A2XT: It's Over

[Sturg]

I think sedron's post is very good and explained things much better than me.

[AUS]

Re: Intentional typos.

You guys did play my level, right? ..Um.

[Willhart]

I like Touhou and there are not that many Touhou themed levels in this game. I also remember there was originally some other level on that spot and this was the best replacement at the time. The "take it musically joke" and the graphics replacements were enough to make it feel different.

I wonder if the wall of Marisas on the second section was inspired by Super Marisa World.

[Doctor Shemp]

Re: Intentional typos.

You guys did play my level, right? ..Um.

In that case it's very obvious by context since there were so many and the rest of the level looked like a mistake too.

[Willhart]

Re: Intentional typos.

You guys did play my level, right? ..Um.

In that case it's very obvious by context since there were so many and the rest of the level looked like a mistake too.

AUS might have gotten some inspiration from the level you created for ASMBXT. It too made fun of SMW and bad level design. The ideas behind those levels were pretty similar.

I think we fixed at least two other typos from those text boxes. The last one was kept since the creator wanted to keep it there for the reference. Adding a sig thing at the end might have been a good idea though.

[docopoper]

The reason I haven't given reviews of your levels is actually because it's actually kind of hard to phrase how you could go about improving them.

1) Your overall theming is good. You stuck to building a Touho joke level and an Every Day Life of a Ladder level. So that's good.

2) It doesn't feel like you've planned your level at all. Don't get me wrong - most of my level design is making it up as I go along, but you do need to think of sections in your head before you start placing blocks. More importantly you need to think of why you want the player to do that section; this can either be a game design reason such as wanting to get your player used to your gimmick in a safe area or it can be something as simple as you having thought of a cool way to mix up your gimmick.

For example - what's the purpose of the starting location in Dense Jangle? It comes across as you having just placed a platform and then another platform and then an oddly shaped piece of land. A much more interesting introduction could have been for the player to start on the EDLoaL ladder and for it to fly into the terrain and break - leaving the player to traverse it manually.

3) You need to make the things in your levels look like they have a purpose being there, and you need to put embellishment around them too so that they look less like "a platform" and more like part of the world. The mushroom platforms in Dense Jangle are a good example of this. Sure they are there to create a split path (which is good since it makes it more interesting) but they really feel like they are there because you wanted to make a split path and saw the mushroom platforms in the blocks menu. Think to yourself why there would be mushroom platforms there. There simply being a cluster of mushroom platforms actually works in the context of a Mario game so you can just go and put some in, but you'd be much better off putting them in a more natural formation as if they were actually growing there instead of three identical ones evenly spaced.

You don't have to go for a natural aesthetic if you don't want to either. If you want to make your level feel like an obstacle course that's fine too and will let you get away with being more direct about your platforms. But if you do that you are still going to need things like support structures to "hold the obstacle course up". Just think of all the background bars I used in Timed Jumps on Moving Everything in ASMBXT (if you remember it well enough); I made sure that every single platform was held up in a believable way by supporting bars. While this didn't change the gameplay at all it made the level feel more believable and natural. In Dense Jangle for example the floating piece of land after the mushrooms could have done with some supporting background land in this respect.

4) Your enemy placement feels haphazard to me, which is interesting since I can see you're deliberately using them in new ways to create interesting situations. I'm not actually quite sure why they feel so haphazard but either way you should try to make them feel more like they have a purpose being there.

There. xD Hopefully that helps you any anybody else that reads it because I can hardly go writing this sort of thing for every level. That would take ages.

Oh also don't look to the intro are of Pebble's Peaks for good level design. I'm learning too and my ASMBXT levels were much spammier overall.

[Doctor Shemp]

Town 6 is definitely super short if you skip half of it! If you take the bottom exit on the left you'll go into the second section.

[Maiku Wotaharu]

Town 6 is definitely super short if you skip half of it! If you take the bottom exit on the left you'll go into the second section.

What he said!

Also....

[Willhart]

Magma's Cove had a nice music choice and so had the boxing day.
I like the bit of story in the town.

Edit: that one thing that happened was really funny.

[SAJewers]

raocow, you missed half the town.

EDIT: Also,

I think that Airship level has 2 exits.

[jayScribble]

The mood dampens and the heat rises.

Besides what people posted before, "Xelenet Village", from what I remember at the earliest version, used to have more depressing music. A more detailed analysis when raocow visits the second half.

"Magma Cove" is a cave level with a few interesting things, such as the thwomps and wooden plank. The sudden transition to a swimming level at the secret exit seems like a weird design decision, but nothing outrageous about it.

"Boxing Day" is in terms of theme surreal for a boss, but otherwise fairly easy at the start. The "second" phase of the fight gives a more interesting way to deal the rest of the damage, and as a result where the real difficulty is.

[Sebby19]

Ugh, raocow, you missed a WHOLE other section of town.

Also, there is something of note if you continue climbing the vines. Start from the right side, where you begin.

Also, there is no water when you go underground, so you don't need to continuously jump.

[tigermoon]

Xelenet Village possibly holds the dubious honor of being the only town level where I died. I wanted to see if breaking those breakable blocks led to anything. They lead to death, apparently.

Also, Magma Cove is the one level in the game that nearly made me quit. Not because it was to hard or I hated it. On the contrary, I liked the level and was pretty much okay with the difficulty of it. Thing is, for whatever reason, the game kept freezing on me at the point with the crawling spiney guys on the oval rock thingie near the end. Had to jump through hoops to get passed there, and it's an unfortunate blemish on an otherwise really neat level. Just glad rao didn't have the same problem I did.

I didn't really like Boxing Day as much as World 5's Pandamona fight. Not quite sure why, though, seeing as they're both really neat. Ah well, throwing skulls around is fun, so I'm not complaining.

[Alice]

Ugh, raocow, you missed a WHOLE other section of town.

To be fair if you go out the top left and it's an off-screen exit it seems completely reasonable to assume that the bottom left would be the same since there's absolutely nothing (in the video at least) to suggest otherwise.

[Rixithechao]

Thing is, for whatever reason, the game kept freezing on me at the point with the crawling spiney guys on the oval rock thingie near the end. Had to jump through hoops to get passed there, and it's an unfortunate blemish on an otherwise really neat level. Just glad rao didn't have the same problem I did.

Were beets involved? From what I understand there's a glitch in SMBX that causes it to crash when mushrooms fall in lava.

EDIT: Okay, just went back and watched that part again. Maybe it's the platform falling from the rail?

[Voltgloss]

Ugh, raocow, you missed a WHOLE other section of town.

To be fair if you go out the top left and it's an off-screen exit it seems completely reasonable to assume that the bottom left would be the same since there's absolutely nothing (in the video at least) to suggest otherwise.

There's a half-broken sign pointing left - directly into the cave that raocow didn't check out.

[Validon98]

Once again I forget to comment on yesterday's levels because of stuff.

Anti-Nirvana, oh boy. This one's a bit of a sprawling world between the outside and inside sections, but maybe that's just me.
Take It What Now sort of just happened to be honest, but I thought the wall of yukkuris was kind of silly in the second half.
Slide Like You Mean It also just sort of happened, although the sign in the beginning was pretty silly (and if you are that goddamn OCD about typos, if it's intentional just throw [sic] in there, geez, it's not that hard). Yesterday was "levels that happened" day where I can't really say much about them other than that they happened. That's probably not the best way to start off a world!

Xelenet Village I feel is mostly there for the Leek Sanctuary and the atmosphere. It's our first kind of depressing town, and it's not our last either! Also a bit of foreshadowing about later on in the world, although to be honest as a whole this world lends itself to being a horroresque place, given it IS Anti-Nirvana. Also, raocow you missed a section all the way past the Leek Sanctuary!
Magma's Cove was a nice sort of platforming level that was made slightly trickier in the first half if you were going for the secret exit, but other than that it... really isn't too hard. That thwomp section in the first half with the wooden moving platform, though, is kind of harder than anything else in the level!
Boxing Day, the boss fight where you throw skulls at Pandemona and... that's it. I don't really have much to say about it, really.

I still so far think that World 6 is "and so that happened" world, and to be honest after having played through the entire game, it IS "and so that happened" world!

[Sebby19]

Thing is, for whatever reason, the game kept freezing on me at the point with the crawling spiney guys on the oval rock thingie near the end. Had to jump through hoops to get passed there, and it's an unfortunate blemish on an otherwise really neat level. Just glad rao didn't have the same problem I did.

Were beets involved? From what I understand there's a glitch in SMBX that causes it to crash when mushrooms fall in lava.

EDIT: Okay, just went back and watched that part again. Maybe it's the platform falling from the rail?

That's what I thought, but no, the formation of spinies caused some serious lag to occur. Had quite a few unfair deaths because of that. Had to toggle the frameskip to make it past there.

[Isrieri]

Pandemona used to have a cute death animation but now she just teleports. Which is fine, but that's what I remember most about the fight.


Everyone who worked on the graphics for this game deserves a pat on the back. They're all very well done and creative and its consistently been what impresses me most about everything related to ASMT stuff. I don't think those guys have gotten quite as much mention as they deserve. So good job, graphics team. Thank you for making the poison mushroom a stinky cheese for me.

[Money]

Thank you for making the poison mushroom a stinky cheese for me.

Aww, you're welcome.

[ano0maly]

I liked Magma's Cove. There's just something amusing about listening to a BGM from a neat minigame raocow played, like Cat Planet, in a different setting. It would have been even better if you got to use the angel form there.

[Joseph Staleknight]

Wow, the mood sure took a nosedive fast. At least it managed to peak upwards for a brief moment after.

Xelenet Village (SAJewers): Man, after the previous two town levels this feels sparse in comparison. That's not to say it's completely devoid of content, though; there is that hidden cave raocow didn't go into with all those cameos and some useful powerups, as well as a torture chamber for whatever reason. The town is also a rather melancholy place, and not just because of the atmosphere and location; everybody who's not a cameo is either dejected, traumatized or suspicious. It's strange to think this was made by the same man who brought us the ever-prosperous Steeltown Mining Co., yet here we are at the less-fortunate sister town. At least the music is somewhat more hopeful than what was in the beta.

Also, I don't remember seeing flaming jets over lava outside in any previous playthrough. However, I do still see that jutting stone just after that which can be broken with a shell; not only does it cause cutoff but it also reveals a trap for the player to fall into if they're not careful.

Magma's Cove (Gezo24): This was a rather neat cave level with some good old cat planet music, though I have some beef with the long moving platform section after the midpoint; it's pretty hard to get through the blue shell and Goopa at the beginning, and the Thwomps after that are pretty hard to dodge as well. Yet the rest of the level felt pretty swell, even the secret exit in the underwater area and the Thwomp gauntlet with the moving plank (which isn't really bad since you can just tank a hit). I'd say it's a pretty decent level overall.

Boxing Day (Demolition): Oh hey, looks like Pandamona's decided to put her new box armor and necromancy skills to the test! However, I don't think they're up to par since I managed to defeat her easily while getting hit only once. It probably didn't help her case that there were six buried skulls off to the side to make the fight less tedious. Still, I'm sure that if it dragged on long enough the arena would have become Skull-Projectile Hell, which is presumably what she was trying to accomplish. Oh well, I'm sure Panda will get to ruin us someday...

[Kitet]

Ahhh, Magma's Cove. One of the few levels I had to quit the game out of, since you can totally spin jump on the first and third thwomps at the section raocow died at, and get stuck there with no way to die when the thwomps go back up to the gaps in the ceiling.

[pholtos]

Argh. Guys. Guys. I mentioned multiple times about that odd graphical problem on the map near boxing day multiple times and yet it's still there, with it's square lava-ness.

[KobaBeach]

Latest addition to my Demoverse headcanon: Pandamona's fave music genre is dubstep