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Lᴜɪɢɪ's Aᴅᴠᴇɴᴛᴜʀᴇ

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Re: Lᴜɪɢɪ's Aᴅᴠᴇɴᴛᴜʀᴇ

Post by morsel/morceau »

I know next to nothing about smb1's coding, but that's probably something to do with nes palette limitations. I was really thinking of smb3. There are lots of examples (in the actual game and as beta content): koopas, paragoombas, 'brother' enemies, cheep-cheeps, para beetles, bills. In each case, different colours define different behaviours (although, again, the colours may not be completely consistent for whatever reason -- I think the boomerang brothers are blue in one of the boss arenas).
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Re: Lᴜɪɢɪ's Aᴅᴠᴇɴᴛᴜʀᴇ

Post by ft029 »

The levels used to be like 40 SMW seconds per midway. Now it's like 150-200, and there's already some sprite spam.

This episode had an escalation in difficulty.
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Re: Lᴜɪɢɪ's Aᴅᴠᴇɴᴛᴜʀᴇ

Post by cozyduck »

ft029 wrote: 6 years ago
This episode had an escalation in difficulty.
Today's levels are actually extremely nerfed compared to the original LA. In the original game, this is already the point where things get quite hard. The bramble level for instance was full of baseball and football charlies, and had conveyor belt floors for good measure. The castle had football charlies as well, had one particular jump between chains that was very tight, and had no midpoint, despite being just as long as the OSE version.

Later in the game some of LAs most infamous levels just got outright replaced by different levels, which I think is unfortunate. Personally, like Morsel I have plenty of nostalgia for the original LA so I don't like OSE that much, but I will admit that a few of the nerfed sections of the original game are such bullshit that I'm not really too sad to see them gone.
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Re: Lᴜɪɢɪ's Aᴅᴠᴇɴᴛᴜʀᴇ

Post by morsel/morceau »

ft029 wrote: 6 years ago The levels used to be like 40 SMW seconds per midway. Now it's like 150-200, and there's already some sprite spam.

This episode had an escalation in difficulty.
Is it fair to talk of sprite spam? Is placing things very carefully so that they are dangerous equivalent to spamming them? I just finished replaying the hack yesterday and I can't recall there being a useless sprite. You will often play a level and see a sprite that seems innocuous only to realise, if you do something a little differently to what you've been doing, that it is there to kill you in this or that circumstance. Anikiti has played his levels and placed things accordingly. You can point out things like that fish that raocow kept swimming into to-day: it's the only sprite in a, what?, 5x12 waterfall and it's super-dangerous. Possibly some of the levels with generators could be called spammy, but they are infrequent and the generator seems to me to be used in a restrained fashion. Let's leave the word spam with some kind of meaning and reserve it for things like Way of the M.
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Re: Lᴜɪɢɪ's Aᴅᴠᴇɴᴛᴜʀᴇ

Post by cozyduck »

morsel/morceau wrote: 6 years ago
Let's leave the word spam with some kind of meaning and reserve it for things like Way of the M.
I'd argue that even in the Way of the M there is some thought in the placement of the sprites, at least the predetermined ones. Of course, you get the generators on top of that, so it becomes a bit of a mess. Unlike most other SMW players, I personally enjoy generators though, especially if the level is designed around on the spot split second decisions, but unfortunatelly levelengine felt the need to use generators in like EVERY SINGLE LEVEL of the endgame, which is really just excessive. Luckily his later hacks show some restraint in this regard, I think his more recent work is quite good actually and very underrated, even though he still occasionally makes some baffling level design decisions, but I digress...

As you say though, Anikiti has a different approach to this. If there is something masterful about him, it's his ability to place an enemy precisely where's it going to be the most annoying for the player. Especially in the Luigi's adventure 2 demo I feel like he made this into an artform, a game where I'd say that the majority of the difficulty comes from obnoxious enemy placements (and believe me, it's plenty hard). I don't know why he never finished LA2 but my personal theory is that he realized how frustrating his level design had become, and therefore cnacelled it and moved on to LA3 where his focus is much more on platforming and less on enemy dodging. Anyways, I can't say I enjoy either of those games as much as LA1. I wonder what others think about this sometimes, but unfortunately, almost noone has actually played LA2, even amongst those that are otherwise familiar with Anikitis body of work.
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Re: Lᴜɪɢɪ's Aᴅᴠᴇɴᴛᴜʀᴇ

Post by aterraformer »

LA2 just sucks and little to no redeeming quality besides its obscurity. I would recommend to no one.
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Re: Lᴜɪɢɪ's Aᴅᴠᴇɴᴛᴜʀᴇ

Post by cozyduck »

aterraformer wrote: 6 years ago LA2 just sucks and little to no redeeming quality besides its obscurity. I would recommend to no one.
You are of course right, perhaps I was too nice in my previous post, it wasn't meant to be an endorsement in any way.
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Re: Lᴜɪɢɪ's Aᴅᴠᴇɴᴛᴜʀᴇ

Post by Zach808 »

I guess today's levels show just how bad the difficulty curve of the Japanese version is. Up to the fortress, the 2 versions seem almost identical and pretty easy. Maybe a couple tricky spots here and there, but nothing too bad. However, both sides of the split path lead to a jump in difficulty equivalent to the jump from level 2 to 3 of Battletoads.
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Re: Lᴜɪɢɪ's Aᴅᴠᴇɴᴛᴜʀᴇ

Post by morsel/morceau »

cozyduck wrote: 6 years ago
morsel/morceau wrote: 6 years ago
Let's leave the word spam with some kind of meaning and reserve it for things like Way of the M.
I'd argue that even in the Way of the M there is some thought in the placement of the sprites, at least the predetermined ones. Of course, you get the generators on top of that, so it becomes a bit of a mess. Unlike most other SMW players, I personally enjoy generators though, especially if the level is designed around on the spot split second decisions, but unfortunatelly levelengine felt the need to use generators in like EVERY SINGLE LEVEL of the endgame, which is really just excessive. Luckily his later hacks show some restraint in this regard, I think his more recent work is quite good actually and very underrated, even though he still occasionally makes some baffling level design decisions, but I digress...

As you say though, Anikiti has a different approach to this. If there is something masterful about him, it's his ability to place an enemy precisely where's it going to be the most annoying for the player. Especially in the Luigi's adventure 2 demo I feel like he made this into an artform, a game where I'd say that the majority of the difficulty comes from obnoxious enemy placements (and believe me, it's plenty hard). I don't know why he never finished LA2 but my personal theory is that he realized how frustrating his level design had become, and therefore cnacelled it and moved on to LA3 where his focus is much more on platforming and less on enemy dodging. Anyways, I can't say I enjoy either of those games as much as LA1. I wonder what others think about this sometimes, but unfortunately, almost noone has actually played LA2, even amongst those that are otherwise familiar with Anikitis body of work.
It's curious raocow was saying that the LA levels felt the same because they used the same background and music, when the things you are doing and sprite set-ups you are encountering actually make them quite distinct. In WofM, the environment may change but the same sprites are used in the same way constantly, which makes you feel that you're playing the same level over and over again. This in itself is mindless or spammy. The gimmick-based approach he's switched to definitely seems to work better for him. I thought the Christmas Balls (I think you may have meant Bits and Pieces, but that hack was too diffuse for me) hack was excellent, exactly the right length and scope for that sort of thing. If raocow wanted to play a levelengine hack that is the one I would suggest.

Was LA2 the one packaged with X World that you access by finding the password? I cannot remember it being particularly special or terrible within the Anikiti oeuvre. The problem with most of his work post-LA is that it is essentially the same sort of thing. If you have already beaten LA, you know you will be able to beat the other works. With the sense of really being challenged gone, you will have to find interest in the technical aspects and construction of the hack you're playing. But if you resent that the underlying shape is the same, you might not be able to appreciate the polish and the decoration. The OSE Lost Levels is therefore a very special experiment (I think a successful and unappreciated one), with its distinct levels and greater difficulty.
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Re: Lᴜɪɢɪ's Aᴅᴠᴇɴᴛᴜʀᴇ

Post by cozyduck »

morsel/morceau wrote: 6 years ago
In WofM, the environment may change but the same sprites are used in the same way constantly, which makes you feel that you're playing the same level over and over again. This in itself is mindless or spammy. The gimmick-based approach he's switched to definitely seems to work better for him. I thought the Christmas Balls (I think you may have meant Bits and Pieces, but that hack was too diffuse for me) hack was excellent, exactly the right length and scope for that sort of thing. If raocow wanted to play a levelengine hack that is the one I would suggest.
I actually haven't played Bits and Pieces yet (but I will soon), but I went through Colossus a few months ago and really enjoyed about 95% of it (while truly despising the rest). Anyways, I think it's far superior to WotM, but it does suffer badly from idea reuse in its late game (this seems par for the course for the big levelengine hacks, and I think Colossus may be his largest one?) I would never recommend it for a raocow LP, not only because it's repetitive, but because it's frankly just too hard.

morsel/morceau wrote: 6 years ago The OSE Lost Levels is therefore a very special experiment (I think a successful and unappreciated one), with its distinct levels and greater difficulty.
So it's been a few years and I just forgot: Are the OSE lost levels these:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=P ... UEu77nT47I
or was there a different set specifically for the OSE edition? Because if they are I would agree they are underappreciated (giving I even bothered to upload a playthrough myself) but I have quite a few issues with some of the levels regardless. Overall, to this day the original LA remains my favourite piece of work produced by Anikiti, which is somewhat unfortunate actually.
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Re: Lᴜɪɢɪ's Aᴅᴠᴇɴᴛᴜʀᴇ

Post by morsel/morceau »

^Yes, that's the hack I meant.

raocow mentioned not remembering the hack has a lot of custom sprites. This is hardly surprising as the original hack doesn't have many (I actually think it may be any) custom sprites. This hack is not Luigi's Adventure!

Basil City 2 is where you should get lives in this hack: at the midpoint entry, climb the ladder and scroll the screen left.
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Re: Lᴜɪɢɪ's Aᴅᴠᴇɴᴛᴜʀᴇ

Post by Mandew »

Way of the M and especially The Collossus are what made me get way disgusted with super fake difficulty. I guess I let that extend to things that didn't deserve such disgust.

What made Virus quit Luigi's Adventure on the very final level is a particular room way into the level. He had spent something like 8 hours trying to get through that one before giving up. I think aterraformer told us that the final level was very much changed to be way less excessive on generators in OSE back then, so I have no doubt that raocow is capable of getting through the entirety of OSE.
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Re: Lᴜɪɢɪ's Aᴅᴠᴇɴᴛᴜʀᴇ

Post by cozyduck »

Mandew wrote: 6 years ago Way of the M and especially The Collossus are what made me get way disgusted with super fake difficulty.
Fake difficulty is a completely arbitrary concept where everyone has their own definition. There's nothing "fake" about the difficulty of those hacks, they're just hard, that's it. Maybe they're not fair (and I'd agree that they probably aren't in parts) but I'd say that even the original Kaizo is significantly more unfair (not harder mind you), and yet it and many of its offshoots continue to have a significant fanbase, just look at all the twitch speedrunners. Clearly it's more a matter of taste then objective truth.

As for generators, which is what most people take issue with in WotM (me included), despite human tendency to blame the RNG whenever possible for a failure, the ability to not manouver oneself into a garanteed failure position is a skill, and one which can be nurtured. WotM, for all its shortcoming, has very few unpredictable guaranteed loss situations, even in the late game generator spam levels.

Colossus doesn't even have that though. Clearly some of its later levels are just way way too long (and there's other problems), but again, there's nothing "fake" about creating difficulty like that, as consistency and prolonged focus are also skills. At most it can be said to not be fun (which doesn't coincide with my experience of most of it, but there's not point debating that).
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Re: Lᴜɪɢɪ's Aᴅᴠᴇɴᴛᴜʀᴇ

Post by Mandew »

I'm pretty sure that expecting the player to win the baseball/lava pollen spam lottery isn't a very tangible form of difficulty. Or getting cornered by genenerated bullets and eeries without being able to do anything about it, for that matter.

Like, that one level with the On/Off Switch in a castle place with all the rain is one thing. That was mechanical, but learning the level actually helped you out. In those levels where baseballs and lava pollen happen, though? I wasn't even playing the game by the time I beat the levels. I'm pretty sure I was asleep and pressing buttons until something worked. It's so disgustingly boring that I didn't have to use any skills to get through; just get lucky and grind my way through it until something functionned. That's how disengaged I was with the game and that's when I decided to quit.

So yeah, despite being really, really difficult, it wasn't a challenge that tested my skills; it was just an exercise in grinding and patience.
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Re: Lᴜɪɢɪ's Aᴅᴠᴇɴᴛᴜʀᴇ

Post by cozyduck »

Mandew wrote: 6 years ago I'm pretty sure that expecting the player to win the baseball/lava pollen spam lottery isn't a very tangible form of difficulty. Or getting cornered by genenerated bullets and eeries without being able to do anything about it, for that matter.

Like, that one level with the On/Off Switch in a castle place with all the rain is one thing. That was mechanical, but learning the level actually helped you out. In those levels where baseballs and lava pollen happen, though? I wasn't even playing the game by the time I beat the levels. I'm pretty sure I was asleep and pressing buttons until something worked. It's so disgustingly boring that I didn't have to use any skills to get through; just get lucky and grind my way through it until something functionned. That's how disengaged I was with the game and that's when I decided to quit.

So yeah, despite being really, really difficult, it wasn't a challenge that tested my skills; it was just an exercise in grinding and patience.
Can't say I often felt like I couldn't do anything, but rather that I read the trajectories of enemies/projectiles badly and thus manouvered myself into those situations. I actually prefer that to the overly mechanical nature of some currently popular kaizo-light hacks in fact. But I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this.
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Re: Lᴜɪɢɪ's Aᴅᴠᴇɴᴛᴜʀᴇ

Post by Mandew »

Excuse me for not having the power to parse 12+ projectiles coming from every cardinal directions at once and occupying 80% of the screen in a non-synchronized and non-choregraphed fashion.

And having to deal with intermittant and hardly predictable slowdown screwing up my tempo.


But here's my actual point here:
Upon reaching the goal of the level, I felt like I had failed. There wasn't anything special about ramming my face into the level until it was cleared. Provided with infinite attempts and patience, anyone can do that.

So I had nothing to prove by going to beat the rest of the game.
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Re: Lᴜɪɢɪ's Aᴅᴠᴇɴᴛᴜʀᴇ

Post by cozyduck »

Mandew wrote: 6 years ago
And having to deal with intermittant and hardly predictable slowdown screwing up my tempo.
This is a fair point. Since I played on zsnes with acceleration I saw no slowdown, but I don't know how it plays under different circumstances and if there is slowdown that's obviously a problem
Mandew wrote: 6 years ago But here's my actual point here:
Upon reaching the goal of the level, I felt like I had failed. There wasn't anything special about ramming my face into the level until it was cleared. Provided with infinite attempts and patience, anyone can do that.

So I had nothing to prove by going to beat the rest of the game.
Don't get me wrong, if you're not having fun then you're not having fun and there's nothing wrong with that. There's no shortage of ways to challenge oneself with SMW anyways. I guess I just get a bit annoyed when I see (admittedly flawed) games like these thrown under the bus while stuff like kaizo or super dram world still enjoy massive popularity (and those games have merit too, but even though as I made clear I really dislike the term/concept of fake difficulty I cannot think of anything more appropriate to be called as such then the kaizo block spam therein).
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Re: Lᴜɪɢɪ's Aᴅᴠᴇɴᴛᴜʀᴇ

Post by Grounder »

those first two levels sure were there for some reason
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Re: Lᴜɪɢɪ's Aᴅᴠᴇɴᴛᴜʀᴇ

Post by ft029 »

Oh great, someone brought up Bits and Pieces and triggered me again :/ I'm at 54/57 exits and it has been like that for months. The insanity of some levels and setups cannot be explained in a single post.

Thankfully, levelengine is making an easier version (one level that took me 3 months took me only one try). But the world 4 and world 5 levels were in the medium-hard difficulty range, which I don't really like. I either want something easy-medium and fun, or difficult enough so that even if the level is not that interesting, it is challenging enough for me to be tense and awake. But a level is too difficult when it takes me weeks or months. (It probably takes levelengine less time because he is some sort of otherworldly being when it comes to dodging hammer bros, footballs, bone bros, grinders, and just about any other enemy).

About Luigi's Adventure, I saw many very inaccurate coin guides in this episode with the blocks that bounce you very high. This leads me to believe that Anikiti doesn't test his hacks thoroughly.
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Re: Lᴜɪɢɪ's Aᴅᴠᴇɴᴛᴜʀᴇ

Post by cozyduck »

ft029 wrote: 6 years ago medium-hard difficulty range, which I don't really like.
Man, those types of levels are precisely the ones I like the most from levelengine. Maybe that's why I do like Colossus quite a bit, as I would pretty much classify the vast majority of the game as such. Only at the very end of the game does he push the precision requirements to where I feel like I really need to grind out specific movement patterns through levels.

As for Luigi's adventure, I also find it weird how sometimes coin guides are just wrong or how there's the occasional blind jump. Anikiti's levels are otherwise fairly well constructed, so it really stands out.
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Re: Lᴜɪɢɪ's Aᴅᴠᴇɴᴛᴜʀᴇ

Post by morsel/morceau »

ft029 wrote: About Luigi's Adventure, I saw many very inaccurate coin guides in this episode with the blocks that bounce you very high. This leads me to believe that Anikiti doesn't test his hacks thoroughly.
Well, at least he has obviously played his hacks without savestates, unlike some would-be Responsible person. Let's think of it this way: Anikiti is a tattoo; the blind drop is a needle. 'How can someone do that to himself', says the prig, and he will never know the exquisite thrill of the penetrant steel. We can maunder on about 'incorrect' level design and 'inaccurate' coin guides; or we can think the blind drop has been put there to annoy us, and revel in it accordingly.
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Re: Lᴜɪɢɪ's Aᴅᴠᴇɴᴛᴜʀᴇ

Post by Voltgloss »

i think we can all agree on one thing

"Penetrant Steel" would be a good name for a rock band
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Re: Lᴜɪɢɪ's Aᴅᴠᴇɴᴛᴜʀᴇ

Post by Leet »

next time, raocow has to fight the scissor man
Well it is a decent hack but sometime its just too repetitif there no level that actually pop in your face and your like oh yeah that level they all ressemble themselves and just monster along the way.
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Re: Lᴜɪɢɪ's Aᴅᴠᴇɴᴛᴜʀᴇ

Post by BobisOnlyBob »

morsel/morceau wrote: 6 years ago Well, at least he has obviously played his hacks without savestates, unlike some would-be Responsible person. Let's think of it this way: Anikiti is a tattoo; the blind drop is a needle. 'How can someone do that to himself', says the prig, and he will never know the exquisite thrill of the penetrant steel. We can maunder on about 'incorrect' level design and 'inaccurate' coin guides; or we can think the blind drop has been put there to annoy us, and revel in it accordingly.
you and rameau's nephew should have a purple prose contest some day

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Re: Lᴜɪɢɪ's Aᴅᴠᴇɴᴛᴜʀᴇ

Post by morsel/morceau »

BobisOnlyBob wrote: 6 years ago
morsel/morceau wrote: 6 years ago Well, at least he has obviously played his hacks without savestates, unlike some would-be Responsible person. Let's think of it this way: Anikiti is a tattoo; the blind drop is a needle. 'How can someone do that to himself', says the prig, and he will never know the exquisite thrill of the penetrant steel. We can maunder on about 'incorrect' level design and 'inaccurate' coin guides; or we can think the blind drop has been put there to annoy us, and revel in it accordingly.
you and rameau's nephew should have a purple prose contest some day

I'm not sure who would win but I think whoever we forced to judge it would lose
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