JUMP - Let's meet again at JUMP½

[cozyduck]

I think Alice was making a reference to the ridiculous A2MT endgame level he made, where the guy insisted the entire gauntlet was fair and beatable on the first try. By the sounds of it, his JUMP level isn't much different.

Well, I just looked it up, and... I'm speechless. Makes me feel dumb for calling his JUMP level hard.

As someone who beat both toolless I'll say that his JUMP level only took me about 4 hours, whereas his a2mt one took more then 12 hours, but maybe I just got better. His JUMP level is very much like Pixel Perfect in that the checkpointing is pretty generous, so you can grind out the muscle memory in a reasonable amount of time for each section. I'm actualy fairly convinced, after watching this LP, that raocow does have the skill to do it legit, but given the necessities of an LP it's pretty likely he will not have the patience. As for beating these levels on a sight read, yeah, that's just not gonna happen.

[Ryrir]

And that was that.

I forgot to mention an interesting story about the Bowser fight yesterday: Originally, mellonpizza signed up and wanted to code the fight! Unfortunately, he knew almost nothing about ASM and what have you at the time he signed up for it, so the plan was to learn how to code in SMW properly, and then afterwards code a whole Bowser fight all on his own. As tends to happen with these things, it didn't really work out (not that I'm blaming him, as far as I know coding bosses is pretty complicated and it takes a really long time to get good enough at it to get pretty much anything done properly). He actually had some attack patterns and everything planned out, but unfortunately they had to be scrapped since we wanted to release the hack in the next week or so.
Now we had some options: Simply use the original, vanilla Bowser fight or use some of the other vanilla bosses we hadn't used yet (like Iggy or a Reznor or something). Neither option sounded particularly appealing, so m/m stood up and coded the entirety of the custom fight in like three or four days.
Think about the guy's level design what you want, but you have to admit that that's pretty impressive!

Speaking of m/m's level design, the blue layer room is the only room in Bowser's Castle that I have not beaten to this day. The reason is the same as raocow's: I start to get physically sick (like some sort of motion sickness?) after a while, and since the room is not easy (you tend to replay a lot of it over and over again) and it's also fairly long, I just decided it wasn't worth it in the end. Something about everything moving but Mario standing still...

My favorite room is mellonpizza's, I think. The whole laser gimmick is super fun to play around with, and the obstacles themselves are pretty creative and well thought out.

[lolyoshi]

Neither option sounded particularly appealing, so m/m stood up and coded the entirety of the custom fight in like three or four days.
Think about the guy's level design what you want, but you have to admit that that's pretty impressive!

AFAIK, the bowser fight were only slight levelASM changes. So it's not like he recoded it entirely.

[Ryrir]

Neither option sounded particularly appealing, so m/m stood up and coded the entirety of the custom fight in like three or four days.
Think about the guy's level design what you want, but you have to admit that that's pretty impressive!

AFAIK, the bowser fight were only slight levelASM changes. So it's not like he recoded it entirely.

Yeah, fair enough.
But still, to come up with something like that which works and is actually pretty fun to play through over the course of a few days is still fairly impressive to me haha

You linked to the wrong video today btw

[Arctangent]

I think the blue stone room might actually cause something I've always called "precision sickness." It happens whenever something feels really easy to do - even if I know full well it isn't - but I just lack the precision to pull it off.

It's not that common for me with games, actually, but when it comes to programs where I want something aligned just right but I'm using a mouse and the grid is too fine to be of any help ...

[morsel/morceau]

Actually, Bowser was made in one Sunday morning afternoon, but there was no special coding involved (my ASM is rather basic).

It's interesting levelengine (in a youtube lp) did 'Frogger' for choice (of course, he didn't know I had made it), although it gave most problems here. I was also physically hurt by it during raocow's playthtough as I have a migraine and laughing is painful. My favourite levels of the castle are 'Snake' and 'Lasers'.

[mellonpizza]

he knew almost nothing about ASM and what have you at the time he signed up for it

More that I didn't really know how to code for a boss. At that point I had made The laser sprite and another sprite which appears in the other multiperson (albeit with some fixes from worldpeace.) Additionally procrastination was more of a killer than anything, with me still working to recover from depression (I've improved alot!) and dealing with summer school + job. Still, pretension was still a big factor, the idea of making really big things like that overexcites me.

[Mata Hari]

So, the fact that Mario don't move with the platforms... was that deliberate from the outset, or did it just turn out that way and y'all were like "let's roll with it"?

[Le Neveu de Rameau]

raocow says "voyons" in this video. It clearly sounds like "voyons". Therefore, he must have indeed been meowing all of those other times.

[lolyoshi]

You linked to the wrong video today btw

Oops, was watching multiple videos at same time so I prob got them mixed up.

[Money]

Man, blue stone room just looks frustrating to play in like every way, to the point where it really had to have been designed as such. A room based on high precision platforming where the level itself is fighting you and you just feel completely out of control is a pretty questionable level design decision imo.

[Arctangent]

Actually, the level's not fighting you at all - which is where the issue arises, because you expect to have to fight against the movement the layers force on you. It's conditioned into anyone who's played a Mario game and intuitive to basically everyone, so it causes you to fight with your own expectations and plans.

[Telamon]

I'd love to see a much longer take on the laser thing from Mellonpizza's level.

[Grounder]

I'd love to see a much longer take on the laser thing from Mellonpizza's level.

quick man

[alleightbits]

#8 just sorta maybe overdid the gimmick. Just a little.

[Koopster]

I ironically prefered to do room 8 over the other two, but I didn't know room 7 was that short. 9 just has some setups I have no idea how to get through without getting hit (the two mad thwomps near the beginning). I don't remember if I ever actually beat it, if not I got really close.

Also, I had waaaaaaay more trouble with Bowser than raocow did. Took me nearly the equivalent of the average Morsel level in time spent lol. I suppose the battle works better for cautious players

I'm still on my way to beat the postgame. The first few levels are way more gentle than you would expect at least, but I'm already feeling what comes next

[Zach808]

I ironically prefered to do room 8 over the other two, but I didn't know room 7 was that short. 9 just has some setups I have no idea how to get through without getting hit (the two mad thwomps near the beginning). I don't remember if I ever actually beat it, if not I got really close.

Also, I had waaaaaaay more trouble with Bowser than raocow did. Took me nearly the equivalent of the average Morsel level in time spent lol. I suppose the battle works better for cautious players

I'm still on my way to beat the postgame. The first few levels are way more gentle than you would expect at least, but I'm already feeling what comes next

Oh man. Shit's about to hit the fan SO hard after the next 2 videos. Too bad it's gonna happen right at my favorite level of the hack. It's gonna be painful seeing everyone on youtube suddenly bashing my favorite level. :(

As for the Bowser fight taking a while, I think that's probably more due to the length. You probably didn't even die that much in the end.

[worldpeace125]

I'd love to see a much longer take on the laser thing from Mellonpizza's level.

The laser room was originally planned for another multiperson level(i.e. real final) where a single room is longer than this. You could've seen more from this if this room was completed earlier, but it was done after the entire structure of the real final level was settled. So the final level couldn't accommodate this room. And it was downsized from the original plan (I think?) to fit the Bowser castle which required a couple of more rooms at the time. Kinda unfortunate.

The laser room is not only my favorite room in Bowser's castle, but also another best moment in this entire hack to me (the other one is morsel's inversed big boo battle. I think I already said this?). I was very amazed at these creative things. If one asks which one was fun to play, lolyoshi's creation firstly comes to mind.

[lolyoshi]

To mods, it would be cool to edit the OP for me since I'm going to be away until sunday (the lp will likely end before I get back), so yeah.

[mellonpizza]

I'd love to see a much longer take on the laser thing from Mellonpizza's level.

I could possibly design a mechanical themed level with a couple more elements to make it complete. I'm also considering rewriting some code to submit it to smwc.

[Ryrir]

So, the original idea behind "Super Grand Ultra Marathon of Finalness" was the following: Dragon coins didn't save in this level, so you had to collect them all while not getting the midpoint (the last one was also in a location that you couldn't get to unless you either had all the switches pressed or kept a feather all the way to the end).
Now, when I originally played through the level I was very, very opposed to this idea: I argued that it was overly annoying, added nothing new to the level, was basically a pure waste of time without any enjoyment at all on the player's side, etc.
I was... very vocal in my dislike of the level haha
While I may have calmed down a bit since, I think I still stand behind my point: In my personal opinion, a gimmick like that is just pure tedium. Imagine having to play through the whole entirety of the level again if you died from one of the mechanical thwomps in the last section for example. It's just not my personal idea of fun, I guess, and I would always prefer the newer version over the older one.
But here you can also see one of the shortcomings of JUMP as a whole: There were very, very few testers who actually gave feedback on the levels. And that's not really a good thing because as you can see, a lot of people apparently liked the dragon coin gimmick of the original level and feel like it lost some of its charm after the update.
And while I don't think that MarkyJoe changed his level only because of my negative review, things might have been different if these people had been part of the review team back when the hack was still in development.

So yeah, moral of the story: Have more than one external beta tester when you do your projects, kids

[Zach808]

So, the original idea behind "Super Grand Ultra Marathon of Finalness" was the following: Dragon coins didn't save in this level, so you had to collect them all while not getting the midpoint (the last one was also in a location that you couldn't get to unless you either had all the switches pressed or kept a feather all the way to the end).
Now, when I originally played through the level I was very, very opposed to this idea: I argued that it was overly annoying, added nothing new to the level, was basically a pure waste of time without any enjoyment at all on the player's side, etc.
I was... very vocal in my dislike of the level haha
While I may have calmed down a bit since, I think I still stand behind my point: In my personal opinion, a gimmick like that is just pure tedium. Imagine having to play through the whole entirety of the level again if you died from one of the mechanical thwomps in the last section for example. It's just not my personal idea of fun, I guess, and I would always prefer the newer version over the older one.
But here you can also see one of the shortcomings of JUMP as a whole: There were very, very few testers who actually gave feedback on the levels. And that's not really a good thing because as you can see, a lot of people apparently liked the dragon coin gimmick of the original level and feel like it lost some of its charm after the update.
And while I don't think that MarkyJoe changed his level only because of my negative review, things might have been different if these people had been part of the review team back when the hack was still in development.

So yeah, moral of the story: Have more than one external beta tester when you do your projects, kids

Nah. You guys made the right choice with this change. Having to beat the entire level with no checkpoint would make this level even harder than

1F8

without really adding anything to the actual level. I probably would've just ragequit the hack at that point if I had made it all the way to the end of room 4 only to discover the thwomp part. I'm pretty sure this isn't just me (though maybe people who got farther than the end of room 3 in their attempts would disagree). The backlash from a lot of other people probably would've been huge. The people who thought levels like Manky Bridge were too long and tedious probably would've shit their pants in horror. And I can see why. Artificially lengthening the level like this would've felt really cheap and lazy.

Granted, this is all coming from someone who ragequit SMWCP about a year ago, so take what I say with a grain of salt.

[cozyduck]

Having to beat the entire level with no checkpoint would make this level even harder than

1F8

As someone who did beat the original version, what you're saying here is not even close to being true.

[rpgfan4]

What's the name of the song in the fourth section? I hear it everywhere but I can never remember its name.

[nathanisbored]

I don't think it was pointed out, but there were some other changes besides the dragon coin thing. Most notably:
Extra powerup block at the start of room 3
A ceiling after the 2nd powerup block in room 3 (so the top fish can't hurt you if you opt to bounce on enemies I guess)
An extra bridge at the end of room 3
I think an extra powerup block in room 4?

And for some reason, one of the cannons in room 2 was removed (at the rotating triple platform obstacle, there were two cannons stacked on top of each other instead of one). Not sure why this was changed. It seems like the most inconsequential thing ever.

This level took me a long time to get all the dragon coins in on v1.01. I ended up flying through most sections, but because of ceilings and such, that was still pretty difficult.

Also, why were the dragon coins placed all at the end in the patch? Why not just keep them spread out and make them save like normal dragon coins? Seems like a weird way to patch it, and it makes the dragon coins in this level seems pointless (I guess they still would be either way).