Super Mario Doomsday - Turning Off The Matrix

[Voltgloss]

At least Soldexus worked

this was, word-for-word, my immediate reaction on reading Plutia's post

[Implo]

How to show that bridge is broken? Create a bridge and put invisible wall right in front of it. That will do it.

I really love this game's logic.

[Paragraph]

As janky as the execution was, I gotta say I really like the idea of a more objective-based platforming win condition than "reach goal posts/sphere". I mean, the gameplay is still the same, but it injects more flavor and gives the level a lot more personality - you could do a lot of organic storytelling with more setups like this.

I mean, SMBX is very much built for that to begin with of course, but the level we saw in Doomsday today was more or less within the constraints of the simpler SMW engine (just replace "red coins" with dragon coins).

[Leet]

Regarding "was it worth it to fix this game?", this question's premise relies on the game being fixed in the first place.

As it stands, raocow is perma-locked out of beating Chaos HouseWeirdspace, and thus any content that exists beyond it - and there's no reason to think future levels won't have similar broken parts. Remember also that he can't be sent a fix because save files are apparently incompatible between versions, hence why he isn't playing the apparently much revised 2.0.

[FusionWarrior]

Regarding "was it worth it to fix this game?", this question's premise relies on the game being fixed in the first place.

As it stands, raocow is perma-locked out of beating Chaos HouseWeirdspace, and thus any content that exists beyond it - and there's no reason to think future levels won't have similar broken parts. Remember also that he can't be sent a fix because save files are apparently incompatible between versions, hence why he isn't playing the apparently much revised 2.0.

Ben has volunteered to replay the game to match raocow's save file (maybe even grab the specific Dagadons raocow has touched? Please?), with all the fixes in place (some of which may be fixes not even in creation yet) and putting the files over to the Virtual Machine and installing and doing all that is basically child's play, so it's not a worry. It was brought up earlier that raocow should continue until a specific game project is released. Perhaps that's a good plan, where there can be an intermission where the fixes are implemented (and tested heavily) and near the end of the intermission game it can be installed to the Virtual Machine, save file transferred, and continued as if very little changed.

My thumbs are doing far better post-hand therapy so I'll be able to do a lot more testing on my end as well. I've been enjoying watching the LP a LOT, and for all the flaws everyone loves to point out, I think the game is pretty darn nifty.

[Arctangent]

I can't tell if that's an intentional pun or if Ben had zero idea of how to spell militia.

Also, I was filled with dread at the concept of a forced stealth segment, but thankfully it was hilariously inconsequential in proper Koopa Troop way. Still, there was not a single part of that level that didn't make the canon ( such as it is ) weep.

[Implo]

Lost Cavern

I agree with raocow about lack of powerups. That's annoying.

The hitbox of these turtles is weird. Sometimes you can run through them unharmed, some other time you get hurt. Also in order to hit them you need to target their head, not a lower body.

If you get a sphere and touch enemy he can still hurt you or even kill you. Luckly the level still get completed.

Also remember when raocow was saying to go to Top Secret Area. Well, he couldn't. After you get 1st midpoint you get stuck on this level until you beat it.

Bullet Canyon

I prefer calling it Muncher Canyon. Slowdown appear whenever you enter the level, no matter is it from the start or the midpoint.

In one bonus pipe close to the first Dragon Coin there is a bug. There is a Yoshi and a blue shell. But when Yoshi take shell, then he immediatelly swallow it. So there is no way to fly there. Luckly there is no Dragon Coins and, I hope, no collectibles.

[Leet]

The koopa bunker plot seems ... really one-sided. Two races make an alliance but the "evil" one forcibly keeps the other one there ... I actually liked the tone shift but this is lacking in nuance and almost focuses on decrying the idea of an alliance between "evil" and "good" fantasy races.

[aterraformer]

the only reason for raocow to keep playing this game is to stave off the last couple of weeks before the release of CLDC tbh

Wouldn't surprise me if this was true and that's just sad. These last few videos have gotten painful to watch raocow suffer though this mess. Then again, I've been pretty hard on it from the start, it just got way worse. It amazes me how much effort was put into getting this project up and running yet it wasn't worth it even if it just ran instantly.

[raocow]

I mean I don't care when cldc releases I got all the games, I'm playing in submission order anyways, not placement order.

with that said, somethign happens today that really makes me consider putting this project down. We'll consider this 'strike 2'. You'll see in the video tomorrow.

[Implo]

That's so sad to hear. I really enjoy watching this lp and playing this game. But if you have that big problem, then, yeah, take a break. I'm also intrigued what's this problem is.

I beat World 6, so it's not the case of getting exits. And the crashes are nothing unusual at this point. Though I must admit that on 2.0 I didn't have any yet. So it must be some really weird error happening case.

Still I hope that break will not be needed. Even though some stuff is broken and there are some weird design decisions here and there, I have a lot of fun with this game. I think it's amazing.

[ano0maly]

As it stands, raocow is perma-locked out of beating Chaos HouseWeirdspace, and thus any content that exists beyond it - and there's no reason to think future levels won't have similar broken parts. Remember also that he can't be sent a fix because save files are apparently incompatible between versions, hence why he isn't playing the apparently much revised 2.0.

Ben has volunteered to replay the game to match raocow's save file (maybe even grab the specific Dagadons raocow has touched? Please?), with all the fixes in place (some of which may be fixes not even in creation yet) and putting the files over to the Virtual Machine and installing and doing all that is basically child's play, so it's not a worry. It was brought up earlier that raocow should continue until a specific game project is released. Perhaps that's a good plan, where there can be an intermission where the fixes are implemented (and tested heavily) and near the end of the intermission game it can be installed to the Virtual Machine, save file transferred, and continued as if very little changed.

But why can't saves be transferred over between versions? That shouldn't happen even if the game was made with legacy Game Maker. If it's a one-time thing with 2.0 I can understand, but if it happens with every update, there's a problem with how the game is set up.

I kind of want to say the 100% save that BuzzNBen would give later to raocow should just be given now so that he has access to any level he wants to play in case another level breaks like Weirdspace, although that might cause some cutscenes to be missed.

with that said, somethign happens today that really makes me consider putting this project down. We'll consider this 'strike 2'. You'll see in the video tomorrow.

If it's a technical glitch, it wouldn't be a bad idea to wait for patchwork and return to the game later. Might be a good idea to do so at strike 2, in fact.

But if it's something to do with how the levels are designed or how the game is set up such that it would require significant revisions, perhaps it might be better to drop the game after strike 3.

[Higsby]

I would be very curious to hear if Bullet Canyon was inspired by levels from World 4 of Super Mario Omega:

[Leet]

I'm not sure if "something really bad happens in the video tomorrow" should be making me excited but it is

[Kilgamayan]

It's NASCAR Syndrome. You go in excited for things to go as wrong as possible.

[Implo]

Alright, A admit. I lied a little in the previous post. I beat almost whole World 6. Today I attempt Castle and.. if you decide to break, raocow, tell author to change the punishment there. He will know what I mean. Because right now this is just ridiculous. Sigh...

[sylvie]

But why can't saves be transferred over between versions? That shouldn't happen even if the game was made with legacy Game Maker. If it's a one-time thing with 2.0 I can understand, but if it happens with every update, there's a problem with how the game is set up.

Game Maker has a kind of bad built in save feature which I'm guessing the developer used, I don't know exactly how it works but I think it's sort of like an emulator savestate - it tries to take a snapshot of the whole internal state of the game. So old saves will basically have old versions of some of the game objects bundled with them, which makes it very easy for updates to break old saves.

For save files that are compatible across versions, you usually have to write a custom save system, but that would probably be very tedious and error-prone for a game this large. Also, there would be no way to convert the Game Maker saves to the custom format without reverse engineering the Game Maker format.

[raocow]

that's really unfortunate

I went through like ten different revisions during the DT3 lp and it was made in game maker :I

[Classtoise]

I kind of want to say the 100% save that BuzzNBen would give later to raocow should just be given now so that he has access to any level he wants to play in case another level breaks like Weirdspace, although that might cause some cutscenes to be missed.

I mean.

Not to kick a guy when he's down but but I dunno if they'd be missed

[sylvie]

that's really unfortunate

I went through like ten different revisions during the DT3 lp and it was made in game maker :I

Well, it's not that bad to write a custom save system if you implement it early on, and keep building on it and testing it as you add new content to the game. I'd assume DT3 uses a custom save system instead of the Game Maker one. But it can be pretty painful to take a complicated game and retrofit a custom save system onto it, because you have to think about your entire codebase and try to remember all the different variables that need to be tracked.

If you forget something important, or if your save/load code has a mistake in it, then your save system will be broken, and in the worst case you won't find out until someone loses progress because of it. Saving is easier than loading because when you load you have to properly set the state of everything; for example, even once the game correctly saves which exits have been reached in each level, you also need to update the overworld map on load so that all the paths corresponding to those exits (and no other paths) are unlocked.

It's difficult to thoroughly test the save system because you basically need to play through the whole game again, saving and loading at various points to ensure that everything that's supposed to be saved is actually saved and that loading from any particular point properly sets the game state. The more complicated your game is, the more likely there's a saving-related bug that only happens if you do things in a certain order, which a single playthrough won't necessarily catch. I feel like if you don't build a save system very carefully from the ground up, it's hard to have any confidence that it's not busted in some subtle way.... I wonder if AAA developers have certain practices they follow to build more robust save systems for their monster games, or if they just rely on having huge paid QA teams.

[Lockirby2]

I suppose that Koopa got to be the General of the malicia because he has peripheral vision.

[Arctangent]

I wonder if AAA developers have certain practices they follow to build more robust save systems for their monster games, or if they just rely on having huge paid QA teams.

If I had to guess, it's to just save the absolute essentials in the rawest form ( i.e. player position and inventory, have an RPG Maker-style list of flags and variables for progress, etc. ) and just code the game based around the idea that it could be loaded in on at any point in time. You mentioned updating the world map, but you wouldn't necessarily have to do much trickery if you basically reinitialize the world map any time you transition to it anyway, for example.

In this case, you'd really only need to keep track of which level dot the player saved on ( preferably through some sort of id ), which exits have been opened with each level dot, if you have all the dragon coins in a level dot, probably which cutscenes have bring triggered, which music coins you've collected, which border cards you've collected, the brothers' current powerup state, which brother is currently active, aaaaaaand I don't think anything else would really be required unless I'm forgetting something / don't know about a certain feature. A few extra variables could be tossed in to ease some of the recalculating of the game state, but really this should be more than enough to determine almost everything on the world map aside from some more temporary stuff you don't want to save ( like whether or not a path is being drawn or Mario is walking from one spot to the other - heck, even his x and y coordinates are unnecessary and prone to causing breaks between versions ).

Can be pretty light, too, since a lot of this stuff could be consolidated into integers via binary operators - for example, a level could store which exits have been obtained in the first two bits of the integer, then with the new individual Dragon Coin saving you could use the following bits to track those, and, hey, there's still a single bit leftover if this is a byte, which you could use for keeping track of cutscenes linked to approaching the level. Same deal with the collectibles - just use a single variable for each type and store 'em in the individual bits, or heck you could even use a single variable for all of the collectibles if you can fit 'em into one.

So, yeah, an important part of making a save system is asking yourself how much you actually need to keep track of - not just in a savefile, but also just while the game is running.

[Kilgamayan]

180 IQ Koopas

[ZephyrBurst]

Got pointed to this thread. The DT games did not use Game Maker's built in save system as I find it essentially unusable. Basically all games that I know of made in any version of Game Maker just use its text file writing functions, which is all DT did.

[Cosmo Fishhawk]

I really liked the visual of the interlocking extendo-bridge block things.

As many gameplay problems as this game has, it does do some really nice looking, interesting things at times (and has a lot of great musical choices like the Treasure of the Rudras piece). So, just for that I'm glad that Ben made it and that raocow is LPing it.