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Multiperson Levels Thread

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mellonpizza
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Re: Multiperson Levels Thread

Post by mellonpizza »

I made a graphic for the nerd in his capsule:
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I'm not a YTPMV'er. My goal is towards learning music and eventually making my own content with what I like (in this case ponies). I'm still studying how music works and this is what I can do so far, so to all the ytpmv'ers out there: Please stop following my videos, cause I'm not interested in making chiptune music with your rules you set up on how to make YTPMV's. Also I'd appreciate if you guys would lay off bronies in the comment section, cause these are made for them and not for people who
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Re: Multiperson Levels Thread

Post by worldpeace125 »

Haha I really like it, thanks a lot!
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Re: Multiperson Levels Thread

Post by Frozelar »

I guess I'll take a sublevel thingy. Since school's out I should be able to, like, contribute to this project again.
I really don't care which one. A8 I guess?
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Re: Multiperson Levels Thread

Post by worldpeace125 »

Boss progress:
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Re: Multiperson Levels Thread

Post by Frozelar »

worldpeace125 wrote:Boss progress:
My god dude, that is amazing. Looks hard as hell but still.
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Re: Multiperson Levels Thread

Post by mellonpizza »

Is that the song you're going to use for the final boss? It doesn't sound bad at all, but I think you could port a song that has much more intense feel, like the RPG maker XP you made for Gnarly (If you have the time; if not I can understand).
P.S. Just a small detail, but you could change the crab graphic to the fly from super mario land (Or whatever it's from) If you choose to have a theme of insects.
I'm not a YTPMV'er. My goal is towards learning music and eventually making my own content with what I like (in this case ponies). I'm still studying how music works and this is what I can do so far, so to all the ytpmv'ers out there: Please stop following my videos, cause I'm not interested in making chiptune music with your rules you set up on how to make YTPMV's. Also I'd appreciate if you guys would lay off bronies in the comment section, cause these are made for them and not for people who
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Re: Multiperson Levels Thread

Post by worldpeace125 »

Thanks for compliment and opinion. As for the difficulty, I'm thinking of intermediate line between SMW and MegaMan(especially MegaMari) because there will be about 5~7 hits you can tank, which is more than SMW(typically 3) but less than MegaMari. (Let me briefly explain MegaMari for some people who haven't heard of it. MegaMari is a platformer game similar to MegaMan. Despite being a platformer, bosses in the game shoot so many bullets like "shmup" and most players is likely to take several hits instead of dodging 100% of them.) This boss is kind of close to MegaMari's side as there are many projectiles for a platformer, but my motto is to design patterns 100% dodgeable though you need to understand their trajectories and need to build strategy. e.g. One concept in this "robot phase" is that being under the weakpoint(eye) is more dangerous.
mellonpizza wrote:Is that the song you're going to use for the final boss? It doesn't sound bad at all, but I think you could port a song that has much more intense feel, like the RPG maker XP you made for Gnarly (If you have the time; if not I can understand).
The song is tentative. But I don't see any specific problems of this song except it's commonly used by other hacks. I'm also considering porting a song.
As you could see there are some sound effects which take large space of ARAM. Whichever song is used, it should be limited and very vanilla.


If I'm not exhausted and if there is no deadline, then the capsule should be the second phase. Otherwise this robot is the first and last phase.
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Re: Multiperson Levels Thread

Post by Daizo »

worldpeace125 wrote:The song is tentative. But I don't see any specific problems of this song except it's commonly used by other hacks.
I think the song fits rather well, but if "overused" is going to be an issue, you might want to make it sampled like what I did for SMW Challenges (except... better, and epic). Either that, or a robot-ish version of Bowser's theme from SMW.
worldpeace125 wrote:I'm also considering porting a song.
If you're willing to take suggestions if you are changing it, you could take something from Portal 2 if it isn't too stressful. Otherwise, maybe the Smithy's 2nd Phase theme from Super Mario RPG or anything that would fit an industrial battle arena.

---------------------------

Well since I'm here, I might as well take level BC and use Vanilla gimmicks and graphics.
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Re: Multiperson Levels Thread

Post by worldpeace125 »

To make a sampled song, I should give up samples for some sound effects because of insufficient ARAM space. So there are three options - just using the current song, making(importing) an unsampled song, or tossing away the missile and kknd SFX for the sake of inserting custom samples for music.

About porting a song from Portal 2, it seems to be beyond my ability. I think http://youtu.be/0uAsD6lQV1I would be the best option for the boss battle but I'm curious about if it's technically possible to port it.

Personally I think "overused" doesn't matter at all, I just mentioned that because some might have issues with it. If most people agree with that the current song fits well, I'm not going to make a song. We need BGM for a submap and castle levels, and I will be busy for them.
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Re: Multiperson Levels Thread

Post by Daizo »

worldpeace125 wrote:To make a sampled song, I should give up samples for some sound effects because of insufficient ARAM space. So there are three options - just using the current song, making(importing) an unsampled song, or tossing away the missile and kknd SFX for the sake of inserting custom samples for music.
Ah, I didn't know that would be an issue. Well if that's the case, maybe sticking with SMW's samples.
worldpeace125 wrote:About porting a song from Portal 2, it seems to be beyond my ability. I think http://youtu.be/0uAsD6lQV1I would be the best option for the boss battle but I'm curious about if it's technically possible to port it.
I've seen quite a few incredible ports recently from games not on the SNES (I think the most impressive goes to Harumi Makoto's Buoy Base), so I would be surprised if it's not possible at all. Although making it for SMW's samples on the other hand...
worldpeace125 wrote:Personally I think "overused" doesn't matter at all, I just mentioned that because some might have issues with it. If most people agree with that the current song fits well, I'm not going to make a song. We need BGM for a submap and castle levels, and I will be busy for them.
I think my minor issue is it doesn't scream "GIANT ROBOT ON THE LOOSE" at the beginning, but rather a "Scary Ghost is showing up". Although when the song picks up, it does fit the battle well.
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Re: Multiperson Levels Thread

Post by worldpeace125 »

Yeah, the current song was originally intended for TOMT's boo hack, right?

I will be open to change the current song. Feel free to suggest any song for the boss theme. After constructing a list of suggestions (including the current song), let's see which one would fit and be feasible.

These songs are what I'm thinking of for the first form.
boss.zip
(45.63 KiB) Downloaded 103 times
And if the second/third form exists, this would be for the last pattern.
Examples for the last pattern: survive for 60 seconds / overkill state (you can't harm the boss, but you are supposed to dodge and survive)

The song for the last pattern(if exists) will be free from those sfx, so it'll be sampled.
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Re: Multiperson Levels Thread

Post by Isocitration »

If we're allowed to suggest anything, might as well give it a shot.

How about this?

It probably wouldn't sound good without samples though. Not sure if there's a midi version, but it should still be possible to port since the song itself is in impulse tracker format, so you can view the notes in tracker software.

Just throwing it out there!
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Re: Multiperson Levels Thread

Post by worldpeace125 »

Oh.
Actually that's what I'm going to make a port of in the future, possibly for a magma cave level. I even have a midi arrangement of it(attached), but I should refer to the .it file for a better quality.
Eruption_Of_Vesuvius.zip
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The quality of unsampled ports of Alexander Brandon's tracks can be expected to be similar as this one.
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Re: Multiperson Levels Thread

Post by Isocitration »

Huh, interesting. The midi definitely sounds like it would fit a lava cave like you intended, while the .it seems to have a more electronic vibe to it to me, which is one reason why I picked it. (the other reason, is that based on your past ports I thought it might be more familiar/easier for you to port)

Still, a pretty funny coincidence! (I don't have any other music ideas at the moment, sorry)
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Re: Multiperson Levels Thread

Post by worldpeace125 »

Yeah, I also think the electronic mood would be suitable. Added it to the list. Thanks for the suggestion anyway.
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Re: Multiperson Levels Thread

Post by worldpeace125 »

Boss progress:
The code has just exceeded over 10000 lines, and only 3~4 more patterns are left!
Too bad the screenshot cannot express bullets' trajectories.
screenshots.png
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Re: Multiperson Levels Thread

Post by worldpeace125 »

Finally boss is completed! It took like two and a half months. Yeah!
The test rom: finalboss.ips

Credits:
yoshicookiezeus (homing thwomp)
DORKAS (GFX of lightning effects and horizontal missiles)
Gustav (giant robot idea)
ThinkOneMoreTime (temporary BGM)
several commercial arcade games (crabs, pesticides, vertical missiles)

Instructions:
A/B: usual item-holding jump (mario is always carrying the spray, no spinjump)
Y: fire spray (once)
X: fire spray (autofire)

It should work well on the recent versions of famous emulators (zsnes, snes9x, or bsnes aka higan).

If you're using zsnes, please open "zsnesw.cfg" and set per2exec to 150. Then it should work perfectly without lags.
I think zsnes emulates the system without fully using virtual resources, and its default configuration(per2exec=100) is much slower than other emulators. per2exec=100 makes many hacks slow, so I think it doesn't make sense to sacrifice things to meet "per2exec=100".

There would be almost no lag in the battle if you don't use zsnes. I confirmed it by testing with snes9x 1.53.

I'm not going to upload the level's resources right now, since insertions don't seem to be ready and I have to modify a routine which are related with both this boss and jellyfish in level BA.

This battle should be the final phase, because I'm now so exhausted that I cannot think of a better thing for the next phase. The nerd idea by mellonpizza is going to be applied for the midboss if possible.

You are already spoiled anyway. So feedback and opinions about the battle would be nice.

I will upload a video of this soon.
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Re: Multiperson Levels Thread

Post by Isocitration »

This boss... is quite difficult! After over an hour of play I got the boss to half health only once. I'm also recording my attempts so there will be a video after I (hopefully) beat it. More comments in the spoiler.
Maybe I'm just terrible, but it seems like I do about half as much damage to the boss as you did in your demo video. At least, I was only able to achieve half it's health bar gone after the fourth damageable phase.

Some attacks seem like they are sometimes impossible to dodge, like the third damageable phase. Sometimes the cyan bullets will move in such a way that you cannot avoid getting hit when ducking under the rockets. I'm sure it's possible to learn to aim them elsewhere, but I'm usually concentrating on getting out of the purple bullets' path and trying to jump to do damage.

Farthest I made it was the fast horizontal scrolling mushroom platforms, where I died to a surprise bullet moving downward. The attacks are really quite fun to dodge once you figure them out, though it's a bit daunting knowing I'm only half way there!
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Re: Multiperson Levels Thread

Post by worldpeace125 »

Thanks for your feedback! I'm glad it was quite enjoyable. But I was aware it would be really hard actually.
I wanted the multiple powerups to enable that most players can complete the battle after 4~5 tries, with all what they have - players can sometimes tank their hits and sometimes depend on their dodging skills, like megaman games. And yeah, if I intended the battle to be based on dying and learning, I should have removed some layer 2 parts like the crab segment because repeating them would be boring.
Currently I place 4 powerups(5 hits) at the beginning and 2 extra hits during the battle but I should have placed more powerups. Ideally, an arbitrarily chosen player should be able to beat the boss with having only 1~2 hits remained at his 5th attempt. Finding the number that realizes it isn't easy.

The third damageable phase is probably the hardest one because you should read cyan bullets' trajectories before ducking (sometimes bullet could be hard to read, which is quite luck based). Since the missiles are introduced for the first time in the phase, I thought I had to fix it to require you only to concentrate on ducking. But I somehow forgot to do that before uploading this. Actually reading bullets before ducking is also required in the last damageable phase, so I'm going to definitely fix the one.
I'm also worried about the number of attacks. They could be excessively many. Regarding this, mellonpizza actually suggested me to transplant some patterns to another boss form(capsule). but I couldn't find out when to make the capsule appear or how to mix some patterns' features(rising layer 2) with the capsule.

There are three kinds of attacks
*-1: damageable phases
*-2: intermediate phases (soaring & shooting lasers)
*-3: layer 2 phases

First loop: 1-1 > ?-2 > 1-3(crab) > 2-1 > ?-2 > 2-3 > 3-1 > ?-2 > 3-3
> 4-1 > ?-2 > 4-3(horizontally moving platforms) > 5-1 > ?-2 > 5-3

Then repeats the below loop
> 2-1 > ?-2 > 3-1 > ?-2 > 5-1 > ?-2 > 4-1 > ?-2 > ...

1-1 is a kind of introduction and appears only once.
? is randomly decided to be a number in 1~4. There are four laser patterns.
Layer 2 things appear only once in the first loop.

e: forgot to mention that the boss's HP was increased, not sure if it was a good choice
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Re: Multiperson Levels Thread

Post by mellonpizza »

worldpeace125 wrote:
I'm also worried about the number of attacks. They could be excessively many. Regarding this, mellonpizza actually suggested me to transplant some patterns to another boss form(capsule). but I couldn't find out when to make the capsule appear or how to mix some patterns' features(rising layer 2) with the capsule.
You probably could just directly transfer the patters to the capsule, you don't really need to make any attacks that would make sense for a capsule. Also dividing the fight into the two stages would make the health increase you gave it more manageable, since you're only focusing on half its health at a time.

Also, I think the boss should be a tiny bit easier (It's a final boss, it should be hard), it made me yell some weird things, but it is very fun.
I'm not a YTPMV'er. My goal is towards learning music and eventually making my own content with what I like (in this case ponies). I'm still studying how music works and this is what I can do so far, so to all the ytpmv'ers out there: Please stop following my videos, cause I'm not interested in making chiptune music with your rules you set up on how to make YTPMV's. Also I'd appreciate if you guys would lay off bronies in the comment section, cause these are made for them and not for people who
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Re: Multiperson Levels Thread

Post by worldpeace125 »

Alright. I made it a little easier. Sorry for the inconvenience Isocitration, if you are recording your attempts.

Contents:
finalboss_v2.zip
(954.63 KiB) Downloaded 91 times
- Added one more powerup. Now you are given 5 powerups at the beginning.
- Changed 3-1(where you duck to dodge missiles): Now bouncing projectiles disappear earlier. Dodging both missiles and projectiles should be easier.
- Changed 5-3(thwomp): Added warning signs to inform that you could be trapped at the sides of screen.
mellonpizza wrote:You probably could just directly transfer the patters to the capsule, you don't really need to make any attacks that would make sense for a capsule. Also dividing the fight into the two stages would make the health increase you gave it more manageable, since you're only focusing on half its health at a time.
Thank you for your opinion, but I still don't know. There are three kinds of patterns which are supposed to have their own roles for the robot battle - one is infight in which you can damage the boss only, the other is involved with the robot's rising effect, and the last one is kinda a range attack with an earthquake caused by the robot's motion. I can't find out how to divide them into two halves, and I prefer to keep them rather than sacrifice these roles I planned.

Instead, I think the nerd or his capsule can be used for a midboss or the first form (and the robot goes to the second form). The spray thing can be firstly introduced there, and it could be naturally intensified by moving to the next robot battle.

Maybe having many attacks would be okay, considering there are arcade games like Dodonpachi series(daioujou, daifukkatsu, etc). Some doujin shmup games like touhou could be good examples. Right now I can think of Hellsinker having tons of various attacks for each boss.
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Re: Multiperson Levels Thread

Post by mellonpizza »

While I do think your view on many attacks is fine, The main issue with that is every time the player reaches a new phase, it is extremely unlikely they will survive it the first time since it requires specific strategy. Therefore, it requires lots of trial-and-error. This isn't necessarily bad, but with how long it takes to restart each death feels awful the further you get. This is what I experienced going through the boss. I died probably 30-40 times and only got to "4-3" without tools (I only used tools to see every attack) and that was one of my better attempts. I don't think the boss was even at half health. To be fair, I'm not too experienced with bullet hell.

If you stick with many patterns there should be something that reduces re-spawn time, like having the robot immediately attack every time after the first attempt and possibly re-spawning quickly and not having to go to the overworld.

If you're going to implement the capsule it should definitely be a midboss to get people used to the bug spray. The boss fight is already somewhat long for how hard it is and a phase in front of that could be unbearable for many players. I understand a final boss shouldn't be something you necessarily beat on your first try, but this is quite an intense fight.

Also, Boss should have a bit less health (15%-20% less). I think it can be manageable with that much without being too short. Basically, you have an amazing boss but just like many others, you failed to be conscious of difficulty illusion (A level feels much easier to the creator than it actually is)
I'm not a YTPMV'er. My goal is towards learning music and eventually making my own content with what I like (in this case ponies). I'm still studying how music works and this is what I can do so far, so to all the ytpmv'ers out there: Please stop following my videos, cause I'm not interested in making chiptune music with your rules you set up on how to make YTPMV's. Also I'd appreciate if you guys would lay off bronies in the comment section, cause these are made for them and not for people who
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Re: Multiperson Levels Thread

Post by morsel/morceau »

I think it might be perfect as it is now if you had a small hitbox the whole time with (roughly) the same number of hits. This is on the basis of 1) the freeze when you get hit being a little annoying to me and 2) it being much easier to dodge in many situations as small mario. At the moment, I feel like I have to do a lot of ducking, which is a bit awkward. I appreciate this might be a too fundamental change.
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Re: Multiperson Levels Thread

Post by mellonpizza »

That sounds like a fantastic idea, but I have no idea how hard it would be to do that... Could be very easy or to complex to even fathom.
I'm not a YTPMV'er. My goal is towards learning music and eventually making my own content with what I like (in this case ponies). I'm still studying how music works and this is what I can do so far, so to all the ytpmv'ers out there: Please stop following my videos, cause I'm not interested in making chiptune music with your rules you set up on how to make YTPMV's. Also I'd appreciate if you guys would lay off bronies in the comment section, cause these are made for them and not for people who
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Re: Multiperson Levels Thread

Post by worldpeace125 »

Thank you for even more inputs. I have to say I'm so grateful for your spending time to test this. But if you manage to die over 10 times, then there's something wrong with the boss that I have to fix. So please don't bother to try even more until the next version, unless you are having fun.

Here's a version I quickly made. Mario's now small, and the boss are no more invincible when you're temporarily invulnerable due to being hurted.
finalboss_v3.zip
(954.73 KiB) Downloaded 81 times
It's also possible to make each attack easier in the future. Also considering having a kind of checkpoint somehow. I will take care of them after sleep. :geek:
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