Make A Good Level Contest (SMW) 3 - Discussion

[LucasRCD]

...yup, I'm dropping out of this one. I ran into some problems in real life (such as my main PC losing internet access), and besides, that level was way too ambitious to be done by just one person. Sorry.

[TaviTurnip]

I have successfully done the last 75% of my level in one night like last time and eagerly await 8th place again with no testers like last time.

God what a barrel of pure nonsense I have put together tonight.

[idol]

...yup, I'm dropping out of this one.

that just means less competition ;)

joking aside, that sux! life gets the best of us sometimes.

[Reecer7]

oh boy, 39 entries just two to three days away from the deadline. i wonder how many times more entries we're going to get over these next days. double? triple? quadruple???

[TaviTurnip]

I estimated to a friend that we'd have 61. (Of course now that I've said this openly, it'll be false.)

[Lunikyuu]

I might have to drop out too, I basically didn't spend enough time familiarizing myself with the engine and it slowed me down to the point where I feel like I have too much left to do to get it done it time :c

[nothobz]

i hope raocow thinks im a good hacker

[Njord_Nytilflytter]

Well, I tried and failed to complete a level. I do not think I will be able to submit either, too ambitious an idea with too little experience. Couple that with a dead and replaced hard drive and SPU combo, and you get no level from me. Disappointing but perhaps next contest.

[GalaxyOfJ]

I finally have an idea! Well, two. If the first ends up too complex to implement in the time left, I have my really dumb fallback idea that I've been sitting on since day 1.

[FPzero]

Tyty and I should have something by the deadline. For having started maybe a week ago and having spent a fair bit of time on resource collection and organization, I'm happy with the progress that's been made.

[King of GETs]

Yeah, I'm seeing a lot of comments about knowing little about the engine and wanting to do something too ambitious. I was in that same boat as well when I first started. There were so many things I wanted to do, but once I got started, I didn't know how to do them. After watching about an hour of basic tutorial videos, I got the gist of it, and I ended up making a level that was well-balanced in length and difficulty, and it had a central theme that lasted throughout.

It's good to want to make something ambitious, but without hours of learning and advanced knowledge, you can't really accomplish what your mind wants. I saw an amazing Touhou boss on YouTube with lots of danmaku patterns. In a normal danmaku editor, those patterns would have only taken a couple of hours to accomplish, but according to the maker of the video, it took him months to get it properly coded. That's great and all, but making a full-functioning danmaku battle in SMW is like making a 3D platformer in Macromedia Flash -- unless you're going for the wow factor and novelty of it all, there are better programs to make such games in. I think if you're new to the whole level making idea, the fancy experiments should be kept to SMBX where the limitations are literally boundless while SMW should instead focus more on good level design and playability.

[Griflion]

I just took a level from the original Super Mario World; deleted everything except the Startposition and the Goal; and then filled the in between with my ideas. It's a pretty basic level and i think the right way for doing the first level in this engine

[aterraformer]

3 days left? wot? someone didn't math right or extension?

[Mandew]

3 days left? wot? someone didn't math right or extension?

It wouldn't make sense to deadline on a friday when people can have Saturday and Sunday to crunch if they need to.

[S.N.N.]

3 days left? wot? someone didn't math right or extension?

All day today, all day tomorrow, and all day Saturday. That's three.

(it was edited early this morning, it's more like two and a quarter now)

[Ivy]

oh what last minute extension? wonder what i can put together during the hours I don't work this weekend

[aterraformer]

Okay, maybe I will do a thing after all. Maybe
I already scrapped

[Fausthieb]

I am so glad that I can still submit on saturday ... ran into a few issues on my side and have no time to submit today ...

[FPzero]

Yeah I'm also very glad for tomorrow's deadline. Tyty's at work tonight until 1am my time and we're definitely not done yet. Thankfully he has tomorrow off so we're going to hammer it all out and probably get it in just under the deadline.

[Juanbro]

Sorry if this was answered before, but I would like to know at which time is the deadline tomorrow? Midnight? Evening? I didn't get any chance to check the editor and everything...and I would really like to do something, even if it is small. For reference, right now is 7 pm in my place.

[ft029]

This makes me think that there is no point in having the contest be any longer than a week or so, as nearly all of these people are doing this at the last minute. And this is true--efficiency increases a ton as the deadline gets closer. And, work expands to fill time.

That being said I'm "done" my level, but it might be too hard (which I have complained about in levelengine's level. Aah I am a hypocrite), so I'll have to polish it.

[FPzero]

Eh, I've been working with my partner for well over a week. A good level takes time, especially if you need to bring together resources to make it. Don't forget also that plenty of people are making these in their spare time and can't devote hours to it at a time. I'm not working on it right now very much because my partner is working a late-night shift at his job and I need to talk with him before proceeding. You can run a contest with only a week's time for submission, but I expect you won't get many entrants.

[Tyty]

It took me about 3 days to make a small, sorta-average 1-world vanilla SMW hack years ago, but I'm honestly VERY familiar with lunar magic and vanilla is easier than working with resources... not to mention that I have a job now and don't really have the free time I used to. It was over the course of a weekend I had off from classes.

Working with resources is much harder. Objects are faster to use than direct map16, you have to make sure nothing glitches out and everything works with regards to blocks and asm. You need to keep track of which resources you've used if you plan on giving credit, and honestly I've spent a lot of time smushing various exgfx files together and editing 8x8 tiles for things to line up right.

I also spent like 24 hours total porting over a song after having not touched music porting since magl2. Honestly, if we didn't team up, neither of us would've finished and I started conceptually/music-wise at the start of the contest.

[ft029]

Woo, finished polishing. If I disabled L/R, my level would have been a true morsel level. Except for the fact that there are no throw blocks.

[Fausthieb]

This makes me think that there is no point in having the contest be any longer than a week or so, as nearly all of these people are doing this at the last minute. And this is true--efficiency increases a ton as the deadline gets closer. And, work expands to fill time.

That being said I'm "done" my level, but it might be too hard (which I have complained about in levelengine's level. Aah I am a hypocrite), so I'll have to polish it.

I did not have that much time and spend a bit more than a week on my entry, because I hadn't touched Lunar Magic in 2 years,
I also guess that a lot of people could submit earlier but wait, because with time you'll notice more and more flaws that you might want to fix.