Level Contest Japan

[Emral]

I know some would probably disagree with this opinion, but I would've opted to not reveal the "author's note" in the Lua file. It's not like it was in the level itself, so players wouldn't have been likely to see it unless they went in to look at the code in curiosity or (as the comment said) modify the level. Whether or not it was meant to be a joke or not, it just seems to me that, at this point, the comment has caused more unnecessary anguish than anything else.

When I read it it didn't strike me as... any of these things people attributed it to in this thread, so in hindsight I agree it was a bad move on my part. I just thought it was pretty interesting.

[Kilgamayan]

Always read hidden programmer notes to the public this is how we get such gems as "hello hacker fucker"

[raocow]

I dunno man if it's in the lua code it's technically part of the level, and I feel like I need to have it known!

[Sturg]

well why don't ya look at the code yourself ya dummy

[Emral]

It was in a file called __ForPlayers.lua too.

[Grounder]

I know some would probably disagree with this opinion, but I would've opted to not reveal the "author's note" in the Lua file. It's not like it was in the level itself, so players wouldn't have been likely to see it unless they went in to look at the code in curiosity or (as the comment said) modify the level. Whether or not it was meant to be a joke or not, it just seems to me that, at this point, the comment has caused more unnecessary anguish than anything else.

When I read it it didn't strike me as... any of these things people attributed it to in this thread, so in hindsight I agree it was a bad move on my part. I just thought it was pretty interesting.

Serious question; how?

[Blue]

During the Hypnosis Redo LP

Oh, I misread your post and thought you were referring to the author of minMax when you said they apologized, not the Hypnosis Redo level. That level annoyed me for a totally different reason because it was a half-ounce of polish away from being really good. It had neat ideas.

[Leet]

Thing about contests being contests in their current state, there's absolutely no room for quality control if you're going to include every level as it was submitted and judged. I think that it was a step in the right direction to not make anything like a big deal of the placements. Honestly, though, at this point it only seems natural to treat a contest as just another collaboration (at least in the assembling-the-game process). So if a level really isn't up to scratch in certain ways, then is there any reason not to just quietly exclude it from the finished product and - to an extent - pretend it never existed?

Wait, what even is the advantage of having contests rather than collaborations anyway?

1. because if the contest only had good levels people would think that people were only submitting good levels. even if we made it public that we excluded some levels from the compilation version, or released two separate versions, many people wouldn't actually read those because they're stuuupid

2. this is actually a big thing, and it's because collaborations never get finished. if we're all working together and want to present it as a real game, it eventually leads to a situation where there are 20 things left "to do" that can't be solved just by making levels. so then only select people can really fix those "to do" things and the collaboration languishes at "90 percent done" for years (see: SMWCP2, A2MT, AZCT). But if we just take all the submissions and present them as is, making a HUB or overworld is basically the only thing we actually need to do after the judges finish their jobs! Also, because people are eager to see their results, getting the contest judged and the results out there are considered much more urgent. In summary: If it's a contest, it actually gets finished.

I don't like it either, but...

[Tyty]

Re:Criticism

This is an LP of a contest. Even without rankings being visible you're going to have people throwing their opinions into the ring about the level. It's going to happen, you can't really prevent it.

I thought the level was bad, but I already have a low tolerance for difficulty and really dislike that style of game in general. I feel locking the player into a series of jumps where there is a very specific path to take especially does not work in a platformer that has things as momentum as it makes them even tighter and potentially more frustrating. Even in games that aren't has hard I very strongly disagree with this design philosophy

On today's video all I have to say is that SMB3 mario reshaded to look closer to the redrawn style is really bothering me for some reason. He's too chunky/has too much black in his design for it to match.

[Alice]

1. Good lord, can we stop with the personality cult nonsense? Yeah I said it. raocow is, first and foremost, an entertainer. A funny and great guy, yes, but also an entertainer. He is not God-Emperor of the SMBX or SMW hack communities for there are none, and even if there were, I doubt he'd be qualified just because he plays a lot of these games for the Internet. So he had a bad experience with a bad level. It happens.

You shouldn't just assume that everyone criticizing the level and/or author are buying into raocow's cult of personality. I can guarantee with absolute certainty that if I'd played the level I would have been much harsher than I already have been. Even more so considering that other than the dick move ambush goomba at the end of the first room I thought the first two rooms were actually rather decent even if they were of significantly higher difficulty than I prefer. The third and fourth rooms though were just bad no matter how you try to paint them.

[Lockirby2]

You shouldn't just assume that everyone criticizing the level and/or author are buying into raocow's cult of personality.

I agree. I always play these contests before viewing the videos (I even waited for raocow's entire A2XT LP to be complete so I could play the release of that) to form my own opinion first and avoid seeing things through raogoggles. My opinion of room 3 especially is a lot more positive because of this (and my opinion of room 2 is more neutral). I enjoyed room 3 a fair amount, even though I would not have rated it high. In room B, raocow had a bad experience, and so did I.

Green Gringo Grassland has Bush riding an shark for America, so it automatically wins the contest.

Raining Grassland looks like a first level. There are a lot of empty flat spaces, with little meat to the level. On the other hand, I actually really like the concept of a level that's raining, but still bright and cheerful. It reminds me of those days where there's dark clouds in one direction with the sun shining from the other way. That always looks so cool!

I don't normally notice stuff like this, but I didn't like the palette in <other> Bowser's Castle. It looked drab. The actual gameplay felt a little bit too long for a level that contains so much instant death. I suppose that's a weird thing to say after (minimal)(Maximal) though. I felt like there were cool setups all around, and I liked seeing the red boot in action.

[Ashan]

And everyone said he could never do it!

[Ashan]

Also minimal maximal was better than any of the levels today.
I'll say it.

[SAJewers]

But if we just take all the submissions and present them as is, making a HUB or overworld is basically the only thing we actually need to do

You literally just described ASMBXT.

[LunarRainbowShyGuy]

If anyone else is bothered by the super inflated death counter just subtract 3142 from the death counter to see what it would be not including the deaths in (minimal) (Maximal). Anyway, time to talk about today's levels.

I liked the falling segment in Green Gringo Grassland, mostly because it does more than just following coins to avoid lava like what happens most of the time I see levels do this sort of thing.

I don't have much to say about Raining Grassland. I did like that the green ! blocks contain powerups. I would say the switch could have been hidden better to potentially make the second half more difficult but it doesn't look like this level is supposed to be that difficult in the first place.

There are a few things I find odd in Bowser's Castle. First there's the fact that Fire Mario barely looks different from regular Mario. I wasn't really paying attention when raocow first grabbed a fire flower and later I was confused about how Mario appeared to be throwing fireballs without a fire flower. Another odd thing is the part with multiple skull rafts that go left even though there's clearly a path for them to the right. Then there's the fact that after getting the star it looks like you can never play the second half again on that save file. Also, it's nice to see rinkas used in a non-spammy way but the one in this level ends up being completely non-threatening (it's at 14:00 in the video if you want to see it).

[Ometeotl]

On today's video all I have to say is that SMB3 mario reshaded to look closer to the redrawn style is really bothering me for some reason. He's too chunky/has too much black in his design for it to match.

The redrawn sprites continue to be terrible and I have an immediate distaste for anything that makes use of them.

Mario's palette in this level looks even worse.

[Money]

On today's video all I have to say is that SMB3 mario reshaded to look closer to the redrawn style is really bothering me for some reason. He's too chunky/has too much black in his design for it to match.

The redrawn sprites continue to be terrible and I have an immediate distaste for anything that makes use of them.

Mario's palette in this level looks even worse.

The tiles from the smw redrawn set look good enough

[Ashan]

If anyone else is bothered by the super inflated death counter just subtract 3142 from the death counter to see what it would be not including the deaths in (minimal) (Maximal).

Is there a way raocow could just forcibly modify the death counter and set it back to what it would be without mM?
Not only did it completely remove the usefulness of the life counter by it having 3000+ useless deaths added to it, but it also started covering part of the item box when it hit 4 digits.

[Emral]

If anyone else is bothered by the super inflated death counter just subtract 3142 from the death counter to see what it would be not including the deaths in (minimal) (Maximal).

Is there a way raocow could just forcibly modify the death counter and set it back to what it would be without mM?
Not only did it completely remove the usefulness of the life counter by it having 3000+ useless deaths added to it, but it also started covering part of the item box when it hit 4 digits.

I already sent him a fix. Wait for sunday's vid.

[Rixithechao]

Sorry, I did say the previous post would be the last I'd say on the matter but I want to address some mistakes I made:

- I got several details about Hypnosis Redo wrong: it was a remake done by two devs with the intent to improve on the original, and while there were some references to the SMBX community much of the humor was just general silliness. It definitely wasn't made with raocow or the talkhaus in mind, though.
- "A lot of progress" was a misnomer on my part; raocow lost progress in a single section and the level had luna checkpoints (albeit ones that had to be manually activated). I don't mean to downplay his experience by saying this, the section in question still had its' share of issues.
- As SAJewers pointed out, his comment about Jople's level wasn't applicable to the point I used it for. It was part of a 4+ year old talkhaus contest.

I still stand by my main points -- more so the TL;DR versions than the TL;DRer ones -- but I am sorry for the above errors and the overall patronizing tone of the post. I'll just leave it at that, I don't have much more energy to argue about it due to rather personal reasons and nobody wants to hear me drag the debate out any further anyway.

Regarding today's levels:

Green Gringo Grassland's bait-and-switch freefall was neat. Not too fond of Alex Jones but I can't not appreciate the sheer unrepentant moxie of the whole thing, also giraffes are pretty rad.

I recall seeing Raining Grassland either during one of the judging streams or somewhere on Discord. More subdued music like that in the switch room could have made for a more cohesive atmosphere throughout the level, but the upbeat and energetic remix it went with ended up being oddly therapeutic, imo. The SMW-style switch blocks are a nice touch, too, and with all the talk comparing collabs to contests I'm a bit curious how well they'd work as a more global gimmick/restriction for a future contest. SMBX2 Beta 4 will have them and the giant switches as new assets so it'd be possible in either engine.

Bowser's Castle (Alternate Mix) has quite a few neat ideas and combines them in interesting ways. At the same time, juggling so many different mechanics made it feel a bit unfocused. The bombs in particular were barely introduced before their use in the boss, though the way they were used was great.

[Ometeotl]

On today's video all I have to say is that SMB3 mario reshaded to look closer to the redrawn style is really bothering me for some reason. He's too chunky/has too much black in his design for it to match.

The redrawn sprites continue to be terrible and I have an immediate distaste for anything that makes use of them.

Mario's palette in this level looks even worse.

The tiles from the smw redrawn set look good enough

Some of them do.

[raocow]

sorry about the late episode this morning, I made a mistake when setting up the release hour!

[Truhan]

sorry about the late episode this morning, I made a mistake when setting up the release hour!

You should've just uploaded a video of you doing the key boss.

[Sebby19]

Considering most of North America is asleep at this, its okay to be late.

[Grounder]

It is indeed possible to ruin a level with one poorly thought-out jump and/or pipe exit.

And before anyone accuses me of raolens...

I know damn well that it would have pissed me off if I was playing.