characters

Download this template to get an idea of what a custom character folder looks like. When you open the folder, you should have these files:

The custom character template folder, and its contents.

Textures

Each of these files are important. Some are self-explanatory, such as Small.png, Big.png and Fire.png, which are the sprites your character can use in each respective power state. These get applied by their respective JSON files of the same name. (i.e. Small.json) Others are a bit more complex in how they function. Below is a quick explanation for the more confusing files:

CharacterColour.png is a 1x1px file which contains a single color, which is color picked for the spotlight when hovering over your character in the character selection menu.
ColourPalette.png is a 3x3px file which is used when Transform Style and Rainbow Effect are set to Classic. This is used when applying the shader which changes your character's color palette when picking up power-ups like a Fire Flower or Starman, or when powering down from a Fire power state. Below is a graphic which explains it in better detail.

Credits to Calico Stonewolf for the graphic, and Mitsame for the custom sprites used.

JSON Files

Along with the texture files for creating your character, there are also several JSON files included which are meant to be paired with your character. If you are just creating a simple texture replacement, these require 0 changes and can be left as they are.

These JSON files affect much larger aspects of your characters. They can allow you to:

Edit or add in animations to give your character more expressive movement.
Replace specific sound effects to give your character additional flair.
Tweak physics values to adjust how your character feels to play.

To learn about how to edit these files, check the page on the JSON Format.

NOTE: It is highly recommended that you have a basic understanding of the JSON format. If you'd like to learn about JSON files and how they work, we recommend this guide. This page will cover some basics, but it will only serve to give you basic examples of what to do. It is also recommended you check the list of variation keys which you can use, which will give you a better idea of what you can do to modify your character based on the states available.

NOTE: You cannot use config related variation keys on custom characters on their own. They require the usage of a resource pack in order to detect configuration values.

Character Animation Keys

Characters have a large amount of animation keys that can be accessed and given animation for various actions. Whilst some are required, others are optional and normally not seen in-game.

You can find a list of every animation key that a character can use here.