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Vanilla Level Design Contest X - 1he First place entry...well d0ne to all.

this is the place where lps are being talked about. it's important to talk about games being played on the internet.
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Re: Vanilla Level Design Contest X - OK still looking at 100th! To level or not to level...

Post by Underway »

Just gonna jump in real quick in regards to the discussion the other day. Personally I entered the contest at the time with the level that I did because I thought it would be an interesting contrast to the other entries while playing the collab, not because I wanted to place well. I went in expecting my level to get 0 points for level design since I was well aware it did not conform to the idea of "Level Design" in the context of a VLDC.

I don't think that means there's something wrong with the way levels are/were judged. VLDC just isn't the contest for entries like this if you want to win or place highly and that's perfectly fine.

A contest for more "unusual" vanilla stuff might be fun, but I don't know how much potential there really is for subverting traditional formulas in the confines of vanilla hacking. I think CLDCs might already kind of fill the niche of "unusual" contest entries, but I haven't taken part in them before or paid much attention to them so I'm not actually sure about that.
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Re: Vanilla Level Design Contest X - OK still looking at 100th! To level or not to level...

Post by Kilgamayan »

What a perfect ending to today's video.
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Re: Vanilla Level Design Contest X - OK still looking at 100th! To level or not to level...

Post by Grounder »

kaizo levels in non-kaizo contests are always a good idea :monstrosity:
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Re: Vanilla Level Design Contest X - OK still looking at 100th! To level or not to level...

Post by Ashan »

I don't know why people are saying "Kaizo-lite," this looks straight up harder than some actual levels from the first Kaizo game
Underway wrote: 3 years ago I think CLDCs might already kind of fill the niche of "unusual" contest entries, but I haven't taken part in them before or paid much attention to them so I'm not actually sure about that.
I think what made your level particularly interesting and impressive is that it was all done in vanilla, though. It wouldn't stand out as much in a contest where the rules allows someone to hypothetically rewrite as much of the engine as they want.
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Re: Vanilla Level Design Contest X - OK still looking at 100th! To level or not to level...

Post by KayhemMaus »

Ashan wrote: 3 years ago I don't know why people are saying "Kaizo-lite," this looks straight up harder than some actual levels from the first Kaizo game
Kaizo has evolved to be much worse since its origins... at least imo
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Re: Vanilla Level Design Contest X - OK still looking at 100th! To level or not to level...

Post by Ashan »

So Kaizo = Kaizo lite?
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Re: Vanilla Level Design Contest X - OK still looking at 100th! To level or not to level...

Post by Underway »

Ashan wrote: 3 years ago I think what made your level particularly interesting and impressive is that it was all done in vanilla, though. It wouldn't stand out as much in a contest where the rules allows someone to hypothetically rewrite as much of the engine as they want.
First of, thanks! I think a level like this could still stand out just as much in non-vanilla contests and be just as impressive but you would have to make use of (probably custom) ASM to get it there. There's still plenty of room to make people go "how'd they do that" outside of vanilla hacks, it's just a lot more work since there are less restrictions.
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Re: Vanilla Level Design Contest X - OK still looking at 100th! To level or not to level...

Post by Kilgamayan »

Just make a super elaborate custom boss, ezpz
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Re: Vanilla Level Design Contest X - OK still looking at 100th! To level or not to level...

Post by Ambureon »

hey what's up i'm bad at forums time for my second post in three years

i'm a few videos behind cause i got a whole buncha shit to catch up on youtube wise but i felt like copypasting my comment from episode 23 over here, give the rao man a better chance of seeing it, share some idle thoughts and background knowledge on some of the weirder entries that i might know more about, yaknow
it's been a kinda weird time seeing people and in-jokes i know and am familiar with from the metroid construction romhacking community show up in this contest and make perfect sense to me specifically and no one else. like, oh yeah duh, smileuser really likes foxes so there's a buncha lineguide art of foxes in their level, oh shyguyexpress made a desert / pyramid themed super metroid mini-hack that had a custom angry sun enemy so it makes total sense that their vldc level would be that too, and meanwhile raocow is playing these levels with no real idea of like the metconst invasion of vldcx and their attempts at making some levels for the other big snes romhack game. i dunno it's kinda neat yknow
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Re: Vanilla Level Design Contest X - OK still looking at 100th! To level or not to level...

Post by Daizo »

I'm all for weird inside gags whenever romhackers outside of SMW enter in a contest like this, which was mainly why I put in that "first timers" disclaimer in the op of the thread. I was kinda wondering if there was a deeper meaning behind some of those weirder entries... now we know!
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Re: Vanilla Level Design Contest X - OK still looking at 100th! To level or not to level...

Post by TiKi »

Underway wrote: 3 years ago A contest for more "unusual" vanilla stuff might be fun, but I don't know how much potential there really is for subverting traditional formulas in the confines of vanilla hacking. I think CLDCs might already kind of fill the niche of "unusual" contest entries, but I haven't taken part in them before or paid much attention to them so I'm not actually sure about that.
YUMP Level Design Contest?

Also in regards to the general mood of the latest posts, I think it's a good discussion about how sometimes vanilla stuff can seem more impressive than chocolate. It also reminds me that there are several general "shades" of vanilla-chocolateness in non-level stuff (so this means ASM, graphics, music...)

1. Vanilla
2. Choconilla/chocolate - Where it doesn't use only the vanilla game's assets, but they ARE all externally pre-made. That is to say, graphics/music ripped or composed, and ASM created by someone who isn't the hacker or on their team. There's still significant leeway in their usage (such as recoloring a tileset/background, using the Noob Boss in clever boss room setups...), but it definitely doesn't come off like just ANYTHING could happen, if you catch my drift. In other words, "everything chocolate in X category of the hack comes from SMWCentral".
2.5 - Not sure what to call this, but it's when there are both significant amounts of pre-made AND custom assets in one category. Like how A2XT has significant custom graphics, but also plenty of rips, or how ASMWCP has custom ASM but also some SMWCentral sprite section sprites.
3. Hyper-chocolate - Where anything can happen in regards to that category. So like how Brutal Mario had "anything can happen" ASM, the Devious Four Chronicles have "anything can happen" in graphics...

Some hacks can also have varying levels of chocolateness in the various aspects. Such as Brutal Mario's old demos where it had lots of ASM but no custom music at ALL.
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Re: Vanilla Level Design Contest X - OK still looking at 100th! To level or not to level...

Post by TRS »

kaizo lite, at least where smwc is concerned, just means that the level/hack can be cleared without tools

there’s been some discussion on whether we should change that definition
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Re: Vanilla Level Design Contest X - OK still looking at 100th! To level or not to level...

Post by Ashan »

I thought if it can't be cleared without tools it's called a pit hack
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Re: Vanilla Level Design Contest X - OK still looking at 100th! To level or not to level...

Post by Ivy »

TiKi wrote: 3 years ago 1. Vanilla
2. Choconilla/chocolate - Where it doesn't use only the vanilla game's assets, but they ARE all externally pre-made. That is to say, graphics/music ripped or composed, and ASM created by someone who isn't the hacker or on their team. There's still significant leeway in their usage (such as recoloring a tileset/background, using the Noob Boss in clever boss room setups...), but it definitely doesn't come off like just ANYTHING could happen, if you catch my drift. In other words, "everything chocolate in X category of the hack comes from SMWCentral".
I feel like there should be a 1.5 in between here where the VLDC rules would fit in (Tile merging, palette swaps, custom music, minimal patches, etc). Compare to 1.0 pure vanilla, a ruleset that restricts you to raw SMW assets for a situation like OLDC.
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Re: Vanilla Level Design Contest X - OK still looking at 100th! To level or not to level...

Post by Sugar »

97th: Lava You Lots by Mata Hari
Koopster
DESIGN: 22/50
CREATIVITY: 19/30
AESTHETICS: 9/20
TOTAL SCORE: 50/100

I think the issue of this level is that it tries to do way too many things, and they end up not being very well integrated with each other - it feels like just a lot of "stuff" everywhere - buzzy beetles, spikey chains, chucks, thwimps, most of them don't do very much. Especially felt this in the split-path-ish segments in the first half. It does neat things though, like the enemies on lava concept that I wish you had developed further (much like most of the gimmicks). The second half grasps the difficulty curve well though, I like the final skull raft jump. I'd love to compliment the aesthetics cause some of what you did I find pretty neat but there's a lot of cutoff and weird palettes everywhere! Sad Day

lolyoshi
DESIGN: 20/50
CREATIVITY: 13/30
AESTHETICS: 14/20
TOTAL SCORE: 47/100

Although the level isn't particularly outstanding, it could have easily done more with what
it has, as I feel like nearly all of the challenges were just repeating themselves without much changes
in it's nature.

Noivern
DESIGN: 26/50
CREATIVITY: 14/30
AESTHETICS: 10/20
TOTAL SCORE: 50/100

Good effort, but lacks polish. I was originally going to use that to describe the aesthetics, but it really applies to the level as a whole. Aesthetically, the level looks good, but lacks touches like animating the fire in the background or having pipes not cut through the lava (you could layer pipes on top of the lava tiles and animate them). Design-wise, the entire second half of the level comes off as strange due to the fact it's designed around the glitchy nature of lava slopes. Designing around glitches is still technically acceptable, but in order to overcome the inherent bugginess it needs to be creative and also the center of the level. It was also kinda boring; if you had made sure there was always something going on in the lava raft sections, the level as a whole would be much better. Kudos for using hidden blocks; this is something I've seen surprisingly little so far.

Sinc-X
DESIGN: 17/50
CREATIVITY: 9/30
AESTHETICS: 13/20
TOTAL SCORE: 39/100

Not bad as a whole, though it's awkward to navigate and the sprites interacting with the lava like they do is pretty silly considering it doesn't really contribute to the design. A fair few obstacle setups are unthoughtful as well.

Rameau's Nephew
DESIGN: 25/50
CREATIVITY: 15/30
AESTHETICS: 10/20
TOTAL SCORE: 50/100

A decent lava cave level with a few castle elements thrown in for seasoning. Most of the setups are all right, though occasionally some of the Ball-n'-Chain setups feel cluttered, and it's not always clear whether one's expected to stay on the skull raft after it sails over a lava fall or jump off. Otherwise it's pretty OK, if not outstanding.

Æsthetically...it has a concept, and one which could work, but it feels a bit unpolished. The general sense for color contrasts is good, but the particulars of the palettes could use some work. Wood in lava could be an interesting surreal touch, but the cutoff pylons just sort of sticking in there look less than pleasing. The transparent layer 3 clouds are a nice touch, though.

+ Solid obstacles for the most part
+ Nice clouds
- Some clutter and unclarity
- Feels unpolished both in terms of design and æsthetics

Other: Including the last section was very magmanimous of you.
96th: Ruins of Icarus by Forty2
Koopster
DESIGN: 17/50
CREATIVITY: 17/30
AESTHETICS: 16/20
TOTAL SCORE: 50/100

This level's structure is very misleading at first. I don't like how there's that door blocked off that you can't access in the normal path. If you wanted to go for some "ruins" lore, you should've used a message or something.
This level is quite awkward to play, and that holds true especially if you're going for a dragon coin run. Having to reach platforms too high for the camera to see is a requirement for the second one, and that also becomes a running theme in the main path during the second half. The third dragon's spot is HARD to get back from. And the last two are some heavy item babysitting. The secret exit is a lowkey blind jump (and seems almost impossible to get back from) unless you have switches on.
The level is pretty unfocused, with a first half mostly based on pure platforming and hopping on things and a second half that's just waiting for spinjumpable enemies to line up with your needs. It's really dry and empty in actual obstacles amd it gets gradually worse - almost every single enemy of the second half is there just to make jumps performable.

lolyoshi
DESIGN: 29/50
CREATIVITY: 16/30
AESTHETICS: 12/20
TOTAL SCORE: 56/100

Although the structure of the level is strange and unusual, some of the platforming is rather
satisfying to play (more apparent in the second half). The design gets heavily decreased due to the
boring and bland wandering "puzzle" for the secret exit. It didn't help that there were red herrings.

Noivern
DESIGN: 28/50
CREATIVITY: 15/30
AESTHETICS: 11/20
TOTAL SCORE: 54/100

You can immediately die in the very beginning, as Mario's trajectory without holding any buttons will eventually cause him to fall in a pit. The first half felt a bit claustrophobic. The second half was good design, but way longer than it needed to be, and you didn't give the player enough time to explore. Couple that with the fact that the secret exit is a rather obscure bit of item babysitting, so if you waste time looking for the key and fail, you *will* run out of time.

Sinc-X
DESIGN: 10/50
CREATIVITY: 10/30
AESTHETICS: 13/20
TOTAL SCORE: 33/100

This level is more annoying than it is fun. Not only do you start it off by shoving a dead end in my face, but the actual navigation of the main part is both difficult and boring. I think there's more time spent waiting for things to align than actually moving, and even when you do get to move, many of the manouevres are too precise to be enjoyable. Surely it's possible to make a ruins level without making the player feel like a rock.

Rameau's Nephew
DESIGN: 18/50
CREATIVITY: 16/30
AESTHETICS: 13/20
TOTAL SCORE: 47/100

Starting with a cannon shot which hurls the player in to the abyss is perhaps not the most auspicious of beginnings, but unfortunately, it sort of sets the tone for what follows here. While the main path isn't -too- bad, it does seem to rely heavily on cheap tricks and expecting the player to know what's coming, especially in the first half. At first I was impressed by the fact that the level seemingly takes in to account/rewards the player's potential attempt to avoid the annoying Super Koopa bounce setup by going over the top, but I was a bit dismayed when I found out that not only was this was in fact the required path for the normal exit, but doing the annoying setup underneath legitimately would lead to what probably ends up being a dead end unless you're going for the secret exit, and even then only when certain conditions are fulfilled.

On that note, the secret exit is far too elaborate--in addition to requiring all the switch blocks be filled (side note--it would have been nice to provide easy switch access for judging purposes), it also requires one know to bring a shell to to the annoying Super Koopa setup, bring said shell, grab the P switch, take this much earlier in the level to get a key, and then bring the key to the end of the first have of the level, which feels like a bit of tedious running around. I can't help but think the level would be better off without it.

Concerning the visuals, the first half doesn't look bad by any means, but isn't all too distinctive, and the random blocks in inaccessible/barely accessible corners just seem strange. The second half, in contrast, looks legitimately cool; I don't think I've ever seen the castle rock FG decorations and clouds used in quite this manner, and ascending in to the dawn at the end is a very nice touch as well. Good job on this.

+ Neato graphics in the second half
- Some cheap setups especially in the first half
- Secret exit tediously elaborate

Other: I like how the level name stealthily suggests to the player that they'll be doing a lot of falling to their doom.
95th: Koopa Troopa Beach by Gamma V
Koopster
DESIGN: 24/50
CREATIVITY: 13/30
AESTHETICS: 15/20
TOTAL SCORE: 52/100

Really short level. The design feels really uninspired, as the obstacles don't vary and it's very easy to just jump over everything. There was certainly some potential with this "real and fake shells" gimmick that went almost completely unused (the fourth dragon coin is kinda cool, but that's it for the gimmick usage). The fact they're hard to tell apart was more of an annoyance than anything, as I got fooled a few times when trying to stand on real shells. The secret exit just feels pointless.

lolyoshi
DESIGN: 28/50
CREATIVITY: 14/30
AESTHETICS: 12/20
TOTAL SCORE: 54/100

Not anything substantial. Kind of underwhelming honestly. It's comes and goes without much
reasons to remember it.

Noivern
DESIGN: 20/50
CREATIVITY: 11/30
AESTHETICS: 13/20
TOTAL SCORE: 44/100

A short easy rompy level. It could have used a bit more length and sprite variety. The only thing creative about it is the solid shells scattered among the level, which is actually somewhat confusing because some of them use the standard sprite palettes. In fact, the level tries to use that to trick the player a few times. The aesthetic is great otherwise. The secret exit is just there.

Sinc-X
DESIGN: 22/50
CREATIVITY: 10/30
AESTHETICS: 11/20
TOTAL SCORE: 43/100

Gotta say right off the bat that I really don't like the use of the shells as tiles. It makes the level visually awkward and more annoying to play. From a design standpoint, it's alright, and doesn't have any huge flaws, but there isn't much to focus on and it doesn't offer much to actually think about.

Rameau's Nephew
DESIGN: 23/50
CREATIVITY: 12/30
AESTHETICS: 15/20
TOTAL SCORE: 50/100

It's an OK level. It looks reasonably nice. The fake shells are sort of confusing, especially when colored similarly to the real shells (I'm looking at you, goldenrod), but I think that was sort of the gimmick. It's a bit weirder that fully above-ground shells are solid and half-buried ones are not, though. Beyond that, there's not all that much to praise or criticize. The secret exit is basically just "go down a random pipe", but it's early on and easy to find, so it's painless. Maybe not necessary, but painless.

+ A pleasing looking beach.
- Pretty standard beach activities (if kicking your clothes at people is what you do on the beach).

Other: i guess since these are lying by the ocean they must be SEA SHELLS hahahahaha
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Re: Vanilla Level Design Contest X - OK still looking at 100th! To level or not to level...

Post by Mata Hari »

I'm pleased with how my level held up insofar as the timings of the ball-and-chain setups worked out pretty much as I would've wanted, when someone else is playing through your level at their own pace I don't think they always do. The cutoff is a bit unfortunate but considering I'd never actually used Lunar Magic before at all I don't think it was too bad! They're slagging off the palettes but I'm pretty sure they were exactly as I intended so there's no accounting for taste.

If there is a way to animate the fire in the background I don't know it.
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Re: Vanilla Level Design Contest X - OK still looking at 100th! To level or not to level...

Post by gbreeze »

On smwc, the categories for difficulty are broken down like so:

-Kaizo:light - possible without tools (and intended to be rta).
-Kaizo:hard - either impossible without tools or the author so clearly intended tool-use that not using them is miserable.
-Pit: abuses constant frame perfect tricks and usually requires more than just savestates (such as slowdown and frame advance).

There's a bit of a grey area between all 3, of course. Between kaizo:hard and pit, I like to think of kaizo hard as you're still playing the game normally, you're just using savestates. Pit hacks, on the other hand, really go hand-in-hand with TASes. Most of smwc agrees that the categories are in desperate need of renaming (among other things) and there's plans in the works rn to revamp a lot of the difficulty category stuff.

Also, I think the aesthetics/creativity contest could either be vanilla or allow asm, probably depends on what most people want. But it would still be different from cldc, in my opinion. Cldc mostly behaves similar to vldc in that the expectation is still on "gameplay" being a part of the level design, and level design is still the largest chunk of the score (which is the case in most contests). My understanding was that this contest would not even have a level design category.

Edit: I should mention that smwc goes into detail on this to be as descriptive as possible about the hack, not try to dictate how people choose to play; if a player chooses to play kaizo:light with savestates, they have every right to of course
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Re: Vanilla Level Design Contest X - OK still looking at 100th! To level or not to level...

Post by Veruchai »

Hmm, I prefered the theme and atmosphere of 'Lava You Lots' to the gameplay of 'Ruins of Icarus'; but can totally see ranking Ruins higher on an objective scale citing design. Things are super hard to put into numbers, tldr judging is hard.
Good levels though.

Interestingly that kaizo-lite level featured something I remember as being called a kaizo-gate.
Which I also believe was in the very first level of the first kaizo hack. Maybe? Memory is hard.
Anyway, with kaizo the first things I think of are kaizo-blocks and -traps which I think are now more troll and less kaizo despite the name.
Definitely different people think differently with classifications.

Ambureon wrote: 3 years ago idle thoughts and background knowledge
Thanks for sharing, this sort of extra info is fun to read.
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Re: Vanilla Level Design Contest X - OK still looking at 100th! To level or not to level...

Post by hyreforgling »

Oh hey, it's my level. I made Ruins of Icarus.

First, I'm happy raocow finally ended up playing and apparently enjoying something I made. I first started making SMW stuff over 10 years ago now (though I never actually finished a project), and have been on-and-off watching raocow videos for probably not as much over 10 years. The first VLDC I entered was the first one raocow skipped LPing (VLDC6 or something), which was a bit of a let-down for me at the time, and I think I was a lot happier with my level for that contest than my VLDCX level. But hey, we got there in the end.

Second, I wasn't altogether satisfied with how my level turned out, but at that point in my SMW hacking life I was pretty creatively and motivationally burnt out on SMW. "A castle in the sky, within a thunderstorm" was one single idea I had left over that I still wanted to make happen, and Ruins of Icarus is what I ended up with. From the sounds of things, I managed to convey the intended feel or atmosphere pretty well. Indeed, the level was supposed to feel slightly awkward and unnatural, unlike a normal Mario level with clearly defined paths and obstacles; maybe too meta of a design philosophy to appeal to most, but at the end of the day I was more or less making the level for myself. I wanted to give the player a sense of exploration, make them feel like they forged a path rather than presenting them with one to follow. I might have prioritised conveying that over actually making something simple and enjoyable for judges to play among over a hundred other levels, but I wouldn't say I regret it. Though watching the level played again after all this time, it feels a bit emptier than I remembered, particularly the second half. I probably didn't have to experience as much idling as the level author, though even during development I added the hopping flames to the design element pool because I realised it was lacking a bit of liveliness.

Other notes: Yoshi's Island 2 was replaced with a single screen containing the red and blue switches. I forgot to change the level name (apparently, I could've sworn I renamed it "Switches") but I mentioned it in a readme along with my actual submission, not realising most people would probably never see it.
I was fairly certain I tested the start of the level to ensure that not pressing anything got you sumo'd rather than sliding off to your death, which is a little more funky than what the judges seem to have experienced.
The secret exit doesn't exactly involve a fun or novel concept, so I'm fine with it being skipped; it probably dragged my scores down a little bit by existing. It and the dagadon placements were pretty much just for the whole "encouraging exploration" thing and offering extra challenges, so again I don't really regret it even if the execution could've been better. It doesn't actually require either of the switches activated though, there's a mace you can spinjump off of.

tl;dr: thanks for play, i don't hope i win
a.k.a. Forty2 on SMW Central
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Re: Vanilla Level Design Contest X - Finally we're past 100th! What if we made a lot o' boppos?

Post by Ashan »

I thought it was pretty cool that the first bit of Ruins of Icarus had you follow a short "obvious" path before you find out it's blocked off and you have to find another route. It's a natural little narrative that the player experiences instead of just being told "go over the temple because you can't go in."
But apparently the judges hated it cause it wasted their time or something, I don't know.

The second half also looked really fun to me. I kinda like those awkward-but-doable jumps because it feels like the level exists outside of just being made for Mario to progress through it, and that ties really nicely into the ruins theme. It's something Dark Souls does in its levels too, a lot of the time it seems like they started off by just designing an area that exists on its own and then later on add in ways for the player to progress through it.
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Re: Vanilla Level Design Contest X - OK still looking at 100th! To level or not to level...

Post by TiKi »

Ivy wrote: 3 years ago
TiKi wrote: 3 years ago 1. Vanilla
2. Choconilla/chocolate - Where it doesn't use only the vanilla game's assets, but they ARE all externally pre-made. That is to say, graphics/music ripped or composed, and ASM created by someone who isn't the hacker or on their team. There's still significant leeway in their usage (such as recoloring a tileset/background, using the Noob Boss in clever boss room setups...), but it definitely doesn't come off like just ANYTHING could happen, if you catch my drift. In other words, "everything chocolate in X category of the hack comes from SMWCentral".
I feel like there should be a 1.5 in between here where the VLDC rules would fit in (Tile merging, palette swaps, custom music, minimal patches, etc). Compare to 1.0 pure vanilla, a ruleset that restricts you to raw SMW assets for a situation like OLDC.
That's a very good point in regardless to the patches and graphics. Though as for music it just means that the contestants are allowed to have their music be at any point on the vanilla-chocolate scale. I was focusing more on quantifying the various categories that a hack has as chocolate or vanilla, not the hacks as a whole.
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Re: Vanilla Level Design Contest X - Finally we're past 100th! What if we made a lot o' boppos?

Post by Sugar »

93rd: Lofted Lifts by Galactaknight
Koopster
DESIGN: 19/50
CREATIVITY: 12/30
AESTHETICS: 13/20
TOTAL SCORE: 44/100

A badly constructed level and seemingly untested. Specially the line guided segments - they are very confusing, unpredictable, and even broken (like, two stances where segments that were meant to be played can be skipped entirely because you can just jump off to the ground). The regular platforming doesn't stand out and the level can get cramped when you decide to make split paths. The gimmick of chucks destroying the blocks doesn't go anywhere, at best the puzzles to get dragon coins just involve waiting and some awkward maneuvering (the last one is barely possible). The looks are kind of cute, but they can get overwhelming and distracting especially in half 2. Also I only found that trees are climbable by accident.

lolyoshi
DESIGN: 21/50
CREATIVITY: 18/30
AESTHETICS: 10/20
TOTAL SCORE: 49/100

Sometimes visually disorienting and confusing, and the whole design of the level is so unusual and
unpleasant that it's hard to play.

Noivern
DESIGN: 20/50
CREATIVITY: 17/30
AESTHETICS: 3/20
TOTAL SCORE: 40/100

The tileset is certainly creative, but doesn't really look that good. The animation in the second part of the level hurts my eyes and makes otherwise okay athletic gameplay hard to play through, and the animation dies when you get the goal.

Sinc-X
DESIGN: 29/50
CREATIVITY: 15/30
AESTHETICS: 13/20
TOTAL SCORE: 57/100

Pretty solid throughout. I like the use of the line guides for the most part, though a few spots are pretty unintuitive and/or precise. My main gripes are with some of your æsthetic decisions. The interiors of the igloos are really ugly and could definitely have been done better; there is also zero indication that you can climb on the trees. The biggest question I have though is why you decided to include the random fading to white in the last section--it's incredibly distracting and not nice to look at. The Chuck "puzzles" in the igloo are not enjoyable at all and probably should have been replaced with something else entirely. The rest of the level is mostly fine.

Rameau's Nephew
DESIGN: 22/50
CREATIVITY: 15/30
AESTHETICS: 18/20
TOTAL SCORE: 55/100

Firstly, it must be said that this level looks flipping amazing. The snow (falling and settled), the trees, the Freeze-Man-style ice fossils, the mountainy background, it all looks wonderful. My only issue is that it's sometimes difficult to tell what's solid and what's not; particularly the solid snowballs seem much more decorative than the non-solid igloo bricks (the bricks also look sort of weird and bathroom-tile-like, and form what in my opinion is the one flaw in an otherwise great visual appearance). Also, props for making a snow rather than and ice level, which means wonderful wintry æsthetics without the annoying ice physics.

As far as gameplay goes, the first half is solid enough, nothing too unusual, but in no way boring, and well put-together. In the second half the level starts forming more of a distinct identity, but it also starts makingmore serious missteps. For one, there's a certain lack of powerups despite the noticeable difficulty spike; the first and only one is several screens in and difficult to miss; if you take the "optimal" path on the line guides, you may well never know it was there in the first place. Secondly, there is no indication that climbing low on the rope life in the latter part of the level (which seems by far the safer and more logical choice) will hurl you into the abyss until it's far too late. Secondly, the obstacle proves quite annoying to do correctly, as there's little time to adjust appropriately to the second Fuzzy after avoiding the first one. The final obstacles are not bad in principle, but represent a continuation of the aforementioned difficulty spike, especially in connection with the dearth of powerups. Also, the white-out, while cool-looking, doesn't really seem to add much besides mildly obscuring the line guides, which is probably not a good thing. Most of the dragon coins are ridiculously elaborate to the point of seeming a touch silly. I'm not sure how the moon can be non-fatally retrieved at all.


+ A visual masterwork, bathroom tiles excepted.
+ Some interesting line guide bits.
- Large difficulty spike, lack of powerups and a few unfair setups in the second half.
- Dragon coins a bit kooky.

Other: Phun Phact: "Lift" and "loft" are basically the Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse versions of the same Proto-Germanic word, respectively.
93rd: Oriental Mountains by Samantha (Decoy Blimp)
Koopster
DESIGN: 26/50
CREATIVITY: 13/30
AESTHETICS: 13/20
TOTAL SCORE: 52/100

The level design is pretty bland. Sprites are very spread out and far apart from one another and they're used in very simple ways and are easy to just run over. There wasn't much going on in the first half and I didn't feel there was much point to the net and the platform ride in the second half cause nothing happened in them. The secret exit was extremely obvious and not very necessary. By the way I somehow got the platform to not spawn various times (including my first runs), not sure how you managed to run into sprite issues with SA-1 but you did...
Your attempt at making it feel oriental was cute, but I think the cave tileset doesn't fit with the bamboos lol. The deco could be more present and it needed a palette that fit better with everything else.

lolyoshi
DESIGN: 28/50
CREATIVITY: 18/30
AESTHETICS: 14/20
TOTAL SCORE: 60/100

While the themeing was cool, it lacked a focus in gameplay ideas, and overall just felt
underwhelming.

Noivern
DESIGN: 25/50
CREATIVITY: 12/30
AESTHETICS: 12/20
TOTAL SCORE: 49/100

Mmm… Lotuses and Pitchin' Chucks, my favorite combination. Really though, you don't do anything with the oriental theme; there's the thing at the beginning and at the end, and those tiny decorations, but that's it. You can't carry the whole theme with just the standard cave tileset. For the most part, the level is a standard romp (not necessarily bad, mind you). I really liked the Sumo Brother, and wish you had built on that some.

Now here's my main issue: key sprites don't spawn properly. The key initially didn't spawn for some reason, and then neither did the flying grey blocks. I managed to get the key to spawn but not the blocks, preventing me from getting the normal exit.

Sinc-X
DESIGN: 23/50
CREATIVITY: 10/30
AESTHETICS: 14/20
TOTAL SCORE: 47/100

This is a nice romp for the most part, but not much more than that. The first half is generally fine, though not notably interesting. The second half has some serious issues that kind of ruin it. For one, the sprites in this part have some serious trouble even spawning in the first place, and when the winged blocks finally do spawn, that section is completely uninteresting, to the point where I could pretty much put down the controller and wait for it to end. I wish you had just scrapped that entirely. By the way, though, that Sumo Bro is completely adorable, and I wish it made more of an appearance.

Rameau's Nephew
DESIGN: 18/50
CREATIVITY: 9/30
AESTHETICS: 10/20
TOTAL SCORE: 37/100

This level has a problem with sprites not spawning. Two rather significant ones, in fact: the key, and the flying platform. The first makes the message box seem weird, and the second makes them likely to hop headlong in to the abyss, not realizing there's supposed to be a platform there.

Beyond that, there's not a huge amount to the level. What's there isn't bad, but the level just isn't that exciting. The secret exit seems a bit perfunctory, and it's easy to get the key stuck on the 1F0 railing, which doesn't -really- need to be there in the first place.

Æsthetically, the torii look pretty snazzy, and the key animation is kinds neat, but the more I looked at the bamboo, the more it appeared to be constructed out of table legs. Beyond that, there's not too much to the East Asian theme. The flight at the end also looks strange with the background flying by at super-speed while the bamboo in the foreground clearly moves by much more slowly, betraying the actual speed of the platform. Its a bit cross-eye inducing.

+ Nice toriis
- Otherwise a little unexciting
- Sprite spawning issues

Other: I mean, you -can- make table legs out of bamboo, but generally it needs a little processing first...
92nd: Sky Mines by RussianMan + Pixel-Gon Gamer
Koopster
DESIGN: 39/50
CREATIVITY: 22/30
AESTHETICS: 12/20
TOTAL SCORE: 73/100

A short but pretty solid stage. The second half is a little slow and has a couple of segments that are hard to anticipate (first diggin' chuck rock and fourth dragon coin) and I feel it's not developed as much as the first and ends a bit too soon.

lolyoshi
DESIGN: 36/50
CREATIVITY: 19/30
AESTHETICS: 13/20
TOTAL SCORE: 68/100

Gameplay was engaging, but the execution was usually pretty sloppy.

Noivern
DESIGN: 15/50
CREATIVITY: 11/30
AESTHETICS: 7/20
TOTAL SCORE: 33/100

Both the level design and the aesthetics are just random. I didn't really get the "mine" feel that the name suggests. It's filled with unnessesarily tough jumps with a few cheap hits in the second half. It wasn't really fun.

Sinc-X
DESIGN: 7/50
CREATIVITY: 9/30
AESTHETICS: 6/20
TOTAL SCORE: 22/100

This level feels like it was made to be as dickish as possible. Almost every setup, especially with line guides, is either way too precise, completely counterintuitive, or both. There is no part of this level that I enjoyed playing whatsoever, and part of that also is due to the æsthetic--everything blends together, and it's often hard to even tell what is going on at all. I have to wonder if anyone but yourself playtested this, because anyone should be able to immediately notice how terribly the platforming is laid out.

Rameau's Nephew
DESIGN: 24/50
CREATIVITY: 16/30
AESTHETICS: 10/20
TOTAL SCORE: 50/100

This level feels a bit cluttered, both visually and in terms of design. Rocks are used to represent not only actual rocks, but also Fuzzies and background objects, which feels a touch confusing, and lots of elements overlap with one another, which feels even more confusing. This most strongly comes in to play with respect to the spikes overlapping with the ground--these don't -look- like they should hurt the player, but they do nonetheless. And this sort of arrangement occurs unfortunately frequently in the level.

Blocking-wise, this level seems designed around giving the player the minimal amount of let and breathing room possible. The (especially horizontal) room the player is given to work with in most obstacles is surprisingly limited, often in weird ways. This is particularly egregious in the second half of the level, where the player is often taken completely by surprise by setups with extremely little let, which often function in ways quite different from how they appear. Indeed, one of the first setups one is greeted with upon entering the line-guided section is a surprise rock to the face from above--due to the narrow platform, this rock would be tricky to dodge in the best of circumstances; if you don't know it's coming ahead of time, it's essentially impossible. A similar obstacle is repeated near the end of the section with more warning, but even less wiggle room; it is followed by a strange line guide which skirts the walls of a protruding land mass with spikes at the bottom (which will in turn skewer you if you don't preternaturally parse how Mario would interact with such a strange construction), which is then followed by a rock ceiling to the forehead if you don't predict the next platform to the right (which few likely will, concentrating instead on the previous obstacle. All in all, it's just too much, with too little room for the player to move around and take in things. Which is a shame, because if this level just generally granted the player a tile or two more space to move around in, it would actually be pretty good. Demanding perfect responses from the player is not really the way to go.

+ Would have some decent setups if the player were just given a little more breathing room
- Too geographically stingy and cluttered in terms of visuals and design.

Other: I did like the lone shovel randomly lodged in the dirt at one point. Like, one of the Chucks just decided that he has had -enough- of all this.
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Kilgamayan
Happy Birthday, Schwer
Posts: 1914
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Re: Vanilla Level Design Contest X - Finally we're past 100th! What if we made a lot o' boppos?

Post by Kilgamayan »

Eleven years after betrayal platforms, we finally get betrayal coins.
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Implo
Posts: 214
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Re: Vanilla Level Design Contest X - Finally we're past 100th! What if we made a lot o' boppos?

Post by Implo »

Kilgamayan wrote: 3 years ago Eleven years after betrayal platforms, we finally get betrayal coins.
You are incorrect here. If raocow would go hug right wall, then he would avoid getting hurt by a rock. That's what coins were indicating. And no, he wouldn't fall off platform.
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Kilgamayan
Happy Birthday, Schwer
Posts: 1914
Joined: 15 years ago
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Re: Vanilla Level Design Contest X - Finally we're past 100th! What if we made a lot o' boppos?

Post by Kilgamayan »

Hey, the video voice man claimed to be betrayed by the coins. I'm just repeating that.
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