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Probably the best way to implement the secret exit in a level like this would be to use L/R scrolling to have the (?) Orb pop out of a wall somewhere.
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# ? Oct 30, 2017 17:36 |
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# ? May 16, 2024 18:12 |
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This should have been a ghost house with a hint at the start that said, "Look behind you!" and some sort of enemy setup that would lead the player to hitting L/R without having it spelled out in coins.
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# ? Oct 30, 2017 17:52 |
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I kind of liked at least the idea of the bits where you had to make sure that the platform at the top of the screen kept the rainbow shell up there; thought it looked like there might have been too much nonsense to try to dodge at the same time for it to be fun in the actual level. My first thought when you first hopped on a platform was that it'd make a neat elevator gimmick... and then I actually saw it in play later in the level and changed my mind completely. And yeah, the vertical bar you had to scroll the screen to get past? Why? What did it even add to the level besides making you stop and sit there for a minute?
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# ? Oct 30, 2017 18:42 |
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FishOnAPiano posted:And yeah, the vertical bar you had to scroll the screen to get past? Why? What did it even add to the level besides making you stop and sit there for a minute? It's a warning that you're entering the lovely Mechanics Zone.
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# ? Oct 30, 2017 18:46 |
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I'd like to give a small post-mortem on the level's concept after two months of sitting on this footage. I don't think the concept of a variable Layer 2 is inherently awful. There are definitely ways it could be used to make for an interesting gimmick. Climbing the vine in the first half while avoiding projectiles that are being thrown at different horizontal levels was a cool bit. The problem is that this level's implementation of the gimmick never really feels natural. The L/R scroll walls are weird to handle in the situations they're presented, the elevator at the end is really hard to play because Mario keeps getting stuck in the blocks (and I've seen other people manage to make these "camera-trickery" elevators without Mario getting stuck so I'm not sure what happened here) and in general the climbing just never feels great when put into claustrophobic situations like those seen in the first half of the level especially. I think people just don't really know how to handle creating these types of levels most of the time. Case in point, there was a level I judged for the oldschool level design contest that we ultimately disqualified for not fitting within the rules that used this variable scroll in combination with rising/falling layer 2 controlled by ON/OFF switches. Creative, but it was really drat hard because of unforgiving enemy placement and difficult to get powerups. In short, I think it's less the gimmick and more on the designer to figure out ways to make a gimmick fun. Throwing the player into a level where they have to both learn and use an obscure gimmick AND deal with relatively difficult enemy setups is a recipe for a bad time on the player's part.
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# ? Oct 30, 2017 20:52 |
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I thought the autoscroller near the end of the alternate exit route looked like a decent implementation. Aside from the brutal looking difficulty (claustrophobic space, heaps of unkillable enemies, that bullshit with having to whip the disco shell around at the end) the general flow of that section seemed to gel with the layer 2 mechanic. I think it has a kind of similar feeling to what you're saying about the vine section.
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# ? Oct 31, 2017 10:57 |
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After reading the thread I was expecting something truly heinous from that level but... eh. At least some parts of it looked like they could be pretty alright with more reasonable enemy and hazard placements. Seemed kinda thoughtless but not particularly despicable.
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# ? Oct 31, 2017 13:47 |
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It looks like something that looks like hell to play; just because you're exploiting a glitch to do anything.
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# ? Oct 31, 2017 15:53 |
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If there had been a mushroom at the midpoint this level would've been over in about 3 minutes instead of 12. Instead you get the uncut mess of me trying to navigate a million baseballs.
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# ? Oct 31, 2017 18:22 |
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Judge World seems really self serving and indulgent. These 2 levels wouldn't have likely cracked the top 10. Had they been judged like all the others, since judging was already anonymous, then it might have been a little better. But having them be showcased as they are, having them require a huge effort to even attain, and having them be unjudged, it should have been really drat good/special. These aren't atrocious, but they haven't seemed to have been designed to be fun/cool either.
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# ? Oct 31, 2017 18:41 |
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I'm just waiting for one of the remaining judge levels to have floating Munchers.
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# ? Oct 31, 2017 18:42 |
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Weeble posted:I'm just waiting for one of the remaining judge levels to have floating Munchers. Naked pipes that terminate in a single muncher facing the wrong way.
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# ? Oct 31, 2017 18:49 |
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This level didn't look nearly as awful as the last. If it gave power ups regularly as it should have, it would've been a pretty okay level. But lacking those definitely made it much worse than it should've been. That's one incredibly stupid mistake for the sake of being "hard". You can be hard and not be unfair to the player!
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# ? Oct 31, 2017 18:53 |
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Well I was really excited for that Waluigi level, but now I'm apprehensive.
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# ? Oct 31, 2017 19:02 |
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Wow, that level showered you with mushrooms in the first half and then the second half is completely devoid of them.
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# ? Oct 31, 2017 19:16 |
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The coin at the beginning was a nice touch. The first half in general seemed pretty inoffensive. Even with the lack of powerups I think it would have been salvageable if it had been cut down a bit. If they took like the best 3 setups after the midpoint and then ended it I think it would have made a fine level. It seemed like it had a lot of padding, in the form of platforming that was tough enough to kill you if you were being sloppy and just trying to get through to the tricky parts, but not actually tough enough to be interesting or challenging.
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# ? Oct 31, 2017 19:24 |
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Have you checked whether these *did* get scores?
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# ? Oct 31, 2017 19:38 |
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He checked the first judge level; it didn't have scores.
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# ? Oct 31, 2017 19:41 |
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when I was watching the video in the background and heard all the complaints about it being unfair, I thought to myself "sounds like someone abused savestates to beat their own level. Sounds like... yeeeeeeeeep its ninja boy"
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# ? Oct 31, 2017 20:58 |
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JossiRossi posted:Judge World seems really self serving and indulgent. These 2 levels wouldn't have likely cracked the top 10. I'll be among the first to say that you don't have to be a creator of content to be a good judge of that content (e.g. art critics don't have to be good artists). But there's no reason to showcase the output of a judge if they aren't any good! So you're right, this feels really self-indulgent. Like "hey, we're in charge of this competition, let's make our own criticism-free levels!" EDIT: vvv okay, if it's tradition, then the other judges ought to judge each judge's level (anonymously, alongside all the other levels they have to judge). Then at least it should be evident that the levels aren't really meant to be on a pedestal. TooMuchAbstraction fucked around with this message at 21:26 on Oct 31, 2017 |
# ? Oct 31, 2017 21:18 |
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I wouldn't say it's self indulgent, it's more that it's become a tradition to have judges for level design contests each make a level to go into a postgame world all while following the contest's rules. Heck, I'm supposed to make a level for the OLDC compilation since I judged it. I have no reason to believe that the judges made these levels thinking that they were doing so free of feedback or criticism and probably just thought they were doing a good job. After that point, we get into the subjectivity of whether or not the levels are good and fun. The next video is a good time though. I'll safely spoil that for people.
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# ? Oct 31, 2017 21:23 |
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That level was okay, but it really needed more power ups in the 2nd section. Hopefully Waluigi land will be better, but those 2 levels aren't getting my hopes up.
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# ? Oct 31, 2017 21:39 |
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FPzero posted:The next video is a good time though. I'll safely spoil that for people. Thank goodness. I, too, await the WAA
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# ? Oct 31, 2017 21:41 |
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Having looked at some of Ninja Boy's videos of him playing SMW hacks in the related, he apparently plays the game horribly stretched, on ZSNES, and abuses rewind. So yeah.
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# ? Oct 31, 2017 23:05 |
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At least there was no layer 2 or 3 tomfoolery
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# ? Oct 31, 2017 23:22 |
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It looked like a pretty solid level held back by one critical flaw because its designer never actually starts from the midpoint.
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# ? Oct 31, 2017 23:28 |
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Yeah that felt less like a "used savestates" level and more of a "always started from the beginning where the powerups were" level.
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# ? Oct 31, 2017 23:29 |
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Remember folks, test your levels from the midpoint.
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# ? Oct 31, 2017 23:33 |
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That's precisely why Mario maker forces you to. (The other reason being midpoint traps but, well, that's another problem entirely)
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# ? Oct 31, 2017 23:55 |
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FishOnAPiano posted:Thank goodness. I, too, await the WAA Just realized that we missed a chance to have the Waluigi episode on WAAlloween Oh well.
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# ? Nov 1, 2017 02:15 |
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The bullshit factor of that level could have been dramatically reduced if Ninja Boy put in a couple of power-ups past the midway point.
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# ? Nov 1, 2017 03:03 |
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get that OUT of my face posted:The bullshit factor of that level could have been dramatically reduced if Ninja Boy put in a couple of power-ups past the midway point. Yeah, just watching it the level didn't seem all that bad except for the lack of mushrooms in the second half. Not that it would be a great level with more power-ups, but I don't think it would've been bad.
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# ? Nov 1, 2017 05:01 |
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The 2nd level was better than the first. You can tell because there's no cuts and the video didn't go on for 30 mins like the first one did. Still doesn't look great, looked kind of frustrating.
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# ? Nov 1, 2017 05:24 |
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That level definitely would've been better if they gave you a cape instead of a mushroom. Although come to think of it, this entire contest has been criminally low on the amount of capes you can get, it's as if every level creator is terrified of giving you any extra mobility.
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# ? Nov 2, 2017 01:09 |
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Eopia posted:That level definitely would've been better if they gave you a cape instead of a mushroom. Although come to think of it, this entire contest has been criminally low on the amount of capes you can get, it's as if every level creator is terrified of giving you any extra mobility. I think this is out of fear of people using the cape to fly over the entirety of your level... which isn't really a problem if your level has a ceiling, or like this last one, is a goddamn autoscroller.
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# ? Nov 2, 2017 01:47 |
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Olive! posted:I think this is out of fear of people using the cape to fly over the entirety of your level... which isn't really a problem if your level has a ceiling, or like this last one, is a goddamn autoscroller. You can still fly over autoscrollers, it just takes longer. I would happily tap Left every second or so if it meant I got to fly over this level. For a fun time, one of the Forest of Illusion levels in the original game does some funky things with parallax scrolling to make it look like the platform you're on is moving super-quickly. But if you fly through the level instead, the parallax scrolling doesn't kick in, so the level feels a lot more sedate even though you're moving through it considerably more quickly than you would be if you rode the platform.
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# ? Nov 2, 2017 01:51 |
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It's like, if lots of people feel like flying over your level, you've done something wrong. Sure, some people will anyway, but if your level is so rear end that the only way people feel like playing it is to not, then they're not the problem.
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# ? Nov 2, 2017 02:02 |
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Kurui Reiten posted:It's like, if lots of people feel like flying over your level, you've done something wrong. Sure, some people will anyway, but if your level is so rear end that the only way people feel like playing it is to not, then they're not the problem. The opposite can also be true, where your level is actually well-crafted and fair but the player chooses to fly over it anyway. In that case, that's the player's decision to play a level but not actually play a level by flying over it instead. For that reason, I used to include capes back when I was making stuff. If the player wants to fly over my level, that's their choice.
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# ? Nov 2, 2017 02:03 |
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FF6 Rando Part 37 - Live Free or Bum Hard We fight all three of the goddess statues in this episode! It goes, uh, poorly. Maybe. Also I am sick and tired of these huge zones with tons of doors to check. Youtube may still be processing as of this post, so give it a few minutes if you want HD.
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# ? Nov 2, 2017 22:54 |
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# ? May 16, 2024 18:12 |
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Spoilering since the video is still processing. Or just hover over it and be confused for the lack of context. There's just one thing to mention so no real update today. Dispel does work. May not really "help" since a turn casting dispel is a turn not casting ultima. But you know what they say: "A stitch in time saves 9999"
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# ? Nov 2, 2017 22:58 |