raocow's talkhaus

Caught up again. Run's going pretty well aside from the DKC2-inspired level. Keep it up!

LunarRainbowShyGuy wrote: ↑4 years ago One last thing I have to say here is that I'm considering going back to the midpoint here as a good place to figure out how the heck those homing bullet bills work, considering that this hack is the first time I'm experiencing them firsthand, and I have a feeling the worst of them is yet to come.

The worst of the homing bullets doesn't actually appear in this game. There's a level with them that's harder than this, but thankfully it's generous with powerups. If you want the most hellish homing bullet hells, they're in Vip2.

forest zone forest zone

DailyMotion
guest starring geno's woods! (continued) - March 15, 2008
2:48 - "Scoop Forest"(???)
4:54 - Mushroom

kinda embarassing - March 16, 2008
0:00 - day/night

YouTube
welcome to the forest (continued) - January 16, 2009
4:38 - scoops haagen-dasz
6:42 - mushroom

The Afternoon World and the Night World - January 17, 2009

2009cow wrote: i just don't know what the hell

same. like, way to overcomplicate things on both playthroughts of the day and night level. how did we get to "i have to backtrack multiple times" from a simple rompy puzzle? it is truly a mystery. at least we can say these runs are all partly blind! :V

also wow, mention of school. times have changed, haven't they?

Zach808 wrote: ↑4 years ago Sometimes, it feels like the creators of Vip4 hate Fishing Fish Guy as much as I do. [...] Granted, there is one level in world 5 that uses him badly, but for the most part he doesn’t completely ruin the levels.

idk about hate - maybe they just have a better understanding of that enemy's purpose/design than the western romhacking community? as rao said a few episodes ago, it's being used primarily as a jumping deterrent rather than an obstacle in and of itself, just like in the original smw. or it may be the romhacking community on this side of the world is much more inclined to take a game element out of context and try to push its applications into wildly different purposes. either way, fish guy has a reason to be placed in a level, and the VIP community gets it.

Something of note - there is a second path in Alaskan Ice Floe Field, for whatever reason.

Ah, world 5. In my experience, definitely one of the easier worlds. Nothing stuck out to me as hard until the very end.

There’s actually more to the ice flow level. If you go into a pipe, you end up underwater dodging giant pieces of ice to avoid getting crushed. It’s pretty neat.

I wasn’t a huge fan of this fishing boo. It starts out staying out of the way, but the further you get into the level, you need to go through the teleporting flame area more and more. For me, that P-switch part at the end was kind of irritating.

Tomorrow: Will pure savestateless once again be dead?

Zach808 wrote: ↑4 years ago Will pure savestateless once again be dead?

No.

Zach808 wrote: ↑4 years ago The worst of the homing bullets doesn't actually appear in this game. There's a level with them that's harder than this, but thankfully it's generous with powerups. If you want the most hellish homing bullet hells, they're in Vip2.

Well that's a relief to hear. I was getting ready to prepare for the worst but I'd rather not. Anyway, here are my comments for today's levels.

Alaskan Ice Floe Field: This is a nice level (pun intended). The auto-scroll is fairly fast, which makes it much more fun than a typical slowly scrolling level (though my opinion on auto-scroll levels may be tainted by the fact that I hated the previous one I played in this hack). Interestingly the pipe at the beginning leads to a water area that's basically a whole different level but with the same fast auto-scroll. I played through both of the areas and I found them both to be pretty fun.

The Mansion of Ice: Another level that I like. The first half is a pretty standard ghost house but with ice physics. The second half has an interesting puzzle which took me awhile to figure out. I probably fell for every red herring before I finally figured out what to do.

Deep in the Cold, Cold Forest: I'm not a fan of this level. At the start fishing boo can be pretty annoying but it's not too bad. That is until the ground rises up considerably, requiring you to spend an extended amount of time in fishing boo's area of control, which is usually the worst part of having to deal with it. Then there's the second half of the level. Fishing boo's still there, and now the disco shell koopas are hidden behind trees. There's also a fake floor thing going on that's not even consistent and there's ice physics on top of everything else. While raocow didn't have that much trouble with the level, all the stuff I mentioned was a bit too much for me. I don't know if the difference is because raocow is just good at SMW or just because I'm relatively inexperienced (as I've mentioned this is the first time I'm playing a SMW hack).

Super Maks 64 wrote: ↑4 years ago

To be honest, i get why raocow panicked

Zach808 wrote: ↑4 years ago Tomorrow: Will pure savestateless once again be dead?

If it's the level I'm thinking of, I know this was where the "VIP coins are save points" was decided, but I think at some point even that limitation on tools was abandoned. I remember raocow having troubles with a similar level in VIP5 as well, and may have used tools there too.

LunarRainbowShyGuy wrote: ↑4 years ago

Zach808 wrote: ↑4 years ago The worst of the homing bullets doesn't actually appear in this game. There's a level with them that's harder than this, but thankfully it's generous with powerups. If you want the most hellish homing bullet hells, they're in Vip2.

Well that's a relief to hear. I was getting ready to prepare for the worst but I'd rather not. Anyway, here are my comments for today's levels.

Alaskan Ice Floe Field: This is a nice level (pun intended). The auto-scroll is fairly fast, which makes it much more fun than a typical slowly scrolling level (though my opinion on auto-scroll levels may be tainted by the fact that I hated the previous one I played in this hack). Interestingly the pipe at the beginning leads to a water area that's basically a whole different level but with the same fast auto-scroll. I played through both of the areas and I found them both to be pretty fun.

The Mansion of Ice: Another level that I like. The first half is a pretty standard ghost house but with ice physics. The second half has an interesting puzzle which took me awhile to figure out. I probably fell for every red herring before I finally figured out what to do.

Deep in the Cold, Cold Forest: I'm not a fan of this level. At the start fishing boo can be pretty annoying but it's not too bad. That is until the ground rises up considerably, requiring you to spend an extended amount of time in fishing boo's area of control, which is usually the worst part of having to deal with it. Then there's the second half of the level. Fishing boo's still there, and now the disco shell koopas are hidden behind trees. There's also a fake floor thing going on that's not even consistent and there's ice physics on top of everything else. While raocow didn't have that much trouble with the level, all the stuff I mentioned was a bit too much for me. I don't know if the difference is because raocow is just good at SMW or just because I'm relatively inexperienced (as I've mentioned this is the first time I'm playing a SMW hack).

You're still gonna have to prepare yourself for the worst. Starting in world 6, you start getting levels in there that are downright hellish to play, and by the end the levels get REALLY long. Might as well get far ahead of raocow now before those levels come up.

Man, a level 9 years ago made raocow resorted to savestates. He made it easy this time.

But then again, raocow played more difficult SMW romhacks for 9 years since.

lamest nightmare level ever

Zach808 wrote: ↑4 years ago You're still gonna have to prepare yourself for the worst. Starting in world 6, you start getting levels in there that are downright hellish to play, and by the end the levels get REALLY long. Might as well get far ahead of raocow now before those levels come up.

Oh I'm well aware of the fact that the VIPs can get really difficult towards the end. I was just speaking strictly in terms of those homing bullet bills. Although I do appreciate the heads-up. Though I don't want to play too far ahead of raocow; I like to have my experience with the levels fresh in my mind when I comment on them. Anyway, here are my comments for today's levels.

Alaskan Ice Floe Field: I commented on this level yesterday, but hearing raocow reminded me of something I forgot to mention. Much like raocow, I appreciate that this level gives you a choice of whether to do the above water part or the underwater part.

One Big Leap Off Yoshi!: The regular path in this level is more or less just an ordinary ice level (which isn't bad), but I do appreciate seeing levels that actually make use of the switch blocks to make things easier (beyond just giving you extra powerups). The secret exit has an interesting challenge where you have to dismount Yoshi, quickly melt some ice, then get back on Yoshi before the platform gets too far away. Speaking of that platform, you don't need to avoid that midpoint, you can just go back a little bit and trigger it from the midpoint. Now that I think about it, you could even ride the platform, take your time melting the ice, then go back and ride the platform again. Anyway, when I first beat this level I was actually in a state that I could get the secret exit, but I had forgotten that this was a red level and had to go back and get Yoshi through that ice with the platform again.

Absurd Athletic: I saw some people hinting at a difficult level coming up (though looking back it was really only one person; I guess I must have just been really worried about upcoming difficult levels yesterday or something) and when I saw this level I was worried but it's not really that bad. In fact it was so not bad that I find myself in utter disbelief that this level caused raocow to break savestateless in the past. Anyway the first half is pretty easy; raocow even managed to get through it without a cape. The second half can be a bit tricky but after some attempts one should have it figured out. You even have parakoopas to jump on during the difficult sections. Also, for some reason the VIP coin right after the midpoint never really registered in my mind, and I guess it didn't for raocow either, considering that it's missing from his VIP coin run.

Today was history in the making. I'm voting it 'best LP moment of 2018'.

Haven't been in the thread for the previous couple of days, mainly because the message boxes were pretty straight-forward and Oyster did a passable job on the level names. One of today's levels makes up for that though, as it seems to be pretty dang notorious.

Oyster's Pearls:
"Moving On to an Unreasonable Tomorrow"
Have a bonus from one of yesterday's levels that pales in comparison:
"Ice Motel"

This Eye o' Mine wrote: ↑4 years ago
Oyster's Pearls:
"Moving On to an Unreasonable Tomorrow"

My best guess is that he saw it written this way, didn't recognize it, and instead of doing a Google search or just trying to say the word aloud and finding out that it sounded like 'athletic'

Honestly if I saw "asuretikku" in hiragana I can't say with confidence I would recognize it as English either. Just because it sounds vaguely similar to a word in another language doesn't mean I would think it's another language and not this one.

To elaborate on this error further for everyone else: if it wasn't for this mistake, Oyster might have translated the name as "Unreasonable Athletic", which is pretty close to the current name.

Also, people were saying during the last playthrough that not having a cape makes things easier to time. But apparently today went fine with a cape?

Man, what a level to break raocow in the past. I'm shocked it was this and not one of the nightmarish world 6 levels or the even worse endgame. Personally I found it to be the easiest star world level.

Btw, not having a cape makes it harder, which was probably raocow's biggest mistake last time. The level's built around you having it, as those last bits demonstrate.

Anyways, things should be smooth sailing for a while.

ano0maly wrote: ↑4 years ago To elaborate on this error further for everyone else: if it wasn't for this mistake, Oyster might have translated the name as "Unreasonable Athletic", which is pretty close to the current name.

"If he didn't make any mistakes, he would've done it correctly" is kind of an obvious thing to say, isn't it?

I'm still going to maintain that the way he put the level name shows an enormous lack of experience with the language, specifically a lack of insight into how it's structured and how people play with it. To anybody with even just a year of basic Japanese language experience it should be pretty obvious, or at least it should give very strong vibes that the word is not natively Japanese due to the way it's built and just the way it sounds, katakana or no. If the use of hiragana here throws you off and makes you decide to interpret it as a Japanese word against all of that evidence, then you're either inexperienced in the way I just mentioned, or in the sense that you still take language 'rules' (such as 'katakana = foreign word') to be these rigid and objective things that are never played with or otherwise open to subjective interpretation. One of the main things that determines the qualities of a translation is how good a translator was at interpreting what people intended to say with their words in context, not how good they were at following dictionary definitions and spelling and grammar rules, which is why machine translations (which by and large do not have a thorough concept of social context) often fail to produce output that makes sense. There is no Japanese word that comes even close to fitting the word 'athletic' in the level name, and Oyster went for the mistaken interpretation that involved misreading a bunch of characters while dropping a bunch of other ones instead of what I (admittedly subjectively) consider to be a much more KISS-principle compatible interpretation of simply going by what it sounds, especially since "athletic" is a common word in these level names. Of course, for all we know he just misread the characters from the start and would've never even read the Japanese rendition of the word "athletic" to begin with, which would make this all a moot point.

That Oyster got it wrong is fair enough and to be expected, as it's pretty established at this point that he wasn't exactly a buff on the subject of translation.

Wasn't raocow's audience much smaller then, and wasn't Oyster the only person willing and remotely capable of translating this, and didn't he do it in a few hours to help his buddy out and was he even a proper student Japanese? There's no need to flog this dead donkey. Oyster, oy vey ist mir.

morsel/morceau wrote: ↑4 years ago Wasn't raocow's audience much smaller then, and wasn't Oyster the only person willing and remotely capable of translating this, and didn't he do it in a few hours to help his buddy out and was he even a proper student Japanese? There's no need to flog this dead donkey. Oyster, oy vey ist mir.

The original VIP runs are actually some of raocow's most popular videos. Probably due to ProtonJon sending a bunch of his viewers over to raocow.

there's a difference between 'size of the anonymous audience' and 'people that reached out to me and I reached back' though

morsel/morceau wrote: ↑4 years ago wasn't Oyster the only person willing and remotely capable of translating this

This first requires him to have been remotely capable.

raocow strong...

It recently occurred to me that my experience playing along with raocow in this game is pretty much the opposite of when I did so with Mega Man Zero. In that game raocow was playing it for the first time (at least I think it was his first time playing) while I had played it before but it had been awhile and I didn't remember much of the details. And while raocow struggled quite a bit I had a relatively easy time. In this game the roles are reversed; I'm the one playing for the first time and struggling to get through, while raocow has played the game a long time ago and has had his memories fade away while having a relatively easy time playing compared to me. Anyway, here are my comments for today's levels.

The World of Cement Blocks Jewels: Admittedly the graphics here are more pleasing to look at then a bunch of cement blocks (though they're not that much better). Speaking of graphics I like how the ninjis look with the background that matches their body colour (I also just realized that these are actually ninjis and not their usual sprite replacement). Anyway, this is a pretty easy level so I don't have much to say about the actual level design.

This Koopa Ain't Stupid 2: Clearly I'm not as experienced at riding disco shells as raocow, as this level took me more than a few tries to beat, while raocow did it on his first try. Though as someone who struggled a bit with this level and died to the trap at the end, I found said trap to be really funny. Anyway, as raocow said, as long as you don't lose your cape this level isn't that bad.

Wait... This Castle's Too Easy!: Some people in the YouTube comments seem to think that the path to the second path was fairly obvious, but to be fair, I thought it was a death trap when I saw it, and I presume raocow did as well. I wouldn't go so far as to call it a dev path though. In fact, looking back I feel like I should have realized it sooner and spent less time flying around.

I like the name, "Moving On to an Unreasonable Tomorrow." You can look at it as a poetic reflection of this LP. A meta reference to how much trouble the level caused raocow in the past. "Tomorrow" (now today), the once seemingly unreasonable skill level needed to beat it is a thing of the past. What 2009 raocow thought was an unreasonable difficulty means unreasonable skills are required, and raocow now has them in this unreasonable tomorrow we live in.