JUMP - Let's meet again at JUMP½

[The Doctor]

It's kinda weird but I find raptures of the deep harder than disco party, I mean disco party is short and once you get disco riding it's really easy :o

Yeah, same. But they are two very different levels, so it makes sense that someone's skills might be better suited for one or the other.

[lolyoshi]

even more troubling, beating it a second time off camera made the proper path do its thing.

?!?!

Can you specify what you mean? @proper path do its thing

[raocow]

basically, the first time I beat the level nothing happened. Second time, finally the path between it and the 'pier' level opened up.

[lolyoshi]

basically, the first time I beat the level nothing happened. Second time, finally the path between it and the 'pier' level opened up.

I'm guessing it's fine now and you can walk on it? Probably was a rare bug.

[Alice]

You called the disco ambush dumb, but then you said it was because you'd lost your patience, but you'd lost your patience because of the level, so maybe... it was dumb??

I mean most of the level seemed fair beyond the inherent kinda-bullshitness of the disco shells, so...

Messing with disco shells and keeping it fair and not wonky is actually really difficult. I made a level last year based around disco shells and, to a lesser extent, kicked blue shells. It was a huge pain to get working correctly.

[Ryrir]

While it may appear that jumping on a disco shell just makes you fly off in a random direction, you can actually control your jumps and tell where you're going to end up before actually jumping on the shell. It's really finicky though, and in a level like "Disco Dance Party" where you're basically hopping on discos for the whole thing, chances are that you'll mess it up at least once. I think if I had to say something bad about the level is that it just kind of assumes that the player is familiar with that mechanic (which is honestly pretty difficult) and just throws these super awkward jumps at you without a warm up phase. Just be glad that you have the yellow switch pressed, because if you don't, there are a total amount of zero mushrooms provided in the level.
If you do know your way around disco shells the level is pretty fun though, I especially like the fist half where everything sort of loops around. It's actually a lot more difficult to design that sort of thing (where you don't just go in one direction but sort of zig-zag through the level) than you might think, so props to ravegg! I also like the "trap" with the ceiling of red switches at one point in the second half - if you jump too high, you'll hit them and the light will turn off. It's a really creative way to punish the player without actually doing anything that would take a hit away from Mario. The disco trap was pretty cheap though, you probably will die to it the first time you get there if you don't have insane reflexes. That disco shell is actually blocked off by a red switch block - the whole level is basically a lot easier if you have all the switches pressed.
And yes, the "break" in the first half where you just take a hit to get to the p-switch is actually intended (it's what the movie is all about). You can only pull it off if you have the yellow switch though, and you'll have to live with the shame if you do it (:

Re: Overworld problems - Let's just wait if worldpeace can give an explanation about it. It's probably just a really rare bug, but it's unfortunate that it happened regardless. Let's hope that future overworld events go smoothly!

[morsel/morceau]

basically, the first time I beat the level nothing happened. Second time, finally the path between it and the 'pier' level opened up.

Second time through, did you not die after collecting the midpoint? -- worldpeace was juggling midpoints outside of translevels. I hope you haven't activated a different level's event!

[worldpeace125]

Just got out of my bed and fixed the glitch. This will fix the problem that happens when you start the level at the midway entrance.
JUMP ver1.021 (post)

Yes, I guess you beat the level without entering the midway position, and it made the overworld work fine. There will be no problem regarding this bug in the LP even if you don't update the rom. Sorry for this by the way!

I hope you haven't activated a different level's event!

Thankfully this won't happen, since the game acts as if raocow just beat a level whose event number is N/A.

[alleightbits]

-ty it up: Yeah, disco jumping? Pretty tedious, yo.

[Ditocoaf]

We've been doing Sidequest Backtrack stuff for 5 and a half videos! It's been neat: After beating the yellow switch, raocow wraps up the video going back to check out the secret in Suspicious Warehouse, and then that rabbit hole goes deeper, and deeper.

[raocow]

I wonder why the dislikes are so high recently, on these videos.

Like I don't mind, I just wished I knew, like, 'why', haha

[YelseyKing]

I can honestly say I did not expect to ever hear Alcahest music in a non-Japanese SMW hack.

[nathanisbored]

So yeah, the movie reveals the 'tank a hit' shortcut in the first half. The downside is it only has a 3/5 chance of working due to Mario's speed oscillations. Of course people like raocow and me who tend to finish levels sequentially miss out on seeing the movie ahead of time (and I never noticed it myself until I watched the movie). I think that level took me about 2 hours, spread between 2 play sessions, so kudos.

I think people tend to consider world 3 to be where the game's difficulty picks up, but only because that's where you start finding all of the really hard secret levels and stuff all at once, and so if you play the levels as you unlock them, you're gonna have a huge difficulty spike around world 3, even though it's not actually the game's fault. Going back to the normal world 3/world 4 levels after all that extra stuff feels like the game suddenly gets easier

[morsel/morceau]

There's another shortcut (give me 35 dragon coins to reveal the spoiler)

[attachment=0]disc0.gif[/attachment]

[Grounder]

There's another shortcut (give me 35 dragon coins to reveal the spoiler)

[attachment=0]disc0.gif[/attachment]

hax

[aterraformer]

Minor nitpick, but Chains of Atrophy really could've used a song other than the default SMW underwater theme.

I disagree.

I wonder why the dislikes are so high recently, on these videos.

Like I don't mind, I just wished I knew, like, 'why', haha

Same. I suspect now bots. 1 is a lot for me and that's what I was averaging every video! I was chalking it up to audio volume issues being dumb though.

[ravegg]

Oh hey this level. Disco is the hardest level I made for this hack, and might be the hardest level we see for a while. It's also cool to see this level right after Chains of Atrophy, since both levels are really hard but in completely different ways.

Dev Commentary on Disco-

The second half of the level used to be really precise and unfun before I completely redid it. It had really tight stupid timing jumps that just weren't fun, so I think some of the set-ups in the revised second half are a lot more interesting. One of the main things I wanted to do with Disco was make switches a key part of the level. Playing with no switches makes the level a beast to play. We saw how the blue switch helps, and the yellow switch is the only source of power-ups in the level. The red switch helps out in a few places, most notably being that the jump with the mechakoopa is way easier, and the ambush disco in the second half is blocked off. I do regret that, since it's hard to react to on your first read. Also the shortcut was part me being generous to players, and part me being too lazy to fix said breaks.

I really wanna see someone beat this level with no switches though

[Zach808]

Oh hey this level. Disco is the hardest level I made for this hack, and might be the hardest level we see for a while. It's also cool to see this level right after Chains of Atrophy, since both levels are really hard but in completely different ways.

Dev Commentary on Disco-

The second half of the level used to be really precise and unfun before I completely redid it. It had really tight stupid timing jumps that just weren't fun, so I think some of the set-ups in the revised second half are a lot more interesting. One of the main things I wanted to do with Disco was make switches a key part of the level. Playing with no switches makes the level a beast to play. We saw how the blue switch helps, and the yellow switch is the only source of power-ups in the level. The red switch helps out in a few places, most notably being that the jump with the mechakoopa is way easier, and the ambush disco in the second half is blocked off. I do regret that, since it's hard to react to on your first read. Also the shortcut was part me being generous to players, and part me being too lazy to fix said breaks.

I really wanna see someone beat this level with no switches though

What about the 2nd special world level? He has 28 dragon coins now. Personally I found that level much harder than DDP, at least the second half. And that's AFTER patching and not having to do the whole level in 1 go.

[KayhemMaus]

Oh hey this level. Disco is the hardest level I made for this hack, and might be the hardest level we see for a while. It's also cool to see this level right after Chains of Atrophy, since both levels are really hard but in completely different ways.

Dev Commentary on Disco-

The second half of the level used to be really precise and unfun before I completely redid it. It had really tight stupid timing jumps that just weren't fun, so I think some of the set-ups in the revised second half are a lot more interesting. One of the main things I wanted to do with Disco was make switches a key part of the level. Playing with no switches makes the level a beast to play. We saw how the blue switch helps, and the yellow switch is the only source of power-ups in the level. The red switch helps out in a few places, most notably being that the jump with the mechakoopa is way easier, and the ambush disco in the second half is blocked off. I do regret that, since it's hard to react to on your first read. Also the shortcut was part me being generous to players, and part me being too lazy to fix said breaks.

I really wanna see someone beat this level with no switches though

What about the 2nd special world level? He has 28 dragon coins now. Personally I found that level much harder than DDP, at least the second half. And that's AFTER patching and not having to do the whole level in 1 go.

Wait. Wait wait wait.

Patching removed the most INTERESTING part of the marathon stage? The Coin run admittedly took me ages to do (I could finish the stage just not with feather in hand) but I thought that difficulty was what made the level. Boo!

[ravegg]

What about the 2nd special world level? He has 28 dragon coins now. Personally I found that level much harder than DDP, at least the second half. And that's AFTER patching and not having to do the whole level in 1 go.

I meant it would be the hardest for a while if he didn't play the special world. The marathon is way harder because of it's length, while disco isn't that long.

[lolyoshi]

Patching removed the most INTERESTING part of the marathon stage? The Coin run admittedly took me ages to do (I could finish the stage just not with feather in hand) but I thought that difficulty was what made the level. Boo!

there was a majority of complains about it (for some reason) so the author decided to take out the challenge.

[alleightbits]

getting all meated: My only problem is with the frozen munchers. They're still bitey, they could be mistaken for lethal. At least until the fire flower section.
super fragile: Neat.

[worldpeace125]

Seeing people have different opinions regarding 'which difficulty is more difficult?' is sort of interesting, but this fact makes it really challenging for level designers to make a level of an intended difficulty (as a side note, I think the marathon level is much easier than the disco level

when the dragon coin challenge is not taken into consideration

).
Also, the difference of liking/disliking challenges between peeps confuses level designers. Of course each player prefers different difficulty due to different degree of patience, skill, etc. But the difference seems even greater when it comes to custom smw levels (rather than commercial games, may not be true). The recent posts certainly certify this, which comes as a dilemma for level designers.

Today's first level shows a good use of melting gimmick. Unlike in many ice melting levels, only one block is melted by a fireball, which makes the consequence more predictable. It was an enjoyable experience for me to concentrate on melting ice blocks at appropriate moments (with taking some enemies into consideration), to pass through the obstacles more conveniently. Duck sliding on some first obstacles (where you have to consider the ground grinder) was cool too. Though the level could have been better if it's less cramped but maybe this is just me. Overall this was a fun level, and it's lucky that we'll see more nifty works from ravegg.

The second level is a simple super fun level. I think rushing on blue ledges is actually the intention of this level, and the hand sign indicates the point where the hopping flame's approaching, so you have to decrease your speed. This was definitely another one of my favorite levels, and made me a fan of markyjoe. Very fast-paced and fun, good job. :) I'm very sorry for that bug ;-;

[Alice]

getting all meated: My only problem is with the frozen munchers. They're still bitey, they could be mistaken for lethal. At least until the fire flower section.

While they could do with not being animated while safe I thought the blocks at the very beginning made it fairly obvious. Anyone up to this point in the game should have plenty of lives to spare and they're right at the beginning of the level so it should at the very least make people question whether they're safe or not and try it out now rather than later when it could be a much worse time to find out. (Unless you're raocow of course who questioned whether they were safe then outright ignored them until forced to acknowledge them.)

[Ryrir]

"Melt a Meat Locker" is one of my favorite stages in ice world. Maybe it's just the awesome music, but the level had a really cool vibe that just got to me. Now that I think about it, I guess it's true that the level is kind of cramped in terms of low ceilings and jumping over enemies, but it makes it work somehow. It's really interesting to me how some levels can make the claustrophobic atmosphere work, and others just feel super tedious to play... and I can't tell what exactly makes it work or not. It just goes to show that you shouldn't make broad statements like "cramped jump with low ceilings are always bad", it really does depend on the context.
What I really don't like too much about the level though is how the second half just completely forgets about the concept of reset doors. It really didn't show in raocow's playthrough, but if you get hit anywhere in that section you basically have to kill yourself and start over via an unnecessary overworld transition. Like, the level had reset doors in the first half so why not in the second half? I guess it's supposed to make it harder and more unforgiving, but it's such a stupid thing to pull - the level wouldn't even be any easier if you'd put reset doors because the player would still basically have to play through the section in one go!
It's really kind of a shame because the level is super well crafted otherwise and many player get hung up about the lack of reset doors which is just so... unnecessary.
The second completely vanilla bossfight of the hack! I believe that there is only one more to go through (though the other ones are basically the vanilla fights with a little twist).

"Crumbling your Problems Away" is such a good level as well. It's actually my favorite MarkyJoe level, because while he created some other levels which are pretty good as well, none of them capture the pure simplicity of the gimmick that this level had. As other people have pointed out, the midpoint was only added in the recent update and is apparently the reason why the overworld glitched out like that. While the author doesn't seem to be fully behind the edit (it was more of an "ugh I guess if you want me to I'll just do it" situation), but I personally believe that it makes the level a lot more fun to play. The hardest parts of the level are right at the end, so if you die there you'd have to play the whole thing again - and while it is well designed, after a while every level gets boring and tedious if you're forced to play it over and over again. I feel like the midpoint will ensure that more people remember this level fondly instead of getting annoyed by it.
The gimmick is legit super cool though and I wonder what else could be done with it.

Let's just keep our fingers crossed that the overworld will work the rest of the way through!