A2XT: It's Over

[Bean]

I've been liking these levels. Again, that difficulty balancing you all did was smart. Levels are hard but in a more genuine way.

[Maiku Wotaharu]

There will be a developer commentary video in this link soon...

And it's up.

[Isrieri]

OH HEY! You used my Big Boo for Blue Surfer! I'm very happy. :D

[ztarwuff]

Oh hey, a town is coming up. So depending on how big the town is, my level might not make it into the next video.

[Crow]

I completely forget the level order for world 8.

The town is not very big, though.

[Granix]

What is up with that fish in Monty Mole's level? I can only think of Fish Slapping Dance reference.

[Tenlade]

shoulda phrased it as "sorry, my foot's asleep" at the end for extra pun. Cool level though.

Thats all I have to add, really.

[Sturg]

There will be a developer commentary video in this link soon...

And it's up.

That was beautiful

Anyway, MMAE got the sweet Circus tent in the attempt of giving most of the levels some neat surroundings to represent the level. I think it got the best one though. Props again to Feenicks for making that!

[Doctor Shemp]

What is up with that fish in Monty Mole's level? I can only think of Fish Slapping Dance reference.

The Find the Fish sketch from The Middle of the Film in The Meaning of Life.

OH HEY! You used my Big Boo for Blue Surfer! I'm very happy. :D

It wasn't appropriate for A Short Stroll but it was too good to pass up using.

EDIT: Developer's commentary for Blue Surfer.

[Joseph Staleknight]

Demo and Co. finally fulfill their legacy as Blue Surfers in an interground lava cavern. Then Britain's finest police crash the scene and arrest our heroes. raocow really should not have killed that poor Italian plumber on the castle ramparts.

Blue Surfer (Doctor Shemp): Oh wow, this level was quite intense. It's too bad that you're effectively reduced to one hitpoint since getting hit by anything makes you lose your sack and thus fall to your doom (probably one of the reason I decided to use a clown car in my own shmup-esque level). Still, it was quite an experience killing everything left and right with Gourd power while avoiding getting burnt to a cinder. Also, I tried doing the glitch that lets you keep the blue sack but never got it to work. Oh well, no big loss.

Fun fact: I never did play the Silver Surfer video game, though I vaguely recall the character from old comic books.

Monty Mole's Aerial Extravaganza (Maiku Wotaharu): And now for something...somewhat different? Eh, it's Monty Python, so it works out.

The first section was a pretty nifty one, what with enabling infinite flight for everyone with a spinach leaf (though I'm sure Kood doesn't do so well because of his flight gimmick). Granted, there's a little problem in that landing on blocks will ruin the gimmick, but it's not that big of a deal when they're sparse enough. As for the other two sections, they're pretty much "avoid deadly walls and stuff" like Blue Surfer, but without enemies and with differing mechanics. Still, I very much enjoyed the flavor of the level in all its Monty Python-ness. Yes, even the gag with the foot not being there to crush our heroes.

Notes from the Spire XIII:

16. "When surfing the blue, halfway down the track, continue as you mean to start." So, if you head to the very top of the left in the midpoint room, there's a secret pipe that takes you to a prototype sketch of the level, complete with congratulatory sign. The only benefit for this is to gain access to ragecow if you haven't already done so, though.

[Leet]

dude my six year old brother just got the 3-up in A Short Stroll that youre not supposed to get

on-topic: i had to turn the sound off for blue surfer so it wouldnt lag (smebex's fault, not the level's) and kill me literally always. before i did that i accumulated too many demos on that level. i almost got to the midpoint in my first try but then lag :L

[Doctor Shemp]

dude my six year old brother just got the 3-up in A Short Stroll that youre not supposed to get

brb, committing seppuku for my dishonour

Seriously though congrats to your brother. How'd he do it? Bring in a feather or raocow double jump or something like that? By the way, did he hit the blocks there? I think I kept them full of poison cheese in case anyone managed to get up there.

I'd be even more impressed if someone managed to beat the level with one of the fake exits. I'm pretty sure it's technically impossible though as you'd need to stop the trigger axe from spawning.

Also, if anyone wants to do a no-midpoint raocow-coin run of Blue Surfer and show off completely, I'd love to see it. I'd also love to see a successful run as Kood, what with him having the least useful hammer throw for the level by a big margin.

[ano0maly]

Kood is a very newbie-friendly character because of the extra leeway you get with his jumps. That's why I use him more than occasionally.

[Septentrion Pleiades]

I would be interested in these so call bad idea of levels. Someone else could make something interesting.

[Granix]

The Find the Fish sketch from The Middle of the Film in The Meaning of Life.

Oh, I totally forgot this, thanks a lot.

[Doctor Shemp]

Kood is a very newbie-friendly character because of the extra leeway you get with his jumps. That's why I use him more than occasionally.

Definitely, Kood makes quite a few levels easier. I'm just saying he's garbage in Blue Surfer because he can only have one bomb thrown at a time and they have barely any forwards arc. Even though raocow's also limited to one thrown controller at a time, they have no arc and can hit multiple targets, so they're redeemed in that way.

I would be interested in these so call bad idea of levels. Someone else could make something interesting.

I was speaking more generally: I make other things besides levels. I have a lot of unfinished music lying around, for example, that was abandoned for being crap.

[Leet]

dude my six year old brother just got the 3-up in A Short Stroll that youre not supposed to get

brb, committing seppuku for my dishonour

Seriously though congrats to your brother. How'd he do it? Bring in a feather or raocow double jump or something like that? By the way, did he hit the blocks there? I think I kept them full of poison cheese in case anyone managed to get up there.

i have no clue but yeah he did

in ASMBXT, he also managed to get the hammer suit from the illusion reward place, but im assuming that was a known thing because he was playing on an older version of the game and he couldn't do it on the newest version so.

[sedron]

Man, I'm writing these level thought things later and later every day. Trying to write these while sleepy is needlessly challenging and it probably shows.

Blue Surfer- Yeah, this one's a bit rough. I think Shemp explained most of the level's problems, the biggest being that it's a bad idea based on a bad idea, but there are some other design issues in play. Progress in both halves feels very slow. The first half has extremely slow autoscroll, while the second half will probably kill you without giving you time to react should you move too quickly. As always, the lava hitboxes are bizarre, so using them as the main obstacle is a gamble. The bullet bill hallway is also kind of iffy, as it can catch the player off-guard and instakill them, which is a bit unfair. I'm not a fan of the blue boot/sack in general, as it controls weirdly and is kind of loud. I can see how people would enjoy this level, and it has redeeming points (like the music and the parts that aren't as hard,) but overall it's not my cup of tea.

Monty Mole's Flying Circus- If only I actually understood most of the references. I got a few, but I haven't watched a whole lot of Monty Python. Beyond the jokes, this level isn't super notable. The infinite flight section is really neat, though, and I'd love to see it used more in SMBX. For that matter, it probably could have been used in Blue Surfer...

[Kil]

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

[jayScribble]

A bunch of random things pasted together.

"Castle of the Above and Elsewhere" seems messy in terms of design and theme: it's a castle level, but it lacks a focus. Overall the difficulty is fair and all, but the level itself seems to just mash blocks and backgrounds together into one castle.

"Desolate Town" is... random with everything in there. Every section just has a different theme all together, in one case having one change to another right off the bat. It's also one of the town that actively kills you right from the start, as opposed to having a warm welcome like the other previous towns.

[Willhart]

The castle of above and elsewhere used to be both harder and longer before the testing. The secret exit was the "elsewhere", but the sign was missing or did not spawn. I kinda like the music used on the sections, the jumping Podobo platform thing and the shopping cart race. It's probably for the best that most of the puzzles were removed though, since they used to take a long time to solve and caused some confusion.

The town had some nice activity going on and some secrets. The stopwatch is there for just the bonus value as far as I know.

[Crow]

Oh man, tomorrow's video should be good. Or an exercise in contrast, since it shall contain both my favorite and least favorite world 8 levels!

Castle of the Above and Elsewhere is... weird! The main path is a lot shorter that the secret path, but only the first room of the level has any real challenge to it. I'd never even fallen down in the second room, that's about the only way to add length to that section really. The secret exit is more A2XT standard weirdness and I guess I'm okay with that. Kind of a messy/forgettable level overall though (as in, I totally forgot about it.)

Desolate Town is a town that I died in and raocow died in, so I would call in the most dangerous place on earth, but it's not on earth so I don't know how that works. And yeah the leek pillar sanctuary is a bit too far out of the way for my liking as well as obnoxious to traverse. I love the raocow cloud float thing, I was waiting for that to finally pop up. Not one of my favorite towns but it's alright.

[SAJewers]

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

It was Octogon, the guy who did Pit of Obscurity in ASMBXT and Talkhaus in MAGLX.

At first, I thought this level just needed a bit of polish and slight tweaking to be decent, but attempts to do that exposed the fact that it needed more work than that. I think in the end, the main exit was cleaned up slightly, while most of the secret exit was canned.

Thankfully, I still have video of an old version of this before we cleaned it up, for those interested:

[sedron]

Level thoughts!

Castle of the Above and Elsewhere- This should have been cut, probably. Sorry, but even after all of the improvements, it's still kind of a mess. It looks very much like a "Youtube level," for SMBX. Everything is so haphazardly placed and nothing looks okay. The difficulty isn't ridiculous like it used to be but it's still not really fun to play. There's just not really anything redeeming here. On a side note, I didn't even know there was a secret exit in testing, so I missed the town entirely.

Desolate Town- I think the World 6 town did the whole "destroyed town," thing a lot better, honestly. It's not that it's bad, mind you, but when the theme was used already and better it kind of hurts the later town. Otherwise there's not much to note here. A couple of neat events but that's it.

[Bryux]

Is there a way to use the clock to save the town though?