Level testing and discussion

[HatKid]

Ok did some editing.
-Reduced amount of enemies and moved them around throughout the level.
-Fixed clip Nao pointed out.
-Made the two turnblock raocoin "puzzles" easier.
-Fixed the midpoint entrance not being at the midpoint.
-Also swapped the wings and the yoshi block

[Nao]

Continuing postgame.

Can't Go Back

Difficulty: 5.5/5. I was finally able to beat it thanks to the nerfs. I do not enjoy this gimmick because it restricts the player's physics in an oppressive way, and I'm confident that a lot of players will feel the same way. However, despite that, the level is well-designed, and now also fair.
Btw, any particular reason this level and "bad day at the garden" do not use the AAT graphic replacement for the venus plants?

PREHISTORIC DOOM CASTLE

Difficulty: 5/5. My level, where I need to add quick retry and redo the boss.

Good Ol' Days

Difficulty: 4.5/5. Clean, and honestly not as hard as I remember it to be.

[SMCslevelengine]

Btw, any particular reason this level and "bad day at the garden" do not use the AAT graphic replacement for the venus plants?

I did not know we had that

[KobaBeach]

I did not know we had that

it's recent but as long as you're ok with it...

[PSI Ninja]

I'm thinking of adding quick retry to several levels. Right now, the retry system is enabled for the following:

• Intro Level
• Life Goes On
• R.A.O.C.O.W.
• SWITCH IS BLUE
• Thwompire State Building

The following don't have quick retry, but might benefit from using it:

• Assault on Snake Block Fortress
• Can't Go Back
• PREHISTORIC DOOM CASTLE

Anyone have any thoughts on other levels that could use quick retry? Though we probably shouldn't force it on levels without notifying authors first.

[Catabo]

Anyone have any thoughts on other levels that could use quick retry? Though we probably shouldn't force it on levels without notifying authors first.

You should err on the "yes" side for any castle levels because it's kind of annoying to have to skip the castle intro scene over and over. Assuming it's room-based (i think it's room-based?), i've been thinking of removing the midpoint from The Castle of Serious Business and adding quick retry so that dying in the middle room just sends you back to the beginning of that room rather than making you re-do the first room too. Nothing of value is lost with the removal of the midpoint because the midpoint was a mechanism to let the player quickly retry the side room in the first place, and quick retry would still let them do that.

[SAJewers]

Anyone have any thoughts on other levels that could use quick retry? Though we probably shouldn't force it on levels without notifying authors first.

You should err on the "yes" side for any castle levels because it's kind of annoying to have to skip the castle intro scene over and over. Assuming it's room-based (i think it's room-based?), i've been thinking of removing the midpoint from The Castle of Serious Business and adding quick retry so that dying in the middle room just sends you back to the beginning of that room rather than making you re-do the first room too. Nothing of value is lost with the removal of the midpoint because the midpoint was a mechanism to let the player quickly retry the side room in the first place, and quick retry would still let them do that.

from tables.asm

Code: Select all

; The second digit sets the behavior of midways bars and level entrances in the sublevel (see the figures in the "midway instruction" folder):
;  0 = Vanilla. The midway bar in the corresponding sublevel will lead to the midway entrance of the main level.
;  1 = The Midway bar in the corresponding sublevel will lead to the midway entrance of this sublevel as a checkpoint.
;  2 = Any main/secondary/midway entrance through door/pipe/etc. whose destination is the corresponding sublevel will
;        trigger a checkpoint like midway bars, and the checkpoint will lead to this entrance.
;  3 = This option enables both the effects of 1 (midway bar) and 2 (level entrances).

Reading this, I almost wonder if we should just have quick retry enabled for every level, then either add more checkpoints for levels that need them, or an icon in the OW for levels that need "autocheckpoint at every entrance"

[Big Brawler]

Finally got to work on a Bowser Room, Since I got the needed files from the ASPE (Thanks Koba) I used them to do this thing. And since I didn't knew any Canadian Ice cream brands to replace the "Gari Gari-Kun" one, I took Bumpty suggestion to make a custom one.

Cape Used Clear Vid


No Cape Clear Vid

[PSI Ninja]

Finally got to work on a Bowser Room, Since I got the needed files from the ASPE (Thanks Koba) I used them to do this thing. And since I didn't knew any Canadian Ice cream brands to replace the "Gari Gari-Kun" one, I took Bumpty suggestion to make a custom one.

I inserted your Bowser room into the life farm level (first door). You mentioned in the Discord that the song you chose was a placeholder, so I left the music slot blank for now.

Also, I added what was completed of SPECIAL in Level A's slot, and put the (temporary?) Parrot Boom Boom boss at the very end.

You should err on the "yes" side for any castle levels because it's kind of annoying to have to skip the castle intro scene over and over. Assuming it's room-based (i think it's room-based?), i've been thinking of removing the midpoint from The Castle of Serious Business and adding quick retry so that dying in the middle room just sends you back to the beginning of that room rather than making you re-do the first room too. Nothing of value is lost with the removal of the midpoint because the midpoint was a mechanism to let the player quickly retry the side room in the first place, and quick retry would still let them do that.

You can have per-sublevel retry, per-midpoint retry, and a combination of both. For example, Level 121 has retry per-sublevel, Level 4 has retry per-midpoint, and Level 122 uses both.

If we add quick retry to castle levels for the purpose of skipping the castle intros, then this logic should probably extend to all of the other levels that have No-Yoshi intros. Problem is, about half of the levels in the collab ban Yoshi from their levels, so there would end up being a lot of quick retry usage, and not necessarily because the level is hard, either.

Reading this, I almost wonder if we should just have quick retry enabled for every level, then either add more checkpoints for levels that need them, or an icon in the OW for levels that need "autocheckpoint at every entrance"

Enabling quick retry for every level would make deaths consistent across the game, but if we were to do this, then we would need to fix the Retry System + Yoshi glitch first. For some reason, retrying deletes your stored overworld Yoshi, and I have no idea how to fix it. Right now, it's listed as medium priority on the todo list because only a handful of levels use quick retry, but it will most definitely become a high priority item if quick retry is featured more heavily in the collab. A downside of giving all levels quick retry is that we won't get to hear the death jingle for Demo and Iris (unless the player exits via the retry menu).

[Nitrogen]

I'm working on a room for the Bowser's Castle collab, but my idea would require using a custom sprite and all the slots for sprites are taken. Is it possible to take slot 15 (reserved for the giant spiny) for my custom sprite since the giant spiny was actually never used?

[SAJewers]

A downside of giving all levels quick retry is that we won't get to hear the death jingle for Demo and Iris (unless the player exits via the retry menu).

There's a setting for that:

Code: Select all

;======================== Default Retry behavior ========================;

; 0 = retry prompt & play the vanilla death song when players die.
; 1 = retry prompt & play only the death sfx when players die (music won't be interrupted).
; 2 = instant retry (no prompt & play only the sfx: the fastest option; like "yes" is chosen automatically)
;     In this option, you can press start then select to exit the level.
; 3 = no retry prompt/respawn (vanilla death: as if "no" is chosen automatically, use this if you only want the multi-midway feature).
; Note: you can override this per sublevel (see "tables.asm") and also at any point by setting a certain RAM address (see "docs/ram_map.txt").
    !default_prompt_type = 1

I'm working on a room for the Bowser's Castle collab, but my idea would require using a custom sprite and all the slots for sprites are taken. Is it possible to take slot 15 (reserved for the giant spiny) for my custom sprite since the giant spiny was actually never used?

BA should be free?

[Big Brawler]

Finally got to work on a Bowser Room, Since I got the needed files from the ASPE (Thanks Koba) I used them to do this thing. And since I didn't knew any Canadian Ice cream brands to replace the "Gari Gari-Kun" one, I took Bumpty suggestion to make a custom one.

Yeah, It's a placeholder, I don't know if another song is going to be used, like in any other final bowser castle, I used this one just to don't left the vanilla music

[PSI Ninja]

New base ROM update. I added two more Bowser's Castle rooms (by me), which you can access through the life farm level. And for consistency, I made Bumpty's Tap-Tap level use the menu-based retry system. This fixes the issue where you're stuck in the level until you beat it. Finally, I fixed the broken Layer 3 in the bramble level. Turns out we forgot to disable the status bar for a few of those sublevels.

Honestly, the inconsistency of the status bar throughout the hack has been bothering me. Most of the time, we have the regular ASMT/A2MT Layer 3 status bar, but it's disabled in a bunch of levels in order to avoid conflicts with certain backgrounds or effects. And sometimes, the status bar is only disabled in certain parts of the same level, further adding to the inconsistency. I guess in general, what I don't like about disabling the status bar is that it can hide important information, such as how many Dragon Coins the player collected, or how many lives the player has left. I think it would be nice if we had a consistent, sprite-based status bar for all levels in the collab, maybe similar to the custom bar in Daizo's level, but it's not a deal-breaker if we can't do it.

[Lord Ruby]

The tricky thing about sprite status bars is that you need to make space in the sprite tilesets in every level that uses them, whereas the components for layer 3 status bars should already be in every level's block tileset. Finding sprite tileset space in every level that needs a sprite status bar and then wiring that space up with the code sounds very tedious, but I suppose it would be possible. Might be easier if there's one that dynamically uploads the numbers it needs.

[KobaBeach]

i feel like we shouldn't worry so much about consistency. it's a romhack

rockman 4 mi has like a game boy hud in brightman's stage due to technical limitations (the darkness mechanic) and everyone's just fine with that

[BumptySMW]

New base ROM update. I added two more Bowser's Castle rooms (by me), which you can access through the life farm level. And for consistency, I made Bumpty's Tap-Tap level use the menu-based retry system. This fixes the issue where you're stuck in the level until you beat it.

Hey thanks for trying to fix this but sadly it completely ruins the 1-Up checkpoint I put at the end of the section so the player doesn't have to redo it again after dying on the Dragon Coins rooms or the boss. I would really appreciate it if it could be changed back to using the L+R Retry UberASM I was using since it has the option to not teleport the player after dying. Sorry for all the troubles.

[SAJewers]

might be easier to multiple checkpoints instead?