VIP and Wall and ALASKA MIX 5: It's not 99%

[vgboy]

The diamonds in the credits separate the names from the 2ch IDs. Magikoopa/Georges Nagaoka's blast says "warosu," which is another form of "lol" that could be likened to "lawl" or "lulz" or etcetera.

And yeah, Marara is meant to be... that. 2ch is silly.

[S.N.N.]

but there wasn't really any place in the plot to put it, so they kinda shoved it in the final battle, editing the plot a bit. Of course, if this isn't what happened, I'd like to know what did, this is just kinda what I assumed.

this is pretty much exactly what happened.

this is pretty much exactly what happens with every tech-intensive boss on the ROM hacking scene too because lol plot/continuity (see: ASMT's Rumia, SMWCP's Toadsworth, VIP5's Julius, every single boss in Brutal Mario, etc.)

[Dollop of Mayo]

Spoilering not because of spoilers but because of length. tl;dr ahead

Because part of the "challenge" of JRPG bosses is whittling your patience and will to beat the game just by having an overly long, drawn-out battle.

Programmer nostalgia takes a back seat to good game design, I guess!

I've never had that issue with JRPG bosses, except on rare occasions (Destiny of an Emperor and Breath of Fire 1 spring to mind most readily).

I do agree with programmer nostalgia ruining things. The lack of understanding that the reason behind some of the awful things you had to do in NES games was due to simple cartridge space limitations. Artificially extending gameplay because cartridges were EXPENSIVE to manufacture thus meaning you had to justify paying $40-50 for a game back in the 80s so you'd better make it last a long time!

I never did play Final Fantasy Adventure, lacking a Game Boy when it was contemporary, and general lack of interest in playing it later down the line when emulation was possible, but it sounds dreadful.

Y'know, some of the posts here make me wonder: just how DO you adequately punish the player for failure? ...

...The line has to be drawn somewhere, so what do you guys think?

Repetition is something that is going to happen in video games, period. What is reasonable as far as repetition goes is a matter of degrees.

Here's some things I don't need when I die :

1 . Do not make me watch the same unskippable cut scene before resuming the task. I've seen it before, don't need to see it again. Final Fantasy X, as much as I love the game, had a couple of hard fights (inb4 everybody says that they beat the game at level 1 with their eyes closed in 2 hours) and those fights had 2-3 minute unskippable cut scenes. That doesn't sound like much. But take into account load times and repeating the fight 3-5 times and well, now you see the issue. Not to mention the time spent in the fights which could be 5-10 minutes apiece. Adds up quick.

2 . Do not make me play a huge chunk of a level over again, especially when a lot of the level is easy save for one big challenging spot. Again, maybe I'm only spending 1-3 minutes per attempt but these add up and make time seem to pass much more slowly, and I'm playing a video game to ENJOY it, and if I'm NOT, you have failed as a game designer, especially if there was INITIAL enjoyment, but it has now worn away due to repetition. Why should I have to prove that I can do the same pixel perfect jump over and over again just to get to the NEXT pixel perfect jump that I can't do yet and have to start all the way over?

3 . Don't make me guess. I don't need you to spell things out for me in plain methodical language, but I also don't need to be confronted with a boss where you can't tell if what you're doing is the correct thing to do. This is particularly an issue in a lot of Mario hacks with custom bosses. They make a noise like they were affected but, well, they weren't, and you have no way of knowing. There weren't any message blocks giving you hints or explaining the fight. You just have to figure it out and sometimes with logic that defies the engine you programmed the fight for.

In a good game you KNOW if what you're doing is working. When you bonk Bowser on the head with a... whatever those turtle robots are that he spits at you, you KNOW you did some damage. He has a different animation and he will start changing tactics and eventually, well, he'll die. Conversely, if you're not making progress; say if you toss a turtle at his clown car thing, nothing happens. He doesn't make a different sound or act like he was hurt when he wasn't.

---

I Wanna Be the Guy is a great example of how to do things. It's hard, yes. Brutally hard, even. But when you die, you start over on the SAME SCREEN you died on. Not 5 screens back. You don't have to do anything but try it again.

I realize in SMW hacks implementing such things has been difficult until recently, since I guess multi-checkpoints are pretty new. So compromise with it. Don't make your levels gigantic. The original SMW had levels that were beatable in under a minute usually, even near the end of the game. If you failed you lost very little progress.

If you need to make a huge level, do it with lots of checkpoints now that it can be done. Realize that old games were the way they were because of LIMITATIONS, not DESIGN CHOICES. If you're making design choices based on limitations, you are limiting yourself and the player.

[Oracle of Wuffing]

Fishin' Lakitu / Tsuri Morara~ / Trolling Morara ["Tsuri" can mean "fishing" or "baiting" (in the sense of a deceiving thread title or the like)]

And trolling can be used in the same way! *The more you know!*

I've never had that issue with JRPG bosses, except on rare occasions (Destiny of an Emperor and Breath of Fire 1 spring to mind most readily).

A few other examples would be FFII (The one on the Famicom), where the last boss has twice as much HP as some of his midbosses, or Dragon Warrior III, where there's like four enemies in the entire game that have over 600 HP and the final boss goes over 1000. Of course, the former has an exploitable damage mechanic the game tells you about, but only sissies use that strategy. FFI would be the classic example (double HP of the last boss you fought and can recover all lost HP), but that guy loses a lot of his majesty in the hindsight of knowing how broken certain game mechanics are.

<_< And also that whole genre and era had the same limitation of "lose to the final boss, you need to play the entire final dungeon from the start all over again," too.

[RobinLSL]

Absolutely, because raocow doesn't like it, and we all know that raocow is a god and whatever he doesn't like other people automatically have to not like.

I don't really get why the fact that I happen to have the same opinion as raocow regarding one particular boss (on which pretty much everyone agrees too) make you react so agressively.

[heycallmeZe]

Absolutely, because raocow doesn't like it, and we all know that raocow is a god and whatever he doesn't like other people automatically have to not like.

I played Julius long before raocow got to him and I hated him then. None of my opinions are formed by what raocow thinks; I play the game ahead of him and form my own opinions.

Yeah, and the point is pretty clear here: Not everyone will like this boss, and if they don't, these are probably the reasons.

The same logic could apply with SoulEye's player levels on VVVVVV. Clearly, he shows some amazing technical skill, using the player editor to make a near complete mod. However, he seems more interested in these technical feats than making his levels fun to play (Kind of the point I made in the VVVVVV thread last night).

When you have games more interested in displaying technical prowess of the machine they're on than actual fun gameplay mechanics (*cough*Crysis*cough*), then you got problems.

[vgboy]

And trolling can be used in the same way! *The more you know!*

Well, yeah, I knew that, which is why I went with "Trolling." I was basically just pointing out the pun, just in case.

[CrispyMWHC]

I Wanna Be the Guy is a great example of how to do things. It's hard, yes. Brutally hard, even. But when you die, you start over on the SAME SCREEN you died on. Not 5 screens back. You don't have to do anything but try it again.

Are you sure you don't mean Super Meat Boy? Because even on easy mode IWBTG doesn't have a save point per screen. I agree with your point, though.

On topic, I can't wait to see how the special world goes, especially since

Tannisinn has some really cool looking gimmics.

[Test Pilot Monkey]

I'm glad that switch room didn't turn out as bad as that VIP4 level.

[freelop]

Someone should add wind to that switch room, I bet that would be a fair challenge.

[morsel/morceau]

Thank heavens that must surely have to be the very last level to feature on/off block-related shenanigans.

Wow. Wrong again.

But, whew! This has to be the absolutely final time those on/off blocks are an issue. Has to be.

[Paragraph]

In what way were they an issue?

The previous usage of them was only bad because of the ridiculous auto-scroll; both in the switch room and in the one before. One too fast, one too slow. That the difficulty came through switches you had to press at the right moment didn't matter at all; it could have been dodging enemies that were flying in, precise jumps over small platforms or whatnot. It was memorization gameplay at its cruelest, with one wrong twitch of the finger sending you to your doom, the switches were in no way integral.

I completely understand that raocow got nervous when he saw them, but as he said in the video, today's switches were most of the time nothing more than glorified munchers...better comparison, a lava-ceiling.

Simon

[LordAlexander]

Is raocow playing a different version of Vip 5? I got it shortly after it was released, and when I fought Julius he had a few extra tricks up his sleeve.

One extra light ball during the sword phase, icicles during phase 2, and a 3rd form

[kilon]

Is raocow playing a different version of Vip 5? I got it shortly after it was released, and when I fought Julius he had a few extra tricks up his sleeve.

One extra light ball during the sword phase, icicles during phase 2, and a 3rd form

You've got an older version.

[Davvic]

Was the title today a reference to something?I feel like its a cat planet quote. Or the name of some level from another hack.

Am I just crazy?

[Ashan]

Okay. Haven't posted in here a while, and now that I'm finally posting, it's something that's kinda irrelevant at this point, and even if it WAS relevant, it's kinda useless... I'll cut to the chase...
I found a way to save a few seconds on "It's All Systematic".

[Rameau's Nephew]

"The world is filled with mysteries, and a lot of them are kind of dumb." Words to live by, if ever I've heard any.

Also, I've stepped on tofu before, and it is decidedly non-bouncy. It just sort of compresses and stays that way. Not the world's biggest go-getter, that bean curd.

[peteyboo]

Was the title today a reference to something?I feel like its a cat planet quote. Or the name of some level from another hack.

Am I just crazy?

It's probably a reference to "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner".

Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

[Ashan]

I found a way to save a few seconds on "It's All Systematic".

I found an even faster way a few weeks ago. I'll upload the video sometime next week.

Okay. What's your YouTube account? I think I'm already subscribed to you, but I just want to make sure.

[Slit08]

raocow seemed to be in a really bad mood in today's video since he wasn't as happy as in the previous parts. That's a shame. :(

[Ashan]

How come in today's video, at 10:08, he has 37 lives and no dragon coins in the castle, and then at 10:11 he has 55 lives and the dragon coins in the castle? What was with the cut?

[raocow]

I used a different savestate to return to the beginning of the castle to do the early rooms, and continued with that one to do the second half. WHen that part was done, before setting out to the special world I reverted back to my 'normal' state.

[Argumentable]

You lack confidence in places where you need it most

Also you should take everybody who made a stupid meme reference into today's video's comments, say all their names at the start of the next video, then say "Fuck you" in the meanest and sincerest way possible (I don't think you can actually muster this)

[morsel/morceau]

(I don't think you can actually muster this)

Well, I didn't think he'd knock through that spike room in one clean shot. Better be prepared for anything now.

[Argumentable]

Also you should take everybody who made a stupid meme reference into today's video's comments, say all their names at the start of the next video, then say "Fuck you" in the meanest and sincerest way possible (I don't think you can actually muster this)

This sounds like a challenge.

It's a mod challenge, I will ban him if he fails