Episode 2 Level Review and Testing Discussion

[snoruntpyro]

wohlstand's level

Thoughts – Did not complete level. Lack of midpoints is a deal breaker for me. Level felt very much like I was “watching it” rather than “playing it.” I ducked and did nothing up until the Ninja section. Then I died non-stop, as jumping is seemingly a death wish, as was ducking. And getting back to that part, while easy, was incredibly boring. I apparently just suck (since the others approved it no problem), but this one caused me to throw my hands up and give in.

You have an outdated version. The version I played (and approved) had like 3 midpoints.

[SAJewers]

What About Railways - Rejected

Thoughts – Did not complete level. Lack of midpoints is a deal breaker for me. Level felt very much like I was “watching it” rather than “playing it.” I ducked and did nothing up until the Ninja section. Then I died non-stop, as jumping is seemingly a death wish, as was ducking. And getting back to that part, while easy, was incredibly boring. I apparently just suck (since the others approved it no problem), but this one caused me to throw my hands up and give in.

What? There are checkpoints there. I asked him to put in checkpoints at every train stop, and he did.

EDIT: Oh, the version in the queue is actually out of date. the updated version is on the wiki page for it: http://engine.wohlnet.ru/docs/Levels/wh ... _1.4.2.zip

[WestonSmith]

I've redacted my rejection. Didn't know the level was updated.

[FrozenQuills]

Soaring Sawmill - Approved

File Name – No issues.

Characters – Did not test with Sheath. She probably can trivialize the secret exit.

Sacks – Can completely trivialize the secret exit.

Cat Llamas – Can completely trivialize the secret exit.

Level Suggestions – The plank surfing felt woefully underutilized. Might benefit from custom music, but what’s there is fine.

Thoughts – Love this level. Difficult but fun. Can’t suggest any serious changes. There are enough cool ideas here that it might warrant a sequel level. Well put together, probably one of the best levels I’ve played yet.

Regarding the plank surfing, I found it difficult to utilize it any more than it is since jumping at any point halts you while the plank keeps moving. I also don't mind the trivialization of the secret exit.
Thanks for the feedback and thoughts!

[GenesisJames]

Hey guys, my two levels have been slightly updated (links are in the usual spots on the Wikia). Mainly it's just some slight platforming alterations in addition to the music metadata being fixed. Still worth downloading, though!

[pholtos]

1 - SAJewers' Mountain Descent

(Psst you misspelled mountain.)

[Wohlstand]

I've redacted my rejection. Didn't know the level was updated.

Remember a gold rule of level reviewers: before review - check for updates!

[SAJewers]

1 - SAJewers' Mountain Descent

(Psst you misspelled mountain.)

if you grab this, you should be able to press start+select and exit levels without needing to kill yourself.

[pholtos]

1 - SAJewers' Mountain Descent

(Psst you misspelled mountain.)

if you grab this, you should be able to press start+select and exit levels without needing to kill yourself.

Where do I put that so it works when I review via level editor?

[SAJewers]

Extract that to the "Episodes" folder, then put all levels in that.

[SAJewers]

Toot

I did some things (with help) for Sheath and The Mysterious House

error.png (3.86 KiB) Viewed 2937 times

[Mikkofier]

Oh crap! So that's not supposed to happen? I don't know what to do about that.

[Enjl]

Toot

I did some things (with help) for Sheath and The Mysterious House

error.png

Looks to me as if Mikkofier put something related to the player into onLoad() (which is also called when the level is loaded in the editor) without checking if the player is valid. There's an easy fix to it if this is the case:

Code: Select all

function onLoad()
 if player.isValid then
  Current code inside onLoad
 end
end

[pholtos]

Extract that to the "Episodes" folder, then put all levels in that.

Do you mean worlds?

Also are you guys actually doing something with dragon coins and if so do they save at the midpoint that you've gotten them or what.

[Hoeloe]

Extract that to the "Episodes" folder, then put all levels in that.

Do you mean worlds?

Also are you guys actually doing something with dragon coins and if so do they save at the midpoint that you've gotten them or what.

In general, dragon coins are only saved at the end of a level (the reason being that multipoints wouldn't necessarily save raocoins unless it was specifically handled per level, which is kind of eh). There are two counters on the hud - one counts to 5 for raocoins in the current level, and one counts total raocoins, which can be spent in towns.

[WestonSmith]

Was all about to rage on this level, and then I realized the source of all my rage: Your moving platforms are invisible when going to the right.

Once I fixed that, I had a much better time. However:

For the love of god, use PNGs for transparent effects, unless you're exploiting SMBX's colour distortion with transparency
I feel the level needs either a powerup or a checkpoint somewhere
I legitimately thought there may be invisible pits in places where there were was no light. Not sure if that's fixable, but something you might want to know.

Fix the platform disappearance, and switch to PNGs, and I think you might be good to go. ---SAJewers | 21:04 ADT, November 15, 2015

I fixed the platform issue (I don't have the npc fix files in my folder structure, so it was never an issue for me). However, the heck is this about PNG? I converted, and now I've lost all transparency. What's the trick here?

[SAJewers]

Got PGE Editor? There's a tool that can convert all your GIFs to PNG for you.

Do that, then see the noticeable difference when the character is under the lights.

Also, don't just straight up convert the GIFs to PNGs, switch to alpha channel transparency instead of using mask files. (someone should make a tutorial on this)

[WestonSmith]

I'm always lost with the PGE editor, so I never use it. I did check out the converter, but for some reason it wouldn't let me select files. I'll have to give it a go later. Thanks mate.

[pholtos]

2 - Holy's Sunrise

[Hoeloe]

Extract that to the "Episodes" folder, then put all levels in that.

Do you mean worlds?

Also are you guys actually doing something with dragon coins and if so do they save at the midpoint that you've gotten them or what.

In general, dragon coins are only saved at the end of a level (the reason being that multipoints wouldn't necessarily save raocoins unless it was specifically handled per level, which is kind of eh). There are two counters on the hud - one counts to 5 for raocoins in the current level, and one counts total raocoins, which can be spent in towns.

Thinking about this, there is a way I could get it to work, given some conditions.

First off, I'd need to add a feature to multipoints. As it currently stands, there's a global onCollected event that is called by multipoints. I've done this with raocoin2, but I would need to add a "per checkpoint" version of this. As an example, currently you'd write this:

Code: Select all

function multipoints:onCollected(id)
	--your code here
end

But for this to work, you'd have to be able to do this:

Code: Select all

local checkpoint1 = multipoints.addLuaCheckpoint(...);
function checkpoint1:onCollected(id)
  --your code here
end

This would be required for anyone who used the onCollected event. The reason for this is that assigning onCollected in lunadll.lua will override anything that assigns it in lunaworld.lua, and it's this event that would be required to make raocoins work.

Having said this, there is apparently some work going into custom events that will handle this properly, so if those get implemented this is a non-issue.

Whatever happens, though, it would require that any use of multipoints loaded it using loadSharedAPI, rather than loadAPI, as otherwise checkpoints won't trigger the event.

Using either of these methods, it would be possible to save raocoins collected at checkpoints, multipoints-defined or not.

This wouldn't make them not spawn when you load the level, though, just save them to your total. Whether or not that's desirable I'm not sure.

[Darkonius64]

http://asmbxt.wikia.com/wiki/Frightenin ... ry?cb=8608

alright, i removed the pillar, and now i think it's 100% fixed, the .ogg music seemed to play fine with me, uh...
also i see that someone added some luna stuff in the level, i dunno if it's still working as none of the luas work on my laptop (yes, i'm gonna contact Kevsoft and Wohl to figure this problem out)

[pholtos]

I've probably made my view on dragon coins clear by now but I don't have the desire to play through an entire level without dying just to get all 5 dragon coins in said level. Basically. I figure that the levels in the later worlds might be sorta ridiculous to do in one attempt. Although if I'm still completely misinterpreting how this works, please feel free to correct me.

[Willhart]

I've probably made my view on dragon coins clear by now but I don't have the desire to play through an entire level without dying just to get all 5 dragon coins in said level. Basically. I figure that the levels in the later worlds might be sorta ridiculous to do in one attempt. Although if I'm still completely misinterpreting how this works, please feel free to correct me.

I think it would be nice, if the player had to collect each of them only once and they saved once collected. I'm not sure how they can be used as currency then though, unless they unlock secret bonus stuff or something.

Edit: it would also break levels with dragon coin collection gimmicks, so it's probably not how it goes.

[SAJewers]

I'd like that too (it's how A2MT did it IIRC), but I've also been told that it can't easily be done.

[raocow]

honestly I don't think I mind?

like it gives a way for the game to have a 'really hard' kind of optional difficulty without resorting to having really hard levels to go through other than in the postgame, I guess.

I guess?

I'm not sure where to stand with overall difficulty, honestly, so I'm letting y'all deal with that anyways, haha

like a part of me felt that a2xt1 was a bit too easy, but maybe that's what made it a really nice lp ?!