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Episode 2 Theme/Town Thread

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SAJewers
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Re: Episode 2 Theme/Town Thread

Post by SAJewers »

Sorry, by "working version", i meant a finished product. Passwords were only a thing in ASMBXT once everything regarding it was 100% done. Cutscenes in A2XTEp1 were not going happen until they were 100% done, and people were ready to move on without them.

If you want to continue with what you guys are working on right now, we can do that for just this time, since shaman hasn't really been around to enforce this, and I may have not been clear when talking about this before, but I want to wholly avoid this in the future; the spot we're in is exactly the thing almost everyone said we should never be in. I would just prefer this gets done ASAP. If you have to modify something, then consider it.
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Re: Episode 2 Theme/Town Thread

Post by Hoeloe »

SAJewers wrote: If you want to continue with what you guys are working on right now, we can do that for just this time, since shaman hasn't really been around to enforce this, and I may have not been clear when talking about this before, but I want to wholly avoid this in the future; the spot we're in is exactly the thing almost everyone said we should never be in. I would just prefer this gets done ASAP. If you have to modify something, then consider it.
I get the feeling we're not in the sort of spot you seem to think we are. Things are moving slowly, yes, but that's actually a lot to do with factors outside this matter. For one thing, I've been really struggling to find time and energy to do much on the pieces I'm working on (and I know similar things are true of other people too). CinematX was implemented and working in earlier levels, but has since needed a thorough rewriting because of changes to LunaLua and is now only partially complete. It's also got a lot to do with 2.0, as a lot of the people who would otherwise be working on A2XT are putting their time into the 2.0 update, meaning that not a lot of work is going into A2XT right now.

I think a lot of the current problems could be solved by defining a solid feature set for the game, and a guide for how towns should be laid out (how shops should function, how quest elements should work, etc. ). This I think would let more people get on with what they're doing. This may be worth discussing in the Skype group, to work out exactly what we're going to do.

A2XT isn't in trouble at the moment, it just needs a little guidance to keep it on track, nothing major.
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Re: Episode 2 Theme/Town Thread

Post by SAJewers »

No, pretty much everything you said is what people wanted to avoid.
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Re: Episode 2 Theme/Town Thread

Post by Rixithechao »

The cinematX rewrite is not going to be for Ep. 2. The version for Ep. 2 is mostly finalized aside from some bugfixes and merging features from one version of the source to another.

The conversation's moved on from the quest levels, but to be absolutely clear, the intent for those was that all of them would all be made after the quests were decided, which, the way I figured at the time, would likely be after the remaining regular slots were filled; the first already being made was just a dumb, backwards attempt at being pragmatic, details under the below spoiler.

Get Schooled (yes, that's the name of the level, it's a lazy fish pun, can be changed if necessary) came about from a combination of fiddling with the camera, autoscrolling and paralX. My first thought was "this could be used in Ep. 2. Do we have any 5-1 slots left?" We didn't. Then, "maybe I can put this toward a different area of Ep. 2", and instead being logical and thinking about how I could change it to fit one of the other worlds, I jumped to "if I made this in a day, I can make more. Maybe instead of just proposing ideas like the quest levels, I should put my money where my mouth is and offer to do them when the time comes."

I am fully willing to change the level to fit a regular slot if it'll work for any, and I will not be making any further levels for specific out-of-scope placement while there are still slots to fill or otherwise pressing the issue.
sedron wrote:Okay so this thread is kind of a mess and I have no idea what's expected of me at the moment. So I have two main questions.

1) What elements are expected to be in the town? I would like a concise list so I know exactly what buildings and such are requires (shops, etc.)

More importantly, at least for Fluffi and I...

2) Are we actually expected to use CinematX or anything other than Vanilla? I asked for the town spot, what, a year and a half ago under the assumption that I'd be using basically vanilla SMBX. I have no desire to put the time into learning anything outside of vanilla. I have too much on my plate as is to justify doing that. If this is an issue, I'm likely gonna have to relinquish my spot. Fluffi also doesn't want to touch CinematX.
There's going to be some lua involved, but how much and whether cinematX in particular will be used seems to be up in the air at the moment. The best way to approach it at this point would probably be to do the vanilla stuff in a manner that can accommodate added lua but will work without it, then depending on what lua-based features make the cut we'll collaborate with y'all to get the code side implemented.

For the features we'd been planning we have this post as well as this post and the following posts on that page to use as guidelines. Some other notes:

For shop inclusion:
- The leek sanctuary's insertion will be mostly automated, so you can just set aside a section and include a storefront (whether that be a full building or just a door/warp/pipe with space for a sign nearby). Same goes for the catllama stables, though a stable may not even be necessary if the majority of levels in the world filter out catllamas.
- For powerup and costume shops, give them their own section(s) with a bit of space for the blocks/other purchasing objects, and a flexible enough layout to expand or shrink the space if necessary.
- If you want to do unique variations like a run-down leek sanctuary or combo shops like outdoor markets/bazaars, department stores, etc., those kinds of things can be arranged but the space/layouts need to be planned accordingly
- Plan for things that can take the place of the storefronts/shops, just in case

Also ideal, but not strictly required and/or are currently uncertain:
- A minigame: can be done through mostly vanilla means, let us know if you need lua written for things like scorekeeping or rewards.
- Sidequests: preferably 2 or 3 per world. Will be triggered and ended via interacting with specific NPCs/objects, use a placeholder collectible for the reward. The activities can be done through vanilla event/layer shenanigans and we'll handle the progress tracking, lua-specific rewards and other code stuff.
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Re: Episode 2 Theme/Town Thread

Post by Hoeloe »

SAJewers wrote:No, pretty much everything you said is what people wanted to avoid.
Sure? But my point is that the CAUSE isn't related to A2XT's system so much as everything else that's going on around it.

Regardless, as I've said many times, the best way to combat this isn't to just slap a deadline on things - that's a surefire way to end up with a broken mess like A2MT was.

Instead, we just need to clarify what's actually happening, as I think there's a bit of general confusion as to what the plan is. Rocky's post is a good start on that, but if anything is unclear there, then we can expand on it.
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Re: Episode 2 Theme/Town Thread

Post by freakin whatzit »

hey, i know i have nothing to do with this project, but having followed both this and a2mt, i can definitely tell that this project isn't even remotely going the way a2mt did. a2mt's situation was that all the talented people simply lost interest because management (and more to the point, direction) kept changing. meanwhile, a2xt's situation is that most of the talented people are preoccupied with other things, but they're still interested. sometimes, situations beyond their control make things slow down.

anyway, i don't think just changing direction and telling everyone to stop working on what they are is going to make things better. it'll just cause them to be demoralized and then they really will lose interest. changing direction so far in development has a way of doing that.
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Re: Episode 2 Theme/Town Thread

Post by Hoeloe »

freakin whatzit wrote:hey, i know i have nothing to do with this project, but having followed both this and a2mt, i can definitely tell that this project isn't even remotely going the way a2mt did. a2mt's situation was that all the talented people simply lost interest because management (and more to the point, direction) kept changing. meanwhile, a2xt's situation is that most of the talented people are preoccupied with other things, but they're still interested. sometimes, situations beyond their control make things slow down.

anyway, i don't think just changing direction and telling everyone to stop working on what they are is going to make things better. it'll just cause them to be demoralized and then they really will lose interest. changing direction so far in development has a way of doing that.
This was a way more succinct way of saying what I've been trying to get across. Apologies for being so loquacious, I'm pretty tired and it's hard to get my thoughts straight.
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Re: Episode 2 Theme/Town Thread

Post by SAJewers »

Hoeloe wrote:
SAJewers wrote:No, pretty much everything you said is what people wanted to avoid.
Sure? But my point is that the CAUSE isn't related to A2XT's system so much as everything else that's going on around it.
The cause may not be related to the system, but that doesn't change the fact that we're sorta in a spot that people agreed on from the start we shouldn't be in.
freakin whatzit wrote:hey, i know i have nothing to do with this project, but having followed both this and a2mt, i can definitely tell that this project isn't even remotely going the way a2mt did. a2mt's situation was that all the talented people simply lost interest because management (and more to the point, direction) kept changing. meanwhile, a2xt's situation is that most of the talented people are preoccupied with other things, but they're still interested. sometimes, situations beyond their control make things slow down.

anyway, i don't think just changing direction and telling everyone to stop working on what they are is going to make things better. it'll just cause them to be demoralized and then they really will lose interest. changing direction so far in development has a way of doing that.
I wouldn't say we're changing direction, moreso trying to enforce something that we agreed on from the start, which is that nothing should be set in stone as part of the game until it is 100% finished. The reasoning for that was not because of fears of ending up like A2MT, but because we wanted to be the exact opposite of A2MT in everything we did: no claiming of anything, no theoretical ideas, just what people happen to make and use.
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Re: Episode 2 Theme/Town Thread

Post by Hoeloe »

SAJewers wrote: I wouldn't say we're changing direction, moreso trying to enforce something that we agreed on from the start, which is that nothing should be set in stone as part of the game until it is 100% finished. The reasoning for that was not because of fears of ending up like A2MT, but because we wanted to be the exact opposite of A2MT in everything we did: no claiming of anything, no theoretical ideas, just what people happen to make and use.
Except that's a REALLY dangerous design philosophy. Sure, it's definitely worth leaving it open towards the start of development, but you literally cannot do that at this point. Take quests for example, as those are a current topic of discussion. At the moment quests are sort of a "eh, maybe?" thing, but I have a semi-complete one in the works in the W3 town. The trouble with this is that, because no-one knows whether they're actually going to be there or not, no-one is making them because they don't want to waste the work if they're just going to be cut. And having just one quest in the game will really break the flow.

Leaving things open when there's little plan or knowledge of how things will go is one thing, not planning the final stages of a project is how you kill it utterly. I didn't want to play this card, but I literally work in game development. I work with this sort of thing every day, and PLEASE believe me that you CANNOT make a game by saying "eh, just throw it in when it's done". If we don't lock features, saying: "no, this is what we are working towards", EVEN IF THEY HAVE TO BE CUT LATER, you will just end up expanding the scope as people try to make all sorts of stuff, because there's no plan as to what they SHOULD be working on.

This mentality is why there's a new feature suggestion every other day, and why nothing seems to be getting done - there's no aim, there's no notion of what "done" is. A project NEEDS that in order to work.

Also, you keep saying that "everyone agreed", but the start of development was a long time ago. Different people are working on it now, and with a much different design philosophy from the one that was set out at the end of Ep1. From what I've seen, most people seem to be in agreement that we need some sort of structure, rather than just blindly creating and slapping it together arbitrarily.
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Re: Episode 2 Theme/Town Thread

Post by SAJewers »

Hoeloe wrote: At the moment quests are sort of a "eh, maybe?" thing, but I have a semi-complete one in the works in the W3 town. The trouble with this is that, because no-one knows whether they're actually going to be there or not, no-one is making them because they don't want to waste the work if they're just going to be cut. And having just one quest in the game will really break the flow.
And that's why agreed on what we agreed on. If someone had an idea, they needed to make it first, then people could decide to make things around it if they so desired.

The problem is that ideas were accepted before someone had actually made the thing up and got it in people's hands, and that's what I want to avoid in the future. I'm fine with letting this slide now, but I want to try and make sure this doesn't happen again in the future, because that's not what we agreed to do.
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Re: Episode 2 Theme/Town Thread

Post by Hoeloe »

SAJewers wrote: The problem is that ideas were accepted before someone had actually made the thing up and got it in people's hands, and that's what I want to avoid in the future. I'm fine with letting this slide now, but I want to try and make sure this doesn't happen again in the future, because that's not what we agreed to do.
But... this isn't what happened at all. All the features we have planned have at least some implementation, and the problem isn't that ideas were tacked on without implementation, but that there was no PLAN for how everything should be put together, because no-one has drawn one up yet. All the features have some form of implementation, and the very reason they were agreed upon before being finished was to allow people to do things like make towns before, for example, all the leek pillar sanctuary code was completely in place. The problem is that there was never a resource to tell people how to account for these features when making their content (for this example, towns should leave a section free for the leek pillar sanctuary).

The problem with the philosophy of "make it first, then let other people make stuff around it" is that a lot of these require some pretty complex code to work. They WILL work, but the implementation is very intricate and lengthy. I for one wouldn't have wanted to stall all the level designs to wait for the raocoin counter to be completely finished, for example, but rather have a basic and cursory implementation in place, and let it be finished and fixed while other things are happening.

Also, you keep saying "we agreed", but literally NO-ONE I have spoken to, other than you, has ever agreed to this. The development team for episode 2 has changed a lot since the start, and I know I certainly didn't agree to it, and most of the other major developers have no clue what you're referring to, from what I've seen on the Skype chat.
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Re: Episode 2 Theme/Town Thread

Post by SAJewers »

Hoeloe wrote:
SAJewers wrote: The problem is that ideas were accepted before someone had actually made the thing up and got it in people's hands, and that's what I want to avoid in the future. I'm fine with letting this slide now, but I want to try and make sure this doesn't happen again in the future, because that's not what we agreed to do.
But... this isn't what happened at all. All the features we have planned have at least some implementation, and the problem isn't that ideas were tacked on without implementation, but that there was no PLAN for how everything should be put together.

Also, you keep saying "we agreed", but literally NO-ONE I have spoken to, other than you, has ever agreed to this. The development team for episode 2 has changed a lot since the start, and I know I certainly didn't agree to it, and most of the other major developers have no clue what you're referring to, from what I've seen on the Skype chat.
This was a thing that was decided/agreed on back during ASMBXT, and people felt should continue moving forward for all of A2XT.

As for plan, unless I"m misunderstanding you, it should be that someone makes it, and then people work with that person to implement that idea, if they so desire, in a way that both people are ok with.
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Re: Episode 2 Theme/Town Thread

Post by Hoeloe »

SAJewers wrote: This was a thing that was decided/agreed on back during ASMBXT, and people felt should continue moving forward for all of A2XT.
And this is my problem. You have to remember that there are almost NO members of that development team left working on the project. The design philosophy is VERY different now from what it was then, and agreements made there stopped being valid once it was decided, months ago, to replace the story and design teams with new people.
SAJewers wrote: As for plan, unless I"m misunderstanding you, it should be that someone makes it, and then people work with that person to implement that idea, if they so desire, in a way that both people are ok with.
Essentially all we need to do is decide on the key features of the game (things like quests, collectible cards, etc.), then agree that these and only these are what will be implemented in the final game. Then, once we have a feature set, we can set up a structure for towns (such as containing 1-2 quests, 2-3 cards, etc. ), and with that in place, we then have a guideline for how to build the remaining pieces of the game that are missing, which can be posted up in an easy-to-locate place on the forums.

The issue at the moment is simply that no-one knows what to do, especially when it comes to towns, so people are just doing nothing. A solid plan is needed to give some direction and, importantly, give an indication as to what "done" is, rather than imposing an arbitrary deadline like ep1 did, which is arguably one of the major reasons it ended up being such a mess.
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Re: Episode 2 Theme/Town Thread

Post by Rixithechao »

Something else of note, going forward we'll mostly be refining the current tech rather than continuing to add to it. cinematX has pretty much hit the ceiling in terms of functionality, the rewrite and future versions will be focused on aesthetic improvements and making that existing functionality more organized and user-friendly.

If what we've been working on for Ep. 2 is received well, we'll have established a framework/formula that we can work within, we'll have existing implementations of the tech to use as starting points, and overall things should go a lot smoother for Ep. 3 and 4. If not, we do things differently or scale back.
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Re: Episode 2 Theme/Town Thread

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Hoeloe wrote:
SAJewers wrote: This was a thing that was decided/agreed on back during ASMBXT, and people felt should continue moving forward for all of A2XT.
And this is my problem. You have to remember that there are almost NO members of that development team left working on the project. The design philosophy is VERY different now from what it was then, and agreements made there stopped being valid once it was decided, months ago, to replace the story and design teams with new people.
See, that's my problem as well. Even though most of the people working on Ep2 is different than in Ep1, that should have stayed as one of the core mantras of the project.
Hoeloe wrote:
SAJewers wrote: As for plan, unless I"m misunderstanding you, it should be that someone makes it, and then people work with that person to implement that idea, if they so desire, in a way that both people are ok with.
Essentially all we need to do is decide on the key features of the game (things like quests, collectible cards, etc.), then agree that these and only these are what will be implemented in the final game. Then, once we have a feature set, we can set up a structure for towns (such as containing 1-2 quests, 2-3 cards, etc. ), and with that in place, we then have a guideline for how to build the remaining pieces of the game that are missing, which can be posted up in an easy-to-locate place on the forums.

The issue at the moment is simply that no-one knows what to do, especially when it comes to towns, so people are just doing nothing. A solid plan is needed to give some direction and, importantly, give an indication as to what "done" is, rather than imposing an arbitrary deadline like ep1 did, which is arguably one of the major reasons it ended up being such a mess.
That should have been done months ago?

Really, I would say just go with what rocky posted earlier, that sounds fine.
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Re: Episode 2 Theme/Town Thread

Post by Hoeloe »

SAJewers wrote: See, that's my problem as well. Even though most of the people working on Ep2 is different than in Ep1, that should have stayed as one of the core mantras of the project.
Well, it may be a little bit harsh of me to say, but the dev team for episode 2 has so far proven itself to be vastly more competent than the one for episode 1, and consisting of people with a lot more experience. I'd rather that the people working on it now come to their own agreement, rather than relying on one made by a different development team who made a project that ended up messy and rushed (episode 1), which is exactly what happened some months ago.
SAJewers wrote:That should have been done months ago?

Really, I would say just go with what rocky posted earlier, that sounds fine.
I agree. It should have been done earlier, and the fact that it wasn't is the only problem, it's nothing to do with the development structure, just communication. What Rocky posted earlier has been a sort of informal plan for a while, but it hadn't been formalised and posted on the forums.
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Re: Episode 2 Theme/Town Thread

Post by ano0maly »

Like freakin whatzit I kind of stumbled into this thread, but there's one thing I want to say, about just making an ASMT/ASMBXT again.

talkhaus has made an ASMT... how many times now? ASMT, ASMBXT, and part 1 of A2XT. Do we really need another rehash of the same old ASMT? ASMT and ASMBXT were created back when the collaborators were yet inexperienced in making an official talkhaus project, and when the tools were more limited or when people had more limited use of more advanced features. The impression given by A2XT was made quite clear by raocow: this is no longer just an amateur collection of raocow-fan levels, but an indie-ish fangame you can download and play. I don't think we need to backtrack on what A2XT Episode 1 accomplished.

From what I see, I think it's agreeable to have both a feature-lock and some soft deadlines on certain things.

As for the sidequests, the way I feel is if we have those short levels now, or even concrete ideas planned out for them already, those could become these sidequests. But suddenly making brand new levels just for the sake of having sidequests seems like last-minute additions to me.
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Re: Episode 2 Theme/Town Thread

Post by SAJewers »

Hoeloe wrote:
SAJewers wrote: See, that's my problem as well. Even though most of the people working on Ep2 is different than in Ep1, that should have stayed as one of the core mantras of the project.
Well, it may be a little bit harsh of me to say, but the dev team for episode 2 has so far proven itself to be vastly more competent than the one for episode 1, and consisting of people with a lot more experience. I'd rather that the people working on it now come to their own agreement, rather than relying on one made by a different development team who made a project that ended up messy and rushed (episode 1), which is exactly what happened some months ago.
It wasn't because of that, it was because people like Septentrion and Dr Shemp insisted on making the Ep1 the best SMBX thing ever to vindicate themselves, and show up people like MrDeePay who though the talkhaus could never actually make something good, while Darkychao and Demolition kept stalling and being secretive about their work. This despite people saying that ASMBXT was fine, and we just needed to do the same thing, but higher quality levels, and an OW; some who left the project because of it. Those guys didn't want that mantra, despite the objections of others, and they won out, even though most wanted that to stay.

ASMBXT failed where it did because everyone was unsure of things, such as difficulty and testing, what things in levels should change. A2XT Ep1 failed where it did because Some people wanted to prove others wrong.
ano0maly wrote:The impression given by A2XT was made quite clear by raocow: this is no longer just an amateur collection of raocow-fan levels, but an indie-ish fangame you can download and play.
That's really only because guys like Septentrion and Shemp wanted it to be that way, with most being ok with "ASMBXT, but better".
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Re: Episode 2 Theme/Town Thread

Post by Hoeloe »

SAJewers wrote:
ano0maly wrote:The impression given by A2XT was made quite clear by raocow: this is no longer just an amateur collection of raocow-fan levels, but an indie-ish fangame you can download and play.
That's really only because guys like Septentrion and Shemp wanted it to be that way, with most being ok with "ASMBXT, but better".
I don't know where you get "most" from, but literally no-one I've spoken to prefers that idea to making a coherent game out of it.

This is a pointless discussion anyway. Most of the extra content that make it more of a game is already implemented, it just needs some proper organisation to make sure it's properly utilised. This doesn't mean restricting anyone's creations, just that people talk to each other and discuss their ideas as they're making them, rather than working in isolation.
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Re: Episode 2 Theme/Town Thread

Post by SAJewers »

Hoeloe wrote:
SAJewers wrote:
ano0maly wrote:The impression given by A2XT was made quite clear by raocow: this is no longer just an amateur collection of raocow-fan levels, but an indie-ish fangame you can download and play.
That's really only because guys like Septentrion and Shemp wanted it to be that way, with most being ok with "ASMBXT, but better".
I don't know where you get "most" from, but literally no-one I've spoken to prefers that idea to making a coherent game out of it.
Most of the people who were around during the start of Ep1 development.
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Hoeloe
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Re: Episode 2 Theme/Town Thread

Post by Hoeloe »

SAJewers wrote: Most of the people who were around during the start of Ep1 development.
Who are no longer relevant because they've contributed next to nothing to episode 2. Ep 2 had a big restructuring a few months ago after MAGLX2, when the development really kicked off, and a lot of things changed then because of the new people working on it.

Can we please work with what the current development team have been working towards, not what a past development team for a different project thought they might do?

In any case, I need sleep. The development team over on the Skype group have been working pretty well towards a shared goal, which is not just "ASMBXT but more polished", and trying to change that now will just make everything collapse.
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Re: Episode 2 Theme/Town Thread

Post by SAJewers »

No no, what I'm saying was the impression of professional indie game in Ep1 was because of a few people who insisted on having that way in order to shows others up, despite people in the discussion thread for Ep1 mostly saying that we should aim for mostly the same thing as ASMBXT, but better. That's why A2XT Ep1 is what it is.
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Re: Episode 2 Theme/Town Thread

Post by Hoeloe »

SAJewers wrote:No no, what I'm saying was the impression of professional indie game in Ep1 was because of a few people who insisted on having that way in order to shows others up, despite people in the discussion thread for Ep1 mostly saying that we should aim for mostly the same thing as ASMBXT, but better.
Ah. I see. However, when the new development team came in for episode 2, the discussion gravitated towards "professional standard indie game" not to show people up, but because new tools were appearing (like LunaLua and PGE) that made it achievable, and people were excited to see the possibilities of a project that really makes good use of it. I think that is what has been worked towards, and it's worked out pretty well for the most part. I think it may have swayed people's views that it was approached from a more positive angle, and also that the tools were clearly there that made it a plausible goal.
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Re: Episode 2 Theme/Town Thread

Post by ano0maly »

SAJewers wrote:No no, what I'm saying was the impression of professional indie game in Ep1 was because of a few people who insisted on having that way in order to shows others up, despite people in the discussion thread for Ep1 mostly saying that we should aim for mostly the same thing as ASMBXT, but better. That's why A2XT Ep1 is what it is.
But it ended up being better quality and better received anyway, despite those things being the intentions for the result. So why not keep that standard?
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Re: Episode 2 Theme/Town Thread

Post by freakin whatzit »

i, for one, am as interested in this game as i am because it's more than just some silly levels thrown together for raocow. obviously, the people working on cutscenes, towns, new mechanics, and the like think so too, or else they wouldn't be making these things in the first place. i don't see how this is a bad thing.

whether episode 1 was supposed to be 'professional indie game' or not has no bearing on this, because this isn't episode 1. it ended up being a good idea for episode 1 and episode 2 and things have been working out extremely well for this project.
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