raocow's talkhaus

Since we have until about the end of summer before maybe either topping off the levels or opening up level slots, let's work on this. So we have 2 multiperson levels again this time around. A standard "Bower Castle" and an RNG based level in the style of Boon's Mechanical Mansion from VIP1 in which certain factors depend on which sublevel you get. Hopefully something a little more manipulable though. I'm pretty open to design and difficult. Just keep it relatively short. RNG level can be harder, I guess. "Bowser's Castle" can be more castle themed but there could be courtyards and stuff. RNG can be anything, really. Hubs welcome. I'm defaulting to Bowser if not specified and we can move around to either or if need be as a group decision.

Bowser:
Hubs - ft029, Pyro, mellonpizza (E2)
88- Pyro
AF- yogui
C4-C6 - ft029
B6-BA - Pyro
B0 - superwiidude
E0 - mellonpizza
CA - Jolpengammler
BB - Lazy
B2 - Zyglrox Odyssey
CC-CD - lolyshi
B3 - aterraformer
1D4 - Divemissle
D7 - handfist
74 GlitchMr

RNG:
E1 - mellonpizza
BC-BD - Lazy
BE - Rockythetigre
CB - ft029
CE-CF - lolyoshi
75 - GlitchMR
BF - Lazy
C8 - handfist
190 - FrozenQuills
15B - MECHDRAGON777

D0 - Ryrir

I'll probably do 1 bowser room and 2 RNG rooms--I've already planned stuff out for this occasion.

Based on the difficulty I would assume that bowser would be like 2.5ish and RNG 3.5ish? In JUMP1 Shattered Dreams was given a "5" although based on raocow's suffering I think it should have been an E. I hope that doesn't happen again this time. (even though I'm probably the most likely to make it so)

My plan is to start with 1 in each level, and I'll do more if slots are not completely filled

probably gonna end up doing like 2 bowser and 2 rng, depends on how many ideas i have ;p

i think i'll do a bowser's castle level, maybe an rng one if i can get an idea for it

pretty much the same as pizza for me. already got a pretty good idea of what I'll do for each room

Pyro's is difficult, probably should be RNG.

Please be sure to claim a number in the claim thread and specify which you want it in, Bowser, RNG or HUB. Posts here have not been considered. This thread is more of a discussion thread. My fault for not specifying.

Am I dreaming? Did aterraformer REALLY beat all three of my levels and consider easy enough to be bowser rooms?

What is life!?

(jk love ya fam)

Attached are C4, C5, C6, CB, and a hub that is placed in mellonpizza's level (must be moved somewhere else). Sorry for the inconvenience of the hub-- I didn't claim it either. SORRY

I will upload a video shortly.

I take it that this is where we're supposed to submit sections?
not sure whether I will do more, depends on motivation and need

e: also please move sublevel BF to bowser

oh sure I'll submit it here too.

i've had this done for a couple days now, but i've been forgetting to upload it

my only worry is that this might be a bit to easy for bowser castle, so it should probably be a starting room

Can you put everything together into a .ips (or .bps) so that I can actually play it without doing aterraformer work? :D

EDIT: Oops I was dumb, my eyes glossed over the .ips for some reason.
Comments on level 1D4: The whole thing is just bland. The jump with the slope is kind of odd, and the hammer brother platform that you have to jump on is a tile or two too high. After that, the thwimp is hard to see as it is above the screen. Then it's just another bland stretch of ground.

my things

C8: Good room, but it's too long. I somehow did it in two tries, but if I died more I would have gotten burnt out quickly due to the sheer length. Many obstacles are trial and error; if you don't know what's coming, you will miss your opportunity. The coin guides aren't well placed either. But it's reasonable--just needs to be like 40% shorter.

D7: I give up. You cannot expect average players to disco ride while avoiding all those obstacles. I can't get past the first turn block obstacle without taking a hit, and I got as far as the part where you have to disco ride with all those thwomps. My suggestion would be, to keep the castle theme, to replace the discos with grinders, as they are more reliable. In addition the turn block obstacle is too hard, and the ground is placed too high. Also, there is a thwomp right after you get past that jump, which is very frustrating.

Two more. I haven't recieved a lot of feedback on these yet so this might not be final

Sublevel D0

I think difficulty-wise it fits better with the RNG level, but if it turns out that it should rather go to Bowser's Castle for whatever reason, it should take all but 10 minutes to make the really hard & precise jumps easier, so that's cool

Ugh, where do I start.

I died 15 times and I haven't beat it yet... and here's my feedback.

1. Too long. Why are there so many precise jumps in between the real gimmicks? This thing can take 250-300 SMW seconds if you're playing carefully, and 150 SMW seconds minimum.

2. I didn't find the first invisible mushroom until I found the second one, in which I realized that powerups might even EXIST. Yeah.

Specific things:

As stated before, there should be less stuff in between the actual shell gimmicks. Here are the sections (the precision jumping only, ignore the koopas and such) that pissed me off more than others because of the insane precision. Also, some of these are near impossible while big.





Other than that... Here, I think the gap between the ledge and the vine block should be a tile or two shorter.


Maybe put a coin here so that I know I should hit the goomba there. I tried to hit it toward the right side, and the goomba flew toward me. Then I tried to drop the goomba, and I ended up killing both the goomba and the koopa.


Doing this trick requires "impeccable" timing, as Miscellaneous Monument said. Also I bopped my head on that spike once while jumping on the goomba. I think this obstacle should be outright removed, or at least have the goomba in a safer spot.





There are some things in the level that I didn't mention. That means they're good. I liked the part with the shell-less blue koopa and the regular blue koopa, among other fun little things. But there's a lot of stuff that's not fun also.

Wow, thanks for the super fast feedback!

Judging from your screenshots I can sort of tell that you're doing some stuff the "wrong" way, meaning that there are often multiple ways to do things, but the intended one is never pixel perfect - For example you're supposed to disco jump over the wider gap, and just smash the run button while standing on the edge next to the goomba at the end. Stuff like that.

I'll definitely mark the mushrooms with coins though, and will widen some of the gaps between the mega spikes. Maybe add reset doors? And explain the easy, not precise way of getting the goomba at the end via message box...

I'll record a video of me playing and will upload it sometime next week.

(You can beat the entire level big, if you're careful about it :P)

Ryrir wrote:(You can beat the entire level big, if you're careful about it )

Unfortunately, most players aren't careful enough.

My feedback might have been a bit convoluted. My main point is that it's too long. This is because the fun parts (stuff with the koopas and shells) have all this unnecessary precision jumping in between. I don't care if I'm doing it right or not, precision jumping should only be used very sparingly.
You also can't expect everybody to know exactly how to pass each obstacle like you do, and putting message boxes all over the place is not an optimal solution.

I'm not sure about this (aterraformer has say on this), but these rooms should take about 0-5 deaths for the average player and be short. In the original Bowser's Castle, the rooms took less than half a minute to complete and were just short bursts of a gimmick. This feels more like an endurance type of room, which isn't appropriate for Bowser or RNG.

I had the rooms of "Shattered Dreams" in mind while designing the level (which in my opinion aren't much easier or shorter than what I submitted). Take ravegg's room for example. At least from my perspective the two sublevels are roughly the same in both length and difficulty. Shattered Dreams was literally full of "endurance" rooms

If that style of difficulty is not what was meant for the RNG rooms then I apologize - I must have misunderstood (Instructions could have been clearer if that was indeed the case though).

But it's definitely not too late to change things around. Let me rearrange some of the obstacles, I'll upload a new version soon and we'll see how it plays then

New version of sublevel D0:

- Made the gaps between mega spikes larger / Made level easier
- Added coins to mark invisible mushrooms
- Added reset doors
- Added message box explaining last obstacle

After a lot of thinking and rearranging the different pieces around and around, I've come to the conclusion that this is how far I'm willing to go.
If it's still too long or too hard for a multiperson sublevel (which is honestly fair enough), I'm just going to use it for MAGL3 or whatever and come up with something more fitting in the one-and-a-half month I still have left before the deadline.

Got it first try, but that's probably because I'm already very familiar with the room. I still stand by the fact that the room is far too long. Try playing some of the other submitted multiperson rooms to see the appropriate length (I think yogui's is a great example).

Or, submit it to MaGL3 lol

I posted this room on the discord in july but not here. Made a update in august but forgot to post it. Here is room AF.
http://bin.smwcentral.net/u/410/JUMP0.5 ... m%2BAF.zip

It should be the updated version. Im not at home to verify but looking at the date I uploaded it on my smwc files there's no doubt.