Episode 2 Level Review and Testing Discussion

[Oddwrath]

I've changed Bat An Eye a little bit(the length is slightly smaller, with a huge emphasis of slightly), but I'm not going to do anything else, until I see WestonSmith's video on it, just to be safe.
Also, a little fun factoid about the level: originally, the second section was going to be vertical. As in ascent. And that was before the bats were on "don't move". That is no longer the case, for obvious reasons.

[SAJewers]

Demo's Journey Through Time:




No real problems with it, aside from a few nitpicky things.

[Hoeloe]

Demo's Journey Through Time:




No real problems with it, aside from a few nitpicky things.

So you can get past all the hands pretty easily by spinjumping on them, even the ones that are really awkward to jump over.

There was a boo and a bat that seemed to cause problems, and I can do something about those.

"Artefacts" isn't actually spelled wrong, it's just using the UK spelling.

The falling stuff doesn't let you swim in it primarily to keep things consistent. There are some areas that could potentially break if they let you swim in it, so I kept everything the same throughout the level (You don't pass any of those areas in a standard run, but it's feasible to do some backtracking and trickery to reach them).

Oh, also, you can make that jump near the end. It's difficult, but it is possible. It would net you a raocoin.

[Willhart]

The Eighth Dimension

I like the background, the song used and the first area of the level. Enemy placement had much variety and there was floor to stand on.

The second half feels way harder than the first half. There are some very precise jumps after the midpoint and enemy spam near the end of the level. There could be some better powerups to help the player get past those enemies, or you could tone them down.

The tight jump with the rotodisk before the midpoint looks to be impossible while small. Maybe place an extra platform below it.

[momo]

I like the background, the song used and the first area of the level. Enemy placement had much variety and there was floor to stand on.

The second half feels way harder than the first half. There are some very precise jumps after the midpoint and enemy spam near the end of the level. There could be some better powerups to help the player get past those enemies, or you could tone them down.

The tight jump with the rotodisk before the midpoint looks to be impossible while small. Maybe place an extra platform below it.

Yeah I was thinking of toning down the second section, especially the enemy spam in the end that I threw together in two minutes because I ran out of ideas at the time.

[ztarwuff]

sedron's Entropy Engine:

This is a neat concept. Very atmospheric. It's challenging, but perhaps a bit too much. The problems I have are as follows:

1. SMBX Physics are just slippery. So one-tiled jumps so near the beginning is just plain mean.
2. I personally think the Love Frog's platform is too high. raocow tends to get very wary around Love Frogs, with good reason. It'll make a player hesitate, which of course, is not what is required there as the player needs to bounce off the Mr Rabbit in order to get to that platform in the first place.
3. That Catnip is next to useless. I've tried twelve times to get it, only to fail spectacularly.
4. Bringing in a blue Yoshi obviously allows the player to cheat, but given how difficult it is, you should let a player do that.
5. The way the layer suddenly changes direction can be really harsh. Combined with SMBX's natural slipperiness, it adds more difficulty than is necessary. Perhaps you could get the layer to slow down before changing directions, so the player knows that the direction is going to change?

Willhart's Grassy Paint:

I have no idea what I'm supposed to do in this level to get anywhere.

[Wohlstand]

Gravity Falls - Ztarwuff

Ha, I'm know why you have invisible sprites with my editor: You just used white masks where are "transparencies", stupid VB 'AND' draw algorithm, it can't do TRUE transparency, because it instead alpha-blending check boolean from mask where pixel should be drawn or skiped. Also it eating much CPU power.
PGE uses TRUE transparency with alpha-blending of sprites (masks and source images merging while level loading). Mask is always a map of inverted alpha-channel (0...255) values [0 - solid image, 255 - transparent, between 0 and 255 - semi-transparency image]. You can fix it with filling masks of gray color.

I was turned some graphics into PNG and was manually made transparent pieces. After I applied to them a PNG2GIFs tool to make right masks. Other masks I filled with light gray color.

There are a fixed sprites with it's PNG's:
http://engine.wohlnet.ru/docs/_files_fo ... ed_gfx.zip

There are a result screenshots (in the PGE Editor, Engine and in the SMBX)
http://engine.wohlnet.ru/docs/_files_fo ... creens.zip

But if you will use real alpha-channel as-is without calibrating to SMBX, you can have this view:
http://engine.wohlnet.ru/docs/_files_fo ... rAlpha.zip
but same in the SMBX same sprites will have less transparency level.

[ztarwuff]

Gravity Falls - Ztarwuff

Ha, I'm know why you have invisible sprites with my editor: You just used white masks where are "transparencies", stupid VB 'AND' draw algorithm, it can't do TRUE transparency, because it instead alpha-blending check boolean from mask where pixel should be drawn or skiped. Also it eating much CPU power.
PGE uses TRUE transparency with alpha-blending of sprites (masks and source images merging while level loading). Mask is always a map of inverted alpha-channel (0...255) values [0 - solid image, 255 - transparent, between 0 and 255 - semi-transparency image]. You can fix it with filling masks of gray color.

I was turned some graphics into PNG and was manually made transparent pieces. After I applied to them a PNG2GIFs tool to make right masks. Other masks I filled with light gray color.

There are a fixed sprites with it's PNG's:
http://engine.wohlnet.ru/docs/_files_fo ... ed_gfx.zip

There are a result screenshots (in the PGE Editor, Engine and in the SMBX)
http://engine.wohlnet.ru/docs/_files_fo ... creens.zip

But if you will use real alpha-channel as-is without calibrating to SMBX, you can have this view:
http://engine.wohlnet.ru/docs/_files_fo ... rAlpha.zip
but same in the SMBX same sprites will have less transparency level.

So that's why my level lags sometimes? Good to know. Except your graphics have a weird overlay problem and some of them are too dark. I can see it in your screenshots. Would making the masks even lighter cause a problem? How white does the mask have to be before the system starts eating up CPU power?

[Wohlstand]

So that's why my level lags sometimes? Good to know. Except your graphics have a weird overlay problem and some of them are too dark. I can see it in your screenshots. Would making the masks even lighter cause a problem? How white does the mask have to be before the system starts eating up CPU power?

"Too dark", because level of alpha-channel is too small (nearly to 0). I made them because here is need to correctly display in the SMBX, but if I will make level of alpha-channel too large, SMBX will display this sprite solid without transparency.
"overlay", because alpha-bleding process giving you a summary color of: background color and all colors of semi-transparent layers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_compositing

You can look about my experiment with transparency level in the SMBX:
http://engine.wohlnet.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=158
1) testing of dependency of sprite transparency to brightness of background
2) testing of all transparency levels: from 0 to 255
3) demo of than functions which draw in the SMBX and example of Alpha-blending function which merging masked image into RGBA image.

I mean eating CPU for a this raster method in general: instead of once generating RGBA image into memory to draw them each loop, it making unmasking EACH loop (Also, RAM space eating in 2X more, because masks stores into RAM like regular images too). PGE doing unmasking of images once into memory and render uses alpha-blending while draw to screen.

But I have idea to make implementation of VB's unmasking algorithm to solve conflicts with SMBX's lazily masks, and I will add flag into "view" menu which you can enable to make simulation of VB 'And' Algorithm, and when you will reload level, RGBA graphics will be like SMBX-drew which will be useful for SMBX'ers which uses semi-transparent graphics or lots of lazily-made graphics. (also I will update my graphics tools to add than methods too)

[Willhart]

Willhart's Grassy Paint:

I have no idea what I'm supposed to do in this level to get anywhere.

Thanks, but I'm not submitting that level. You can find all the levels that have been submitted to the episode 2 from this page: http://asmbxt.wikia.com/wiki/A2MBXT_Levels/Episode2

It'd be nice if someone reviewed my level "Dark Prince" if they have time. I'm mostly interested about possible lag issues and the boss fight at the end. Download link

[ztarwuff]

Willhart's Grassy Paint:

I have no idea what I'm supposed to do in this level to get anywhere.

Thanks, but I'm not submitting that level. You can find all the levels that have been submitted to the episode 2 from this page: http://asmbxt.wikia.com/wiki/A2MBXT_Levels/Episode2

It'd be nice if someone reviewed my level "Dark Prince" if they have time. I'm mostly interested about possible lag issues and the boss fight at the end. Download link

I see... Well, let's put it this way. I hvaen't even scratched the surface of that particular level, but I'm kind of getting this strobing effect with the red solid areas. It's the same kind of effect you get when you view a recording of an old CRT monitor. Happens when I'm moving. It's not that easy on the eyes, especially given the colour scheme.

Honestly, haven't you heard of Virtual Boy?

As for the boss fight:

At first, it felt like some kind of onslaught of hands. I was doing my best to survive, but nothing was happening. Eventually, I got tired and died.

Third time round, I don't know what happened. The fight progressed onto the next stage, but I had no idea why.

[Willhart]

I see... Well, let's put it this way. I hvaen't even scratched the surface of that particular level, but I'm kind of getting this strobing effect with the red solid areas. It's the same kind of effect you get when you view a recording of an old CRT monitor. Happens when I'm moving. It's not that easy on the eyes, especially given the colour scheme.

Honestly, haven't you heard of Virtual Boy?

As for the boss fight:

At first, it felt like some kind of onslaught of hands. I was doing my best to survive, but nothing was happening. Eventually, I got tired and died.

Third time round, I don't know what happened. The fight progressed onto the next stage, but I had no idea why.

Thanks for the quick review.

Some of the hands are weakpoints. They need to be destroyed in order to get to the next phase of the fight. I'll have to make them more obvious, maybe with some yellow or something.

I have heard about virtual boy. The dithering pixels don't flicker for me at all though. Even when moving, they just blend into slightly darker hue of red. Were you playing on full screen, or maybe the graphics just work differently on some monitors? I probably can't do much to fix this, since it is important part of the gimmick.

[ztarwuff]

Thanks for the quick review.

I have heard about virtual boy.

Oh geez. Sorry about that. I only just realised how aggressive that came off. Sorry for sounding so rude. That was merely a jokey sentence. Hope you didn't take that the wrong way.

Some of the hands are weakpoints. They need to be destroyed in order to get to the next phase of the fight. I'll have to make them more obvious, maybe with some yellow or something.

Or you could have eyes in the back of the hands. If you can fit them in there, that is.

The dithering pixels don't flicker for me at all though. Even when moving, they just blend into slightly darker hue of red. Were you playing on full screen, or maybe the graphics just work differently on some monitors? I probably can't do much to fix this, since it is important part of the gimmick.

Playing on a 1920 x 1080 resolution 21.5" HDMI HP2159m monitor. I wasn't using full screen.

I can't help but notice you're using the exact same kind of white mask transparency that I used in before Wohlstand suggested that was a bad thing to do. Perhaps the mask is the problem? I don't know. It's hard to say. Anyway, it's not a huge problem, I hope. It's just, I worry it could cause eye strain in some players, that's all.

[Willhart]

Oh geez. Sorry about that. I only just realised how aggressive that came off. Sorry for sounding so rude. That was merely a jokey sentence. Hope you didn't take that the wrong way.

No problem. It was a pretty good example. I did see the flickering on another monitor when I tried it too.

I can't help but notice you're using the exact same kind of white mask transparency that I used in before Wohlstand suggested that was a bad thing to do. Perhaps the mask is the problem? I don't know. It's hard to say. Anyway, it's not a huge problem, I hope. It's just, I worry it could cause eye strain in some players, that's all.

White masks are essential for making the lighting effect. Almost same colors will look completely different when placed under a tile with white mask. It turns only some tiles bright red. The flickering happens due to a large area of 1x1 pixels alternating. I can probably reduce them from the room after the midpoint pretty significantly. I also tried to replace all the red color with green just for fun, but that seemed to make the flickering worse.

The eye idea is good. I'll probably use that when I go and replace some of the other sprites too.

[ztarwuff]

Oh, I forgot to mention one other thing. There's a typo in the second half.

Feed says "Good thing there is no curce of the maze". It should be "curse".

Also...

I'm not sure whether we should cater for people stupid enough to do it, but I could kill the genie with the jellyfish, thus making it impossible to get to the door. Would it be a good idea to attach the genie to a platform that protects it?

[WestonSmith]

My ability to stick to any sort of schedule is shoddy at best (Bat An Eye / Tiny Level Reviews).

Ignore my stating its a live review. I'm dumb.

EDIT: Tried out a custom background. This one is stolen from Google Search, and may not be ideal, but its closer to what I think this level's bg could/should look like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oL3WRHD ... e=youtu.be

[Voltgloss]

Just a note apologizing for my recent absence - real life consumed a significantly larger portion of my time the last couple of months, but as we get into and past the holidays I expect to have more time to get back into reviewing and posting feedback for this. Thanks all.

[Willhart]

I made a video of the latest version of my level "Dark Prince". I might consider making video reviews for other people too.

[Sturg]

Holy crap that light gimmick is one of the coolest things I've seen in a long time.

[SAJewers]

I really hope guys like pholtos start doing level reviews again.

[momo]

Willhart is a wizard.

[Willhart]

Willhart is a wizard.

Thank you. I've been saving that idea for a while.

In an attempt to make reviewing easier, I added all of the levels that have been submitted so far into the same folder. It's missing some levels that had broken download links or did not follow the folder hierarchy. I've send PMs to the makers of these levels, so that the issues can be fixed. I'll try to keep the levels up to date. The accepted with changes levels are not included either, since most of them did not follow the guidelines.

Download link for possible episode 2 levels:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/h8ya1 ... ls+ep2.zip

[Oddwrath]

My ability to stick to any sort of schedule is shoddy at best (Bat An Eye / Tiny Level Reviews).

Ignore my stating its a live review. I'm dumb.

EDIT: Tried out a custom background. This one is stolen from Google Search, and may not be ideal, but its closer to what I think this level's bg could/should look like.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oL3WRHD ... e=youtu.be

Bat An Eye
-I've replaced the pencil spikes with smb3 spikes. Not all of them, but the ones on the platforms have been replaced.
-The bullet jump is gone and is replaced by much simpler bat jump.
-Yeah, that bit at the beginning of section 2 was a mistake. Fixed.
-I'll try to do something with the background, but I can't promise anything. If I have to, I'll just recolour a smb3 cave background dark grey and use that instead. Then again, I'm pretty sure that's unnecessary, as most people would not be looking at the background while playing this level, but at the positions of the bats. Having the background being generic means less distractions.
-Bananasnake at the end is gone.
The Tiniest Castle
-I've noticed that while you were playing that not all switches were showing whether you've hit them or not in the rooms themselves. Fixed.
-As much as a "tiny level in every world" is a good idea, I can't do it, because this is a collab project. I doubt that 8 small speedrun levels in every world would be allowed, unless I get other people to do them. Furthermore, that would mean I'd have to do some retheming for this level to make it more of a "World 1" level.

I'll upload the (hopefully)final versions later, when my computer is not being a dumb.

[Mabel]

http://www.twitch.tv/dipperscheeks

gonna play a few levels, come on in.

edit: and done : )

[Hoeloe]

http://www.twitch.tv/dipperscheeks

gonna play a few levels, come on in.

Gonna have to sit this out because of very limited internet, but if I can, I'll watch it in a few days when I have stable internet again.