The latest and hottest release on the 3DS is without a doubt Super Mario Maker, the game that allows you to utterly torment other people in a Mario game. That doesn’t mean that’s only game in which you can create your own levels for Mario to roam around though. Enter “The 4th Dimension”, a tool created by developer exelix11 which allows you to edit and create levels for the game Super Mario 3D Land.

This tool is still in development stages and this new update to it only brings it version 0.9, but it is already in a state where you can more than use it to play around. To me, that’s the essence of the fun in a homebrew scene: playing around and tinkering with stuff. Exelix11‘s tool in its current state allows you to do a lot already. There are a bunch of videos in – what I assume – is his YouTube channel showing off the results of playing around with this. I would give it a look if you want to see what this tool is capable of.

What is The 4th Dimension?

The 4th Dimension is a tool created by developer exelix11 for the 3DS game Super Mario 3D Land. You can use it to edit the game and create your own levels and them play them on it. It is a Windows-based tool (sorry Mac and Linux users) because it uses Microsoft’s .net framework. While reproducible in other OSes using the Mono Framework, The 4th Dimension uses specific WPF components that can’t be reproduced outside of the Windows environment.

Features

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• Level loading and object editing
• Rails viewing and editing
• Loading levels from szs,byml or xml
• Converting game models to obj
• Byml <-> xml converter
• Model importer

Things still to be done:

• Better 3D viewer
• Other things (?)

Changelog for v0.9

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• Now it’s possible to edit properties for more objects at the same time
• C0Lists now can be edited like normal objects types in the main window
• Added dragging snapping every 50 units Shift + Ctrl + Drag
• Some other smaller changes

Instructions

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You’ll need:

• Windows Vista/7/8.1/10 and .Net Framework 4.5.2 (Sorry linux users, but this uses some WPF components for 3d rendering that mono can’t run)
• The unpacked romfs of the game
• A way to run the custom levels (3ds with ntr cfw, hans or citra maybe)
• Every file explorer

How to use the editor:

• Unpack the romfs of the game, then open the editor and select it, the editor will convert every model to obj (so they can be viewed), this will take a while
• Now open a level and you’re ready to go!

For a more in-depth guide into how to use this tool click here and watch the video provided above.

Some tips:

1. When you zoom in too much the camera may go crazy, zoom out to fix that
2. Don’t play with the “l_id” value of objects, if there is invalid data the game will crash
3. Keep some backups of the level while editing, the editor may crash
4. If there are 3D objects that are annoying in the 3D view(skyboxes, TransparentWalls, etc), delete their 3d model in the models folder or rename it, the object will be replaced in the editor with a small blue cube

Credits

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Thanks to @Gericom for every file explorer and it’s DLLs
Thanks to @gdkchan for Ohana3DS

Download The 4th Dimension

To download The 4th Dimension, head over to the release thread over at GBATemp or go to the developer’s GitHub release page and download the files needed. If you prefer to get the link straight from us you can click here. If you have any bug reports of feature suggestions you want to make to exelix11, do so in the forum thread linked since it is there he asks for those sort of things to be filed.

Happy tinkering!