Episode 2 Theme/Town Thread

[Hoeloe]

The player could be given like 100000 raocoins worth of currency after beating the normal game. This could be used to unlock stuff from the towns that has not yet been gotten at that point. The player can still get access to some of that bonus content early, if they have money for it.

I think it might be fun to get that as a reward for beating the post game, but that as an idea works, I think.

There should not be anything minor to worry about/unlock after beating the last level of the game. The postpostgame content should still probably be behind a leek barrier.

Well, it would be totally possible to unlock everything as you're playing the game. I always figured the reward for beating the game was the postgame, but the reward for beating the postgame is pretty much just... beating the postgame, generally. Might be nice to say "hey, you beat everything! Now have everything you missed!"

To be honest, I don't mind particularly. I just want to see this system in the game to give the towns more content, and to give raocoins a purpose.

[Lunikyuu]

I think giving raocoins more purpose would be a nice addition. Right now, I don't really feel like it's worth it to put raocoins in my levels because I feel like people will just ignore them due to the low reward, but I feel like having a collectable with less value than a leek, but more valuable than a powerup or life would be a nice thing for level designers to include for side areas and such.

[SAJewers]

To be honest, I'm against this idea.

[Doctor Shemp]

When thinking about adapting one of A2MT's extremely ambitious ideas, you should stop and remind yourself that A2MT was never finished, and there's a reason for that.

[Leet]

except its not really ambitious at all in this case... and there wont be any conflicts between pieces of 'asm'... and its different from what a2mt did... and a2mt didnt invent currency in a video game... and the reason a2mt wasnt finished had nothing to do with the dragon coins...

[Rixithechao]

I can respect Dr. Shemp's concern -- I'm practically the king of feature creep -- and SAJewers' disapproval. Like I said before, we have coin collection working but we don't have any shops or gates or anything working yet. There's still a lot to be done.

So how about this: instead of continuing to argue about it here, those of us interested should just go ahead and continue working on the system ourselves, then we set up a sample game with a town and a handful of approved levels. When the time comes we can put it to a vote, something like 3/5 majority for the system to be included. If we don't have a working product ready within a reasonable time it simply doesn't get implemented. Does that sound fair?

In the meantime, discussion here can continue on improving the towns regardless of a currency system. Sidequests, minigames, NPC dialogue, leek rewards, etc.

Ultimately, I think it'd be cool if A2XT were to have a currency system, but it's not the end of the world if it doesn't get included. There's no reason the stuff can't be used in other SMBX projects, right?

[SAJewers]

I'm not against it because of feature creep, I just think it's a bad idea.

[Rixithechao]

My apologies. You never said you did, it's just that you're the project manager and you voiced your disapproval twice now so I couldn't not acknowledge that. Let me go ahead and edit that bit for clarity.

[WestonSmith]

Quick Pro Vs. Con for Currency

Pros
+Adds more character/interest/flavour to towns
+Handy way to limit access to things like Life Farms and broken power-ups
+Alternate method of accessing levels (i.e. towns may have secondary exits requiring payment to access, leading to new routes on the map)
+Extra element of collection for those who enjoy such things

Cons
-Not every level will be built with coins in mind
-Hiding content via coins is effectively no different then hiding content via leeks
-Extra work to get running and testing
-Extra element of collection for those who dread such things

Ultimately, I think it comes down to this: what would currency add to the game that we can't achieve via leeks? The only thing that really comes to mind is accessing powerups or 1Ups in towns, since currency would put a limit on the number of times one could access them. An example would be that Town A has a mini-game to life farm in, but it costs 5 coins. If it was accessed via leeks, then the game could be played indefinitely. But then, lives are meaningless anyways (by and large), so that doesn't amount to much.

Really, it strikes me as more of a neat flavour element: would you rather each level hold 3 Collectible Leeks or 3 Collectible Coins? Not sure it's worth all the effort, but then I won't be the one putting the effort in, so what do I care?

Edit: One last thought. Coins COULD be used to access tips on getting leeks... effectively making them sort of meaningful, as a way to access the actually meaningful leeks. That might be the coolest use for them, though thrifty players would just quit/restart after reading the tip to avoid paying for them. So... blah!

[Leet]

sajewers why do you think its a bad idea

im not a super supporter myself (nor am i against it tho) so im not being like "um prove it nerd" but i think it would make sense if everyone gave more reasonings since ive seen mostly reasons as to why it should be there compared to the amount of the other

[Lunikyuu]

The reason I feel an extra currency would be helpful is that it kind of frustrates me that there's no sort of "middle ground" collectable between powerups/1ups, and leeks/secret exits. I mean I guess I could use a leek if I felt something warrants something more valuable than just a powerup, but I feel I might easily end up putting too many leeks in if that's the case.

e: maybe I'm overexaggerating the last part a bit, but it does kind of feel like there should be something to fill that value gap and that dragon coins would be the perfect things to do that if they had more purpose.

[Doctor Shemp]

I think it's a bad idea because

-Not every level will be built with coins in mind

I have no faith in anyone here, including myself, to build a level with a balanced number of coins in it without some sort of set number to aim for, which is restrictive. I have a feeling we'll see a lot of levels with no coins and a lot of levels that look like they could have come straight from NSMB 2 (i.e. a coin every space).

[Leet]

But we're doing it with raocoins, so every level will either have 0 or 5.

[Doctor Shemp]

Uh disregard my previous post

They're still hard to place intelligently though. And I only like collectathons if they're 3D and feature dragons.

[Leet]

And also they don't stay collected when you grab them so you could farm them if you really wanted, so it's (unfortunately, but also fortunately) not really a collectathon either (hence why I said this isn't what A2MT did)

Actually that right there is a problem, it would be easy to find an early game level to farm them instead of caring about the ones you're seeing in the harder levels. But whatever, I guess it's sorta up to the player to cheese it or not.

[Doctor Shemp]

Then my reaction changes to "eww, farming".

[Kil]

How about using lives as currency? That's a more interesting choice to make if you ask me, since they have a use and aren't just a grinding implement. Do I use these lives on short term powerups or do I save them so I don't game over?

[Leet]

That doesnt feel right to me

Like, it's one of those idea things that sounds interesting but doesn't necessarily actually feel that hypercool in the game itself

I can't come up with a good reason why though other than "they already have a purpose and raocoins dont"

[Kil]

Yes that's true. Personally I still think permanent dragon coins would be the coolest. Maybe someone should do a poll for all of this. I'm still hoping for a mostly normal game really above all.

[Zygl]

Actually that right there is a problem, it would be easy to find an early game level to farm them instead of caring about the ones you're seeing in the harder levels.

This. Farming raocoins promotes itself by virtue of being inherently the fastest way of getting enough raocoins for whatever thing you can't afford, provided it's a sufficiently large difference that you can't just get it in the next level or two. Plus it either completely ruins the balance of the prices of things or it's balanced with farming in mind, which is a pretty fantastic way to pull off the incredible feat of having your Mario game be crap because there's too much farming but I assume we want this to be a good game.

[Leet]

Well, in theory the prices for the rewards in the towns that are actually new content would be balanced around the amount of dragon coins of the levels in the world, so it wouldn't be "too much farming", it's just a way people can do it if they are Ultra Nerds

[Sturg]

So wait:

Are raocoins being spent and you no longer have them?
When you collect a raocoin does it disappear permanently?
If yes for both are raocoins just like leeks except for little small things on the side?

If we are doing this, in which I think there should be an actual demonstration with a mini-world and such, there's gonna be some huge balancing and messing with each level. That'll be fun.

Still, I'd like to see this gimmick in action before taking it to heart.

[Rixithechao]

Arright, don't mean to be rude or anything but the last page or two have mostly been re-explaining how the proposed currency system works. So to make sure everyone's on the same page, here's a quick FAQ on the current implementation as of this post:


1. The currency system uses raocoins (dragon coins). Not regular coins, not some other collectible.

2. The raocoins regenerate like normal, they DO NOT behave like they did in A2MT.

3. The raocoins you collect are only saved to your funds when you touch the midpoint or beat the level; if you die you lose the ones you've collected since you last entered the level/touched the midpoint.

4. Here are some things I proposed before to spend raocoins on. Additionally:

• Access to a monster zoo like in Yoshi's Island DS that shows off enemies in a safe environment
• Some kind of concept art or something if anyone has it lying around
• A basegame music jukebox
• Minigames, either for lives or leeks, but nothing that directly impacts other people's levels like powerups

5. A2XT's development is not organized enough to accomodate anything too crazy like permanent movement upgrades, equipment, buyable springboards/donut blocks, etc. Let's leave the physics & mechanics changes to the level creators and stick to just powerups and mounts for buyable power.

6. To avoid players wasting purchased powerups on levels, a "filter forecast" system has been proposed. Either an NPC/sign around the shops tells you which levels have powerup filters or this info is noted in the leek sanctuary. Alternatively, players purchase unlimited access to item generators.

7.

A lot of the system is already in place. It's minimal effort to actually implement it, which is why we're talking about it at all. Yeah, there's still a little to do implementing a basic shop, but the lua libraries that already exist have pretty much already done the difficult bits.

8. I've suggested we create an example game once the libraries are complete to see how the system works in execution and then vote on whether it should be included.

9. Both permanent and repeatable transactions are possible. You can choose to make it so that players have to pay one RC to gain permanent access to a minigame or charge them one RC per attempt.
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[Willhart]

If the player buys something in the towns, does this mean they have to pay the cost every time they want to access it? I was hoping that the payment would be required only once for some things. I'm pretty sure it would require some weird technology though, or placing the shops and other bonus content on separate parts of the ow (which would be pretty terrible idea).

Having near infinite money at the end can make it a bit more manageable, but I feel that loosing everything when leaving the town will still be not so great. Things like mini games and one time access to power-ups/mounts/library/cutscene would still probably work. Permanent changes should be avoided though, since there is no way to save them.

I still like the idea for rewarding the players for playing well and taking extra time collecting raocoins.

[Rixithechao]

Updated the post. LunaDLL's variable bank lets us keep track of variables between play sessions, so we can make event flags for one-time payments.