MaGL X2 Relay Level (What is a level? A miserable little pile of...)

[Dragon Fogel]

Made it to the end of Section 7. Haven't finished it yet and I'm probably skipping to the next section again.

-After Pyro's screen, Tetris Attack music starts playing. But it doesn't start when you enter the section.
-danddjosh's screen is pretty much trivial if you make the one-shot jump onto the structure and a huge pain if you don't. This is kind of a big disparity.
-Pyro's screen can easily become unwinnable. Is this intended as part of the "bad design" joke? Regardless, if you're directly below the knife-firing urns, they don't fire so you have to use cheats in order to die.
-pholtos' screen is a bit much. If you were Link, at least you'd know where your shield is, but there's no clear visual sign of it on Sheath. I remember there was some talk about this screen earlier, so count me in favor of toning it down.

I'll take a look at the rest of the level tomorrow. Hopefully the autoscroll will be fixed by then so I can properly test Section 4.

[Rednaxela]

Updated status, crossed off things resolved. Things that are updated by may not be a permanent fix are underlined. New things in green. Italics are comments.
(I've not time to address everything that's come up since I started on this afternoon after all, but I have made sure to keep track of things in the below list)

Midpoints:

• "I think the midpoint at the start of section 2 should be moved to the end of section 1, because there is a fire flower, it will help with making everything easier." Done
• "there aren't power-ups after the bees, other than the Yoshi and shoes. I think it would be best to just start the player as Super at every checkpoint to make up for this." (2x) Player now always starts big
• "could also move the mid point from from section 6 to SpoonyBardOL's screen." Sure, let's give that a try
• "Honestly, I think there should be a checkpoint at every character change." My thought: Some of the character transitions last too short, or are right near a section transition anyway. I'll leave this as it stands mostly for now but can revisit after other changes settle?

Bug list:

• "able to zip out of Kapus' section and get stuck forever, so you might want to put in a pit on the far left of Section 7"
• "Dying in sections 7 or 8 (and possibly 6) starts the wrong music."
• "A number of platforms need to be extended offscreen, otherwise you can fly over/under them."
• "It would be great if you can disable the cutscene after you get the midpoint too."
• "The midpoint tape is visible in the "cutscene" at the start of section 4" The 'best' fix I have a fix in mind will require a LunaDLL version update to a version that Kev hasn't made a release of yet, so I'll leave this for the moment
• "Also, if I load the test world, it starts me at the beginning of Waluigi Time for some reason." (low priority)
• Investigate "slow down immensely right before the bee section" (3x) and " after the "Waluigi went to bed" section" (3x). Seems to not be an issue after respawning in the area
• "When you beat Lejes's screen, the music restarts for no reason. It should just continue, since the music doesn't change. Also, the "Press Y" text should disappear when the boss dies (right now it only disappears when you enter the next screen)."
• "On SAJ's screen, Mario appears briefly, then disappears. Mario should just appear, then "die"."
• "when I restart from the midpoint in Section 4, if I move around while the screen is dark Waluigi is at the top of the screen when it fades in."
• "You can get stuck on Pyro's screen. This can easily be fixed, just fill up the hole you can get stuck in with some blocks"
• "Also, when I went to Section 7 from Section 6, the Tetris Attack blocks didn't spawn. This left me pretty confused about what to do. They worked after dying and respawning, though." Strange... haven't experienced that myself.

Balance:

• Hoeloe's screen - "BEEEES" Tweaked it a bit (instead of 1 second interval, a transition from 3 second interval to 1 second interval, which was enough for me to legitimately beat it). We'll see
• SAJewers's screen - "Autoscroll section is too slow" (4x) Slightly increased, but only before Lejes's section, not after. We'll see
• OrangeChickenPasta's screen Volunteered to adjust it after I post this update
• FusionWarrior's screen - "The switch should make Charlakitu disappear, he's really annoying after that if you haven't killed him and there isn't always a good opportunity to do that."
• Ometeotl's screen - "The spiny egg spawner is pretty obnoxious and requires very precise timing, unless I'm missing something. I would recommend toning it down." (but was replied to with "Go around it, not through it?")
• noterday's screen - "The maze was still annoying and I'd recommend blocking the pit between it and Lunatic Quark's screen just so there's zero danger of dying before the next midpoint." (My thought: put water in that pit?)
• Mikkofier's screen - "The Fast-falling Donught blocks in Section 4 should/need to be changed to the other falling donught blocks." (2x)
• Lejes's screen - "Might be wise to have a powerup one screen before or after Lejes."
• GalaxyOfJ's screen - Do you want the propeller block from earlier removed when entering your section?
• danddjosh2000's screen - "Really annoying to do if you miss jumping on top of the bombable blocks, which so far I've done every time. Very slow and risky, and not much fun. I'd rather have a way to get back on top of the structure." "danddjosh's screen is pretty much trivial if you make the one-shot jump onto the structure and a huge pain if you don't. This is kind of a big disparity."
• Pyro's screen - "Can easily become unwinnable. Is this intended as part of the "bad design" joke? Regardless, if you're directly below the knife-firing urns, they don't fire so you have to use cheats in order to die.
• pholtos' screen - "It is a bit much. If you were Link, at least you'd know where your shield is, but there's no clear visual sign of it on Sheath. I remember there was some talk about this screen earlier, so count me in favor of toning it down.

Other/Uncertain:

• "I think you can skip Sniggerbobble's switch puzzle thing with a hammer suit, but if you miss the Koopa you'll probably die due to having to jump to have a shot at him. (which happened to me when I tried it). It's probably tricky enough to do that hitting the switches is easier, though."
• "noticed that the actual events of FusionWarrior and Kuposan's screens can be entirely skipped. Since you get a blue shoe just before the latter, it would either have to be filtered or just have a big wall after it that requires activating the machine."
• "In addition, one of the cats (referring to SAJ's screen) gets caught on the cracked block (which I think is used to trigger things); it ends up in the right place, but the process of getting it there looks weird." I wondered if this was intentional so had left it that way in the past?

Update download here:
MaGLX2Relay-58C.zip

I'll modify my screen when your done working through the bugs.

Technically not done with bugs, but I'm done for this revision. Go ahead. :)

After Pyro's screen, Tetris Attack music starts playing. But it doesn't start when you enter the section.

Do you mean when you enter via midpoint? The wrong music playing when entering via midpoint is among the issues already noted and is now resolved.

[pholtos]

I thought the fireball blocking would be fairly obvious, even with sheath. Is it not? Fireball is low, hold down, if not don't do anything. Figured it was simple enough even with a changed graphic.

[Rednaxela]

Personally I felt is was reasonable with Link, but I think Sheath's sprite throws it off a bit. I wonder if it would make sense for us to make a "Shielded Sheath" sprite for this perhaps? Might be an interesting twist and also improve the playability of that?

[Dragon Fogel]

It's not the fireball blocking that's the issue, it's blocking the pollen so you can be a step further and get a tiny bit of extra time between waves. It's tight enough between waves that I find myself wanting to do that.

[SAJewers]

Would it be easier/better instead to change Sheath's sprite to give an indication of a shield/the ability to block?

[OrangeChickenPasta]

I made my section easier, i slowed down the poison mushroom generator and move the ninjis back so they are easier to deal with, i also removed the boo. If anyone can test it let me know if this is any better.

Download

[cheez8]

Would it be easier/better instead to change Sheath's sprite to give an indication of a shield/the ability to block?

That might just be a good idea in general, but especially in this case where (from the sound of things) blocking things is a major part of her role.

[Mikkofier]

Edit: okay, getting past these donut platforms is way too much for me with the autoscroll as it is right now, I'm giving myself a shortcut to Section 5 and I'll wait to do further testing on 4 until the autoscroll speed is fixed.

I've said a few times, and I think others have agreed, that the donught blocks need to all be the slower falling ones.

There's more than just cosmetic differences between the donut blocks? You can learn something new every day! Feel free to change them.

[snoruntpyro]

-Pyro's screen can easily become unwinnable. Is this intended as part of the "bad design" joke? Regardless, if you're directly below the knife-firing urns, they don't fire so you have to use cheats in order to die.

Yeah, that's an accident. The spot should just be filled up.

Also, I never had an issue with Sheath's blocking. I was able to do the section without ever blocking the pollen (but I did have to block the fire).

[Dragon Fogel]

Turned out there wasn't much left.

Mabel's Screen: Reduce the hits needed on Batafire, there's no easy way I could find to stab the boss repeatedly so it's a typical slow Mother Brain fight unless I missed some trick. I think 5 hits would be reasonable, other people may want to weigh in.
If I did miss a trick, it should be made a bit clearer.

The only other thing I have to note is, dragon coins. I can only remember four:
-RenaTurnip's screen
-Ditocoaf's screen
-Ometeotl's screen
-Ivy's screen

Was there a fifth? If not, we should add it in somewhere. Horikawa can do this if she wants, or we can put one on someone else's screen.

So aside from the obvious fixes, that just leaves testing a toned-down bees screen, Section 4 once the autoscroll's fixed, OrangeChickenPasta's new screen, and Pholtos' screen. I'm still not fond of noterday's wall maze, or danddjosh2000's screen that's either super-easy or incredibly annoying based entirely on whether or not you miss a single jump, but they're at least reliably beatable.

SAJewers has a point about putting midpoints at the Peach/Sheath switches, as they're right before the toughest parts of their respective sections. (This is before I test OrangeChickenPasta's modifications, to be clear.) Although, by the same token the midpoints after those are also warranted. I think this is a bigger deal with Sheath, since the section leading up to that screen isn't quick in the slightest - I can zip through Section 5, but 7 has bomb-digging, the "miss the jump and you're slowed down so much it's probably faster to die" screen, and a "dodge falling blocks" screen. Nothing super-hard, but it's time-consuming and the last screen is way too tough considering that.

[snoruntpyro]

Mabel's Screen: Reduce the hits needed on Batafire, there's no easy way I could find to stab the boss repeatedly so it's a typical slow Mother Brain fight unless I missed some trick. I think 5 hits would be reasonable, other people may want to weigh in.
If I did miss a trick, it should be made a bit clearer.

Batafire spawns bombs. Just slash those to collect them and press S (or whatever alt run is for you) to toss them at it.

[Dragon Fogel]

Batafire spawns bombs. Just slash those to collect them and press S (or whatever alt run is for you) to toss them at it.

You misunderstand, I was doing that. The problem is that's slow. I mentioned stabbing because that's how Link usually avoids the "killing Mother Brain is slow" issue.

[Mabel]

those bombs spawn pretty fast, though

5 hits is fair tho

[Rednaxela]

those bombs spawn pretty fast, though

5 hits is fair tho

I'll take that as the go-ahead to implement that then.

As a note, for early-afternoon today (i.e. now) I'll be working on LunaDLL/LunaLua stuff, so I'll probably not be working on further relay level updates till evening

Also as a reminder for anyone who wants to test 1) The toned-down bees, 2) The slightly tweaked auto-scroll (no doughnut swap yet though), or 3) OrangeChickenPasta's new screen, the most recently posted version does have those.

[Dragon Fogel]

Replaying from that version. Here's what I've got so far.

Toned-down bees works, I got through it on three tries. Someone who hasn't beaten the tougher version yet may have better comments, though.

Section 4:

Midpoint is still visible during the fade-out, one of the cats still gets stuck on the floating block. Maybe it could be replaced with something that can be passed through?
Autoscroll feels better. Still feels a bit slow to me, but manageable.
At the moment I'm stuck on Mikkofier's screen. I replaced the donut blocks, other than the first three, with the slow-falling ones. But then I couldn't work out what to do - I assumed I had to hit one or more of the blocks, but those are really tough to reach with the Rinkas getting in the way. I think I'll do a quick god mode test to figure out what's going on and how the timing works out on things, then see where I run into problems trying to do it legit.

Edit: Further things after god-mode testing.

-The Rinkas become increasingly obnoxious as you go through the screens. I'd actually suggest outright removing them when you reach the foreign-language Goomba. They're mostly tolerable up to that point, after that they become unbearable. They don't show up in the Crocomire fight, but the last wave fired will and that can be troublesome. And Cirno's screen leaves very little room to maneuver around them.
-The cats in the advancing wall get really messed up when they resume chasing you after Crocomire. Not sure how to fix this, probably involves messing around with Lua.
-Minor point, I wanted Nopor Puss to make the advancing wall disappear entirely after you talk to him.
-Crocomire takes a while to kill and takes some effort to survive; a midpoint here seems warranted. Not sure if it would be better before or after; Cirno's screen seems fairly tough, but I'd have to do a no-god-mode run to get a better sense of how those two screens work out.

[S1eth]

When you start at the second checkpoint and think you'll get yourself a power-up:

[Dragon Fogel]

I pointed that out, but when I did it I didn't even get the bees.

[Rednaxela]

I pointed that out, but when I did it I didn't even get the bees.

The only way I can imagine that you didn't get the bees is if you're running an old <0.7 version of LunaLua, and the "can't process more than one event per tick" bug which was fixed as of 0.7 occurred.

[Dragon Fogel]

To be clear, that happened in the version of the level before this one. Pretty sure it was after I updated Luna, too, since I did that for my testing.

Whatever happened, this needs a fix of some kind.

[Ometeotl]

For the record, my name suggestion was "You have only yourself to blame", not "You only have yourself to blame".

[Rednaxela]

For the record, my name suggestion was "You have only yourself to blame", not "You only have yourself to blame".

Huh... interesting. I had copy-pasted from someone else who said it as "You only have yourself to blame".

Well... I think it makes sense to make it the original "You have only yourself to blame" probably.

[Dragon Fogel]

Tested OrangeChickenPasta's screen with modifications.

I think toning down the poison generator and moving the top Ninji back was enough. The midpoint works better at Sedron's screen, because it's a little bit tricky and so is the screen after it. It would still be nice to start Peach with a power-up, though. Anyways, the rest of Section 5 is easy and quick once you have a little foreknowledge, so I'd prefer the midpoint be after this screen.

Aside from that, here's my overall list of issues right now, anyone can feel free to weigh in on them.

Screens that are notably difficult:
-Most of Section 4 due to Rinkas. Either drop the spawn rate significantly or eliminate them entirely at some point, after Crocomire at the lastest. Right now there's a lot of times where I do nothing more than jump to avoid Rinkas while waiting for the screen to scroll further. In the second half, I don't think that's even viable due to the narrow passages.
-Pholtos' screen. Slowing down the pollen generators to 2 seconds should help. Maybe it would be okay to have them be a bit faster but I'd recommend 2 for the next test, then 1.5 if that's too slow. A midpoint here would help too, as the section before it is time-consuming.
-Mabel's screen. Lower hits to 5, as already mentioned. Not sure how this would work in conjunction with moving the midpoint to the start of Pholtos' screen, I'll test that when Batafire's HP is reduced.

Screens that are annoying but not particularly difficult:
-noterday's screen. Some way to tell the passable wall tiles from the impassable ones, even a subtle one, would help a lot, as would eliminating even the already-slight risk of dying before the midpoint. Maybe add in a non-obvious shortcut for replays of the level.
-Lejes' screen. Crocomire takes a while to bring down. A midpoint here would be nice, considering the next screen's pretty tricky.
-danddjosh2000's screen, if you miss the jump you've got a lot of tedious bomb-work ahead of you. If you make the jump there's barely any point to the screen. Not sure what to do here.

Cosmetic issues:
-Midpoint tape is visible during the fade between Section 3 and Section 4.
-Cats in the Batafire wall move in weird ways when there are walls/obstacles in the way, most notably at the beginning and right after Crocomire.
-Haven't checked in my latest round of testing yet: does Section 7 still play the regular music when you first get there instead of the Tetris Attack music? If it does, set it up to play the latter.

[Ditocoaf]

I have to admit I don't understand "you have only yourself to blame". Are we assuming that the player is someone who contributed? Is it directed at raocow specifically?

Is it something I'd understand if I'd played past section 3?

[Dragon Fogel]

Is it directed at raocow specifically?

Yes, because the relay level was his idea in the first place.