Chocolatey Shenanigans! - SMWC's Chocolate Level Contest

[Kristian]

Besides, you folks need to realize there this is still ranked near the bottom. Most of the levels before 15th were average, at best. The really good stuff comes later.

Damnit, I placed 16th. Oh well, I guess you could say that mine was the best average level.

[Fireyblaze]

That still means that my amateur-hour thing is chocolater then like a third of the contestants!

Well. you have played multiple hacks in your day. You have seen first hand what makes hacks good and what doesn't, so you have a pretty good idea what you can do.

[Daarkbuu]

Personally, I don't think this level should have ranked this high. It's not bad at all, but It seems like it would fit a little better a couple of spots down.

[GauRocks]

Today is the middle lever of the soft serve machine at a buffet that only provides plates, not bowls.

Half of what you get is chocolate, but the other half is vanilla, and the presentation isn't very appealing. Plus, it's going to melt all over the place if you don't eat it fast enough. It's chocolately, but you're never going to ask for it when you want chocolate.

[flameofdoubt]

This may be obvious but just in case: I'm pretty sure podobo and invisible enemy silliness is due to sprite limits. Oddly somtimes instead of not loading the sprite the sprite will be just invisible or have tiles missing (the circular saws (grinders?) are a good example of this). It may be the case that an invisible enemy is just an enemy where the tiles didn't load at all. Either the guy never applied the sprite limits patch and then accidentally went over the limit, or he applied it and it may be on the wrong setting, or heck just on the right setting but messing up because sprite limits just sometimes do.

I thought today's level was nice looking but it felt really very short. This is probably due to the fact that to wring the most out of the one level limit almost all the hackers so far have made as huge levels as possible. Whenever i try and hack i know the length of levels is always an odd issue though anyway. Levels are generally much longer or shorter than they look in Lunar Magic, and how long i expect the "average" level to be is for some reason about 3 times as long as the average original super mario world level. This is probably due to watching all these hacks with huge levels.

I'm really liking some of the stuff that's come up in the contest so far. Other things i agonise over because of asmt, but i can't wait to see what's higher.

[Kristian]

Anyone else notice the OW was a thing?

Anyways, raocow, you should reset the game or something when you die in the intro message screen. It can glitch up some stuff while you're playing.

The level was once again, solid, with a few errors.

[yoshicookiezeus]

Anyways, raocow, you should reset the game or something when you die in the intro message screen. It can glitch up some stuff while you're playing.

No, it won't. The life counter will wrap around to P4 or something like that if you die enough times to get it past 0, but then the game just returns you to the title screen after you get the message too appear. The worst thing that can happen gameplay-wise is that you start out with less lives than the normal five.

[kilon]

Apart from some sprite issues this was a very enjoyable level. It wasn't outstanding, but if I play such a level midway through a hack, I'm happy.

[Kristian]

No, it won't. The life counter will wrap around to P4 or something like that if you die enough times to get it past 0, but then the game just returns you to the title screen after you get the message too appear. The worst thing that can happen gameplay-wise is that you start out with less lives than the normal five.

Ooooh. I knew it was bad to die in the intro screen, but I never really knew why..

[Yugge]

I must say I enjoyed the Zybourne Clock reference there at the end :D

[Muncher]

I can't wait until you get to the final ones.
They will bring you pain ^^

[raocow]

Tomorrow's video has reached peak 'I just don't know what to say about this.' And it's from a forum guy too, which makes me sad!

[Alex-R]

You pretty much always seem to be more or less "speechless" when playing those kind of levels, just saying.

[Caracc]

Normally this is where I'd post an oversized awesome smiley.

In all seriousness, I had no idea that anyone (let alone raocow) would be Let's Playing through these levels (particularly blind). Pardon my construction of a level that leaves very little to say about it.

I did warn you all.

Oh, assuming you only played through it once and didn't ramble too much, you really ought to break your pattern and post the video today as a bonus of sorts.

Only if you didn't make it drag on, of course.

[raocow]

I played through it twice, so it makes for about five minutes. I like to have it as a full 'episode' if only to surprise those like me who are not in the know.

[flameofdoubt]

Have...have i misunderstood the contest or something? There's absolutely nothing wrong with vanilla levels but surely they just shouldn't be present in a "chocolate" contest, let alone position 20 of 33ish?

EDIT: Someone in the know told me how it came to be known as the "chocolate" contest, i hereby retract the above statement and replace it with something about today's level being somewhat...lacking.

[Kristian]

You know, raocow hit it dead on today. The one guy, who placed really high with a vanilla level, SyStemkraSh, was it? He basically said he wanted to see how his vanilla level would compete against everyone else's chocolate levels. It was a great level, too.

Looking at the results again, it may not have been SyStem, he placed one ahead of me. But yeah, a lot of people HAVE the ability to use custom graphics, but wanted to enter on pure level design.

[AirPump]

I personally liked today's level a lot. It was straightforward, yet would probably catch you off-guard if you started getting lazy.

[FPzero]

I liked the colored climbing koopas. I remember doing that in a hack I never release but instead with the flying turtles.

[StarkMaximum]

A Vanilla level placing high in a contest for Chocolate levels is like a picture winning a writing contest. I don't care how damn good it is, it's not fair to the others.

[kilon]

But wasn't it actually an 'Anything goes'-contest? Meaning it can be as chocolate as chocolate can be or just pure vanilla.

With that said, I'm honestly amazed this is ranked so relatively high. The level design wasn't appealing to me at all and although everything worked, I think at least 5 earlier levels where better. Ah well, most ranks where pretty close together anyway.

[FPzero]

kilon's right, it was an "Anything Goes" contest. If you wanted to enter with a vanilla entry, you could and the judges would judge your level appropriately. There wasn't a separate category for vanilla vs chocolate, so if you chose vanilla you knew what you were getting into.

[GauRocks]

Today is vanilla with a drop of blue and yellow food coloring on top.

There is nothing to say about today's chocolate content, because it was completely insignificant and contributed nothing except "more colorful" to plain vanilla. Even the eye-searing first level wasn't this vanilla.

[Daarkbuu]

Well....at least it looked somewhat fun in my opinion. Not much else to say about it though.

[Kristian]

I don't care what anyone said, about the length or anything.

I loved this level.