A2XT: It's Over

[ano0maly]

I felt the same way as sedron about Desolate Town. Probably my least favorite town I've seen. It seems to have a buildup to some kind of event that doesn't actually materialize.

[BobisOnlyBob]

Someone needs to get genius with Luna.dll and the stopwatch and make a town that CAN be saved for A2XT2: digital groove (or whatever subtitle it ends up with)

[Octagon]

That castle is still terrible. Sorry guy who made it.

Non-guy who made it duly apologizes. I had way too many ideas and way too much stress with layers to apply mentionable polish. "Developer bias" or whatever you call it hit me kind of hard until I couldn't really tell the good from the bad anymore.
The side path contained four rooms that could be done in any order, which expanded on the malfunctioning skeleton lock, assembled parts of the Bat Cannon one by one (including the awful cutoff capacitor) and created a really weird atmosphere. They have been cut out because they were glitchy and made stuff kind of tedious (a midpoint in the Peach-cosplaying-scientist room was required). Their removal makes it a very non-sequitur place and feel fairly short for a long level, but it never made much sense anyway.

While I do miss the atmosphere and messy thematic balance the extra rooms provided, thank you for the cleanup, it's for the better.

I thought the "switches as checkpoints" gimmick of the main path was sufficiently characteristic to excuse the thematic split of castle/sky, but it turns out too easy to actually make a difference.

The pedestal blocks are for a tiny unimportant thing with communist ninjis (which I put in with no knowledge of the world ?4? subplot). It's just to get a moon.

[Doctor Shemp]

It seems to have a buildup to some kind of event that doesn't actually materialize.

I assume the threat being talked about was Percy, although that's never followed through in any other level.

Also decimate means "kill one in 10" not "kill everyone" grr

[Lunikyuu]

Someone needs to get genius with Luna.dll and the stopwatch and make a town that CAN be saved for A2XT2: digital groove (or whatever subtitle it ends up with)

Seconded, when raocow theorized that in today's episode, I thought it was a pretty neat idea. Shame that stopwatches don't stop events like that, as I was planning on using a gimmick based around stopwatches, but the fact that events still activate immediately as opposed to when the stopwatch wears off completely breaks it.

[KingTwelveSixteen]

Someone needs to get genius with Luna.dll and the stopwatch and make a town that CAN be saved for A2XT2: digital groove (or whatever subtitle it ends up with)

Seconded, when raocow theorized that in today's episode, I thought it was a pretty neat idea. Shame that stopwatches don't stop events like that, as I was planning on using a gimmick based around stopwatches, but the fact that events still activate immediately as opposed to when the stopwatch wears off completely breaks it.

Have the event wait 0.1 second then activate a different event?

[Isrieri]

You probably wouldn't need Luna.dll to make that happen. Stopwatches don't stop events whole-sale but they do pause them. You could probably come up with a level that keeps certain disasters from happening with just vanilla SMBX. Its all about how creative you get with it.

[Lunikyuu]

Have the event wait 0.1 second then activate a different event?

D'oh! Of course the solution would be that simple I thought I tried that before, but apparently I didn't as I just tested it several times and it worked perfectly

[Joseph Staleknight]

Demo and Co. infiltrate a bifurcated castle and save one of the towers from being destroyed by the Mafia. Then they head to town...or what's left of it.

Castle of the Above and Elsewhere (Octagon): Man, the Above sure is a messy castle. And it's got quite the platforming challenge as well! It doesn't help that in some cases you need to be very aware of you're surroundings, otherwise you'll get hit and fall down (to your doom if inside the castle). At least there's a midpoint right outside the upper level of the castle, though it's behind some rather difficult hazards. Overall, very difficult if not rage-inducingly so.

Interestingly, the secret exit in Elsewhere's castle felt less difficult, especially once I knew how to shortcut my way through the bat ventilation area. Gotta love that bat cannon ruining Elsewhere the Mobster Boom Boom's schemes!

Desolate Town (8flight): Okay, first of all the welcoming committee isn't very nice, especially since towns are supposed to be breather levels. You just don't send some fast skeletons to mob the PC when they enter; that's common courtesy!

Anyway, the town pretty much lived up to its name, what with the graveyard, 8flight casually destroying towers and letting debris fly everywhere, and other scenes of ruin. Granted, there wasn't as much ruin and despair in Jolpe's or MonkeyShrapnel's rooms, but the mood felt otherwise appropriate. Even the watch that could have prevented the ruin is heavily guarded...almost too heavily.

Also, if you take a particular door in the Door Storage Room--good luck even navigating through there, by the way--you'll be able to get to the rewards in the broken minigame room! Too bad you'll have to reset the game

or go "ghostytime"

to leave. But hey, it's quite an achievement to pull that off!

Notes from the Spire XIV:

6. "The Above is but one castle path of heights that gently wuther. / Strike orange switch and backtrack to find Elsewhere - the other." (Castle of the Above and Elsewhere): Yep, pretty much the secret exit (or at least the way there).

[Moosh]

Peculiar Night has some really awesome atmosphere stuff going on. I agree with raocow that it's much better when you can't actually see the layers changing.

Pavlov Gold is a really awesome level. I love the effect where you're avoiding blue stuff while the song is messing with your head by saying yellow hurts. Personally I would have hidden a damaging blue thing on the last screen to mess with people because I'm a jerk, but that's just me.

[jayScribble]

Looks like dynamic change can happen within the level.

"Peculiar Night" is a level that compressed many of it's parts into two medium-sized sections. Due to the dynamic state of the level and the sudden appearances of NPCs, people can get lost at first and have a few Demos if you predicted where to go is wrong. Overall, a level that is unique in it's execution and design.

"Pavlov Gold" takes the phrase/mantra "yellow hurts" to the extreme, and twists it around. As a result, the player has to adapt to a new playstyle with all the moving platforms and switches that are needed to be pressed to progress. However, the mantra just says that a particular frequency of the light spectrum is harmful to your well being, but doesn't state that the other colors do harm you as well.

[Willhart]

That song was so surreal. It was really nice. The silent intro set the mood really well for it. Ghosts in the final room looked like large eyeballs, especially when they lowered on the same level.

Pavlov Gold used the enemies to teach the gimmick of the level. It was pretty well designed and executed. The music automatically shows at the start of the level, which is why the music code was not necessary to be used.

[Unaniem]

With Peculiar Night all of my contributions to the game have been seen!
Well kind of

I'll keep the final thoughts stuff for when the game is actually finished, but for now I'll just say that it was a joy being able to contribute to the project and that the months of production were some of the most fun I've ever had on the internet.

I'm glad I'm able to say this and at the same time say that there's still a good chunk of content left in the game to enjoy.

[Crow]

Re: Furba noise - That could be because Unaniem made both Fahren and Peculiar Night. Continuity!

Peculiar Night: Holy hell is this amazing. I can't even come up with proper criticism because I just love the concept so much and the execution was pretty stellar. When I first played this I just had this huge grin stuck on my face. Without question my favorite level in the entire game, good job Unaniem~

Pavlov Gold: On the other hand I have a lot to dislike about this level, especially considering its placement of immediately after my favorite, which might not be fair BUT. I don't see why the pipes have to be instant death when nothing else is, especially with that low-ceiling jump in the first half, agh. I don't care for the homing koopa spam at the beginning of the second half. And I had the same issue as raocow with the blue-but-not-really platforms near the end. Also, the music gets really grating after only a little while, and with how much I died in this place it reeeally got annoying. I just did not enjoy this level at all, the concept is neat but the execution didn't do it for me at all.

And now the final stretch to the castle begins. It's like world 8 of ASMT, except... better, also easier.

EDIT:
I just realized

Favorite - Canopy Journey

If I can cheat and do this, I'm going to have to say Fahren is my favorite.

Favorite: The Descent

THIS WAS NOT INTENTIONAL, HAHA.
I want to see more Unaniem levels, clearly >.>

[Sebby19]

See? Whoever made the Yellow hurts level, raocow DID indeed forget about the hint to the secret room, that the library gave away.

[ano0maly]

What do those message boxes in Pavlov Gold say? Also, the blue coins didn't hurt you in the blue part for some reason.

[Sebby19]

What do those message boxes in Pavlov Gold say? Also, the blue coins didn't hurt you in the blue part for some reason.

yellow hurts!

[Validon98]

I have not commented in awhile. Like... more than a world "awhile," so I'll just sum up World 7 as "it happened" and most of world 8 as decent or funny or maybe eh, there's a really big mix.

Peculiar Night is probably thematically one of the best levels in the game, bar none. I absolutely love how the level just slowly changes over the course of time. You're going back to the same places but they're completely different, and it just flows from there. Really nice job there, Unaniem!

Pavlov Gold meanwhile I remember ztarwuff saying being a psychological experiment meant to deliberately mess with the player and make them miss that in that last section, blue hurts instead of yellow. I think that fails because any Mario player that sees an enemy falling into something with that sound effect can realize it's dangerous, and the fact that a sign points attention to it really doesn't make it any better. There's probably a better way to implement this sort of experiment so that it DOES work and mess with the player moreso than it really ends up doing, but otherwise it's a decent level with not a lot of room for error.

[Ditocoaf]

I think that fails because any Mario player that sees an enemy falling into something with that sound effect can realize it's dangerous, and the fact that a sign points attention to it really doesn't make it any better.

Well, it doesn't want to straight-up lie to the player. The goal of that level was to tell the player that "blue hurts now instead of yellow", but have the player mess up anyway because they've developed reflexes to avoid yellow.

I think it was super-neat. I loved Peculiar Night as well. I might place Peculiar Night as way-way above, actually, but the section where you actually see the changes happening partly ruins the effect for me.

[ztarwuff]

Give me a break, guys. That was my first level ever. raocow played through my levels in reverse chronological order. EuroShell R&D in World 5 was the second I ever made. My third and fourth levels never made it into this episode, and my fifth level - MAKL Vanilla (in World 1) - only managed to sneak in because somebody pulled out of the project late in the game.

And you guys have a slack quality control on ASMBXT to blame for the difficulty of Pavlov Gold. I based that level's difficulty on the levels I played in ASMBXT.

I ended up toning it down huge amounts, which resulted in the sign in the second half.

Pavlov Gold: On the other hand I have a lot to dislike about this level, especially considering its placement of immediately after my favorite, which might not be fair BUT. I don't see why the pipes have to be instant death when nothing else is, especially with that low-ceiling jump in the first half, agh.

Because there was no other way of indicating that yellow hurts without hurting the player. And it worked. raocow saw the Furbas being vaporised upon touching the yellow pipe and managed to put two and two together, without even having to wait for the lyrics to start.

You should have seen the original, where everything yellow was insta-death.

What do those message boxes in Pavlov Gold say? Also, the blue coins didn't hurt you in the blue part for some reason.

The yellow coins don't hurt you in the first half, either. They just lie. You ever notice how the yellow coins in the first half were directing you towards yellow platforms and pipes, whereas the blue coins in the second half were directing you towards blue pipes and platforms?

And the secret entrance to the Ice Fort was probably too well hidden. If I hadn't placed it near the Yellow Goopa spam, raocow might have spotted it. It's the only pipe in the level that visibly goes up through the ceiling. Mind you, I guess that hint doesn't work in a level where the player never once goes through a pipe.

TL:DR I learnt my lessons from this level:

1. Never go with the crowd when it comes to difficulty levels.
2. Tell the team about secret rooms before they play it, so they can look out for it and find any faulty logic behind their placement.

[Granix]

Peculiar night is really good, atmospheric level. Even dying doesn't break the mood, which isn't easy to do. And I like seeing as something appears on screen, it gives a feeling of something getting closer and closer. Overally great level, the best even.


While I don't remeber how I felt in second half of Pavlov Gold (it's like it happend, nothing more, probably because of dying 30 times or so in a first half), but now I was like "No don't jump on yellow! Oh... Yellow doesn't hurt here."
Also I believe it's an ice place, because Pavlov was Russian.

[Willhart]

So, the yellow and blue coins hurt by misleading. I did not even think that possibility since everything else was deathly. Good thing there was no need to collect any of the bad ones.

[Crow]

Because there was no other way of indicating that yellow hurts without hurting the player. And it worked. raocow saw the Furbas being vaporised upon touching the yellow pipe and managed to put two and two together, without even having to wait for the lyrics to start.

The first yellow pipe was confined and inaccessible. Have that one pipe be insta-death while the rest aren't. Add a blue pipe in the blue section that's fundamentally the same.

To be fair my gripes with it are for the sake of exactly one pipe anyways. Had issues running into it from the side via momentum as well as bumping my head on it in the low ceiling jump. If that one pipe wasn't yellow/wasn't instant death my issues would probably be lessened anyways.

You should have seen the original, where everything yellow was insta-death.

Would probably have been the hardest level in the game.

[Mabel]

At least those chase goopas aren't fire immune anymore

[Doctor Shemp]

When I got around to playing Peculiar Night I was vary wary because it looks exactly like the kind of stuff I hate. However, it's not, and I quite like it, because Unaniem knows how to make levels. Like I mentioned in my dev commentary for A Short Stroll, even if a level or game isn't sold on its gameplay, it still needs to have solid gameplay behind it to work. The biggest question is: if I removed everything except the gameplay from the level - the music, the atmosphere, the story - would it still be fun? I think Peculiar Night would be. It's solidly built. The difference between this kind of gimmick as it would be executed on, say, Newgrounds and the way Unaniem executes it is that the former would probably just have you walk from eyeball-thing to eyeball-thing while the world changes around you. Arty, sure, but not fun. In fact, that's not limited to Newgrounds at all - Slender is just walking from point to point, as are quite a few games - but I digress. The point is that Peculiar Night avoids all that and manages to have a solid gameplay core to the level.