Talkhaus Christmas Advent 2018!

[SAJewers]

this clearly wasn't meant to be so tough given the author's comments but

i think this is a sign to disallow levels if this happens again next year

I've suggested before that instead of people sending disparate, single levels, a proper level collection package thing should happen instead.

[Rixithechao]

Just requoting these since we're on a new page.

Let me just get this in before the flood

Enjl
1 hour ago
The second key is just pick up the key from the other side ;-; I'm so sorry.

raocow
57 minutes ago
hey, that's all on me, don't be sorry

Enjl
53 minutes ago
We were worried about that little puzzle too and tried to remedy it by adding the fake-lock section and the sad face on collection of the lock near the checkpoint but it's pretty clear that wasn't enough or too abstract... I hope it didn't sour your mood too much and I'm glad you seem to have enjoyed the rest at least. Have an incredible chrimsly. : )

So please keep things civil, okay?

As a playtester for the level myself, I had trouble with the "second key" segment too. The solution is that the lock is friendly and can be walked through, and imo it's not unfair to think that could be gleaned from that second friendly lock shown in the video. The second lock wasn't there when I playtested it, and I can't say for sure how much it would've actually helped had it been there during my testing runs, but I'd like to think it would've made a difference. (Also keep in mind that play experiences are subjective and different factors can affect peoples' observation skills and approaches to puzzle logic, like playing the thing as an LP versus unrecorded. Not blaming raocow or anything, more saying that I probably should've accounted for that myself when giving enjl my feedback.)

There is definitely a benefit to having the level be played by someone outside of the smbx2 dev team and I'm sure that would've helped as well, but it's also worth noting that the level runs in a private dev build of beta 4; without getting into too much detail there's been some concern about leaks in the last few months, so enjl was being extremely cautious about not giving an unfinished version of this software to anyone he didn't know well enough to trust that they wouldn't spread it around behind our back.

[Lockirby2]

The sad face that appears when the first lock is opened was enough to tip me off that opening it was the wrong move. But it's a bit too subtle for a gift level (which should almost be borderline blatant on how to progress IMO).

[Awoo]

That was unfortunate :C

I'm curious what that Star Trek collection was exactly. Was it the entire movie set? I didn't really get a good look

Also surprised it wasn't Voyager. Voyager's super duper under-rated IMO :I

[raocow]

yeah it's all the movies

[Truhan]

yeah it's all the movies

Including or excluding the modern ones?

[ano0maly]

I do think there is a good discussion to be had here. What raocow said during the Interdimensional Rift video got to me as a valid point - he shouldn't have to "work" when it's a gift, even though he didn't mean to sound lazy or anything. With what happened between that and today's level, it might be a good idea to have someone screen through the levels for functionality, just like how RedMageSusie checks physical gifts and is informed of what they are.

[Tain]

Ok, so I've kind of wanted to talk about gift levels/games and figure this is a decent time to share.

The biggest issue is time commitment, under normal circumstances games taking time is (usually) a good thing, you want content. For gifts, we should assume that raocow is going to be making a video.

Things like walking back from death, puzzles, or things like cutscenes/text become a problem very quickly. To look at today's video, the zig-zag trap is punishing by taking extra time; or traps that have door transitions, waiting for bombs, etc..

Along with that, having an instant respawn/TP to the last checkpoint would be a lot better than actual deaths; the video today did a really good job with frequent checkpoints which is also really important for gift levels.

For things like puzzles, having extra textboxes/hints is also a good idea, event to the point of having the solution spelled out. As long as they are clearly marked (and explained at the start of the level [Boxes that look like 'this' are hint boxes!]), there shouldn't be much risk of accidentally spoiling a solution.

The goal should be to make failure as quick as possible, and to prevent situations where the player is 'stuck'. I agree having someone look at/play through levels beforehand would be a good idea, just to have a "if you get stuck here, do this" if nothing else. But in general keeping in mind that a level as a gift has different goals than normal could help prevent a lot of issues.

[Ditocoaf]

Yeah, like, suggesting your own romhack/game in the suggestion thread is discouraged for multiple good reasons.

I don't think anyone meant their gifts this way, but there's a real danger of gifts being a way to avoid that rule and even guarantee raocow plays your thing.


probably, in future christmas gift setups, there should probably be a rule to not gift LP-ables, in general. With special exceptions for things that were exceptionally impressive team efforts AND notably chirstmas-y (like that 3D Demo game from last year). Or trivial/short/just-a-thing-to-look-at-quickly (like joke nonlevels, or the WTH fix).


eveveryone who's given LP-ables so far (whether something they made themselves, or something cool they wanted to buy for raocow) has had their hearts in the right place, and the things were cool, and I hope this post doesn't come across as harsh criticism of them. But, next year, I think the thing I said in the third paragraph here would be good policy, to bypass risk of downsides to all these upsides.

[repairmanman]

Is it possible the first key isn't needed to go through the door? After failing it shows you a fake door that you can walk through, it might be a hint.

[raocow]

yeah enjil told me the solution and that is it

[Petzi]

Yeah, like, suggesting your own romhack/game in the suggestion thread is discouraged for multiple good reasons.

I don't think anyone meant their gifts this way, but there's a real danger of gifts being a way to avoid that rule and even guarantee raocow plays your thing.


probably, in future christmas gift setups, there should probably be a rule to not gift LP-ables, in general. With special exceptions for things that were exceptionally impressive team efforts AND notably chirstmas-y (like that 3D Demo game from last year). Or trivial/short/just-a-thing-to-look-at-quickly (like joke nonlevels, or the WTH fix).


eveveryone who's given LP-ables so far (whether something they made themselves, or something cool they wanted to buy for raocow) has had their hearts in the right place, and the things were cool, and I hope this post doesn't come across as harsh criticism of them. But, next year, I think the thing I said in the third paragraph here would be good policy, to bypass risk of downsides to all these upsides.

I think implementing rules like that would be blowing the issue out of proportion. The arguments you raised are completely valid, but I think additional rules would discourage people from participating and are simply unnecessary.

If next year we get the same amount of LP-able gifts as this year, that seems like a pretty reasonable amount? I would only view it as problematic if the number starts increasing each year, to a point where raocow or RedMageSusie (or the viewers, I guess, those jerks) feel it's excessive.

What I mean is, it's a lot nicer to rely on people to be honourable and keep LP-ables to a minimum, because that gives folks a lot more freedom and keeps the event interesting. It's the Talkhaus! Chill and let chill! Rules drools! Besides, if such a rule were implemented, someone would have to judge whether a given gift warrants a "special exception", which sounds like a gateway to controversy and hurt feelings.

EDIT: I haven't watched all the videos yet, so that might be relevant when reading this post

[Awoo]

What a weird note to end on! I'm kind of sad there's no Voyager
Can't wait until next year

[Grounder]

[Le Neveu de Rameau]

But is it truly over? Does the alphabet end with C? Or are there further shores beyond the horizon? We must remain ever-vigilant, and keep a lookout atop the foremast to see what wonders await us.

[Kilgamayan]

Being someone that did not participate in one of these until this year, my nuclear take is that not only did Ometeotl hit the nail on the head a few weeks ago, but it was honestly a little bit disturbing seeing the amount of self-aggrandizement in this project. There were a lot of people that seemed to see this project as an opportunity to grab the metaphorical microphone and puff themselves up instead of an opportunity to express their appreciation for raoguy. Perhaps some of it was unintentional, but I would have a very hard time believing that all of it was unintentional. It really cheapened the feeling of some of the videos. Have things always been like this? I have admittedly not watched GraPE videos from before this year.

Anyway, as such, I would be totally fine not seeing a one-shot SMW level gift again. Bah humbug, I guess?

[Piesonscreations]

Maybe the final frontier was the friends we made along the way.
Hope you had a merry christmas everyone!

[Awoo]

Being someone that did not participate in one of these until this year, my nuclear take is that not only did Ometeotl hit the nail on the head a few weeks ago, but it was honestly a little bit disturbing seeing the amount of self-aggrandizement in this project. There were a lot of people that seemed to see this project as an opportunity to grab the metaphorical microphone and puff themselves up instead of an opportunity to express their appreciation for raoguy. Perhaps some of it was unintentional, but I would have a very hard time believing that all of it was unintentional. It really cheapened the feeling of some of the videos. Have things always been like this? I have admittedly not watched GraPE videos from before this year.

Anyway, as such, I would be totally fine not seeing a one-shot SMW level gift again. Bah humbug, I guess?

I hope my gifts didn't come off that way :c

[Kilgamayan]

FWIW I had no one in particular in mind when I wrote that. There is simply a notable difference between sharing one's interest with another person and trying to making a video segment all about oneself instead of the person receiving the gift, and it's not all that difficult to tell them apart.

This is all just one old man's disappointed and cynical grousing anyway, as much as I suspect I am not the only person who holds this opinion about some of those letters. It's not going to bring about any meaningful change. Don't fret about it too much.

[Peliptia]

▸▸ahhhwhat a year ´-･ᴗ･-` this has really brightened my december a lot ♡ coming home to these videos in the evenings made me look forward to every days˭̡̞＃♡ ♡

[Leet]

I think it's just a symptom of these videos becoming regular expected things (for us). It becomes "a thing we do (raocow and the talkhaus)" (even though raocow doesn't know he's receiving them ahead of time) rather than "here's a surprise above-and-beyond project we put together!" I also think adding rules to regulate these projects would only exacerbate this issue in different ways and make it even more inauthentic.

[Rixithechao]

Overall things didn't seem too much different from last year's GUrP to me, though I'm fairly biased on the matter for a number of reasons. If you're curious, Kilga, here's a playlist.

The way I see it is that because raocow himself is such a nice and down-to-earth guy, even folks who haven't gotten to know him that well may feel more comfortable trying to connect with him on a more personal level. In some cases peeps may not have the best social skills and/or be all that self-aware, or something went wrong with the execution or there's some other spanner in the proverbial works, but more likely than not they're well-meaning.

Now with that said, if I was one of the people that came across as tooting their own horn... well, looking back at what I wrote I can't blame you for getting that impression, but it definitely wasn't my intent. More than anything else my goal was to entertain raocow but in retrospect a lot of my DM was just setup for stupid jokes, which in turn existed to justify other stupid jokes and so on. Altogether the bulk of it was just arbitrary fluff and next time if write any kind of letter at all I'll do my best to keep it short and sweet. Probably best to just let the gift itself do the talking, though.

As for level gifts, I'm personally down for future birthday and advent events having guidelines for them to help things go smoothly; the stuff about providing optional hints for any puzzles and/or making the solutions more blatant, keeping execution challenge low, relatively short playtime, etc. seems like a good start. But yeah, making these things hard rules would do more harm than good.

(also this is nitpicking but SMW and SMBX are separate engines and aside from one of raocow's old hacks getting fixed up for modern emulation all the digital mario stuff this year was made in the latter engine)

[Truhan]

Being someone that did not participate in one of these until this year, my nuclear take is that not only did Ometeotl hit the nail on the head a few weeks ago, but it was honestly a little bit disturbing seeing the amount of self-aggrandizement in this project. There were a lot of people that seemed to see this project as an opportunity to grab the metaphorical microphone and puff themselves up instead of an opportunity to express their appreciation for raoguy. Perhaps some of it was unintentional, but I would have a very hard time believing that all of it was unintentional. It really cheapened the feeling of some of the videos. Have things always been like this? I have admittedly not watched GraPE videos from before this year.

Anyway, as such, I would be totally fine not seeing a one-shot SMW level gift again. Bah humbug, I guess?

I'm getting the negative feeling that this may be directed at me too because I put in a letter with Mr. Snuggles/Wubbles. Believe me, I wanted to give raocow the Monty Mole the same year that he made the snuggly wubbly comment, I just didn't have much stability at the time. Katamari Damacy was just a small bonus because I had found out about it like 2 or 3 weeks before and it really did seem like a game that raocow would play for his channel (never mind that he said himself that he was planning on getting it anyways). I sent the gifts on my birthday because it made sense from a "filling up all the days" perspective. I wasn't trying to puff myself up or anything, I just knew there was no way raocow remembered the snuggly and wubbly comment unless I reminded him. Susie was even kind enough to look it over, say it was okay, and print it out for me. I would hope that if it was out of line, she would've told me so and I could've rewrittem it.

[Lockirby2]

I didn't get a feeling of self-aggrandizement from 99% of the gifts given, and I think that y'all did a great job! Congrats on a successful GRAPE!

[Super Maks 64]

Usually you would use this thread to discuss abnormal situations such as cirno music.