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ASMBXT Level Review Thread

an SMBX collaboration hack!
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Kashkabald
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Re: ASMBXT Post Levels Here

Post by Kashkabald »

Should be a list on the first post of level claims, like we discussed in the other topic.

For now, I'd like to do a beginning/mid-game level, an endgame level, and one or two post-game levels.
Anshwo
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Re: ASMBXT Post Levels Here

Post by Anshwo »

Doctor Shemp wrote:
Ok, here's a quick level I did to get used to the engine called "Oh, No! It's Lakitu!". I do kind of like it though and it could work as a finished level.

http://www42.zippyshare.com/v/3285903/file.html

To play it, extract the rar to ...\ASMBXT\main game\worlds\AXMT Dev Episode
Then open it up in the Level Editor and test it.

It's got a working checkpoint, one SMB3 Power Star as the level exit, 5 Yoshi Coins and one hidden 1-up. I've beaten it with Mario & Luigi. I've noticed from playing through that you can cheese parts of it with Toad & Peach as their ability to throw fireballs straight up can take out Lakitu more easily, although there's only some parts of the level where they'll be able to reach him. And it's balanced for Peach because she can't spin jump on spinies. Also played through it a bit with Link and it should be beatable with him too. Obviously I'll go back and change any part of it if it's incompatible with any level design rule we may come up with.

Any suggestions for improvements would be greatly appreciated.
At this part, Lakitu's spinies can start to get rather cluttered if you dilly dally even a little bit. It can be rather hard to traverse without taking a hit from a silly mistake. Maybe making the passage a little more wide open and having a larger head room would help.
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There's a little bit of cutoff in these areas:
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Use these rather than the ones you're currently using: Image
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Use the ones you used in the other part I mentioned
Other than that, the difficulty was quite impressive. I could see it making it into the late mid-game or end-game area. Multitasking with the blargs and lakitu at the same was my weak point haha. Anyways I think it's a rather good level.
I'm not sure about this whole reviewing levels thing (since it's my first post), whether I should put everything in spoilers or not or what the deal is. Sorry if I did something wrong!
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m4sterbr0s
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Re: ASMBXT Post Levels Here

Post by m4sterbr0s »

Anshwo, you didn't do anything wrong. It's better to post in spoliers (since some images make the page longer). Anyway, below is my review.

Level Review: "Oh, No! It's Lakitu!"

Overview: I could see this level being near the end game, as Anshwo did point out. The level wasn't so bad, but it could use some improvements.

Pros:

• The difficulty was pretty high (especially in the 2nd section where you had to dodge the objects thrown by Lakitu and avoid the blaargs).
• The music selected, especially for the 2nd section, was really nice.

Cons:

• There's cutoff in some parts (as Anshwo pointed out pretty well).
• Mixing graphics from SMB1/SMB3 with graphics from SMW just seems unfitting.
• The nets that were posted in the 1st section looked out of place.
• The 1up was very easy to find.
• When completing the level, the three lakitus give a lot of free lives away when they're changed into coins.

Suggestions:

• I'd prefer if you use the SMB3 grass tileset to match with the SMB3 background or change the background to a SMW background.
• Fix the cutoff.
• Replace the nets with either those mushrooms from SMB1 or those riding wooding platforms from SMB3.
• For the second section, I'd prefer you use the SMW cave tileset.
• Remove one of the lakitus (preferably the one that throws bob-ombs since that doesn't add to the difficulty as much).

Additional Comments: There are some cases where some backgrounds can work with tilesets that don't correspond to the actual game it belongs from (because the pallete of the foreground matches with the pallete of the background). This doesn't seem to be the case here, however. You don't necessarily have to change the tileset to match with the appropriate background (I just thought it would look better). But if you think it looks fine, I guess you can leave it (since some people like to mix different tilesets with different backgrounds, such as SMB3 with SMW). Other than that, not a bad job.
Last edited by m4sterbr0s 11 years ago, edited 1 time in total.
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Mineyl
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Re: ASMBXT Post Levels Here

Post by Mineyl »

I'd like to do two or three levels for this, myself. In SMWCP, I did two endgame levels, but for this...I'll probably end up doing an early-game level and a late-game level and perhaps a mid-game level somewhere between them. I'm first going to kinda' hang back and see what other people make so I'll get an idea of what sort of stuff my levels will be sided with, though.
I'm going to spoiler all of my critique to keep from stretching out the page, images or not.
I like your level, but I do think the second half is much, much more difficult than the first. Most of the difficulty I had with it came from the fact that I'm simply not used to Mario game sprites interacting with platforms and the like, so I didn't know how to react to the spinies on the skull raft, so there was some learning going on there for me. It was mostly that I found it unintuitive how they'd change direction from the raising and lowering of the platforms.

I have two minor suggestions to perhaps make the level easier and/or more fair: the first is to add a power-up by the midpoint. Unlike SMW, the player cannot go to another level and bring power-ups back to the midway entrance, so any subsequent attempts at the second half after an initial death will be done without extra health for quite a while. The second suggestion is to add a breather about halfway through the raft ride so that the player isn't in a constant struggle against the Lakitus piling up at the top of the screen and the sudden "hit the things in order to clear the path and quickly jump back onto the skull raft" gimmick.
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McClain
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Re: ASMBXT Post Levels Here

Post by McClain »

Man, that Lakitu level is HARD. I don't know if I can hang with you guys. :)

General problem, but the sprite for the spinies makes it impossible to tell what direction they are going. This can be a real problem with something like the skull raft, which can make them change direction randomly on slopes. I'm honestly not a fan of the way SMBX handles object collision like that and would usually try to avoid that much interaction, preferring to use Blargs and Paratroupers as obstacles when on a moving object (i.e., stuff that doesn't touch the thing you are riding on).
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Re: ASMBXT Post Levels Here

Post by McClain »

XutaWoo wrote:Uh, Where's The Floor?
The main path is pretty fun. The alternate, I don't have a clue how to get through that without eating a hit
at the nippers
The mini-pipe at the exit causes some weirdness if you try to slide into it. I'd just use a normal pipe.
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XutaWoo
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Re: ASMBXT Post Levels Here

Post by XutaWoo »

The hint to how to get through the 'secret' exit is in the tree at the end.
You're supposed to bring a shell with you, and wipe them out. As a bonus, you get to skip the ceiling pirahna and the podoboo if you can land on the shell!
Also, you're supposed to be small through the entire thing. Hence why the entrance and the exit have 1-block tall tunnels with spikes on the ceiling.
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Re: ASMBXT Post Levels Here

Post by McClain »

XutaWoo wrote: Also, you're supposed to be small through the entire thing. Hence why the entrance and the exit have 1-block tall tunnels with spikes on the ceiling.
You can slide through while big, even through spikes, if you run, duck, then look left and let go of duck. It's almost impossible to force someone to be small for a trick.
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XutaWoo
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Re: ASMBXT Post Levels Here

Post by XutaWoo »

Oh, huh.

Ah well, that sounds more like an exploit on an engine, and hopefully most people don't know of it. :P
McClain
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Re: ASMBXT Post Levels Here

Post by McClain »

Well... even if you make yourself small to get into that space without sliding under the spikes, you can still have an item in your reserve box, and use it in the secret area, and then glitch the small pipe on the other end :)
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XutaWoo
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Re: ASMBXT Post Levels Here

Post by XutaWoo »

Hopefully the players will have enough ~COMMON SENSE~ to either use their reserve item before they get on the platform or after they complete the section, considering, y'know, spike tunnel and the fact you'd have to slide into the pipe if you're not small. :V
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Mineyl
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Re: ASMBXT Post Levels Here

Post by Mineyl »

XutaWoo wrote:Uh, Where's The Floor?
The level seems to be pretty standard fare, though there's a prevalence of item babysitting on the main path (which is broken by flight power-ups, Yoshi, Kuribo's Shoe, and Toad's double jumps). I really like the vertical portion and I think it's pretty creative and fun up until the row of munchers at the bottom!

The secret path has a few offenses, though. First of all, you try to filter the player's power-up with the spike ceiling, but it can be circumvented by an engine glitch. You will have more success using munchers to attempt to filter power-ups, but bear in mind that power-up filtering in general tends to be looked down upon. Also, requiring the player to know to bring a shell with him before taking the one-way pipe to the secret route is pretty mean, as it's pretty much a guaranteed death the first time around (or even more if it doesn't "click" with the player; it didn't for me).
I could say more about the level than that, but I'd like to offer a suggestion to everyone to not be rushing levels out the door so quickly. I'm 100% positive raocow will be playing this, and we want him to have a genuinely good time and make a genuinely fun game for him, right? He's seemed quite enthusiastic about a Talkhaus SMBX project for a long time, after all.
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McClain
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Re: ASMBXT Post Levels Here

Post by McClain »

XutaWoo wrote:~COMMON SENSE~
Welp, I think I'm done here.

You can't expect a player to do what you want them to do. They WILL try to break the level. I'm trying to point out a glitch and you are trying to tell me I'm playing the level wrong. That's not how QA testing works.

Good luck.

Edit: sorry, I didn't mean to be so snippy. I know I'm new here and shouldn't make a shitty first impression. But seriously, if I do something the first time, then plenty of players will do it. And what the guy above said about forced hit being kinda a crap move.
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XutaWoo
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Re: ASMBXT Post Levels Here

Post by XutaWoo »

McClain wrote:You can't expect a player to do what you want them to do.
This much is true.

But I can expect a player that, unless we change things and make it so that the gameplay's based around exploits, to try to play normally unless they really feel like messing around with said exploits. Which, in turn, brings the awareness that you may encounter more things that don't exactly work.

Exploits that don't get turned into features are, ultimately, cheats, so one should not expect a normal nor polished results from using them. Just look at the multigrab bug in Super Mario World; not only is the timing incredibly difficult, but the more items you have, the less consistent behavior with pipes becomes.

That said, I severely underestimated the normal sliding distance of the player, anywho, and putting the sign which hinted at the solution to the minipuzzle in an entirely different place, so here's an updated version with the logs before the pipe to that area extended (so now you really have to commit yourself to using the exploit) and moving the sign right to the area.

(technically the link's the same because I use Dropbox but hey)
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Mineyl
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Re: ASMBXT Post Levels Here

Post by Mineyl »

That didn't really fix anything, though, because SMBX has an entirely different exploit where if you duck into a one-tile gap while super, face the opposite direction, then stand, you'll zip through to the other side effortlessly (raocow even demonstrates this in the very first video of STTB and one of the later videos of STTB2 where the glitch is required to reach secret areas).

You should probably tailor the secret area to the possibility of being either big or small, because it's essentially impossible to have a 100% effective power-up filter in this engine without outright killing the player (or having tight, claustrophobic level design that severely hinders movement).
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lukaramu
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Re: ASMBXT Post Levels Here

Post by lukaramu »

Shouldn't we try to seperate the actual level submissions from the level reviewing? It would definitely help with oversight. Also, should we make a central place where the currently reviewed levels can be downloaded?
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XutaWoo
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Re: ASMBXT Post Levels Here

Post by XutaWoo »

Mineyl wrote:That didn't really fix anything, though, because SMBX has an entirely different exploit where if you duck into a one-tile gap while super, face the opposite direction, then stand, you'll zip through to the other side effortlessly (raocow even demonstrates this in the very first video of STTB and one of the later videos of STTB2 where the glitch is required to reach secret areas).

You should probably tailor the secret area to the possibility of being either big or small, because it's essentially impossible to have a 100% effective power-up filter in this engine without outright killing the player (or having tight, claustrophobic level design that severely hinders movement).
i have the feeling you missed the point of the first part of that post

As McClain demonstrated, the area's still entirely possible while big if you use the same exploit you used to get in while big. Granted, it'd be even more claustrophobic, and it's certainly not intended, but I feel it's like wall jump bug from SMW; authors shouldn't be forced to try and keep people from using it. Granted, this exploit is a lot easier than the wall jump bug, but it's still the same principle: this level's designed for normal players, who may or may not know of exploits.

I did update the level again, though, because the pipe to that area was not properly two-way. Whoops.

Plus, the logs above where slightly modified to make it a bit easier to get to.

Read: I kept bumping into to lower log and screwing up my jump, so I made it so that I can actually reliably make that jump.
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Mineyl
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Re: ASMBXT Post Levels Here

Post by Mineyl »

LukaRamu wrote:Shouldn't we try to seperate the actual level submissions from the level reviewing? It would definitely help with oversight. Also, should we make a central place where the currently reviewed levels can be downloaded?
That would probably be a good idea. This'll get very cluttered very soon, otherwise. :lol:
XutaWoo wrote:i have the feeling you missed the point of the first part of that post
Oh no, I get your point! However, it's the job of the designer to realize what tools (whether officially sanctioned or exploits or what-have-you) the player has at his disposal and take the appropriate action to ensure that the level plays as well as it can.

For example, you know full well in Super Mario World that if you give the player a cape, there is nothing stopping him from flying over entire levels with it, so you take measures to prevent that from happening by creating some sort of deterrent in the air, whether it be a ceiling or obstacles (or taking the easy way out and disabling cape flight altogether).

I wouldn't expect a designer to plan around glitches such as the wall jump (which requires frame-perfect execution), but more well-known and easily-performed exploits such as double-grabbing and p-switch cloning can and should be planned around. The fault does not lie with you if the player experiences some sort of one in a million glitch that is nearly impossible to produce consistently, but otherwise, it's important to do your best to make sure your level still plays adequately to the point that if it's impossible for the player to continue, he or she will feel like it is legitimately his fault and not the game dicking him over. Does that make sense?

As long as the secret path is still doable big or small, though, I suppose it's okay.
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Doctor Shemp
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Re: ASMBXT Post Levels Here

Post by Doctor Shemp »

Here Comes Dracula! wrote:Hi.

So here's a very early draft of a thing.

It's a bit all over the place at this point. There are some bits that I'm not happy with, and others that I'm thinking of just scrapping, but I figured I should get some feedback before taking it any further.

Also, I chucked in a placeholder overworld so you don't have to play it from the editor I guess?
Ok, here's a few quick thoughts:
The music is really nice and the aesthetics are great. The level looks really good. The difficulty is off the chain. I know it's for all intents and purposes a
boss rush level
but still, it's fairly unrelenting. I'd suggest adding in quite a few more powerups. On that note, did you know that if you don't give friendly NPCs something to say then you can collect them as mushrooms? Because currently that's what's happening to your jumping Toads. Also please for the sake of everyone's sanity include a midpoint.

Overall though the whole
house of bosses thing
is a neat post-game idea if that's what you're going for.
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Jolpengammler
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Re: ASMBXT Post Levels Here

Post by Jolpengammler »

I want to make like 2 levels one mid/endgame level and one end/postgame level :D
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raocow
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Re: ASMBXT Post Levels Here

Post by raocow »

so we're really doing this? ALrighty then, I'm officially making at least one level.

OH MAN I WONDER WHERE IT WILL RANK DIFFICULTY WISE?!%?!
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Cadwyn
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Re: ASMBXT Post Levels Here

Post by Cadwyn »

I too am making at least one level. No idea where it's gonna be difficulty wise, as it's my first time making a level (never even made one in Lunar Magic). As such I'm a little nervous, but will do my best. :)
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lukaramu
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Re: ASMBXT Post Levels Here

Post by lukaramu »

I'll sure make one or two end-/postgame levels, too (I hope they won't enter the level of the unreasonable, but re-watching the SMWCP-LP, "Rupture in Reality" has inspired me in a sense of unreasonable difficult level design (although it is beatable!).

I'm also compiling the levels with assets for oversight and reviewing purpose, eventually will release a zipped compilation if that's ok with everyone.

Furthermore, are we gonna do something like "making more than 3 levels is discouraged, but not forbidden" to prevent '_L_-ception'??? Asking this here because it has mostly to do with submitting levels.

Looking forward to this!
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cheez8
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Re: ASMBXT Post Levels Here

Post by cheez8 »

I'm gonna try my hand at making a level for this too! I'm still getting used to the level editor, but I'll do my best!

It'll probably be a fortress-like environment but I can't be sure? I do know for sure that there'll be a boss at the end, at any rate.
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yoshicookiezeus
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Re: ASMBXT Post Levels Here

Post by yoshicookiezeus »

So this is where we post what kind of levels we are making? Very well then; my level is a generic "climb the tower to escape the rising lava" type level, except I'll have the speed of the lava change in accordance with the music in an attempt to make it slightly less generic.
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