ASMBXT; Journey's end

[Xirix]

I don't see why we couldn't have themed worlds that are simply there in an aesthetic sense, after all.. all of ASMBXT takes place in a castle, they're not all castle levels.

Also Mini-Golf world needs to happen definitely.

[XutaWoo]

Honestly, themeing the worlds and then having the levels not fit the theme at all seems pretty VIPish. Which means it'd suit an AwhateverT project just fine.

[S.N.N.]

I've only read a few of the past posts, but if it's a debate as to whether or not the worlds should be themed, I'm siding with alex2 and going against it. The Talkhaus collabs have always had a random nature to them, and even though they don't always turn out great in their design or difficulty, they have a very special level of charm that you don't get from any other games. It's also worth noting that if ASMBXT had used themed worlds, about 70% of the levels would fit into the category of "miscellaneous" or "just plain weird".

I think the mish-mash formula has worked well thus far. It doesn't need to be changed.

[darkychao]

You get more levels like "Life Lift" out of this method.

What? Life Lift is your example of an original level? Elevator levels are nothing new and not to mention that there were TWO in this peoject!

[Doctor Shemp]

Citations in on an internet forum? That's bringing out the big guns! While I tend to agree that "often restrictions on creativity help creativity" (Otane, 2013) and I do find the same thing when composing music for a purpose (Shemp, 2012; Shemp, 2013), I also acknowledge the point that it is contradictory to the existing feel of the series (Alex et. al., 2013). If we did go down the road of having a "WFT World" or "idk World" (Otane, 2013) then how would we draw it on the overworld?

I think we should do the levels first and then see if themes appear. If they do, we can build an overworld. After all, World 5 was nearly all spooky-themed in ASMBXT (raocow, 2013). Alternatively, we could build bigger and more thematic hubs like XutaWoo's original proposal (XutaWoo, 2012).

[Eathanu]

Various Things

All decent points, but they hinge on people still being interesting in collaborating when they're being told what they can make. I think the important point here is that ASMBXT had so many people interested in designing levels (myself included) because they weren't being told what to do. So, sure, you might get more interesting/memorable levels out of dictated world themes that force innovative ideas, but good luck getting similar showing to ASMBXT.

[raocow]

I agree that restrictions is an important tool to bringing out creativity, however in order for it to work you need to have a base level of skill. You need to have existing experience for it to 'shine' and to make sense. The issue with this is that the 'a [x variable] thing ' has had always been composed of like 75% inexperienced designers, ranging from litteraly never did anything before to maybe poked aroudn in the thing once or twice. In this context, there are diminishing returns in constraints.

[SAJewers]

Whatever happened to the death counter program. Do we know the number of raocow deaths for each level?

It didn't seem to work on Windows 7.

As for Themed worlds, what I'm thinking is letting people make their levels with whatever themes, and then grouping levels together into worlds based on similar themes. for ASMBXT, there were a few levels based on video games that could've got put into a "video game reference" world.

EDIT: Here's a few other ideas:
- STTB2 level structure, ending with the foal tape, and having the leek/star hidden somewhere in the level.
- 1 boss per world, at the end of every world. A lot of people made bosses, we ended up having more levels with bosses than worlds.
- STTB2 styled world map. I don't know if the "central world" idea is even possible in SMBX. Plus, A star world that took you around the map like in STTB2 means we can do ZebraSpace again.

[Doctor Shemp]

As for Themed worlds, what I'm thinking is letting people make their levels with whatever themes, and then grouping levels together into worlds based on similar themes.

Wouldn't that result in a nonsense difficulty curve unless everything flukes out exactly right?

[Septentrion Pleiades]

It will also hinder peoples' creativity by being restricted to a specific theme.

Well, like, I figure we could also have two worlds that are like...

"WTF World" and "idk World" which are just random levels unrestricted by the thematic elements.

"WTF World" would be more gimmicky and "idk world" would just be generally unrestricted.

(Also! Often restrictions on creativity help creativity! This has been demonstrated in scientific tests. Often, when given a loose restriction like "Write a story on space travel," students will produce more generally creative work than from a prompt that is simply "Write a story on whatever you want.")

I actualy agree with you for once, although I'm probably thinking through this different. Instead of thinking of this as some rescriction, we can instead develope a common resource pool for each them. Each world then could have unique NPCs, graphics, or music. Then not only will each world stay with it's flavor, a lot of people could get new ideas.

For example, a jungle world could have resprited podiboos you can hop on, or have rediculous gaint spiny creatures as the norm. We could have a NPC replacement for every NPC that doesn't fit. It would also be nice to share block resources throughout each theme.

Also, I'm not saying we should make levels use these resources are a requirement, because if someone thinks that they can do better without them, then you might as well leave them to their own voilation.

[Cronocke]

"<>" is a reference to Brian Brushwood.

Never in my wildest dreams would I have expected raocow and the NSFW Show to intersect. And then that happened.

I don't know what to say.

[Kashkabald]

I'm also against themed worlds. We wouldn't have such an eclectic mix of levels in ASMBXT if there were themed worlds.

Also someone suggested, probably the best way to avoid any issues is to use an overworld with a number of hubs. Basically because I prefer hubs as they're far more interactive and you can do a lot more with them graphically than an overworld, plus you'd have to fit the levels around the overworld.

[Septentrion Pleiades]

I don't think themed world should hender any level. I propose the solution being whenever world consistancy is seriously broken, the play goes threw some sort of portal, sort of like Oblivion gates to zebra space.

[kil3]

I'm just gonna drop some truth bombs of unimaginable import

The straight difficulty curve in asmbxt felt bad, and it put the LP in a bad mood towards the end knowing for certain that all of the levels starting with glazed donuts were going to be really hard. When you can barely beat levels in world 5-6 and know it only gets harder, you don't want to play the rest of the game, especially when some levels are low-interest and hard for no good reason. So amazingly enough, I agree with themed overworlds since it would fix the difficulty curve, but I'd rather see the organizer try and theme them after all the levels have been made.

[Sebby19]

Otane, your intelligence is wasted on us.

Anyway, I'm in Poland right now, and I finally found an internet source. All I have to say is I'm glad that flying level exists. It's a really good example of flying physics, and a good level that teaches them. 1 important fact is that if you have full momentum going all you need is to land on one block to recharge your flying.

Interestingly, NSMB2 does the same thing with the Raccoon Tail, only this game makes it even easier, as you only need any horizontal movement when you touchdown.

[Isrieri]

The straight difficulty curve in asmbxt felt bad, and it put the LP in a bad mood towards the end knowing for certain that all of the levels starting with glazed donuts were going to be really hard. When you can barely beat levels in world 5-6 and know it only gets harder, you don't want to play the rest of the game, especially when some levels are low-interest and hard for no good reason. So amazingly enough, I agree with themed overworlds since it would fix the difficulty curve, but I'd rather see the organizer try and theme them after all the levels have been made.

This is very true. However...

I agree that restrictions is an important tool to bringing out creativity, however in order for it to work you need to have a base level of skill. You need to have existing experience for it to 'shine' and to make sense. The issue with this is that the 'a [x variable] thing ' has had always been composed of like 75% inexperienced designers, ranging from litteraly never did anything before to maybe poked aroudn in the thing once or twice. In this context, there are diminishing returns in constraints.

That is also very true.



I don't know how you guys set up ASMBXT. Whether you plotted out the hub first, or if the levels were just made at random and thrown together into a giant hub. But I think the best way to go about it would be to not have themed worlds but to have a strict number of worlds.

I'm in the middle of working on Super RMN World and the Talking Time expansion and what the two games have in common is that there aren't any specific themes in the game. But they both had preset difficulties or worlds that each of the levels would fall into. Talking Time had an Early Game, Mid Game, and Post Game where the levels were ordered by difficulty to create a better curve. And with RMN I suggested that each level have a numbered difficulty of 1-8. 8 because it's the usual number of worlds in Mario and people have a pretty good idea of how hard a level should be based on that scale (usually). It's a better guide for the developers as to what sort of challenge they should be shooting for with whatever level they intend on making, and that's worked out pretty good so far.

So I would suggest the same thing: Don't worry about theming worlds because although I agree that restrictions inspire creativity more than inhibit it: If you don't have a load of experience with the engine it's a bit more difficult to work with those restrictions and still come up with something as creative as most levels I've seen from the talkhaus. Rather, if you just try to order levels based on a preset curve, and never allow levels to go above what's been decided, I think you'll run into considerably less fossilized triceratops turd levels.

[SAJewers]

The straight difficulty curve in asmbxt felt bad, and it put the LP in a bad mood towards the end knowing for certain that all of the levels starting with glazed donuts were going to be really hard. When you can barely beat levels in world 5-6 and know it only gets harder, you don't want to play the rest of the game, especially when some levels are low-interest and hard for no good reason. So amazingly enough, I agree with themed overworlds since it would fix the difficulty curve, but I'd rather see the organizer try and theme them after all the levels have been made.

This is very true. However...

I agree that restrictions is an important tool to bringing out creativity, however in order for it to work you need to have a base level of skill. You need to have existing experience for it to 'shine' and to make sense. The issue with this is that the 'a [x variable] thing ' has had always been composed of like 75% inexperienced designers, ranging from litteraly never did anything before to maybe poked aroudn in the thing once or twice. In this context, there are diminishing returns in constraints.

That is also very true.



I don't know how you guys set up ASMBXT. Whether you plotted out the hub first, or if the levels were just made at random and thrown together into a giant hub. But I think the best way to go about it would be to not have themed worlds but to have a strict number of worlds.

I'm in the middle of working on Super RMN World and the Talking Time expansion and what the two games have in common is that there aren't any specific themes in the game. But they both had preset difficulties or worlds that each of the levels would fall into. Talking Time had an Early Game, Mid Game, and Post Game where the levels were ordered by difficulty to create a better curve. And with RMN I suggested that each level have a numbered difficulty of 1-8. 8 because it's the usual number of worlds in Mario and people have a pretty good idea of how hard a level should be based on that scale (usually). It's a better guide for the developers as to what sort of challenge they should be shooting for with whatever level they intend on making, and that's worked out pretty good so far.

So I would suggest the same thing: Don't worry about theming worlds because although I agree that restrictions inspire creativity more than inhibit it: If you don't have a load of experience with the engine it's a bit more difficult to work with those restrictions and still come up with something as creative as most levels I've seen from the talkhaus. Rather, if you just try to order levels based on a preset curve, and never allow levels to go above what's been decided, I think you'll run into considerably less fossilized triceratops turd levels.

Didn't Talking Time Bros have sort of themed worlds? This is what I'm thinking, having very loose themes, but allowing people to make whatever, and at the end, we can group them together into worlds based on similarity.

[Kashkabald]

My idea is this:

Do away with the concept of "worlds", have the overworld with hubs thing I said, and just place them one after another by difficulty. A lot of the worlds in ASMBXT didn't exactly end with a boss, or had their boss in the middle, which is a defining characteristic of the worlds in Mario games. Hell the concept is even 'somewhat' present in World 5, which is as atypical in a Mario game as it can be, since it can be even hard to figure which level order is the right one.

I just think the Talkhaus excels at having no constraints instead of having "beach levels, forest levels, snow levels" and whatnot.

[darkychao]

Could we have it so that the player starts in a hub that connects to worlds and have each world's final level reward the player with a leek that is required to advance to the next world?

[SAJewers]

Some people wanted a better plot for A2MBXT though. Some of the ideas tossed around here make it hard to even have a plot.

Also, according to this, it's quite complicated to have both a HUB and overworld, and you can't use auto-start events.OK, looking at it again, that's only for a overworld that moves to a HUB. If we went from HUB to Overworld, that would work fine.

EDIT:OK, if we started out in a HUB, and had each "world" in an overworld map, that could work. Though, how can Zebraspace be incorperated into that?

[aterraformer]

I updated that stupid blind spin jump at the end over Overboiled as well as fixed something raocow broke because apparently I still don't know the regular jump height in this engine (second time he did this on one of my levels darn steaming mad)

Here's my A2MTbX idea, basically I think zebraspace should like together all the hubs somehow like when you beat one it links to the one previous from two beyond not dissimilar to SMW star world so the trek back to start for the postgame will be less or something I don't know. I think there should be weird inter-connectivity still between them but hidden really well and should hide extra stars.

[SAJewers]

Here's my A2MTbX idea, basically I think zebraspace should like together all the hubs somehow like when you beat one it links to the one previous from two beyond not dissimilar to SMW star world so the trek back to start for the postgame will be less or something I don't know. I think there should be weird inter-connectivity still between them but hidden really well and should hide extra stars.

So, basically, like what Talking Time Bros 2 had with the Star World.

[docopoper]

We could try making a hub world that looks more like the original design proposed for the ASMBXT hub.

Where you have haphazard paths around a semi-themed area that has loads of sub-themes built into it. For example a grassy area with a flooded cave in it and random pools of lava near lava levels. And for levels like Timed Jumps on Moving Everything - have custom graphics from the level in the hubworld.

Also - I'm glad people keep using my levels as examples of good levels. ^^

EDIT: also - here's an update to Revolution. To fix those few missing tiles of 'smoke'.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/490 ... lution.lvl

[SAJewers]

That could work as well. If we do go with a HUB over an overworld, I'd be all for making the HUB a level in and of itself.

[SAJewers]

I think first we should come up with the plot, then decide on everything after that based how well it fits the plot.