The 2014th Smoo Central Vanilla Contest

[swirlybomb]

Hostel's atmosphere, though.

Yes.

[Gardenolva]

The sublevels ARE in the collab, just the exits are all wrong, at least from what I recall. I remember SNN asking for Hostel again, so I sent him one...where the start of the level send you to the 25% of the level.
Here's Hostel completely, minus any wrong choices.
A non-blind run of it clocks in at 8 minutes, so yeah.

I plan on redoing Hostel for a hack I'm doing. Making its own world, and dividing it into four levels.

I watched the video. I can't believe that the part of the level from VLDC7 was the part after the midpoint! One thing about the other doors when you pressed the P-Switch, are they leading you to traps?

[Tatrion]

Personally I've chosen to basically just ignore the ranks levels have at this point and just enjoy them for what they are. It's way easier to do that when the game is structured like a semi-normal SMW hack to begin with, too.

[Mata Hari]

I recognize that SMW hacking is hard and lame but some of the levels having significant chunks missing seems like a fuckup that shouldn't have happened.

[Mata Hari]

Also Fishing Fish Guy is just the worst and any level that uses him would get 0 from me. Every time.

Worse fake difficulty than all the lovefrogs in ASMBXT.

[morsel/morceau]

Spooky Swamp has a secret exit - one of the death's-head tombstones near the beginning is a door. The collect all the coins one is pretty annoying (you can cheat by feeding yoshi off-screen). Congratulations on finding the last one on your own.

[10204307]

It's funny, because the way Fishing Boo was used in the original SMW was actually pretty mild. Like, the level was mainly made of low platforms, and Fishing Boo was all the way at the top of the screen - as long as you measured your jumps it was completely possible to avoid getting hit by it. Sadly, very few people have managed to use it as well as Nintendo did originally.

Anyway, today's video had three levels that I like a whole lot, especially the third one, Pleasant Forest. There's just something about that level that feels very good - it's the right combination of palettes and tilesets that makes it particularly... well, pleasant. It's quite incredible how vanilla hacking has changed in recent years - people seem to have a better grasp on difficulty and what makes a level enjoyable to play. And the trend of using Tails-whatshisnumbers' weird dirt geometry fetish has since died down, which is nice, to say the least.

The mountain SMW remix that Pleasant Forest used is probably my favorite song in the VLDC7 soundtrack, by the way.

[Frozelar]

I also liked today's levels. I kinda feel like the forest level only used Mystery Deeps because it sounds really really nice, and not because it was necessarily super fitting, but maybe that's just me.
SPOOOOKY

[Validon98]

Today's episode once again showing that the rankings are borked in a couple places maybe perhaps.

In other words, these levels actually were like... really nice, especially FOREST OF ILLUSION. I like levels that play around with how the game is usually played, at least when done well. It's a real shame that the rankings give some false impressions at times!

[Mineyl]

One of the only things I'll say in defense of the rankings (and this has likely been brought up in other contests) is that even though you're seeing giant discrepancies in ordinal positions (1st, 2nd, 40th, 50th, and so on), the actual scores are extremely close to one another until you get down to the bottom two or three. For instance, 20th place got a 70.5/80, while 69th place got a 61.75/80 - less than a 10-point difference there.

[Leet]

raocow was so happy in this episode!!! it made me happy too

[S.N.N.]

That particular remix (the one used in Pleasant Forest, which we'll actually hear a lot in the mountain world) is probably the best one. The ice remix we'll hear later takes a close second though.

Actually, the mountain world in general is great, I'm looking forward to seeing that one.

[Giant Ninji]

I watched the video. I can't believe that the part of the level from VLDC7 was the part after the midpoint! One thing about the other doors when you pressed the P-Switch, are they leading you to traps?

All incorrect doors lead you in circles. The two doors at the end of the Spriteless Area leads to two different rooms. Each room is correct, but it is simply faster to take the second door. All p-switch doors simply send you to the room you didn't take, and there's one as well in the other room not show in the video.

levels having significant chunks missing seems like a fuckup that shouldn't have happened.

Yes. Correct.

Also Fishing Fish Guy is just the worst and any level that uses him would get 0 from me. Every time.

You are the type of person I actually made the level for. I know that some people for some reason have passionate hate for the fishing boo that, as you said, you automatically think any level using it is terrible. I made the level knowing that, since I do not think that the fishing boo sprite itself is what makes a level inherently wrong. I can't tell if I did it to prove them wrong or simply to mess with them, because it's dumb to hate a sprite so much that any level that uses it is bad. I think it's both, really.

Just in general to address some other people:

Hostel was spawned from the ideas of a dark level that must be played slowly and thoughtfully. The the first area is completely spriteless, and at the end of that are there's a choice between the Hands Room (swooper bat ceiling) and the Heads Room (fishing boo). That's the original Hostel. So any ideas that the fishing boo was tacked on is completely untrue. If you didn't notice, the Heads Room was for the most partwithout reach of the Fishing Boo, but to mix things up and I had the player think about what to do with the Layer 2 smash, which is a thing that forces the player to be taken above the FIshing Boo, which is not ideal.

[KobaBeach]

I had reasons in being afraid of those weird freaky faces on the trees

why did this remind me of macross (yes i know it says robotech, but this scene's originally from macross so there)

(robotech is just three mecha anime haphazardly duct taped together after all)

[Alice]

You are the type of person I actually made the level for. I know that some people for some reason have passionate hate for the fishing boo that, as you said, you automatically think any level using it is terrible. I made the level knowing that, since I do not think that the fishing boo sprite itself is what makes a level inherently wrong. I can't tell if I did it to prove them wrong or simply to mess with them, because it's dumb to hate a sprite so much that any level that uses it is bad. I think it's both, really.

There's some very valid criticisms against the fishing boo though. Namely the fact that when it turns around the flame flat out teleports making it REALLY difficult to avoid. SMW only avoids this issue simply because they make the fishing boo a moot point whereas the vast majority of user made levels that utilize the sprite give you very few areas where the sprite isn't a danger. If the only way to deal with the issues of the sprite is to make it completely non-dangerous then there are issues with the sprite.

[Mata Hari]

That pleasant remix is extremely fresh

[10204307]

Can I just say I love that mountain overworld map? It looks super neato.

[Ditocoaf]

The original fishing fish guy was used to say "don't ever jump this high", and it was just a 30% chance you'd actually be punished for breaking that rule. When he's used in a context where you have to spend time his killzone, he's suddenly an obstacle instead of an area-denial thing. And he's way too jittery and unpredictable to be a fun obstacle. He could theoretically be used well in hacks, if they use him just as a mild deterrent from going above a certain line. It can make the other stuff feel tougher and slightly claustrophobic because you're encouraged to jump at minimum height -- but it's probably best if you make it entirely possible (even if it's very difficult) to stay below his range.

[S.N.N.]

One of my favorite levels in the game is coming up tomorrow.

Another one of my favorite levels may also be coming up tomorrow depending on whether or not raocow doesn't make the former a single-entry video.

[Validon98]

That song on the beach/mountain place is really good. What is it? Sounds endgamey.

[lolyoshi]

It's original.

[swirlybomb]

I liked Spiny Logging Fort. I agree with raocow that the way the moving platforms interacted with the Grinders made for some interesting play. Has that been done much elsewhere? It seems like it must have been, but I can't say I remember any specific examples.

[went]

It's original.

Man, could we get a link or something? It's really good stuff.

[morsel/morceau]

The remixes were linked here: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=15496&p=267198#p267198

[Frozelar]

Just when I think I've seen everything you can do with vanilla graphics, something else happens in a level and I get super fascinated all over again.