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FPzero
Oct 20, 2008

Game Over
Return of Mido



(Banner courtesy of nine-gear crow)

Welcome back to the Romhackeria! The Romhackeria was an LP megathread from 2011 whose focus was to LP various romhacks that are out there. At the time, hacks such as Rockman 2 Min, Super Metroid Redesign, Zelda 3 Parallel Worlds and more were played for the thread and a good time was had by all. (Anyone remember Punch Donkey?) This thread is a revival of that one since there's always time and place for romhacks and there's always new ones being released.

I know of a lot of romhacks but my main knowledge of them is Mario, Metroid and Fire Emblem. There's no way I've seen them all. Please feel free to participate in the thread by contributing an LP! I only have a few guidelines:

1. Put a little bit of effort into your LP. Think about the level of effort required for the Casual LP thread and that's all I'm really asking.
2. If you want to do a screenshot LP, please use the SSLP Test Poster for your updates. The previous thread didn't allow SSLPs to be done in it just because of the space they would take up but now that we have the SSLP Test Poster, I say go for it! Just use the Test Poster and then link the update like you would a Sandcastle submission.
3. Stay away from the dregs of romhacking. There's a LOT of romhacks out there that are plain lovely, offensive, or both. Don't do hacks that fall into either of these categories. They're not entertaining and no one wants to see a playthrough of "Jewish Mario fights the KKK Dick Nazis" (I bet this hack actually exists).
4. If you want me to link your LP in the first post, make a mini-OP. I can use it to better distinguish your LP from the rest. LP "Thread Title" not required, but encouraged.

Of course, all the other LP Subforum Rules and Regulations apply here.

If you've never done an LP before, I encourage you to give it a shot! Megathreads like this are a great place to learn. Let's have some fun!


Table of Contents

Super Mario World Central's Vanilla Level Design Contest #9 (VLP) by FPzero & Tyty - Links in second post. *FINISHED*
Link to the Past Randomizer (VLP) by CirclMastr & CombatLobster *FINISHED*
Final Fantasy 6: Brave New World (SSLP) by Aerdan *Abandoned*
Super Mario RPG: Reserve_22//. (VLP) by Garbonix & Miz Kriss *FINISHED*
Rockman CX (VLP) by Heavy Sigh & many rotating guests *FINISHED*
Final Fantasy 6 Randomizer: Beyond Chaos (Double LP) (VLP) by liquidypoo, Demerine & FeyerbrandX *FINISHED*
Super Mario RPG: Axem Rangers (VLP) by Garbonix & Miz Kriss *FINISHED*
Fire Emblem Midori/Green Hack (SSLP) by Mysticblade *Abandoned*
Super Metroid: Eris 2012 (VLP) by TooMuchAbstraction *FINISHED*
SMW - The Devious Four Chronicles: Hunter's Revenge Revised (VLP) by Doseku *FINISHED*
Rockman 4: Minus Infinity (VLP) by Heavy Sigh & many rotating guests *FINISHED*
Super Mario World: Hacks 101 (VLP) by Tyty & FPzero *FINISHED*
Donkey Kong Country 2: The Lost Levels (VLP) by Artix & FPzero *FINISHED*
Super Mario Land 2 DX (VLP) by Doseku *FINISHED*
Zelda 3 Randomizer: Keysanity (VLP) by FPzero, Artix & many rotating guests *FINISHED

FPzero fucked around with this message at 00:27 on Mar 11, 2018

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FPzero
Oct 20, 2008

Game Over
Return of Mido

SUPER MARIO 151



The Super Mario World Central Vanilla Level Design Contest (VLDC) is an annual contest on SMWCentral.net in which users participate to see who can make the best "vanilla" level. The term vanilla in the context of Super Mario World romhacks means that no resources from outside the original game are used to create these levels. The focus and half of the total score is primarily on good Level Design with the other half being made up of Creativity and Aesthetics. The numerical breakdown is as follows:

Level Design: 30 points - "Was your level fun, well built, interesting? Does the level have a good difficulty curve? Not too easy or too hard."
Creativity: 20 points - "Did you put the provided resources to good use? Did you implement a fun and/or unique gimmick? Anything that will make your level stick out amongst the crowd?"
Aesthetics: 10 points - "How did the level look? Appearance and things such as usage of decoration, map16 and custom palettes for visual improvement."

VLDC9 is the 9th annual contest and began in January 2016. The romhack is a compilation of all the contest entries with a record 117 levels with 152 exits. Compare that to the original game's 75 levels and 96 exits and you'll see there's a LOT more content here than before. The hackers over at SMWCentral even had to figure out how to add more levels to the game since it only supports up to 96 levels by default. In short, this contest was absurdly popular this year and from what we've played so far, the quality, even in the lower levels has been really good. I can't wait to get to the Top 5.

This contest usually brings out some of the best in content from SMWCentral's userbase and is compiled into one large offering to play each year. It's usually a lot of fun to see what they have created; even the bad ones can be entertaining in their own way. That's just to be expected when you have a huge userbase participating.

So why am I playing this? Well first off, I'll be joined by my good friend Tyty for the entirety of the LP. Frankly, the two of us wanted to play the hack anyway and decided why not record it at the same time and have an excuse to talk about level design? Both of us have experience with making SMW romhack levels over the last ~10 years and we both have slightly different ideas behind what we think makes for a good Mario level. The goal of this LP is mostly to just have fun exploring a contest hack from a community both of haven't been an active part of in years. If we spark a few discussions on the nature of good game design along the way, that's a bonus as far as I'm concerned. Otherwise, we hope you enjoy the ride as we go through the game.

Table of Contents:
































-----



Here we go. The contest is organized into a Worst world, a Best world and all the rest are strewn around the rest of the overworld and submaps. We're going to get the Worst world out of the way first, then play all the stuff on the overworlds and end with the Best world.

Sorry about the kinda funky audio going on in this and the next few videos. I accidentally baked Tyty's audio into the game audio due to a recording mistake and the only way to fix it was to create a half-assed autoduck with his voice against the game audio. It was salvaged thankfully, but I don't intend to have poor audio quality for him in the future.

FPzero fucked around with this message at 19:04 on Nov 7, 2017

Artix
Apr 26, 2010

He's finally back,
to kick some tail!
And this time,
he's goin' to jail!
Been looking forward to to this one. I can see why a lot of these levels scored so low, because outside of the third level, they just don't seem to...do anything? Like, the first level was literally a flat plain with a couple pieces of raised terrain and a handful of enemies, and it doesn't seem like they had any idea what they actually wanted to do with it.

raocow
Apr 23, 2007

Keen Dreams

Please give me a chance to be a better person. -Willhart
Romhacks ?! Who even plays those.

DoubleNegative
Jan 27, 2010

The most virtuous child in the entire world.
In spite of these being the worst maps, this still looks like a really fun hack. Enough so that I tracked down and downloaded the hack to give it a try myself.

And yeah, most of these worst levels really have a "my first Mario Maker level" feel to them.

raocow
Apr 23, 2007

Keen Dreams

Please give me a chance to be a better person. -Willhart
It's worth noting that the contest DID have peeps sending over outright kaizo nonsense, or like 'check out my sweet 20 screens of absolutely nothing!!' but those levels just got outright disqualified and thus are not present in the compilation game. That's kinda why 'worst world' is actually kinda alright if bland.

FPzero
Oct 20, 2008

Game Over
Return of Mido

Yeah we were unaware of some of the unique circumstances surrounding judging, disqualifications and penalties at the time of our first recording. Now that we know what those circumstances are we'll make mention of it starting around episode 6.

Omobono
Feb 19, 2013

That's it! No more hiding in tomato crates! It's time to show that idiota Germany how a real nation fights!

For pasta~! CHARGE!

Those levels were not bad as much as aggressively mediocre. If those are the worst we're in for a treat.

raocow posted:

It's worth noting that the contest DID have peeps sending over outright kaizo nonsense, or like 'check out my sweet 20 screens of absolutely nothing!!' but those levels just got outright disqualified and thus are not present in the compilation game. That's kinda why 'worst world' is actually kinda alright if bland.

Although, how is difficulty judged? I mean, Kaizo nonsense is pretty obvious, but apart from that did the contest have some guidelines, as in "the level should be designed targeting world whatever difficulty" or "difficulty should fall within the original Super Mario World curve"?

Blaze Dragon
Aug 28, 2013
LOWTAX'S SPINE FUND

I admit, I did try reaching all my teeth with my tongue when the Traveler Tip said I couldn't. I fell for it.

Bloody Pom
Jun 5, 2011



Are those of us unable to do our own LPs able to make requests?

FPzero
Oct 20, 2008

Game Over
Return of Mido

I don't see why not. If someone sees the request and wants to do it, more power to them.

Omobono posted:

Those levels were not bad as much as aggressively mediocre. If those are the worst we're in for a treat.

Although, how is difficulty judged? I mean, Kaizo nonsense is pretty obvious, but apart from that did the contest have some guidelines, as in "the level should be designed targeting world whatever difficulty" or "difficulty should fall within the original Super Mario World curve"?

Difficulty is usually based around how good the difficulty curve is in the context of the level. Harder levels shouldn't be scored differently than easier levels on that basis of overall difficulty alone. As long as the difficulty within the level ramps up consistently, fairly, and carefully, it should receive a high difficulty score. Of course, I wasn't judging any of these, so this is just how I would interpret the category if I was. The exception is Kaizo levels which were either disqualified for being excessively unfair, or had extra exits added at the start of levels to allow players to still get credit for "beating" the level without going through the whole difficult thing.

raocow
Apr 23, 2007

Keen Dreams

Please give me a chance to be a better person. -Willhart
Also fun fact: that yellow level that had two exits somehow? Nobody actually knew that level had two levels until beta testing the compilation game (which is why it has a yellow dot). A later update corrected this, in addition to a few other odd things here and there.

Stink Terios
Oct 17, 2012


I feel like I'm the only person who had next to no problem finding that secret exit.

Ometeotl
Feb 13, 2012



It's MISSEL! Or SISSLE!
I confused myself...



raocow posted:

It's worth noting that the contest DID have peeps sending over outright kaizo nonsense, or like 'check out my sweet 20 screens of absolutely nothing!!' but those levels just got outright disqualified and thus are not present in the compilation game. That's kinda why 'worst world' is actually kinda alright if bland.

And thank god for that.

Dinictus
Nov 26, 2005

May our CoX spray white sticky fluid at our enemies forever!
HAIL ARACHNOS!
Soiled Meat
The rom hack features quite some nice music, be they mixes or outright covers of existing musical themes. Surprised to hear One Must Fall 2097 at the start screen.

Araxxor
Oct 20, 2012

My disdain for you all knows no bounds.

raocow posted:

It's worth noting that the contest DID have peeps sending over outright kaizo nonsense, or like 'check out my sweet 20 screens of absolutely nothing!!' but those levels just got outright disqualified and thus are not present in the compilation game. That's kinda why 'worst world' is actually kinda alright if bland.

When I saw worst world, I was expecting levels of that caliber. Glad to see that there was definitely a bottom line there. I'm interested in seeing the rest if bland was the worst it had to offer.

FPzero
Oct 20, 2008

Game Over
Return of Mido



Even though the worst world isn't totally terrible, there are still a few bad levels in here that mostly left us questioning the creator's decisions.

raocow posted:

Also fun fact: that yellow level that had two exits somehow? Nobody actually knew that level had two levels until beta testing the compilation game (which is why it has a yellow dot). A later update corrected this, in addition to a few other odd things here and there.

Yeah, seeing your video was how we figured out the solution for Simple Path. Hiding the key offscreen, away from the camera and player's view is a crappy move to make.

frankenfreak
Feb 16, 2007

I SCORED 85% ON A QUIZ ABOUT MONDAY NIGHT RAW AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY TEXT

#bastionboogerbrigade
The level's theme seems to be "how not to do hard precision jumping".

FPzero
Oct 20, 2008

Game Over
Return of Mido



We go through a lot of levels in this episode and get out of the Worst world. We'll be returning to the first level once we feel more confident (maybe once we get the switch palaces).

Blaze Dragon
Aug 28, 2013
LOWTAX'S SPINE FUND

Purple is a good colour and I'm glad there was a level that embodied purple as purplefully as that level.

Araxxor
Oct 20, 2012

My disdain for you all knows no bounds.

That level definitely wasn't a Kaizo styled one, but it was still pretty bad.

And a lot of those levels just don't seem coherent. Some of them look like they're trying to do too much at once and it just ends up a mess.

hanales
Nov 3, 2013
This is great. There are so many cool hacks nowadays. There's a bonus donation incentive for super metroid rotation hack at AGDQ.

Zeratanis
Jun 16, 2009

That's kind of a weird thought isn't it?
Boy, seeing this makes me want to get back to my LP roots... :allears: Could always do the new Super Metroid Redesign. Also another Super Metroid hack I can't remember the name of that had a map like, 2-3 times the size of Redesign's which is pretty daunting. Only issue is committing the time. Definitely can't wait to see what people will do though.

Bloody Pom
Jun 5, 2011



I'd like to see someone do Project Base and the hack based on it, Hyper Metroid.

Project Base is mostly a palette swap of the base game with a number of map changes, but also includes a number of QOL improvements, like being able to do the damage backflip on demand. Hyper Metroid builds off of Project Base and has a more open map layout that lets you sequence break in pretty much any order if you're good enough.

fake edit: the new Redesign is a loving nightmare and I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

FPzero
Oct 20, 2008

Game Over
Return of Mido

Zeratanis posted:

Boy, seeing this makes me want to get back to my LP roots... :allears: Could always do the new Super Metroid Redesign. Also another Super Metroid hack I can't remember the name of that had a map like, 2-3 times the size of Redesign's which is pretty daunting. Only issue is committing the time. Definitely can't wait to see what people will do though.

Don't do the 2-3x bigger one. It's called Metroid Mission Rescue and holy god it is way too loving big. I played it and it easily took 25 ingame hours (i.e. about 40 real hours) to beat and I was using a map to make my way through it. It's big for the sake of being big. Super impressive on a technical level but way too big. And for being that big it's actually extremely linear. My friends were making fun of me for basically sunk-costing my way through the whole thing.

If anyone wants to see how big the game is, here's a link to the map. I'm hosting it on my personal dropbox so hopefully it doesn't hurt my bandwidth: 7873x4339, 1.59 MB


Redesign: Axeil Edition on the other hand seems to have gotten a lot better with its latest release. When it first came out it had a bunch of problems such as extremely aggressive and dangerous Metroid AI and too much purple door cap use. That last one caused me to stop playing just because I didn't have enough resources to even get into Draygon's room thanks to about 5 purple doors blocking the way and I had no willpower to go farm enemies for them. Those two issues and more have been addressed since release though and overall it has a huge number of technical improvements over the original such as a functioning hint system, an elevator-based fast-travel system and a very detailed pause screen map. It's definitely worth showing off again in my opinion.

Project Base and Hyper Metroid are also super cool hacks and I'd love to see someone tackle either or both.If I weren't doing VLDC I'd show them myself but, well, I already have enough LP projects going on right now to plan another!

TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe
Hyper Metroid is decent, but for my nonexistent money the best Super Metroid hack, hands-down, is Eris. The map and graphic design is amazing, the map itself isn't ridiculously huge, and there's, like, one place in the game where the game balance is stupid (it's the Botwoon fight, which is done super-early with hardly any resources).

Phazon is also an interesting hack, where you play as Dark Samus. It has some neat graphical edits and generally good map design.

frankenfreak
Feb 16, 2007

I SCORED 85% ON A QUIZ ABOUT MONDAY NIGHT RAW AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY TEXT

#bastionboogerbrigade

Dr. Fetus posted:

And a lot of those levels just don't seem coherent. Some of them look like they're trying to do too much at once and it just ends up a mess.
Yeah, "incoherent" and "poorly thought out" seems to be the theme here. The really fundamentally broken stuff got filtered out well if a level that's just there, doesn't do anything offensive and happens to be purple is among the worst.

On the other hand, I really look forward to the return to the lava level which deserves to be there just for the concept of it.

JossiRossi
Jul 28, 2008

A little EQ, a touch of reverb, slap on some compression and there. That'll get your dickbutt jiggling.
I initially discounted the thread because I can only handle so much "random person playing SMW hacks and getting frustrated" and was really surprised to see it actually be a discussion of level creation and design. I'm really glad I took another look and gave it a go because you two are interesting to listen to as you play through the levels.

I'm also surprised they used the term "Worst" for the first batch of levels. They are not exceptionally bad (for the most part) almost seems unfair to label them that.

Araxxor
Oct 20, 2012

My disdain for you all knows no bounds.

JossiRossi posted:

I initially discounted the thread because I can only handle so much "random person playing SMW hacks and getting frustrated" and was really surprised to see it actually be a discussion of level creation and design. I'm really glad I took another look and gave it a go because you two are interesting to listen to as you play through the levels.

I'm also surprised they used the term "Worst" for the first batch of levels. They are not exceptionally bad (for the most part) almost seems unfair to label them that.

Worst is probably just relative in this case. Apparently the really bad submissions and levels that are just Kaizo stuff just got left out of the hack entirely.

JossiRossi
Jul 28, 2008

A little EQ, a touch of reverb, slap on some compression and there. That'll get your dickbutt jiggling.

Dr. Fetus posted:

Worst is probably just relative in this case. Apparently the really bad submissions and levels that are just Kaizo stuff just got left out of the hack entirely.

Oh I know, it's just if you make it relative, then calling them the worst (even if it is "worst of the best") just seems overly negative for something where the levels definitely don't feel "worst" worthy is all.

Mak0rz
Aug 2, 2008

😎🐗🚬

JossiRossi posted:

I initially discounted the thread because I can only handle so much "random person playing SMW hacks and getting frustrated" and was really surprised to see it actually be a discussion of level creation and design. I'm really glad I took another look and gave it a go because you two are interesting to listen to as you play through the levels.

I'm also surprised they used the term "Worst" for the first batch of levels. They are not exceptionally bad (for the most part) almost seems unfair to label them that.

Yeah, I'm enjoying the explanation about level design and various SMW game behavior (like that stuff about the Layer 3 water). These bad levels are irritating and dull at worst, which is refreshing. Part of me wants to just play this myself before FPzero spoils it all.

You guys were confused about the multiple exit levels in one of those videos. It seems the space color doesn't matter, but there are check marks in the top right corner of the screen that shows how many exits there are that turn green as you find them.

Edit: Regarding Super Metroid hacks: I played through SM Redesign Axeil a year or so ago. The map design is brilliant and some of the engine changes were pretty neat, but I don't really go to ROM hacks for the challenge so it was more annoying than it was fun.

hanales posted:

This is great. There are so many cool hacks nowadays. There's a bonus donation incentive for super metroid rotation hack at AGDQ.

Hell yes. I had a blast playing this one, though I didn't come close to finishing it.

Mak0rz fucked around with this message at 01:03 on Jan 9, 2017

FPzero
Oct 20, 2008

Game Over
Return of Mido

JossiRossi posted:

Oh I know, it's just if you make it relative, then calling them the worst (even if it is "worst of the best") just seems overly negative for something where the levels definitely don't feel "worst" worthy is all.

Yeah I'd agree. It's grandfathered terminology though, starting with VLDC7 when the first of these contest collaborations was done and the Worst world was actually filled with bad, broken and/or kaizo levels.

As for the level dot confusion, the secret exit in Simple Path (in the first video) wasn't even found until the collaboration hack was compiled. That's probably why it had the yellow dot for the original release. In the newest update, it has a proper red dot and apparently has had the solution made visible. (Hint, the necessary tools were located offscreen in a place where the camera didn't scroll, hence why no one found it.)

hanales
Nov 3, 2013
For anyone who would like to see sm rotation at agdq.....

everyone Feral will be running during Setup Block 2, which, as of right now, is scheduled for 2:43 PM (edt) on Tuesday.

FPzero
Oct 20, 2008

Game Over
Return of Mido



Sometimes, secret exits do more to hurt a level than help it. I didn't cut out any footage here, but think about how long it took us to find and solve the secret exit in the first level. It's a little unfortunate because the main level, and much stronger showing, is a good, basic Mario level.

Scaly Haylie
Dec 25, 2004

JossiRossi posted:

I initially discounted the thread because I can only handle so much "random person playing SMW hacks and getting frustrated" and was really surprised to see it actually be a discussion of level creation and design. I'm really glad I took another look and gave it a go because you two are interesting to listen to as you play through the levels.

If it's any consolation, I'm got a nice counterbalance to FPZero's quality videos in the works.

Prop Wash
Jun 12, 2010



That I Hope I Win guy has watched too many fangames. Great LP though!

Tyty
Feb 20, 2012

Night-vision Goggles Equipped!


It's worth noting, that they didn't put levels in the worst world if they would've been dropped there by penalties. The 108th place level ate so many penalties it had a negative score. Notably, it wasn't vanilla and recieved a MASSIVE late penalty.

imo they should've just not accepted late entries but they wanted to try not being so strict this year I guess.

FeyerbrandX
Oct 9, 2012

To complete FPs thought that got dropped in the "I Hope I Win" stage, the music is some weird farty version of the regular athletic/overworld theme

Ometeotl
Feb 13, 2012



It's MISSEL! Or SISSLE!
I confused myself...



Tyty posted:

It's worth noting, that they didn't put levels in the worst world if they would've been dropped there by penalties. The 108th place level ate so many penalties it had a negative score. Notably, it wasn't vanilla and recieved a MASSIVE late penalty.

imo they should've just not accepted late entries but they wanted to try not being so strict this year I guess.

I think not being vanilla is a worse transgression than being late in a Vanilla contest.

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SelenicMartian
Sep 14, 2013

Sometimes it's not the bomb that's retarded.

Perhaps it was submitted for a previous year's contest?

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