SMBX (2014 Yacht of Opinions): MaGL X - Whoohoo!

[yogui]

Damn I was waiting for the video to be up so I can eat my lunch while watching it.
It's past 3am and I'm super hungry.
Thanks youtube.

[BobisOnlyBob]

MY SANDWICHES

[Diggertron]

Hooray, finally!

[Quill]

Not sure why Horikawa scored that first level more than the second.

[Unaniem]

Yoshi's Ocean Cloud was pretty decent, liked the layer shenanigans and the subtle raft screen-transitioning, but that was just that.

I'm not really feeling Hyrule Holiday however. It was good at it's core (but nothing truly amazing), and the custom enemy work is well done too, but...ehh? The town part just felt like it was dragging on without much to really give aside from wacky NPC dialouge. While that is not necessarily a problem, I felt like the level just wouldn't be different without it: you could just have the lady NPC turn up in the middle somewhere to mention her child is gone and have the level continue without actually interrupting the action with loads of slow-paced jokes.

The level design was okay, but I really feel like putting a 'stop' to the action for a moment just for the sake of establishing Mido more was really something that made it cost.

With how high the expectations are getting now, I'm preparing for the tiny storm that will arrive when my level ends up being 'eh' in comparison to some of the better levels here.

[jayScribble]

Mario's really feeling it: he's becoming Yoshi and sometimes Link in the most weirdest places.

"Okay, So Imagine a Yoshi's Island Ocean Cloud..." is a interesting ascetic level and some funny Yoshi moments, but the water being lava isn't as clear as first, and the moving layers part was alright, but didn't really fit into the level well.

Speaking of NPCs, "It's the Holidays in the Land of Hyrule" does it in a good way, as well as the technical aspects of it as well, but in terms of the level, it's just fetch quests, and the latter half just seems to spam enemies like it was infested with them.

[S.N.N.]

I'm not really feeling Hyrule Holiday however. It was good at it's core (but nothing truly amazing), and the custom enemy work is well done too, but...ehh? The town part just felt like it was dragging on without much to really give aside from wacky NPC dialouge.

Yeah, I felt this way too. Just because Valtteri has a good reputation doesn't mean everything he produces will be top tier, and I think this level made it obvious (I know he's capable of better though). I actually enjoyed the entry before it a lot more.

Also, regarding the after-text: "some reason"? Come on, surely you could have thought of at least one legitimate reason why you didn't enjoy the level.

[raocow]

It's weird because I kind of felt the same way. Everything is 'there', and it's genuinely a very good level with a lot of craft put into it, but after playing I just felt... 'eh?', you know?

It's a feeling that is very, very difficult to put into words.

edit: basically it left me without feeling much of any emotion, whereas some genuinely poorer levels did manage to make me feel really good at the end. This is what is happening.

edit2: I guess you could say that it is 'clinically good'

edit3: which is all nice and all, but like Horikawa I prefer to feel something than not. Ultimately this makes us terrible 'technical' judges but hey.

[Willhart]

The first level had some good usage of npcs, eggs and yoshis. I also like some of the humor and the look of the clouds. The ending was kinda abrupt.

The second level was fun in the non wacky way. There were a lot of effort in there and everything looked consistend. I like towns when they are well made, but the theme might have put some judges off.

[Sorel]

Also, regarding the after-text: "some reason"? Come on, surely you could have thought of at least one legitimate reason why you didn't enjoy the level.

Welcome to Horikawas world, have a nice stay.

[Mata Hari]

How did Horseman manage to have a broken mask

E: Oh so it's like, going from a level with a custom horse to a level with vanilla horse changes the graphic, but not the mask? That's a bit silly.

[SpoonyBardOL]

E: Oh so it's like, going from a level with a custom horse to a level with vanilla horse changes the graphic, but not the mask? That's a bit SMBX.

Man, every day that passes that doesn't have my level I feel disappointed because, naturally, I can't wait to see it and yet it's great that I keep making it farther and farther. Honestly with the way the levels were going I started expecting my stage when raocow was in World 5. I'm probably somewheres in World 7 though, so maybe not too much longer!

[sedron]

I think the only part of Horikawa's judging I really disagree with thus far was not adequately explaining why she didn't care so much for Valterri's level. I understand it being hard to pinpoint, but you only need to know the SMBX community a little bit to know Valterri is pretty big there and there'd be a good chance of people going crazy over his placement. =P

Just watching the level, I think it's major weakness was simply in land and enemy placement. There's very little platforming to speak of, and the majority of the challenge comes from dealing with enemies. Since most of the enemies are dealt with in basically the same way, it becomes pretty repetitive and never really asks the player to do something new or different. The land layout is good for a romp, but it doesn't really go any farther than that.

The town in the middle has been cited as a bit of an issue, but despite how it does kind of break the flow of the level, it's not necessary to explore it and you only need to go through once. I think it's perfectly fine.

One more thing I'd like to mention is the lack of focus in enemy types, especially in the second half. It contains (reskinned,) Birdos, Hammer Bros, Thwomps, Slimes, Snifits, Boos, jumpy Zelda 2 guys, Bullies... I'm sure there were more. The huge array of enemy types combined with the large number of them (by virtue of being a heavily enemy-based level,) makes the whole thing seem a bit haphazard and almost spammy. It's also tough to do many interesting things with those enemies when you get to use most of them 3 or 4 times at most.

[Mata Hari]

I'm glad you made these critiques because watching it I never felt like there was a whole hell of a lot to the level design either. But you put it smartwise.

[CodeGorilla]

Perhaps it just got lost in the previous pages, but what was the method for ranking the submissions without using numbers? I really can't see how anything except numbers could handle the 134 entries.

I don't know all of the format suggestions this forum used, but largely out of people complaining about getting this many points and whatnot, SMWC utilized an "unranked" format for the 2013 VLDC where the judges provided comments on how they felt about an entry and gave it a rating (Not For Me, Unfufilling, Ambivalent, Enjoyable, Favorites ). The rating would be "temporary" converted to a letter grade from A-F for obligatory reasons. When we finished individual judging, the four discussed with each other what should the Top 3 winners be with a couple of "stragglers" getting honorary mentions. The rest wouldn't be bothered with a ranking. (Essentially everyone else got last place.)

A side event was used that allowed non-judges to vote for their favorites, but their input wasn't taken into consideration for our judging for numerous reasons.

Of course, that contest only had around 85 entries- a far cry from 134- but still doable. (Yeah, it's a tough task, but who said it was ever easy?)

Although I see what you're getting at, I think the issue with this idea is that for this contest, the organizers wanted to be able to put all the entries into a single game - something that SMBX is rather good at, but SMW (from what I've gathered) is terrible at. The issue, then, is that they wanted to be able to sort *all* the levels by ranking so that the levels get progressively better on average. This sort of approach wouldn't make any sense in a SMW contest, but is kind of expected in a SMBX contest. That's why numeric scores were used.

[Tenlade]

Frankly its still dumb that the Yacht of Opinions is really The Yacht of objective precision scoring out of 100. Not much of an opinion if you've got a specific scoring system that breaks a level down into its base concepts.

Seems like a lot of arbitrary work and a bunch of choice drama solely to decide which order the hot tubs are in.

[sedron]

Frankly its still dumb that the Yacht of Opinions is really The Yacht of objective precision scoring out of 100. Not much of an opinion if you've got a specific scoring system that breaks a level down into its base concepts.

Seems like a lot of arbitrary work and a bunch of choice drama solely to decide which order the hot tubs are in.

A) The numbers are just representations of opinions, more or less.

B) If the scoring were objective, each judge would have given the same scores as each other for every level. The scores are different because of differences in taste and opinions, ie. it's subjective.

C) I don't think there's any system that would 100% avoid drama anyway. As long as people have their own opinions it's bound to happen.

[tirakai]

The Zelda level honestly seemed rather simple to me. The town is neat but towns are fairly common in Mario Hacks now and the level part looked like very standard level design. The Zelda sprites on the enemies and npcs is really the only part that stood out.

Honestly I'd put it near the bottom of the previous world with the other well-designed but ultimately forgettable stages.

[Bwarch]

I think the only part of Horikawa's judging I really disagree with thus far was not adequately explaining why she didn't care so much for Valterri's level. I understand it being hard to pinpoint, but you only need to know the SMBX community a little bit to know Valterri is pretty big there and there'd be a good chance of people going crazy over his placement. =P

Honestly it might be a good idea for future shenanigans if we do blind judging (if possible) wherein the judges don't know who made what. It would be a bit difficult and roundabout but the upside is you don't get artificial inflation for community celebrities.

Also bias. Because all the bias in the world.

Not saying that's the case here, I haven't even watched the ep yet, just using the quote as an excuse to expound on something I've been thinking about.

[tirakai]

How would you do blind judging? I would think the way the submissions work means that judges will see who submitted each level.

Would you have someone compile all the levels in a hack format with the levels given a number instead of with submitter names? That way the scores for each level could be kept track of easily. It would mean some extra work but it would help stop the bias and add more fun/drama for the judges too since they'd find out who they rated high through the videos (as long as they don't cheat and look at the submission topic).

[memnarch]

...

A) The numbers are just representations of opinions, more or less.

B) If the scoring were objective, each judge would have given the same scores as each other for every level. The scores are different because of differences in taste and opinions, ie. it's subjective.

C) I don't think there's any system that would 100% avoid drama anyway. As long as there's people have their own opinions it's bound to happen.

Fixed for you. People ain't mindless robots yo.

Blind judging would be pretty hard, especially since there's really no way to control if the creator puts their name in the level itself or not. Perhaps if someone looked through all the text before passing the levels to the judges, but i think that would get tedious real quick.

[DinnerSonic]

Finally, raocow played something I made, awesome!

It had multiple bugs that I swear weren't there when I tested, awesome! Have a director's commentary.

Things like the deadly cold "lava water" and the suddenness of the ending are purely my own design faults, but those pipes that did nothing and the lack of music in the last segment(which is meant to play the same music as the first) were definitely not meant to happen.

The pipes were meant to lead to Yoshi's Island style side rooms that would reward you with a flower(Dragon Coin) and give a bit more of a YI feel. The flowers didn't actually do anything beyond give a 1-up if you get them all, though with hindsight I might have put in red coins and gave some kind of extra reward for getting them all. Though that would require beating the level without dying, which isn't always fun.

The sinking and rising clouds were meant to be odd level-shaped clumps of clouds floating in the ocean cloud, though I guess I got carried away with things. Not sure why I didn't add more of a hint to the safe areas, but raocow made it through things relatively safely at least.

I dwadled a lot with the level, to be honest, leading to last minute tweaks, fixes and changes, leading to possibly odd design choices and overlooked missing tiles... and yet I made it all the way this far.

Also, does it say something about me, one of my earlier ideas in the level was the Yoshi 1-up gag? I wanted a lot of eggs to toss and a general focus on wanting to use Yoshi, which lead to the idea of "Get yourself a Yoshi... no, not that one!" and the weird way Yoshi turns into a 1-up in SMW. I hope it wasn't too morbid...

Mildly interesting how, beyond the "Let's play Everything Else!" theme, that my level's placed near another level that featured a clump of talkative NPCs. Mine was a bit of fluff and excuse making, while the other was a legitimate Zelda 2 town, but, details.

[SpoonyBardOL]

Blind judging would be pretty hard, especially since there's really no way to control if the creator puts their name in the level itself or not. Perhaps if someone looked through all the text before passing the levels to the judges, but i think that would get tedious real quick.

Eh, just have a rule that states you lose some amount of potential score if the judges find you left your name in the level somewheres. Any possible advantage someone might want to claim by letting the judges know the author of the level would be outweighed by the penalty. Then we'd just need a neutral third party to handle the handing-off of levels to the judges, with a list of names provided after judging is done.

[Isrieri]

I don't understand the hubbub about bad judging. Judging is itself a biased process. You can compile a rubric to run each level by in an attempt to critique it on quality and design alone, but even still that's going to mean different things to different people. Its all a matter of taste and preference. Its like trying to grade art in an art class.

If you guys want the scores to round out better, just have more judges for the next contest. Five instead of three, maybe. Feedback from differing perspectives means a broader set of tastes that get taken into consideration.

I'm also going to go on record and say I liked the random name theme a lot. Regular contests are boring.

[sedron]

...

C) I don't think there's any system that would 100% avoid drama anyway. As long as there's people have their own opinions it's bound to happen.

Fixed for you. People ain't mindless robots yo.

I wasn't trying to say people are or should be robots. I quite prefer that opinions are, in fact, a thing. =P