A Second Mario Thing: free alex

[limepie20]

Wow I get two in a row! Basically with this, Cheeseofdoom did all the technical stuff (sprite freeze, palette change, animation, graphics) and I added the freezing auto scroll and did all the level design. He originally started the level, but never finished it, so I dredged it with him.
There are a few things I would've done differently today like introduced the wind better, and not have a practically unfair obstacle in front of the second springboard, but hey I'm glad popular opinion is up, better than my other two levels.

[Kil]

but you can't argue that there isn't something distinct about a lot of SMWC produced levels

Click here to read the positive version of this post

SMWC levels usually put a heavy focus on a clean and solid presentation. I think this became very important to a lot of people after a lot of ugly stupid levels started becoming popular on youtube. To counter the stigma of these ugly levels, visual critique became very important to them, and they developed a very high standard for visual levels. If you play SMWCP you can clearly see many of the levels have lots of custom terrain, foliage, and other pretty stuff everywhere.

The opposite of this would be the pachinko machine level from VIP4, which is basically a wacky pachinko machine made out of SMW blocks which doesn't care how it looks.

Click here to read the negative version of this post

SMWC levels tend to focus on superficial visuals above anything else. They do this because they're still trying to make everyone forget about all those stupid youtube troll levels from 2007. Since the main activity there is upping one's social standing via the art of complaining, all of the levels have become super inbred into the same exact thing from the endless whining of the same 5 people who do nothing but complain about mario levels all day.

The opposite of this would be the pachinko level from VIP4, which was created WHEN THE ANCIENT DEITY IZUNA GONGEN HIMSELF PARTED THE HEAVENS ABOVE JAPAN UPON A 7 TAILED FOX, AND WITH HIS RUGGED TANTO BLADE HE CUT A PACHINKO MACHINE OUT OF AN ANCIENT BOULDER THAT WAS THOUGHT TO BE UNBREAKABLE. Also the Talkhaus is just as bad with their putting terrible fanfiction in every game.

[Saturn Moriya]

Midair springboard jump: raocow revealed to be a real time TAS bot.

Punctuated Time has an amazing gimmick, and it uses it pretty well too! Some of the idea's were really well executed and interesting, like the water, air, autoscroll and most of the homing bullet parts. I feel like there could've been more though. It's not like the level feels empty, not by a long shot, but the gimmick begs to do more. The thomps, regular bullets and spinies really didn't cooperate with the gimmick much, other than sort of putting a thomp in a place, otherwise just making them irrelevant. It's probably really hard to make the gimmick work with sprites though, so I'm not complaining. I just think it's too bad we couldn't have, for example, charlies or lava lotusses. I think other sprites could be much more involved with the gimmick.

Still, great job on this one, probably the best gimmick level we've seen so far!

[KobaBeach]

ZA WARUDO!
TOKI YO TOMARE!!

[/size](if the chest item placement was ever finished, this level's should have been a stone mask, screw ur 2hu references)

The opposite of this would be the pachinko level from VIP4, which was created WHEN THE ANCIENT DEITY IZUNA GONGEN HIMSELF PARTED THE HEAVENS ABOVE JAPAN UPON A 7 TAILED FOX, AND WITH HIS RUGGED TANTO BLADE HE CUT A PACHINKO MACHINE OUT OF AN ANCIENT BOULDER THAT WAS THOUGHT TO BE UNBREAKABLE.

best post 2014

[Zygl]

re: Item babysitting no longer being a thing
Are those dumb nonsensical homing bullets also no longer a thing? Because they're dumb and make no sense and really should quit being a thing.

Great level aside from those being all over the place, though. I'm kinda curious about the ASM behind the gimmick and why it has those weird sprite-related glitches.

[Voltgloss]

So if you tried to stop time while swimming in the water, what happens? Instant death?

[Bryux]

So if you tried to stop time while swimming in the water, what happens? Instant death?

I'm quite sure raocow tried and then it made the didn't work sound.

[Money]

>video title isn't "za warud-oh"
geez raocow, get it together

[The Doctor]

re: Item babysitting no longer being a thing
Are those dumb nonsensical homing bullets also no longer a thing? Because they're dumb and make no sense and really should quit being a thing.

I love homing bullets. One of the few, maybe even only, enemies that provide a legitimate challenge in the Mario games.

[leod]

Level could've been cool, but the bullets ruined it.

[Septentrion Pleiades]

Thwomps are the default enemy, but some of the inserted enemies were a bad idea from the start. I'm not sure if anyone ever spoke out against homing bullets, Those enemies were the standard in SMW hacking.

[AUS]

Big demo discrimination like it was no thing although I can't be mad at this level because just look at that asm.

[Shard1697]

That was super cool. Rough around the edges, but cool.

[ano0maly]

It's a bit amusing that a bunch of things reset when you restart time. The thwomps set their current position as the new default position. In some other games the thwomp enemies keep retracting until they hit a wall, but I guess in SMW they don't?

[Alice]

It's a bit amusing that a bunch of things reset when you restart time. The thwomps set their current position as the new default position. In some other games the thwomp enemies keep retracting until they hit a wall, but I guess in SMW they don't?

In SMW thwomps try to retract until they are in their original position. I can't speak for horizontal thwomps but vertical ones actually have an issue where if they drop too far their default position will be reset to the lower subscreen.

In this case it looks like either maverick thwomps have the same issue but horizontally or, judging by the bullet generators, they have some slight conflict with the gimmick's asm.

[MrDeePay]

re: Item babysitting no longer being a thing
Are those dumb nonsensical homing bullets also no longer a thing? Because they're dumb and make no sense and really should quit being a thing.

I love homing bullets. One of the few, maybe even only, enemies that provide a legitimate challenge in the Mario games.

Their sudden erratic movements are annoying to deal with, and not in the fun way either. There's an actual Homing Bill with movements that are more natural and provide a reasonable challenge to put up against.

[Mabel]

Like that one with vampire Sideshow Bob and vampire Fry fighting over gothloli Bart while he sings In The End by Linkin Park

OH GOD THAT PIC
I CANT EVBEN

[CM30]

re: Item babysitting no longer being a thing
Are those dumb nonsensical homing bullets also no longer a thing? Because they're dumb and make no sense and really should quit being a thing.

Great level aside from those being all over the place, though. I'm kinda curious about the ASM behind the gimmick and why it has those weird sprite-related glitches.

Homing Bullets are in actual Mario games you know. New Super Mario Bros Wii 9-3 and the 3D games more precisely (in the 3D ones, all Bullet Bills and Torpedo Teds are homing, at least prior to 3D Land).

As for the ones with the weird movements you see in a lot of hacks, I'm pretty sure they're from Brutal Mario. No idea how they became so common, perhaps someone like carol released them about 10-15 years ago or something and a bunch of people just chucked 'em in random levels.

[AUS]

There's an actual Homing Bill with movements that are more natural and provide a reasonable challenge to put up against.

I would ask "why does nobody ever actually use that" but this is like four years old.
Tell us, DeePay-senpai.
Do people actually use it?

[worldpeace125]

OMG the gimmick of today's level was really neat! Definitely the coolest thing among what I've seen in recent days. Specifically, I liked stopping the screen-scrolling progress and rearranging objects to make it possible to pass through the obstacles. It's not hard to imagine decent flash games like this would exist. The level would be excellent if some excessive obstacles were fine-tuned.

[YelseyKing]

Wow. Today's gimmick was... honestly really cool. Interesting enough that one could base an entire hack/game around it, even. Kind of a shame it wasn't implemented all that well, though. There were only a few places that it felt like the gimmick was really all that necessary for (the pipe at the start, the springboards, and a couple bullet jumps). Otherwise, it just felt like a pretty standard stage that... had a really neat extra gimmick, like raocow implied.

Also, homing bullets: Threat or Menace?

[morsel/morceau]

I'm kinda curious about the ASM behind the gimmick

There's a custom sprite actually level asm code changing the the on/off status when you press the R button and everything (animations, block behaviour, custom sprite behaviour) depends on the on/off status. So the spike top is a custom sprite, etc. (a super-efficient way of freezing the sprites).

[Willhart]

Both levels today were really neat graphically. Treasures were great too.
Goofy Grotto is one of the level names that kinda stands out from the level list for some reason. Good to see that it was rather special.

[BobisOnlyBob]

someone please draw the second treasure of today's levels wearing the first treasure of today's levels for raocow

[Patgangster]

...Done with the main map? How about that level he walked over at about 0:08 in the third video?

definitely not biased because that's my level or anything.