VIP 2 Revival; TRENTE-QUATRE: FINAL; the segment with infinity

[LHB]

If you thought the first 4 worlds were easy (which, besides the jellyfish level, they were), don't worry. The next couple videos will show the real VIP 2 rearing it's ugly head.

[alleightbits]

laughing out louds: That's a....weird secret exit, again.
bullet line land Well, that happened.
That is actually a really accurate description of the TLC. Huh.
"Prime President raocow, what is your stance on the gun control?"

people don't kill bullets, weird block physics do, and i am only slightly coincidental in its activities.

[Grounder]

i think rao was talking about mishi guys

he WAS a pirate!

[TaviTurnip]

Ahhh I really like the actual hunt aspect of the hunt. That offscreen coin makes me super happy. This was a good coin hunting level. Also the final two coins are neat.

Bat ceiling though :C

Can you be a hypocrite if you're too much of an idiot to be able to tell otherwise?

Well, when you consider most places on the Internet... yes, that is precisely what people are.

[LHB]

I'm not sure if rao did that last run in one shot or not, but wow. I was surprised how quickly rao went and used the savestate. :(

Anyways, the next level took me 5.5 hours and nearly 250 lives, so gl with that.

[raocow]

I'm not sure if rao did that last run in one shot or not, but wow. I was surprised how quickly rao went and used the savestate. :(

it was a ~50 minute recording, so pull any conclusion from that as you will

[Mata Hari]

Having to get those coins seems lame af so having to get all those coins in one go seems hella lame af

[Zephyr_DragonLord]

it was a ~50 minute recording, so pull any conclusion from that as you will

I take from that you had a bad day doing that. ...Like I didn't have too good of one.
I actually missed updating THE NUMBER, of all things.

...Though the rest went smoothly, it seems. Tomorrow is likely going to be a major change of pace, if the rumors are true. Keep sane, raocow. And best of luck.

[alleightbits]

note block place: Oh man, seizures.
all the biomes: That was a level. raocow refusing to line the line, I see.
cat castle: Hahaha, that ending death. But that secret exit was pure pain.
raoemulator saves the day again!

[AuraLancer]

Wait, I don't understand. How does Youtube recognize a boss fight?

[Ometeotl]

Wait, I don't understand. How does Youtube recognize a boss fight?

The same way google can do reverse image search, just on multiple frames in succession.

[TaviTurnip]

Hoo boy...

As far as disliking autoscrollers is concerned, I feel sorry for anyone who falls into that camp :/ (For speedrunners, I understand the boredom completely as they are physically unable to change the outcome despite experiencing it hundreds to thousands of times.) Autoscrollers are cool and provide a unique gameplay requirement that is not usually based on waiting so long as absolutely anything is put into the level. People just wanna go fast. Most autoscrollers shouldn't be made to be huge difficulty spikes though... for reasons mostly about having to retry it. Short and skill-based, or long and low-stress, are good combinations, but unlike with normal levels, making a brutal difficulty long autoscroller is just... >_>

As far as all the homing guys go and how they cooperate, your best bet is to just avoid the problem altogether. Rather than trying to dodge around them, place yourself somewhere far and away with zero risk, where they can't hurt you (this can often just be a neutral jump) and pick them off on the way down if you can. Even in places in any level with only one homing bill, this is the safest thing to do if you aren't an expert at dealing with them. Since this is an autoscroller this thankfully means that their spawn and charge times will always be the same (rather than trying to make the avoidance jump only to have one of them be seriously desynced).

This level kinda was too much either way :S There were a couple points where it threw a lot of homing guys all at once, and even I consider that sideways fire trap mean. It would be funny and cute in a place where a casual player would be expected to keep a powerup, but not here, haha.

[Zephyr_DragonLord]

I'm going to share something with you all. Autoscrollers can be good. This can be seen in Super Mario Brothers 3.

...The level that was just played is NOT one of the good ones. It's plagued by the literal worst enemy type: HOMING. BULLET. BILLS!
They are absolute nonsense, especially the trademark homing. They were made in an age before homing was mastered by the Parakoopas and Paragoombas in SMBX, AND IT SHOWS. Without the autoscroll, this level wouldn't be a steaming pile of bad design (as much), but with it, a swarm of four becomes UNBEARABLE. They are the reason for the difficulty in The Sky is Fine but the Waves are HighR.
Oh, and the sky ISN'T fine. It's literal hair thanks to those homing bills, as I said and raocow demonstrates. Without them, this level would actually be completely fair. VIP designers had a bad idea of what good bullet hell is, and that makes me quite sad. There was actually potential here. It was ruined.

[Elurchin]

And so, raocow's love affair with homing bullets became more complicated than ever.

[LHB]

Wow! Good job raocow. I consider the first half on par with VIP 3 final special stage in difficulty. The good thing about this level is you'll never have a problem dealing with homing bullets anymore/ :P

[Alice]

Whoever designed those homing bills is really an asshole. They don't respect proximity, they home pretty accurately at a quick pace, and they fire at the same rate as a standard bullet bill cannon. One of those things would be fine but all three, especially in a level where there's a lot of them (some of which appear to be completely unmarked and in the middle of the air unless those ones were just related to the sprite count), in an autoscrolling level that limits your mobility is just atrocious design.

[SAJewers]

Hoo boy...

As far as disliking autoscrollers is concerned, I feel sorry for anyone who falls into that camp :/ (For speedrunners, I understand the boredom completely as they are physically unable to change the outcome despite experiencing it hundreds to thousands of times.) Autoscrollers are cool and provide a unique gameplay requirement that is not usually based on waiting so long as absolutely anything is put into the level. People just wanna go fast. Most autoscrollers shouldn't be made to be huge difficulty spikes though... for reasons mostly about having to retry it. Short and skill-based, or long and low-stress, are good combinations, but unlike with normal levels, making a brutal difficulty long autoscroller is just... >_>

As far as all the homing guys go and how they cooperate, your best bet is to just avoid the problem altogether. Rather than trying to dodge around them, place yourself somewhere far and away with zero risk, where they can't hurt you (this can often just be a neutral jump) and pick them off on the way down if you can. Even in places in any level with only one homing bill, this is the safest thing to do if you aren't an expert at dealing with them. Since this is an autoscroller this thankfully means that their spawn and charge times will always be the same (rather than trying to make the avoidance jump only to have one of them be seriously desynced).

This level kinda was too much either way :S There were a couple points where it threw a lot of homing guys all at once, and even I consider that sideways fire trap mean. It would be funny and cute in a place where a casual player would be expected to keep a powerup, but not here, haha.

The problem I see with most autoscrolls is that they don't telegraph the optimal positioning to the player. If you look at something like Butter Bridge 1, it's usually clear to the player where they should be positioned. That, and difficult autoscrollers getting annoying after dying multiple times and causing the player to get impatient.

The problem with today's level wasn't really because of the autoscroll, but more-so homing bills are terribly designed and unfun/too punishing

[LunarRainbowShyGuy]

Well that looked like a pretty bad level. Especially the part where the flying enemy doesn't drop its cape because of sprite limits. And of course the massive amounts of homing bullet bills. The fact that you can't stop their cannons from firing makes them especially bad.

They were made in an age before homing was mastered by the Parakoopas and Paragoombas in SMBX, AND IT SHOWS.

Well the homing enemies in SMBX aren't exactly fun to deal with either. Actually, now that I think about it, it seems like in every Mario hack/fangame, the homing enemies are usually the worst to deal with. And every once in a while there's a level that has tons of them, and those levels always end up being really unfairly difficult. Fortunately, the homing bullet bills in Super Mario Maker are a lot more reasonable.

[SAJewers]

Well that looked like a pretty bad level. Especially the part where the flying enemy doesn't drop its cape because of sprite limits. And of course the massive amounts of homing bullet bills. The fact that you can't stop their cannons from firing makes them especially bad.

They were made in an age before homing was mastered by the Parakoopas and Paragoombas in SMBX, AND IT SHOWS.

Well the homing enemies in SMBX aren't exactly fun to deal with either. Actually, now that I think about it, it seems like in every Mario hack/fangame, the homing enemies are usually the worst to deal with. And every once in a while there's a level that has tons of them, and those levels always end up being really unfairly difficult. Fortunately, the homing bullet bills in Super Mario Maker are a lot more reasonable.

The problem with homing enemies in SMBX is that it's hard to predict their path. Contrast with the homing bills in SMB3 and YI (probably also SMM too), where they make wide turns, and their path is usually telegraphed

[Sniggerb0bble]

Oh wow, congrats at beating that legit rao, I know I wouldn't have had anywhere near enough patience to tackle it; it felt good to watch you succeed.

Also, man, I remembered that the Homing Bills in this were horrendous, but I forgot how 'vertically excitable' they were. When they want to go up or down, they won't let anything stop them. I wonder how much less terrible they would be if they had a limit to how much they could move vertically. They'd still probably be awful due to the way they move in cycles and how fast they move in general, but at least they wouldn't dive down from the very top of the screen without warning.

[Willhart]

That was kind of a huge one level video.

[LHB]

The good news is there are only 2 more levels that approach that amount of difficulty, but they are a couple worlds away.

[Grounder]

what a shitty level

[pholtos]

AUTOSCROLLING LEVELS (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

[Slit08]

The good news is there are only 2 more levels that approach that amount of difficulty, but they are a couple worlds away.

One being Poison Gas, and the other one?