An SMWCentral Production: A game about some eggs

[LucarioPK]

Man those skeletons look doofy as hell. o.o

[rubberfishy]

The vibe that I'm getting off of this LP is weird. I feel like raocow is criticizing the game more than it needs to. With ASMT, however, he laughed his way through and hardly criticized anything outside of the difficulty.

I kinda feel the opposite. I felt that the ASMT LP was kinda awkward as raocow was on purpose not criticising things as much as he normally does.

I dunno, maybe it was only be who felt that way.

[haligonian]

(Least here in America)

And there's the problem.

[FPzero]

Throw all your tomatoes and shoes at me because I came up with the name and pronunciation.

[megamario]

Throw all your tomatoes and shoes at me because I came up with the name and pronunciation.

Also weeaboo manor is an amazing pun and I hate Aqualakitu for it

[MrDeePay]

Since I know the YouTube readers are gonna piss and moan about later levels (kind of exercising some sort of a double standard), or they're getting the wrong impression from raocow, a list of W1-W7 that may cause some amounts of considerable ire. Spoilerd just in case.

I'm not sure if v1.5 took care of more of these, though.

(1) Treacherous Tower - Just the boss, really.
(2) Weeabooo Manor - A bit long, but otherwise managable. Older versions of the level were even "worse".
(2) Football Canyon - 2/3 is a stark contrast to the level name. Plently of nasty/ambush setups that goes on for too long. Basically it fits in a much later world than 2.
(3) Unearthly Hollow - Tedious fetch quest and no midpoint.
(3) Cave of Lost Pride - Very long first part. Some areas can provide some unfair hits (especially Monty Moles).
(3) Sinister Dungeon - Reversed X controls every few seconds in second half. Getting a Fire Flower while this is happening freezes the game.
(4) Zephyr Manor - Ice and wind, though the wind isn't as bad as it is in Hyper V. Also fits in a much later world than 4.
(5) To Land Much Below! - Uses YI Shyguys with spotty hit detection and some picky parts with time, otherwise rather fine.
(7) Wild Wet Castle - Long and Boring. Not sure about Anya now since she's been updated in v1.5, but she too is also long, boring, and at times unfair. I did "maintenance" on Imamelia's two other levels (Frigid Lake Cavern and Morel Mountain), but WWC was never "properly" finished during "Alpha" testing so I could take a crack at that, too.

Won't cover World 8-B until raocow gets there.

[Kleiner Kokiri]

Weaboo Mansion IS a hard level. But its a fair hard, different to Football Canyon imho.
The reversed boos and enemies in itself all work out as dangerous obstacles because of the tight level design.
The plattforming was though, but doable.
It just happens that a bit of the level did not make sense. For example the second switch under the blue blocks. It had no purpose. And the switch in the same room on the farest right neither.

Other than that, the difficulty striked raocow because those one/lined blue blocks are still one of his weaknesses. And then there was this one mistake, which was more hilarious than anything else.

This level was really good. But for Football Canyon i have zero excuse.
Maybe .... MAYBE if it were later in the game ...

Guess we come to that later though.

[S.N.N.]

Slight spoiler in regards to tomorrow's video:

Keep your eyes on the background in the water level.

Visually, it's one of the most impressive HDMA tricks I've seen in quite a while. Figured I'd note it since it might be easy to miss if one doesn't pay attention.

[Dollop of Mayo]

haha wow I think I'll pass on playing this after all

If the mansion is "reasonable" difficulty and it took raocow 10+ lives and 40 minutes to do, and it'll only get harder, I will never in a million years have the patience to get through it without abusing save states. raocow has 10x my skill at Mario, and I can beat all of SMW with little issue, including the star worlds.

But lest anybody get the impression I'm pissing and moaning, I'll just say that I don't think I'm a hack player. Hack creators pretty much universally turn their noses up at the difficulty of the original SMW and invariably crank it up at least 3 notches. And that's cool. I enjoy watching them get played but other than novelty they hold no appeal to me to play them myself.

[MrDeePay]

Weeaboo Manor's difficulty was moreorless fine (most of it's legit complaints come before it was updated to add a checkpoint), considering that it's a hidden level that skips over most of World 2. Two levels you'll be seeing very, very soon don't have much of an excuse though.

As far as I'm concerned, secret levels that skip large chunks of worlds should be made harder than the rest of the levels in that world.

[Dollop of Mayo]

See, you say the difficulty is "fine" yet I, a person who, again, has no problem with regular SMW, would probably get very frustrated and give up an hour into the level were I forced to do it legitimately, or would abuse save states mightily otherwise.

That's not "fine" difficulty, that is "hard" difficulty. That's not bad, but call it what it is.

If things later are harder, then they are harder. Your version of "fine" is "hard" but you seem to be trying to separate the two.

If I have a problem beating a level of this hack, it's not because I suck. It's because it's harder than I'm really willing to deal with. Could I eventually beat this whole hack? Yep. Am I willing to endure the frustration and sink the time that would be necessary into beating it? Nope.

Hard isn't bad, and I'm not saying it's bad. I'm just saying it's not for me. But in the end, this shit is hard.

[MrDeePay]

It's a general trend that SMW hacks are going to be harder than the original SMW. While it's not outright stated, it's strongly implied in the grander scheme. SMWCP never intended to hold the player's hand from the beginning, but attempted to have a more steady curve than other hacks, certain level authors never getting the memo notwithstanding. I'll quote myself from SMWC.

SNN is saying that while there are levels that are harder than they need to be in accordance to where they are on the map, the game as a whole isn't as hard/bad as many of you are making it out to be; including the ones that never even touched it and are basing their opinions on a Canadain guy playing through.

That's not to say that the other levels are flawless, but you're making their issues seem like "OMG this blows!" when they tend to range from nitpicking to inconveniences to something that needs to be looked into.

[raocow]

The game is still harder on average than the original smw, though. You can't deny that. That is litteraly all Dancing Mad was saying.

Edit: I mean heck the original smw also had a secret ghost house in it's second world, so I think it's easy to compare both game's 'standards' here!

[The Doctor]

See, you say the difficulty is "fine" yet I, a person who, again, has no problem with regular SMW, would probably get very frustrated and give up an hour into the level were I forced to do it legitimately, or would abuse save states mightily otherwise.

As long as you're not in a coma you should be able to beat Super Mario World without a problem. If you consider Super Mario World to be of average difficulty or what you compare other games to than you are bad at platformers. Now that's not an insult. I'm terrible at FPS games and I struggle with Halo, but I'm not going to seek out custom mods designed by hardcore Halo players and be surprised when they up the difficulty.

Super Mario World hacks are designed by hardcore gamers who have played SMW to death for hardcore gamers who have played SMW to death. It makes sense that hack designers are going to make their hacks with the type of difficulty that they enjoy and can handle rather than cater to a more casual, or less skilled, audience that isn't even likely to be playing hacks in the first place. It's probably more fair to expect the difficulty of say Ninja Gaiden or Castlevania in SMW hacks. With that expectation than yes, SMWCP is fine. Hyper V on the other hand is definitely hard. Mario Gives Up probably falls under easy to medium difficulty.

[HuFlungDu]

(Least here in America)

And there's the problem.

That was a mistype before I remembered it was a grammar rule everywhere, I forgot to delete it. It doesn't matter where you are, as long as you speak English, it's correct. Seriously, did you even read the link I posted?

As for the difficulty, I could hardly be considered the best SMW player, but I'm definitely not bad at it either, and I've gone 3 days and 80 lives on certain levels...

It's a general trend that SMW hacks are going to be harder than the original SMW. While it's not outright stated, it's strongly implied in the grander scheme.

Not entirely true. I for one have never made a level more difficult than, say, a world 4 SMW level (My feeble attempt at making a kaizo notwithstanding), though that likely has to do with the fact that I prefer my levels to be easier (since if I die more than 10 times on a level, it really stops being fun)

[limepie20]

As for the difficulty, I could hardly be considered the best SMW player, but I'm definitely not bad at it either, and I've gone 3 days and 80 lives on certain levels...

(since if I die more than 10 times on a level, it really stops being fun)

I don't get it.

[HuFlungDu]

I don't get it.

You don't get that I have died 80 times on certain levels and stopped having fun after 10 deaths? I feel for you.

[limepie20]

Well what's the point?

[Rameau's Nephew]

Man those skeletons look doofy as hell. o.o

Of course they do; they're skeletons--they can't help looking doofy. And they'd probably deliberately continue doing so anyway even if they could do anything about it! Crumbums, the lot of them.

In any case, I think the problem here is less the difficulty as such than the fact that the first few stages are pretty easy, as expected at the beginning of a hack, then *POW*--the difficultly suddenly spikes up massively. If Weeaboo Manor appeared in world 4 or 5, you'd be unlikely to hear nearly as much grumbling; the problem is that it appears in world 2 and is the very first Ghost House in the game.

Collab hacks, of course, always have some problems with creating a smooth difficulty curve; it's sort of hard to coordinate with so many contributors. But, from various accounts, an added problem here seems to be that the uneven difficulty of this hack skews pretty heavily toward the early worlds, giving the play a bad first impression, which sticks with them through the rest of the game.

The anecdote about SNN having to choose for the first castle between a level that's really a bit too hard for world 1 and one that has a maddening gimmick highlights an interesting problem--it seems that not too many people want to make early game levels. I suspect that when making only one or two levels for a hack, people tend to operate more in contest mode than full-length hack mode--that is to say, instead of regarding their level as a small part of a larger game, they instead try to throw everything they've got into their level. This is an understandable impulse--no one wants their contribution to this long-awaited hack to be that one easy, low-key level at the beginning, they want it to be that keh-heh-raaazy level that sticks in everyone's mind afterward. Now, that sort of thing is fine when you're playing a single, isolated level (which is precisely what they're making their contribution as), but an entire hack of such levels gets exhausting pretty quickly.

How do you solve this problem? Well, that's the question, isn't it. As SMWC tends to be a strong proponent of a fair difficulty curve, I suppose many people had the (conscious or unconscious) expectation that they would have managed to conquer this issue, but alas, such was not to be. Too high expectations can be a liability for any work.

[HuFlungDu]

... That I died a lot and it then ceased to entertain me? I don't know how many more ways I can say this...

[limepie20]

Yeah but if your not having fun what motivates you to keep playing the same thing for three days?

[HuFlungDu]

Stubbornness? Probably stubbornness, yeah.

[MrDeePay]

Yeah but if your not having fun what motivates you to keep playing the same thing for three days?

The desire to make it past the roadblock and continue with the game (and not just give up on a particular part), most likely.

In any case, I think the problem here is less the difficulty as such than the fact that the first few stages are pretty easy, as expected at the beginning of a hack, then *POW*--the difficultly suddenly spikes up massively. If Weeaboo Manor appeared in world 4 or 5, you'd be unlikely to hear nearly as much grumbling; the problem is that it appears in world 2 and is the very first Ghost House in the game.

Either that or if it wasn't attached to SMWCP, knowing some people. (A lot of it just comes off to me heavily like a double standard.)
However, as I mentioned, Weeaboo Manor is also a hidden level (that hides another hidden level) and it skips all of World 2 (in fact, each world up to 7 has levels that can skip large chunks of the Worlds they're in and most of them are no pushover either) so I'd say it's sudden difficulty was justified, though it really did need a midpoint.

And again, that doesn't excuse Football Canyon.

Collab hacks, of course, always have some problems with creating a smooth difficulty curve; it's sort of hard to coordinate with so many contributors. But, from various accounts, an added problem here seems to be that the uneven difficulty of this hack skews pretty heavily toward the early worlds, giving the play a bad first impression, which sticks with them through the rest of the game.

The anecdote about SNN having to choose for the first castle between a level that's really a bit too hard for world 1 and one that has a maddening gimmick highlights an interesting problem--it seems that not too many people want to make early game levels. I suspect that when making only one or two levels for a hack, people tend to operate more in contest mode than full-length hack mode--that is to say, instead of regarding their level as a small part of a larger game, they instead try to throw everything they've got into their level. This is an understandable impulse--no one wants their contribution to this long-awaited hack to be that one easy, low-key level at the beginning, they want it to be that keh-heh-raaazy level that sticks in everyone's mind afterward. Now, that sort of thing is fine when you're playing a single, isolated level (which is precisely what they're making their contribution as), but an entire hack of such levels gets exhausting pretty quickly.

I agree with that on a whole, but I'd say for those guys to just grin and bear it if they didn't get the type of level they wanted. But I would assume that some people decided to use the "showcase" mindset and forget that they're contributing to a collaboration hack. I mean, both Snowflake Cavern and Into the water for example try to cram in so much into the level that it doesn't seem to know what it wanted to be, which in turn hurt the quality of the levels.

And to be honest, Sinister Dungeon was fine where it was originally before Lynnes did what he did. Seriously, what the hell man.

How do you solve this problem? Well, that's the question, isn't it. As SMWC tends to be a strong proponent of a fair difficulty curve, I suppose many people had the (conscious or unconscious) expectation that they would have managed to conquer this issue, but alas, such was not to be. Too high expectations can be a liability for any work.

The only thing I can think of is for the level authors to scrap the offending sections of their levels and start from scratch or look into toning them down heavily so they play fairly in accordance to where their level is on the map (this includes which world it's in what levels they're supposed to unlock, what levels would they skip if the player's taking an alternate path, etc.), but I suppose that was a side effect of Riolu designing the overworld before any of the levels were actually completed. Some people just seemed to never got that memo or didn't use the mindset of the common player in wondering if their level was easy or hard enough.

[MrDeePay]

Second half of the level is a trek through a room/hallway with conveyor belts (over lava) and some of those rising/falling pencil spikes. Doesn't sound so bad, no? Well how about every few seconds the controls invert on the X axis (there's one small room where it goes crazy)? I (believe I) mentioned on SMWC that because of the way it tells you the controls are reversed (Mario flips through all four palettes like he's invincible), that getting a Fire Flower while this is happening can freeze the game. I don't know if that's been fixed in v1.5, though.

The level's incredibly pointless and tacked on gimmick was one of the reasons (if not the main reason) it and Treacherous Tower swapped positions on the map. And part of the reason why Giant Spiny may feel too hard for World 1 to some, though World 3's boss is no pushover, either. Only two, maybe even four other levels swapped positions on the map.

- Thankfully, that level has a second midpoint right after that section.
- Thankfully, the conveyor belt blocks also have no corner offset (so Mario's safe from falling into the lava as long as no buttons are pressed).

Mind you, the level's still doable without tool assistance, but it's annoying to do.

tl;dr - Did one of the worst things you could possibly do to a player without having the level being designed around the gimmick in order for it to be forgiving.

[cozyduck]

World 5 spoilers

Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to accept a level that combines high speed + precision parts with enemies that have atrocious hit detection (To Land Much Below)? grr...

Having said that, the difficulty complaints are overblown. This game gets tough quickly, but it's no RTTC or Luigi's Adventure.