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General Planning Thread

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Dragon Fogel
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General Planning Thread

Post by Dragon Fogel »

Okay, we have a subforum now, so I guess we'll want a thread for discussing the overall shape of the collab. Obviously this isn't as important as actually making levels, but there are some decisions to make and so this is a thread for bringing those up and talking about them.

Some obvious questions right off the bat are:
-Do we go with a hub or overworld?
-Do we use the Mario cast, Demo and company, or put in a bunch of work to make a new cast entirely?
-Do we give the game some sort of plot?

The main advantage of a hub is that we can offer a power-up room that can be used in between midpoints. However, since this is going to have actual testing and balance, that isn't as important as it would be in a proper MAGL X. I don't think I have a strong preference on it myself.

No strong thoughts on cast. Tradition suggests a Mario cast but it's not strictly necessary. I doubt we'll come up with a new cast, but it's theoretically an option if people really want to do it and are willing to put in the necessary spritework.

As for plot, I'm totally in favor of attempting to build an ongoing plot out of whatever nonsense people put into their levels, because that's something I enjoy doing. But if people just want to have a bunch of levels, that's fine too.

Feel free to share thoughts on any of those things or bring up other subjects for discussion.
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Re: General Planning Thread

Post by Wolfolotl »

the prospect of having an entirely new cast is tantalizingly exciting
I volunteer myself and my artistry skills for character design/kind of alright spritework should that come to pass
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Re: General Planning Thread

Post by TaviTurnip »

I think we should try to prioritize decisions from the ground up, if that makes sense. Which is to say, get some levels going, then decide if it feels better to do a hub or an overworld (perhaps the handful of levels we start with gives us a good idea for one or the other), then decide if the cast should be changed or if a mini story should be added...

Otherwise perhaps it should be mandatory for all level to have the SMB3 star, which is normal anyways, correct? I don't think making decisions ahead of time is a bad idea at all, I just want to make sure we don't jump two steps ahead of ourselves and then a month later we have nothing to work with yet because no levels. Feel free to disregard me entirely, just putting in my two cents D:

I like the idea of a mixed up overworld (like say, lava town, mountain town, forest town all close together and visible at once) but I also appreciate the benefits of a hub. I also am a big fan of Demo and the cast, and since I am 99.9% certain MaGL X2 will be featuring Mario and the crew, it could be fun if Demo and the others were here in a kind of "huh? What is this place?" sort of way. But that's just my personal preferences all written down :T I'd rather we made decisions that benefited the project most if there were any that were objectively best.

At Wolfolotl: Having a new cast also sounds fun, but what would the goal of the cast be? :O Would they be quirky, or all specifically very different, or parodies/homage, user-submitted ideas, which? Is there anything people on this project would specifically find best if we made a new cast? I can definitely offer my art skills to one character if this is what happens. (I call dibs on Toad >~>)
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Re: General Planning Thread

Post by Rednaxela »

RenaTurnip wrote:I think we should try to prioritize decisions from the ground up, if that makes sense. Which is to say, get some levels going, then decide if it feels better to do a hub or an overworld (perhaps the handful of levels we start with gives us a good idea for one or the other), then decide if the cast should be changed or if a mini story should be added...
I personally agree with the idea of waiting till some levels are made for deciding about hub vs overworld or plot... but I think it might be nice to do some tentative resource-creation for cast at a relatively early stage.

My initial leaning about custom cast is... to keep more in theme with how MaGL X is, how about we keep with the vanilla cast as the default in the episode/hub/etc... BUT... we can also prepare player character spritesheets for a set of cameo-cast-characters, that level makers could insert whenever thematically appropriate.

I have one idea of what could be done for a playable cameo-cast-character that may be fitting in a funny sort of way...
Horikawa Otane wrote:Oh feel free to use my SMBX self wherever you want in levels, the hub, etc.

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Re: General Planning Thread

Post by Dragon Fogel »

Yeah, obviously the levels are the most important thing and I don't want to understate that. I more of wanted this to be a discussion that happened alongside early level-making. Apologies if that wasn't clear. I should make some threads related to level submitting so it's a bit more apparent, I'll go and do that now.

I also have to admit that bringing up the idea of a new cast was something of an afterthought; I like the thought of a new cast, but it would mean a fair amount of work and would probably slow things down. (It would also a new SMBX executable, which is something people have grumbled about before, and I should be clear that I don't know what would be involved in that beyond taking an existing build and replacing the files in the resource folders.) Plus it wouldn't necessarily be a good fit with what we want to do. Mostly I was thinking in terms of Mario or Demo, since we could pretty easily do either of those.

Edit: While I was writing that up, Rednaxela posted and I think I like the idea of a "recurring" custom cast. Anyways, I'll go make some more directly level-related threads now.
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Re: General Planning Thread

Post by TaviTurnip »

Dragon Fogel wrote:Yeah, obviously the levels are the most important thing and I don't want to understate that. I more of wanted this to be a discussion that happened alongside early level-making. Apologies if that wasn't clear. I should make some threads related to level submitting so it's a bit more apparent, I'll go and do that now.
I wasn't trying to shoot this down or like force a track of mind, it's just sorta how I perceive and process things and so it was the first thing I thought to type out. Sorry if it seemed pushy or otherwise ;w; It makes a lot of sense to talk about both sets of things at once, and it's probably best to lay out all the possibilities on the table like this in case people get ideas from it. Like I already want to start drawing up a character to replace Toad, I'm probably going to start doing that like, in the next hour. It sounds fun D: I'll probably start a level too. I'm actually kind of hyped to keep doing levels too. My A2XT level will never be finished at this rate.
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Re: General Planning Thread

Post by Dragon Fogel »

Oh, no, I didn't think you were trying to do anything like that. That was just me clarifying my own thoughts. I do a lot of that.
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Re: General Planning Thread

Post by Shinoda »

Can anyone clarify what this whole new forum is about? Are you guys planning on making an entirely new game or is this for discussion about how Magl X2 is going to be dealt with? So much confusion.
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Re: General Planning Thread

Post by pholtos »

Uhh... basically it's for people who want to make levels based off of rejected maglx/2 names. That's about it for now.
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Re: General Planning Thread

Post by TaviTurnip »

Yeah, between people who just want to keep using level-making energy and people who see unused names and have really cool ideas for them :o It'll turn into a mini-project with enough participation.
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Re: General Planning Thread

Post by Shinoda »

Then I might be in! MAGL X2 helped me understand the engine better so without a deadline I might be able to do interesting things.
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Re: General Planning Thread

Post by TaviTurnip »

I am apparently fundamentally awful at All-Starts style character sprites, or I'm just not having a good start to trying it :D </3 But I'll hopefully have a sheet done tonight for a potential Toad, and a power-up version before too long. I don't think it'll clash with general Mario graphics poorly but obviously it'll be up to everyone involved if they like it enough when the time comes.
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Re: General Planning Thread

Post by Zygl »

Dragon Fogel wrote:-Do we go with a hub or overworld?
To reiterate my stance on this from the other thread, a hub fits more in line with the MaGL X 'tradition' and also Blivsey's stated he's willing to do a hub, whereas we'd have to find peeps to do an overworld.
-Do we use the Mario cast, Demo and company, or put in a bunch of work to make a new cast entirely?
Apart from maybe a stray Demo or Iris here and there the level names were made based off of the default SMBX cast, so it'd probably be better to go with that, I think.
-Do we give the game some sort of plot?
Personally I'd prefer no plot, just a bunch of levels. Though if there's to be a plot there pretty much has to be some involvement of the spirit of rejected level names or whatever it was from Holy's level last year.

(Thanks for picking up my slack btw, I wanted to get some sleep before I really dove into organizational stuff like this.)
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Re: General Planning Thread

Post by Dragon Fogel »

Zyglrox Odyssey wrote:
-Do we use the Mario cast, Demo and company, or put in a bunch of work to make a new cast entirely?
Apart from maybe a stray Demo or Iris here and there the level names were made based off of the default SMBX cast, so it'd probably be better to go with that, I think.
This is a good point; I think we can work with all the Mario references with Demo or a hypothetical original cast, but it does make more sense with Mario's group. (Which is not to say that the levels will make sense in and of themselves.)

Right now I think my personal preference is an SMBX base, possibly with recurring replacement characters as Rednaxela suggested. Of course, other people are free to share their thoughts on this.
Zyglrox Odyssey wrote:
-Do we give the game some sort of plot?
Personally I'd prefer no plot, just a bunch of levels. Though if there's to be a plot there pretty much has to be some involvement of the spirit of rejected level names or whatever it was from Holy's level last year.
If there's a plot, it will mostly be me making silly justifications for why one level is a boot factory and the next is an extradimensional prison. I like doing that sort of thing and I'm all up for it. There might be the occasional level inspired by the overall plot, but for the most part we'll be working from the levels to the main plot, whatever it is.

And yes, the spirit of rejected level names definitely has to be worked in somewhere, it just fits too well with the general idea here.
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Re: General Planning Thread

Post by Heraga »

The MaGL X 1/2 Judges should be the playable charcters. And the hub should be a rejected toy factory with levels being "Defected" toys that have been recalled by the Talkhaus community. Either that or it should be the plot for the game.
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Re: General Planning Thread

Post by Zygl »

Sokobansolver wrote:The hub should be built around the levels in progress, or that is what I would do if it were my project. I can design a level if there's still space available (and it seems that you all are literally just getting this thing off the ground.) Anyone who knows me from SMW Central is aware that I'm primarily a Kaizo hacker, but I can still barely manufacture a level that is merely very difficult yet non-Kaizo.
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Re: General Planning Thread

Post by FFR »

this whole thing is starting to look interesting... now, not only do I not have time, I'd also like to wait til I see feedback from my MAGLX/MAFAB stuff before I start ruining other projects :P but count me as an interested spare tire
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Re: General Planning Thread

Post by Dragon Fogel »

So, there was some talk about re-using names from MAGLX (and X2 when that's actually released) as bonus levels. I'm in favor of this, and I'd like to put forward a more detailed idea for it.

I'm thinking that the level names from the first MAGL X could be used as side levels in each world, basically the equivalent of ASMBXT's Zebraspace levels. (Even if we go with a world map rather than a hub, we could still make these stand out in some way.) The ones from MAGL X2 (which we're not going to see for a while) could be used for postgame levels. Maybe with a second postgame world for levels that violated the name gimmick, or appeared in the SMW MAGLs or something.

Any thoughts on this?
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Re: General Planning Thread

Post by Zygl »

Dragon Fogel wrote:So, there was some talk about re-using names from MAGLX (and X2 when that's actually released) as bonus levels. I'm in favor of this, and I'd like to put forward a more detailed idea for it.

I'm thinking that the level names from the first MAGL X could be used as side levels in each world, basically the equivalent of ASMBXT's Zebraspace levels. (Even if we go with a world map rather than a hub, we could still make these stand out in some way.) The ones from MAGL X2 (which we're not going to see for a while) could be used for postgame levels. Maybe with a second postgame world for levels that violated the name gimmick, or appeared in the SMW MAGLs or something.

Any thoughts on this?
Personally I kinda dig the idea of reusing some names from the SMW MaGLs but I feel like they'd be more fitting as Zebraspace than reused names from the SMBX ones, being rather out of place and much less likely to exceed like 8 in number and all.
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Re: General Planning Thread

Post by Rednaxela »

I for one like the idea of having some form of area(s) for SMW MaGL level names and non-rejected MaGL X(2) level names, provided that the primary gimmick of the project remains the unused level names of course.

Regarding postgame vs zebraspace vs giraffespace for different types of those, I think it may be best to wait till a few such levels are made before deciding on the details of that arrangement.
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Re: General Planning Thread

Post by Heraga »

Rednaxela wrote:I for one like the idea of having some form of area(s) for SMW MaGL level names and non-rejected MaGL X(2) level names, provided that the primary gimmick of the project remains the unused level names of course.

Regarding postgame vs zebraspace vs giraffespace for different types of those, I think it may be best to wait till a few such levels are made before deciding on the details of that arrangement.
Why not have both?
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Re: General Planning Thread

Post by Rednaxela »

Nin wrote:Why not have both?
I never meant not having both, so much as which types of level names go in which.
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Re: General Planning Thread

Post by YelseyKing »

I talked to Fogel on IRC, and he said I could help with quality control once some levels get submitted... though I may well do one or more of my own, as well. I've wanted to jump into a collab since I joined Talkhaus, but A2XT seems completely impenetrable, so this one's as good as any, heh. I don't have any thoughts or ideas in particular right now, but just wanted to pledge my help in whatever ways I can.
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Re: General Planning Thread

Post by Mystick »

I SERIOUSLY think this should have a HUB, with Horikawa giving fake ratings and commentary to each level.
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Re: General Planning Thread

Post by YelseyKing »

Mystick wrote:I SERIOUSLY think this should have a HUB, with Horikawa giving fake ratings and commentary to each level.
Hahahaha. I like that idea, myself. Dunno if it'll get used, but it just struck me as amusing.
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