An SMWCentral Production: A game about some eggs

[raocow]

Out of curiosity, is the level after, To Much Land Bellow or what-have-you.. is it supposed to be pretty hard? Or is the problem me here.

[MrDeePay]

Other than some stingy segments with errors and a buggy Shy Guy sprite, not really.

[Dollop of Mayo]

Without prior knowledge of the game this boss came from and a total lack of any hints as to how to beat it and a very poor visual cue as to what to do, yeah, this was a really terrible boss.

I've only played Metroid Prime 1 but that game was full of information about how to deal with the situation you're in. You could scan bosses and frequently there would be information about them in computer databases. So in MP2 if that trend continued I highly doubt you were thrust unprepared into a situation with the boss the level's was based upon.

There have been a few levels in this hack where those handy dandy message blocks could have been put to good use.

I don't know who out there has more fun in a game where they don't know anything and that's where the challenge comes from. Being provided with foreknowledge and then having to USE that knowledge is a good challenge. This boss would have still proven challenging but not tedious had raocow known what he was aiming for from the start.

Obviously this is all hindsight but you know, again, something to take into account for SWCP2.

[S.N.N.]

stuff about the boss

I've never played MP2 (at least, not up to this boss), and I had no issue figuring out how to beat it on my first run. I just treated it like a first run of a boss from any other game - messed around for a bit wondering what to do, and figuring it out after I saw the hurt blocks. I can understand the "if you haven't played x then you won't get y" argument most of the time, but here .. I dunno. I personally don't think it applies.

It looks like all of SMWCP2's bosses will be original designs anyway, so it'll come down to having to figure out each fight without any other knowledge.

[Kleiner Kokiri]

I figured it out rather fast as well.
Now after seeing today's episode i cannot wait for the Boss in Desert Town. raocow will play for hours :D

[limepie20]

I wanted to like the level but I didn't. It looked great but the background ruined it for me. It just didn't look right having this robot base thing with no roof or walls and I didn't like that at all. But I guess it had to stay with the cloud theme somehow.

[Dollop of Mayo]

Well good on you; I don't know if it was something about the video though, but it took me a few times AFTER raocow noticed the yellow flashing dealy to know what in the world he was talking about.

You might have figured it out quickly but not everybody else will. Taking the stance of "well if it was easy for me it is thereby easy for everybody" is a very narrow way to look at things.

[Wyatt]

For those of you who didn't play the game, it's really unfair to say that what you had to do wasn't obvious.

Don't forget that there were two fights with the same boss, the first of which was in a fairly safe room, so that the player could safely experiment and figure out that the boss' weakness is the electric panels. Unluckily, raocow just happened to hit the boss in the right place first try (which is seriously unlikely unless you huck the block from the other side of the room like he did) and therefore didn't learn anything from the fight.

[Kleiner Kokiri]

It's not unlikely. It happened to me as well. This is why i thought, the switch just activated the door or something.
The whole case could have been easily dismissed if this boss had a hit counter or something. Then at least you could see if damage was done or not.

[Bleaghhh]

Yeah, I think the original fight with the easier version made the fight much easier, I got from the first room that you had to zap him with the electric bits. It was still pretty hard to see in the second room though, I got hit a couple of times by the 'lectric on the bottom spider climb before I noticed it was there.

Desert boss though, that one took me a few minutes to figure.

I hate it when..

..hitting a boss seems to do something but really there's a trick to it. I always just assume they have mega health. I did the same thing with Bowser in world 8 before he jumped into the lava himself...

[Argumentable]

You can totally see tiles change color when you hit that switch.

PS this is the first video I've watched of this, but I will say I don't like the enemy graphics. I think they look derpy as hell.

[S.N.N.]

Taking the stance of "well if it was easy for me it is thereby easy for everybody" is a very narrow way to look at things.

I .. wasn't taking that stance at all. I was just stating it from my perspective. The majority of people I've talked to who actually -played- the hack had no issues figuring the boss out - just difficulties actually beating it.

Eh. Oh well.

[Chdata]

I had no clue what I was doing really when I fought it. I've never played metroid so I also had no clue that this whole level was a reference to that even when I got the powerup thing.

edit: See the boss runs I posted in the TAS thread since I'll have the trackspinner run there.

[freelop]

Tiny time limits are always scary, reminds me a little of the poison gas house in vip(4?)

[morsel/morceau]

The difficulty was a bit bullshit. If you don't know what you're doing ahead of time, you're dead. This doesn't seem to sit well with the reset-door philosophy.

On an unrelated note, why have shy-guys in a hack if they don't act like shy-guys? You should be able to stand on them and pick them up, otherwise, what's the point?

[Rameau's Nephew]

Yeesh, raocow sounds like he's genuinely being tormented by the first half of the level. But really, not only is the time limit too stingy for some of the dance steps required of the player, the gimmick could really use some explanation in-game. I perished twice in bafflement before realizing my time had even been reduced in the first place, and twice more before I realized that green water somehow causes your time to drain even faster. Honestly, that last part's not even remotely intuitive.

Re the mustaches talking segment at the beginning--I know this hack wishes to portray Luigi as "the sensible one" (hence assigning him such pearls of insight as the previously mentioned "This looks like technology all right"), but honestly, the fact that Mario does all of the actual work while Luigi just stands around like the useless parasite he is and acts all smug about doing nothing causes me to instead associate him with Moron Luigi from HACK, who, denied Mario's help, is unable to brush his own teeth without killing himself, yet nevertheless struts about like the cock of the walk afterward, as though we should all bow down to him in worship of his amazing accomplishment of having been saved from his own stupidity by someone else. I never disliked the character of Luigi before, but ROM hacks for some reason seem determined (intentional or not) to imbue him with as many unsympathetic traits as possible.

On an unrelated note, why have shy-guys in a hack if they don't act like shy-guys? You should be able to stand on them and pick them up, otherwise, what's the point?

Those are actually Yoshi's Island Shyguys here, whose traits--or at least movement patterns--the sprite, in fact, does imitate. They're not perfect, though--the hit detection, as seen in the video, is a bit buggy. Also, these ones seem to disappear in a puff of smoke when jumped on, for some reason. Of course, the original YI Shyguys has strange responses to being jumped on, as well--they would fall off screen (not explode, like most enemies), but would not be permanently defeated, instead coming back if you walked off screen then returned. Even the mighty ground pound (bane of many a jump-resistant foe) had the same effect. And as far as I know, they (and their various graphic swaps, like the lantern ghost) are the only enemies in the game that behave this way--everyone else who can be defeated by a jump goes down permanently from one--just not this single, very basic enemy. Pretty weird.

[Bean]

Eh, but we've seen enemies like that in other hacks such as the red Buzzy Beetle, so I won't go off the deep end about that. I guess my complaint would be to explain said time gimmick in more detail in that first room and replace the time-draining water with regular stuff. Other than that, I kind of liked watching that level.

[limepie20]

The level would've held up better if the second part of the level had the time gimmick again. Like pick either the first or second half. Your level should have a consistent theme.

[morsel/morceau]

Those are actually Yoshi's Island Shyguys here, whose traits--or at least movement patterns--the sprite, in fact, does imitate.

Hmm, I didn't think of that. It still seems strange, since you're playing as Mario and not as Yoshi, so the interactions shouldn't carry over. To remain canonically consistent, perhaps we should think of Adult Mario's experiences with the shyguys of Subcon as an imperfect recollection of Baby Mario's time on Yoshi's Island.

[Mineyl]

Several people have disagreed, but I honestly find To Land Much Below one of the worst levels in the entire game. The time gimmick comes from out of nowhere and is super stringent, foreground and background objects blend in with each other, and the Shy Guys were coded sloppily enough that it looks like even the supposed "fixed" version still has hitbox issues. Those bats in the second section swoop WAY too fast, as well. I'd expect something like that in Megaman, not Mario.

Luckily, world 6 is pretty balanced and genuinely fun in the grand scheme of things, so hopefully it'll help make us forget the sins of the past worlds. I can only think of one level I dislike there, and that's only because you have to carry a key to hell and back to get the secret exit.

[Test Pilot Monkey]

The whole thing could have been much better and less stressful with P-switches and reset doors.

The level would've held up better if the second part of the level had the time gimmick again.

Why do you hate raocow?

[Dollop of Mayo]

Taking the stance of "well if it was easy for me it is thereby easy for everybody" is a very narrow way to look at things.

I .. wasn't taking that stance at all. I was just stating it from my perspective. The majority of people I've talked to who actually -played- the hack had no issues figuring the boss out - just difficulties actually beating it.

Eh. Oh well.

Fair enough, I reread your post and it doesn't seem as much in the way of thinking I've come to expect from a lot of others talking about difficulty.

Also, today's level was bullshit for basically the same reason all the other bad levels in this hack were bad PLUS a strict time limit and half-blind jumps tossed onto the steaming pile.

[FPzero]

I don't understand why such badly coded shyguys were used in the first place because I've seen hacks before SMWCP that had YI shyguys that worked fine and fell offscreen like they did in YI.

i don't get the time gimmick either. I can't believe TLMB thought it was a good idea, or that we didn't think to change it in any fashion before release.

[megamario]

Wow that level was a mess.

So you had some clouds but now you're inside ruins and have a horrible time gimmick (also glitchy shy guys? Why use the YI version anyway? another case of global change?) for several screens but now its time for parabeetles without the time gimmick back into normal clouds SUDDENLY A DESERT (I get why it let out onto a desert, but it seemed kind of abrupt to me)

[Daarkbuu]

Tiny time limits are always scary, reminds me a little of the poison gas house in vip(4?)

vip 2

also wind fortress music yay.