Make a Good Level 4 - The Underworld

[PSI Ninja]

I loved the presentation of the judge audition levels as a cute little mini-hack. It's nice to finally know the authors of these levels.

Mega Mole Bathhouse:

I thought this stage was pretty fun, it seems like the silly kind of thing you'd see in ASMT. No real complaints, except maybe needing to wait for things to time correctly if you miss the winged platform after the stretchy block setup. I actually didn't mind the funky colors.

Move Faster Pokey!!:

Like other "Kaizo: Light" levels, I had to savestate-practice to learn all of the timings. This was the only time during the entire contest I had to resort to this, and it's not the most fun way to experience a level. In order to minimize the occurrence of Pokey's fakeouts, I found it was best to execute the timings as soon as possible.

By the way, "Jupiter's" review of this level is what made me pretty sure the identity was xfix back when I was guessing who the judges were (because of the technical information that was provided). And also, xfix made a Shoutbox post about playing the audition levels, which narrowed it down.

[KobaBeach]

idol called me "a candy ass bitch" [paraphrased] for using savestates on move faster pokey and that's very funny because so did xfix

im mercury :)
i was gonna be a robot before takeuchi's editor cockblocked her

For the sake of transparency, off the top of my head:
lava -> first level
bathhouse -> romp
pokey -> overly hard
athletic -> traditional
ninji -> gimmick

I think my fave was In-Season Athletic, though Ninji Citadel was up there. Athletic just reminded me a lot of lolyoshi and rextep's level design style which I vibe super hard with and guess what so does Heraga

so cockman 7 eh

[Mata Hari]

Speaking of Pokeys moving faster, Horror of Lava feels a lot like the non-Kaizo levels ProtonJon would play back in the day

[camwoodstock]

honestly raocow notes a "make a bad level" would probably veer in the direction of kaizo but, on the contrary, i feel like the winning levels WOULDN'T be kaizo, by the sheer principal that there exist people who actually Enjoy playing kaizo levels. even like the worst and hardest and least enjoyable kaizo levels, there's always That Guy (and it's usually the very designer of it) who is like "I want this to be Harder, actually." a level like Horror of Lava is hilarious in part because, aside from its few kaizo traps like the fake softlock, it's comedically over incredibly fast because it's so effortless, to the point where the lava simply is very literally a recolored layer 3 water you can swim through and don't get hurt by.

also that being said, if anyone ever wants to organize a mabl (make a bad level), hit us up we wanna enter it

[Emral]

there was a "qldc" (questionable ldc) on smwcentral last year, which is kind of like a yump level design contest i recall... at least that seems like what it was aiming for. i don't think i've seen the results, however, so i'm not sure how it turned out.

[ultratowel112]

That sounds terrible, but in an awesome way. Maybe the most awesome way? Since we are going a little off-book anyway, we could then call them hacks and open it up to 1-3 levels (with a "reasonable to complete everything in about 20 minutes" clause). We would have to put a 3 in the title so people knew the upper limit.

M.A.T.H 3

[Catabo]

Coming soon: I Love My Single-Shot Guy!, the new romantic comedy in which a plumber falls in love with a plant!

Enemies that jump when you jump look like a lot of fun and I'd love to see them as a staple enemy in a full game.

I think it's telling of how much of a fun journey MAGL4 was that it's done nothing but make me excited about more SMW. Levels like these really remind one about what's possible in this game. Congratulations, well done, etc to everyone involved, and double congrats to gameguy!

[PSI Ninja]

That sounds terrible, but in an awesome way. Maybe the most awesome way? Since we are going a little off-book anyway, we could then call them hacks and open it up to 1-3 levels (with a "reasonable to complete everything in about 20 minutes" clause). We would have to put a 3 in the title so people knew the upper limit.

M.A.T.H 3

The first M.A.T.H. contest was way back in 2009. So I guess that makes it the first "bad" SMW level design contest ever, across both SMWC and the Talkhaus? It would be interesting to revive this contest in the modern day, and to see some "well-designed" bad levels. And by that I mean, they don't just resort to being overly difficult or unfair, devolve into enemy spam, or have garbage tiles everywhere.

My thoughts on the final three judge audition levels to cap things off.

Horror of Lava:

This kind of feels like the first half of the first half of a level. Until I read the reviews, I didn't notice the glitched Porcupuffer near the beginning of the level, and the potential softlock with the P-Switch.

In-Season Athletic:

This was also my favorite level out of the five. I thought it was really fun, and it felt like an athletic level that FPI would make in a TSRP game (again, dated comparison). The fast-moving mushroom scale platforms were an interesting twist. It felt like they served a dual purpose of being less tedious to wait around for them to sink, and to make some setups a bit harder, too.

Ninji Citadel:

Another fun level. I think I cared for the autoscroller section a bit less than the first part, due to having to wait a set amount of time to get back to where you were if you died. That's a problem with autoscrollers in general, though. The setups where you had to maneuver the Ninji at the top of screen, and Mario at the bottom of the screen at the same time were really cool.

And with that, that wraps up MaGL4! The idea of a "MaGL4" has been thrown around for quite a few years, so I'm happy that I happened to be around to witness it finally becoming a reality. Congratulations to the organizers for all their hard work in setting up the rules, creating the judge audition levels, and making the medals, the judges for taking the time to score and write detailed, helpful reviews of all the levels, and Koba for getting the ball rolling in the first place. And of course, congrats to everyone who submitted an entry, because without them, there would've been no contest to begin with. With 33 entries (35 individuals), it seems like interest in SMW hacking is not dead on the Talkhaus after all. I think what we can learn from this is, as long as a SMW hacking opportunity presents itself here, people will show up and deliver.

[JupiHornet]

Horror of Lava is one of the funniest levels I've ever seen

[KobaBeach]

The first M.A.T.H. contest was way back in 2009. So I guess that makes it the first "bad" SMW level design contest ever, across both SMWC and the Talkhaus? It would be interesting to revive this contest in the modern day, and to see some "well-designed" bad levels. And by that I mean, they don't just resort to being overly difficult or unfair, devolve into enemy spam, or have garbage tiles everywhere.

qldc 2 (except it came first)

stares at the yoshi cape flight glitch lustfully

[Lord Ruby]

This was a lot of fun! I'll be looking forward to future SMW things. Even though we ended up not making judge levels, I actually had an idea for one, maybe I'll make it a reality for that collab that may or may not be coming.

Ah, but now my work on MaGL4 is done. Time to ... hm ... fade back into obscurity...? I'll be watching, though.

maRs540-3.png (684.32 KiB) Viewed 1168 times

[KobaBeach]

Ah, but now my work on MaGL4 is done. Time to ... hm ... fade back into obscurity...? I'll be watching, though.

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