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SUPER MARIO 152 - FPzero & Tyty play VLDC9

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Sugar
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Re: SUPER MARIO 152 - FPzero & Tyty play VLDC9

Post by Sugar »

Now I wonder what will be level title in FISH IN SPACE :).
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Re: SUPER MARIO 152 - FPzero & Tyty play VLDC9

Post by FPzero »

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Huge variation in level qualities today.

Today's tip: Coins are generally indicators of safety in Mario, so make sure that any coin path you make for the player will be safe. The player should be able to follow that exact path and not be hit.
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Re: SUPER MARIO 152 - FPzero & Tyty play VLDC9

Post by Sugar »

What you felt was a cage was actually Layer 2 (can be verified with this scores thing), and you cannot actually have vertical level with transparency in vanilla SMW, as there is no correct level mode (which I assume is why Layer 3 graphics were used).
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Re: SUPER MARIO 152 - FPzero & Tyty play VLDC9

Post by FPzero »

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A really excellent level heavily marred by one segment. It's a shame because I really liked the level overall. It probably took us just shy of 30 minutes to beat but compare it to the black and white flying yoshi level (Episode 15) and the big difference is that I was generally having fun with this level even as I was continually failing.

(Also Pyro if you're still watching, the people on SA were curious to hear any sort of dev commentary on your level since they generally thought it was a neat and good level)
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Re: SUPER MARIO 152 - FPzero & Tyty play VLDC9

Post by morsel/morceau »

It actually should be called Swizz Hotel.
swizz
noun [ S ] also swiz uk ​ /swɪz/ us ​ /swɪz/ UK old-fashioned informal

something that is disappointing or unfair:

"There's only half as much in the new packets. "What a swizz!"
dont wanna jihad no more
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Re: SUPER MARIO 152 - FPzero & Tyty play VLDC9

Post by FPzero »

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What an amazing-looking level! It's almost too good looking. As in, while it's visually amazing it's also very visually confusing. This is a rare instance where the level can actually overstimulate the player with signals and information. In the end though, it's a very good and fun level otherwise with an incredibly creative theme, beautiful execution and a clever twist on the theme for the secret exit.
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Re: SUPER MARIO 152 - FPzero & Tyty play VLDC9

Post by snoruntpyro »

FPzero wrote: 7 years ago (Also Pyro if you're still watching, the people on SA were curious to hear any sort of dev commentary on your level since they generally thought it was a neat and good level)
mfw

I guess the dev commentary would be that it was a level sort of made at the last second to replace my old submission. My original submission was your typical newcomer level where it's just a mess of gimmicks and ideas and it had no coherence, and I realized this when I still had the chance so I made something cuter and dumber. The accelerator blocks were an accident with map16 and I just rolled with it. I mainly don't like the level because I don't think it uses its gimmicks very well and the bonus cave section looks awful. I don't necessarily think it's bad, it just could have been so much better. I like my VLDCX entry a lot more.
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Re: SUPER MARIO 152 - FPzero & Tyty play VLDC9

Post by FPzero »

I took a look at the cave section because we did miss it when playing on recording.

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You're probably right about it overall. It's not the prettiest section visually and I don't think it adds much to the level. It's pretty long, you have to constantly deal with the Fishin' Boo, there really aren't many enemies in it and the accelerator blocks are totally absent.

I think that the accelerator blocks are neat, but there's just not much that can be done with them in terms of iterative challenges or setups. I still think the level was super fun to play though and that's what mattered for me in the end. The creativity of fish replacements was great.
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Re: SUPER MARIO 152 - FPzero & Tyty play VLDC9

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The levels we played were pretty good overall so we spent most of the time talking about old romhacking history on the internet.
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Re: SUPER MARIO 152 - FPzero & Tyty play VLDC9

Post by FPzero »

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Some good looking and fun levels today. First one was a little bit boring though and had one odd mandatory puzzle that probably shouldn't have taken me so long to figure out. That can happen though when the player really isn't expecting to be confronted with a puzzle.
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Re: SUPER MARIO 152 - FPzero & Tyty play VLDC9

Post by FPzero »

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It's really surprising how effective that simple animation was. Atmosphere is hard to pull off in an engine like this but man, sometimes it just works.
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Re: SUPER MARIO 152 - FPzero & Tyty play VLDC9

Post by Sugar »

This particular level... well... it's a running gag of VLDC, so to speak.

https://youtu.be/wNyV39-rnrM?t=319
https://youtu.be/HWACOq2Z4WU?t=11

(Giant Shy Guy changed his nickname to Frost, by the way)
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Re: SUPER MARIO 152 - FPzero & Tyty play VLDC9

Post by FPzero »

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They're all short! But also good. This is pretty indicative of Mountain World (with one exception).
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Re: SUPER MARIO 152 - FPzero & Tyty play VLDC9

Post by FPzero »

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Yellow is the worst color to work with. It's only acceptable on its light shades, otherwise you have to start adding orange for dark stuff. Dark yellow is an awful color.
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Re: SUPER MARIO 152 - FPzero & Tyty play VLDC9

Post by Sugar »

Looking forward to Starry Summit. It's a thing.

I really like it myself, but uh, yes, this level is sort of thing you either love or hate.
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Re: SUPER MARIO 152 - FPzero & Tyty play VLDC9

Post by FPzero »

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The level is cool but just too long. Each exit makes you solve at least two long and involved puzzles to win. Individually, the puzzles would be fun but taken together it's too much. Unfortunately, there wasn't really anywhere to cut throughout it because the majority of the video was slowly puzzling out the solutions so this is mostly unedited.
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Re: SUPER MARIO 152 - FPzero & Tyty play VLDC9

Post by Sugar »

I feel like the level would be better with 1UP checkpoint after star run, but author unfortunately didn't know about those. 1UP checkpoints were relatively unknown by VLDC9, in VLDC8 only Morsel and worldpeace used those, in VLDC9 in addition to those two, also lolyoshi and FrozenQuills, and all of those are part of Talkhaus JUMP community, so...

At least it seems like they are more common in VLDCX, which is actually fairly great in my opinion, as one extra checkpoint can make a huge difference. But what I consider to be success myself is that they were used outside of JUMP level designers team. I know that at least one level in VLDCX has 1UP checkpoints because I pointed them out to their author.

Don't get me wrong, 1UP checkpoints weren't something secret, they were used actually fairly commonly in JUMP endgame, just innovation takes time to catch on and JUMP endgame was way too difficult for average player to reach.

(alternatively, the level just could provide a mushroom in secret section to make dying harder, as it is feasible to die to Bullet Bills in that section, the main point of a level is a puzzle after all)
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Re: SUPER MARIO 152 - FPzero & Tyty play VLDC9

Post by FPzero »

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Wrapping up mountain world. The skull rafts in the first level are done really well for once and the second level is graphically impressive, though needed a bit more development with its themes and setups to be truly great.
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Re: SUPER MARIO 152 - FPzero & Tyty play VLDC9

Post by FPzero »

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Welcome to Abstract World where levels don't make physical sense! This is a very special session because Tyty was visiting from Canada and we decided we absolutely had to record VLDC at some point. Please excuse the unclean audio over the next several videos, especially the clicks of the analog stick. It's much harder to edit out background noise when you have two people on the same open mic.

We start off with two very different levels that each give us varying amounts of trouble but in a good way. The sprite setups in the second one are pretty great and challenging!
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Re: SUPER MARIO 152 - FPzero & Tyty play VLDC9

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welcome to murder death place zone world enjoy your stay

Oh, you don't know what I'm talking about? You will see when you get to the right side of a map.
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Re: SUPER MARIO 152 - FPzero & Tyty play VLDC9

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everything is awful on the right side of the mapppppppppp
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Re: SUPER MARIO 152 - FPzero & Tyty play VLDC9

Post by FPzero »

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It's ok to make hard levels in Mario, but don't forget that this is not Super Meat Boy. Dying and respawning in Meat Boy is trivial and part of the experience. In SMW, it's slow and tedious. Mario is not a game with friendly checkpointing and you must design your hard levels with that in mind. Otherwise, well, you take the green door like I did. (Still not sure how to get past those four koopas.)

(I've since seen parts of the rest of the third level and I think I want to go back to it. We gave up way before the level gets interesting and I want to make another honest attempt at it. Maybe with savestates. We'll revisit it some other time.)
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Re: SUPER MARIO 152 - FPzero & Tyty play VLDC9

Post by Sugar »

Honestly, I like this level. It's true, it's the hardest level in entire VLDC9 (perhaps with exception for FLASH BLACK), but I think the level actually plays fair - it's well designed for a hard level (I beat it savestateless, and it was a fun challenge). The problem is that it's too hard for an average player. I honestly feel like if this level was more reasonable to do, it would be Top 10. In VLDC8, Podobooru by Lazy got the THIRD place. From 3rd to 88th, what a jump. Looking forward to your playthrough of this with savestates.

There are two levels in abstract world that are in my opinion absurd in terms of difficulty. One of those is not marked with a green door (for some reason, it really deserves one), the second one is the worst level I've played in SMW, and I played a lot of bad levels (like Cave Void in SMWCP... ugh). I don't like those, their difficulty is more like fake difficulty than anything - and I'm somewhat disappointed they got higher place than this well designed level. Oh well, that's how things go.

I think to pass those four Koopas, player needs to duckjump just in-between. It's fairly tricky (it's a hard level after all), but can be done consistently once player gets used to it.
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Re: SUPER MARIO 152 - FPzero & Tyty play VLDC9

Post by FPzero »

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This level is split between two videos because the raw recording time for it was somewhere around 45 minutes and I didn't have many good places to edit footage out since we talked over most of it.

There are just way too many level ideas in this level. Pick 2 out of the 5 distinct ones we encounter over the two videos and you could build a solid enough level. The other problem is that the difficulty spikes really badly during the autoscroller due to "Big Mario Discrimination," or making a level so claustrophobic that being Small Mario is preferable to being Big Mario just because of his smaller hitbox.

Visual clarity is also a problem. Why are dolphin tails suddenly harmful? Why can't I stand on darker objects in the autoscroller? Why the other random sprite replacements? "Abstract" isn't meant to be a cop-out, no holds barred free pass to be weird and get away with it when you have questionable design decisions.
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Re: SUPER MARIO 152 - FPzero & Tyty play VLDC9

Post by FPzero »

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Why would you ever put a Lakitu offscreen? It's completely unfair to the player because they can't see when or where the falling spinies are heading.

And again, none of the 5 distinct level ideas in here match up other than because they're weird. You have: relatively basic platforming, cramped autoscroller, tiny leftwards moving layer 2 with bullets, leftwards swimming in the air with unfair lakitu and cramped autoscroll swimming with rip van yoshis.

We were just not fans of this level. And sadly, I hesitate to say that this was even the worst one in the world. There's still another to come...
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