World Map Organization - Public side

[Nao]

Another small update. Switching around Blue Switch and Green Switch because of difficulty considerations and thematic reasons.

Sorry for posting a lot, but I'd rather document these changes here in case anyone wants to object.

[PSI Ninja]

I like the variety of paths you came up with for each world. The submaps are looking pretty chunky though, with 12-13 levels each. Once these submaps actually get designed in the editor, I'm worried that things would become too crowded. So I'm thinking that some of these levels could poke out into the main overworld via a path that briefly leaves the submap, and then eventually returns. Having even more interplay between the submaps and main overworld like this would be cool, and it would also make the overworld look a little more populated with level dots.

Some specific comments/suggestions regarding level placements:

• I feel like The Emerald Winston Bar and Restaurant shouldn't be on the critical path through the forest submap, which requires the player to answer ten trivia questions in a row to pass. Right now, it looks like all other puzzle levels in the game can be skipped. I'd maybe put it on the alternate path right after The Legend of the Captain Blackpowder. That way, Emerald Winston would still come right before The Castle of Spirits, which is appropriate for the bar/alcohol themes of both levels.
• For the sake of balance, PUNT RETURN should be the Rest Area for the postgame, swapping positions with Temporal House. This is because it is effortless to farm more than 50 lives in one shot, which would be convenient for the life-draining postgame levels. Not to mention, it would be a pretty good reward for unlocking the postgame in the first place. Also, Temporal House (Level 1D) has an exit.
• bad day at the garden doesn't really fit thematically into Urban/Mountain, though I don't know what other red level could replace it. Maybe baby catnips get tragic concussions? This would give Urban/Mountain world a puzzle level, which is good for variety.
• Idiom Factory II would be a better introduction to the postgame than Switching Difficulties, the former channeling the beginning of ASMT's postgame. The Rest Area doesn't necessarily have to show up as early as the first level, if that was the reason for the current placement.
• We need a place to fit in Rachel's Rebate Rotorcraft for every submap, if it's going to be a quirk warp system similar to Funky's Flights from DKC1 and DKC2.

[SAJewers]

I like the variety of paths you came up with for each world. The submaps are looking pretty chunky though, with 12-13 levels each. Once these submaps actually get designed in the editor, I'm worried that things would become too crowded. So I'm thinking that some of these levels could poke out into the main overworld via a path that briefly leaves the submap, and then eventually returns. Having even more interplay between the submaps and main overworld like this would be cool, and it would also make the overworld look a little more populated with level dots.

Some specific comments/suggestions regarding level placements:

• I feel like The Emerald Winston Bar and Restaurant shouldn't be on the critical path through the forest submap, which requires the player to answer ten trivia questions in a row to pass. Right now, it looks like all other puzzle levels in the game can be skipped. I'd maybe put it on the alternate path right after The Legend of the Captain Blackpowder. That way, Emerald Winston would still come right before The Castle of Spirits, which is appropriate for the bar/alcohol themes of both levels.
• For the sake of balance, PUNT RETURN should be the Rest Area for the postgame, swapping positions with Temporal House. This is because it is effortless to farm more than 50 lives in one shot, which would be convenient for the life-draining postgame levels. Not to mention, it would be a pretty good reward for unlocking the postgame in the first place. Also, Temporal House (Level 1D) has an exit.
• bad day at the garden doesn't really fit thematically into Urban/Mountain, though I don't know what other red level could replace it. Maybe baby catnips get tragic concussions? This would give Urban/Mountain world a puzzle level, which is good for variety.
• Idiom Factory II would be a better introduction to the postgame than Switching Difficulties, the former channeling the beginning of ASMT's postgame. The Rest Area doesn't necessarily have to show up as early as the first level, if that was the reason for the current placement.
• We need a place to fit in Rachel's Rebate Rotorcraft for every submap, if it's going to be a quirk warp system similar to Funky's Flights from DKC1 and DKC2.

I mentioned this in the discord, but I want to throw it here as well, but I had a rough idea for a storyline for the Forest World based on the Auto-Generated Chatpters in this A2MT video.

The whole thing loosly revolves around a conflict/rivalry between Emerald Winston III (who own both the bar and the Distillery that's Castle of Spirits) and Everything D. Swan (who I guess would be the boss in Castle of Serious Business, and animated all the alocohol?))

. Not sure if that effects placement of levels, but just wanted to throw this out there.

If too many lives is an issue with PUNT RETURN, the football sprite can be edited to give 1 life per Charlie instead of however many it currently gives.

I also had a shot of inspiration for using up one of the 2 remaining level slots (based on both an ASMT level and this bit from an old LoadingReadyRun sketch. My plan was to have it have a rocky visual theme, so that could probably fit in Mountain World if we need it.

Idiom Factory II should be the first level in the Postgame, as a callback to ASMT.

How do we want to deal with that? Should it be availaible as soon as you enter the world, or should it be unlocked after beating the first level?

[Catabo]

I like the variety of paths you came up with for each world. The submaps are looking pretty chunky though, with 12-13 levels each. Once these submaps actually get designed in the editor, I'm worried that things would become too crowded.

Might be fun to play with level density in submaps? It follows that urban world should be dense because cities tend to be dense, but besides that another world being sparse, another world having levels clumped in one place and sparse in another, etc, could be funny.

[Lord Ruby]

• I feel like The Emerald Winston Bar and Restaurant shouldn't be on the critical path through the forest submap, which requires the player to answer ten trivia questions in a row to pass. Right now, it looks like all other puzzle levels in the game can be skipped. I'd maybe put it on the alternate path right after The Legend of the Captain Blackpowder. That way, Emerald Winston would still come right before The Castle of Spirits, which is appropriate for the bar/alcohol themes of both levels.

If we do it like that, we'd have one soft puzzle level on one path (Horse Adventure), and the trivia level on the other. So maybe we should have those two on the alternate path, and legend and NO VEGETABLES, ONLY TREES on the main path? Horse Adventure is fairly long, which might compensate for the alternate path being easier but more puzzle-filled.

[SAJewers]

I like the variety of paths you came up with for each world. The submaps are looking pretty chunky though, with 12-13 levels each. Once these submaps actually get designed in the editor, I'm worried that things would become too crowded.

Might be fun to play with level density in submaps? It follows that urban world should be dense because cities tend to be dense, but besides that another world being sparse, another world having levels clumped in one place and sparse in another, etc, could be funny.

Just for reference, A2MT had the following for it's submaps:

Forest: 11 levels
Cave: 8 levels
Moon: 11 levels
Castle: 11 levels
Eye: 3 levels
Mountain: 9 levels

(anything marked with a level id of 0 is either not enterable, or takes to/from the open ow)

[Lord Ruby]

I like the variety of paths you came up with for each world. The submaps are looking pretty chunky though, with 12-13 levels each. Once these submaps actually get designed in the editor, I'm worried that things would become too crowded.

Might be fun to play with level density in submaps? It follows that urban world should be dense because cities tend to be dense, but besides that another world being sparse, another world having levels clumped in one place and sparse in another, etc, could be funny.

I'll second this. Specifically, I think urban and fishmarket make sense as the more dense worlds. Valley of Bowser in base SMW has 16 points of interest, so we should be able to fit everything in one submap for those. For the forest, I think the secret path from the early split makes sense, and maybe the switch palace as well? For the sky, Moon Palace and the switch palace sequence seems like it could make sense. Alternatively, maybe Moonbounce, Snake Block Fortress, and possibly Homeworld Chunk?

[Nao]

I like the variety of paths you came up with for each world. The submaps are looking pretty chunky though, with 12-13 levels each. Once these submaps actually get designed in the editor, I'm worried that things would become too crowded. So I'm thinking that some of these levels could poke out into the main overworld via a path that briefly leaves the submap, and then eventually returns. Having even more interplay between the submaps and main overworld like this would be cool, and it would also make the overworld look a little more populated with level dots.

They definitely could be partly on the main map. My suggested structure doesn't necessarily specify what is on submaps and what isn't, it's more so showing the grouping of levels into "worlds" overall (splitting them up in subsections for a better overview and ease of drawing). I like the idea of having Fishmarket and Mountain/Urban being denser maps. I also think the Forest map could be dense if it needs to be (classic forest submaps are very easy to make with a lot of levels on it.. see JUMP1/2 for an example), but I also don't mind at all if we split it up partly across the main overworld.

I feel like The Emerald Winston Bar and Restaurant shouldn't be on the critical path through the forest submap, which requires the player to answer ten trivia questions in a row to pass. Right now, it looks like all other puzzle levels in the game can be skipped. I'd maybe put it on the alternate path right after The Legend of the Captain Blackpowder. That way, Emerald Winston would still come right before The Castle of Spirits, which is appropriate for the bar/alcohol themes of both levels.

Hmm. Honestly speaking, does Emerald Winston even need an exit? I thought of it as more of a Yoshi's House equivalent. SAJewers had some elaborate poetic plot planned for the Forest World which I think would work better if Emerald Winston was on the required path.. So why don't we remove the exit, and make both Emerald Winston and My Green Garden accessible after Castle of Spirits?

For the sake of balance, PUNT RETURN should be the Rest Area for the postgame, swapping positions with Temporal House. This is because it is effortless to farm more than 50 lives in one shot, which would be convenient for the life-draining postgame levels. Not to mention, it would be a pretty good reward for unlocking the postgame in the first place. Also, Temporal House (Level 1D) has an exit.

Sure. I will switch it around for now. These can always be adjusted later easily, of course.

bad day at the garden doesn't really fit thematically into Urban/Mountain, though I don't know what other red level could replace it. Maybe baby catnips get tragic concussions? This would give Urban/Mountain world a puzzle level, which is good for variety.

We discussed this on discord. Keeping it as-is for now because of more balanced difficulty-curve.

Idiom Factory II would be a better introduction to the postgame than Switching Difficulties, the former channeling the beginning of ASMT's postgame. The Rest Area doesn't necessarily have to show up as early as the first level, if that was the reason for the current placement.

Yes, I didn't realise it was a reference.

We need a place to fit in Rachel's Rebate Rotorcraft for every submap, if it's going to be a quirk warp system similar to Funky's Flights from DKC1 and DKC2.
[/list]

I want to end myself. In other words, let's just put them freely accessible at the start of each world, or something?

[SAJewers]

I feel like The Emerald Winston Bar and Restaurant shouldn't be on the critical path through the forest submap, which requires the player to answer ten trivia questions in a row to pass. Right now, it looks like all other puzzle levels in the game can be skipped. I'd maybe put it on the alternate path right after The Legend of the Captain Blackpowder. That way, Emerald Winston would still come right before The Castle of Spirits, which is appropriate for the bar/alcohol themes of both levels.

Hmm. Honestly speaking, does Emerald Winston even need an exit? I thought of it as more of a Yoshi's House equivalent. SAJewers had some elaborate poetic plot planned for the Forest World which I think would work better if Emerald Winston was on the required path.. So why don't we remove the exit, and make both Emerald Winston and My Green Garden accessible after Castle of Spirits?

It'd be odd if it didn't, since I think all the other Rest Areas have one (I haven't looked at Temporal House yet)

[Nao]

• I feel like The Emerald Winston Bar and Restaurant shouldn't be on the critical path through the forest submap, which requires the player to answer ten trivia questions in a row to pass. Right now, it looks like all other puzzle levels in the game can be skipped. I'd maybe put it on the alternate path right after The Legend of the Captain Blackpowder. That way, Emerald Winston would still come right before The Castle of Spirits, which is appropriate for the bar/alcohol themes of both levels.

If we do it like that, we'd have one soft puzzle level on one path (Horse Adventure), and the trivia level on the other. So maybe we should have those two on the alternate path, and legend and NO VEGETABLES, ONLY TREES on the main path? Horse Adventure is fairly long, which might compensate for the alternate path being easier but more puzzle-filled.

Forgot to reply to this yesterday, but this plan doesn't quite work - the secret exit of Silent Flower Forest requires a Yoshi, and it's very possible that Horse Adventure is the first level with Yoshi that players will encounter (since the Forest world can be entered quite early). So my intention with the pathing was that you could do Horse Adventure and then take a Yoshi into Silent Flower Forest, which is why the secret path is significantly shorter than the main path here.

[SAJewers]

• I feel like The Emerald Winston Bar and Restaurant shouldn't be on the critical path through the forest submap, which requires the player to answer ten trivia questions in a row to pass. Right now, it looks like all other puzzle levels in the game can be skipped. I'd maybe put it on the alternate path right after The Legend of the Captain Blackpowder. That way, Emerald Winston would still come right before The Castle of Spirits, which is appropriate for the bar/alcohol themes of both levels.

If we do it like that, we'd have one soft puzzle level on one path (Horse Adventure), and the trivia level on the other. So maybe we should have those two on the alternate path, and legend and NO VEGETABLES, ONLY TREES on the main path? Horse Adventure is fairly long, which might compensate for the alternate path being easier but more puzzle-filled.

Forgot to reply to this yesterday, but this plan doesn't quite work - the secret exit of Silent Flower Forest requires a Yoshi, and it's very possible that Horse Adventure is the first level with Yoshi that players will encounter (since the Forest world can be entered quite early). So my intention with the pathing was that you could do Horse Adventure and then take a Yoshi into Silent Flower Forest, which is why the secret path is significantly shorter than the main path here.

Do note Silent Flower Forest does have a Cat Llama.

[Nao]

If we do it like that, we'd have one soft puzzle level on one path (Horse Adventure), and the trivia level on the other. So maybe we should have those two on the alternate path, and legend and NO VEGETABLES, ONLY TREES on the main path? Horse Adventure is fairly long, which might compensate for the alternate path being easier but more puzzle-filled.

Forgot to reply to this yesterday, but this plan doesn't quite work - the secret exit of Silent Flower Forest requires a Yoshi, and it's very possible that Horse Adventure is the first level with Yoshi that players will encounter (since the Forest world can be entered quite early). So my intention with the pathing was that you could do Horse Adventure and then take a Yoshi into Silent Flower Forest, which is why the secret path is significantly shorter than the main path here.

Do note Silent Flower Forest does have a Cat Llama.

lmao I probably should have checked that block :D

[PSI Ninja]

We need a place to fit in Rachel's Rebate Rotorcraft for every submap, if it's going to be a quirk warp system similar to Funky's Flights from DKC1 and DKC2.

I want to end myself. In other words, let's just put them freely accessible at the start of each world, or something?

That seems like the easiest thing to do at this point. However, I'm having second thoughts about how useful a fast travel system like this would be. Based on your overworld design, none of the worlds seem to be that far away from each other. And it takes quite some time to get inside the Rotorcraft to begin the warping process in the first place. I'm wondering if instead, Rachel's Rebate Rotorcraft can be used to warp to specific levels as soon as they're unlocked, rather than warping to a set point within each world.

Here's another forest world issue: Coasting Redwoods has Green Switch Blocks to aid the player, but the Green Switch Palace is placed after it in the forest submap. Although you can reach the switch palace on an alternate path via the secret exit of My Green Garden in Green Forest, there would no longer be a reason to go back to Redwoods, making the Green Switch Blocks in that level pointless. I could just replace the Green Switch Blocks with regular ? Blocks that have capes, but then it would be one less level that uses Green Switch Blocks (which are already pretty rare throughout the collab). Something to consider.

I worry that there might be other Switch Block issues like this with the current overworld design, but I haven't looked into it yet.

[Luckwaive]

We need a place to fit in Rachel's Rebate Rotorcraft for every submap, if it's going to be a quirk warp system similar to Funky's Flights from DKC1 and DKC2.

I want to end myself. In other words, let's just put them freely accessible at the start of each world, or something?

That seems like the easiest thing to do at this point. However, I'm having second thoughts about how useful a fast travel system like this would be. Based on your overworld design, none of the worlds seem to be that far away from each other. And it takes quite some time to get inside the Rotorcraft to begin the warping process in the first place. I'm wondering if instead, Rachel's Rebate Rotorcraft can be used to warp to specific levels as soon as they're unlocked, rather than warping to a set point within each world.

Adding to this, if the point of Rachel's Rebate is for convenient fast travel, wouldn't it be best to have it accessible at any time, through a button press on the map or something? That would remove the issue of having to find a spot to shoehorn it into every world too (which seem like they are kind of cramped with levels as is).

But I guess the issue with that is that it starts to just turn into the SMA2 status screen with less information and extra steps. So I don't know. Maybe that's starting to stray too far away from the original idea?

[Nao]

Update with all the things discussed during the last days.

[SAJewers]

Hey, is there any update on this? Has anyone stepped forward to make the OW?

[Luckwaive]

Hey everyone, I'm going to revive this ol' thread here since I'm actually starting to ramp up designing this thing.

I have a couple of suggestions for potential changes to the current layout. I'll post the most recent mockup Nao made some months back for reference:

AAT.drawio (1).png (350.46 KiB) Viewed 6652 times

This is still a bit outdated, the most important changes are Twilight Tofu and a rest area being added to World 1 and Triple Threat preceding Rachel's Rebate on the overworld.

I guess my first suggestion here would be to swap the placements of the sky and forest worlds, mostly for thematic reasons.
Triple Threat has the player climbing up a mountain into the sky, followed by Rachel's Rebate, and then Red Radish. The secret exit of Red Radish has the player climbing further up into the sky... so wouldn't it make more sense for this to lead into the sky world rather than the forest world?

Conversely, the levels currently leading to the sky world are Thornbush and Baby Catnips. Thornbush would very naturally transition to a forest, and an underground level transitioning to forest would also make a lot more sense than a transition to a sky area.

The world layouts themselves would need to be slightly adjusted to accommodate this, since Sky has two entrances currently as opposed to the forest, which has one.

The main reason I could see to not do this would be potential difficulty balancing reasons... I don't really remember if the sky world was all that much more difficult than the forest, or if they were similar in their difficulty, as it's been a bit since I've played through them.

The other suggestion I'd like to make is swapping Tank Ga Warui and Good Ol' Days. Maybe this is just me, but I think Tank is a lot more difficult and fits in more naturally with the other special world levels, where Good Ol' Days feels... oddly easy in comparison to them? Plus, if the final world is supposed to be accessed from a rift in the sky (I suppose this could change though), I think this kind of makes more sense as a transition too.

And one last thing, for now: Was it ever established how fast travel should be implemented? Do we need to make space for an additional level spot in each submap for this, like Funky's Flights?

How would everyone feel about these changes? I'm sure I'll likely have more things to suggest as I dive deeper into designing this thing, but I figured this was a good place to start.

[KobaBeach]

This is still a bit outdated, the most important changes are Twilight Tofu and a rest area being added to World 1 and Triple Threat preceding Rachel's Rebate on the overworld.

pinging cam & tori here, let me know what part of triple threat you want images of

pingo

I can't really comment on the changes myself since I haven't played the levels in a while, but do what feels natural to you.

[camwoodstock]

pinging cam & tori here, let me know what part of triple threat you want images of

uhhh the start of it, since we wanted it to be a blend of the end of seige at wolfenstein/the start of the first W2 level! it's probably just as good the past few days have bottlenecked us on actually doing anything for the cutscenes OOPS

[PSI Ninja]

This is still a bit outdated, the most important changes are Twilight Tofu and a rest area being added to World 1 and Triple Threat preceding Rachel's Rebate on the overworld.

For reference, here's the latest World 1 submap you posted in the server a few weeks ago:

image-132.png (63.7 KiB) Viewed 6612 times

Just wanted to confirm that the rest area is the very first spot on the map? Where it is placed will affect how I approach designing it. For the record, I would be perfectly fine with having it right at the beginning.

I guess my first suggestion here would be to swap the placements of the sky and forest worlds, mostly for thematic reasons.
Triple Threat has the player climbing up a mountain into the sky, followed by Rachel's Rebate, and then Red Radish. The secret exit of Red Radish has the player climbing further up into the sky... so wouldn't it make more sense for this to lead into the sky world rather than the forest world?

Conversely, the levels currently leading to the sky world are Thornbush and Baby Catnips. Thornbush would very naturally transition to a forest, and an underground level transitioning to forest would also make a lot more sense than a transition to a sky area.

The world layouts themselves would need to be slightly adjusted to accommodate this, since Sky has two entrances currently as opposed to the forest, which has one.

The main reason I could see to not do this would be potential difficulty balancing reasons... I don't really remember if the sky world was all that much more difficult than the forest, or if they were similar in their difficulty, as it's been a bit since I've played through them.

Nao put a lot of thought into the overworld layout to account for things like Switch Palace blocks and to avoid pointless secret exits, so we have to be careful about moving stuff around. But looking at the diagram again, it's not perfect. For example, Red Radish is way at the start of the main map, but it heavily features Red Switch blocks (the Red Switch Palace can't be found until the Sky world later on). And the Castle of Spirits/SERIOUS BUSINESS both have Yellow Switch blocks, but you can't access the Yellow Switch Palace until after those levels. We could fix some of these inconsistencies by removing/replacing the offending Switch Palace blocks in such levels, or attempt to shift levels around. In the worst case, we may have to accept that there is no perfect solution.

I think Forest world is easier than Sky world on average. Instead of swapping the worlds around, my thought is to swap Red Radish and Fungus Forest Flow. Then one of the exits of Fungus Forest Flow can lead to Forest world, which would make more thematic sense. However, I see your point about Red Radish leading to Sky world. Maybe I would further swap its position with Baby Catnips? Regarding Thornbush, that level leading into Sky world sounds plausible to me (the brambles climb up into the sky). If I could have a day or two, I can try to rearrange things on the main map while still accommodating theme and in-level Switch Palace blocks.

The other suggestion I'd like to make is swapping Tank Ga Warui and Good Ol' Days. Maybe this is just me, but I think Tank is a lot more difficult and fits in more naturally with the other special world levels, where Good Ol' Days feels... oddly easy in comparison to them? Plus, if the final world is supposed to be accessed from a rift in the sky (I suppose this could change though), I think this kind of makes more sense as a transition too.

I feel these two are about the same difficulty, but Tank ga Warui starts out weirdly hard (it gets a bit easier later in the level). It doesn't matter to me if these two levels get swapped, but maybe it makes more sense for Good Ol' Days to be on the main map with all of the other "green" levels.

And one last thing, for now: Was it ever established how fast travel should be implemented? Do we need to make space for an additional level spot in each submap for this, like Funky's Flights?

Maybe a new fast travel location is unlocked whenever a new rest area becomes available? Then on the overworld, the player is taken to the fast travel selection screen with the press of a button (if that's possible). That seems like the best way to handle this without making the maps too cluttered.

[SAJewers]

Nao put a lot of thought into the overworld layout to account for things like Switch Palace blocks and to avoid pointless secret exits, so we have to be careful about moving stuff around. But looking at the diagram again, it's not perfect. For example, Red Radish is way at the start of the main map, but it heavily features Red Switch blocks (the Red Switch Palace can't be found until the Sky world later on). And the Castle of Spirits/SERIOUS BUSINESS both have Yellow Switch blocks, but you can't access the Yellow Switch Palace until after those levels. We could fix some of these inconsistencies by removing/replacing the offending Switch Palace blocks in such levels, or attempt to shift levels around. In the worst case, we may have to accept that there is no perfect solution.

I'd rather not edit levels to fix this; probably better to just reshuffle the switch palaces.

I think Forest world is easier than Sky world on average. Instead of swapping the worlds around, my thought is to swap Red Radish and Fungus Forest Flow. Then one of the exits of Fungus Forest Flow can lead to Forest world, which would make more thematic sense. However, I see your point about Red Radish leading to Sky world. Maybe I would further swap its position with Baby Catnips? Regarding Thornbush, that level leading into Sky world sounds plausible to me (the brambles climb up into the sky). If I could have a day or two, I can try to rearrange things on the main map while still accommodating theme and in-level Switch Palace blocks.

Some suggestions I would make looking at the flowchart again:

• Not sure I like the idea of yeah! get down! ONE MORE TIME!'s main exit looping back. I get it for Use Of A Goal Posts because the main exit is more of a failure state, but this one feels a bit off to me
• The joke in THE OBSTACLE lands its best if it's one of the earliest levels the player can come across while also occurring before the yellow switch palace. Maybe make it the 2nd level after whatever the 1st one ends up being (while leading to Doing Things the Hard Way), and have the secret exit of whatever level 1 is lead to yeah! get down! ONE MORE TIME! (the main exit of which leads to The Feeling of a Freshman and the secret exit leading to forest town)
• Reminder that Gate To Final World can't be a level because we're out of regular level slots

The other suggestion I'd like to make is swapping Tank Ga Warui and Good Ol' Days. Maybe this is just me, but I think Tank is a lot more difficult and fits in more naturally with the other special world levels, where Good Ol' Days feels... oddly easy in comparison to them? Plus, if the final world is supposed to be accessed from a rift in the sky (I suppose this could change though), I think this kind of makes more sense as a transition too.

I feel these two are about the same difficulty, but Tank ga Warui starts out weirdly hard (it gets a bit easier later in the level). It doesn't matter to me if these two levels get swapped, but maybe it makes more sense for Good Ol' Days to be on the main map with all of the other "green" levels.

Another option might be Who put Touhou in my hack?, which is rated 4.5 difficulty

And one last thing, for now: Was it ever established how fast travel should be implemented? Do we need to make space for an additional level spot in each submap for this, like Funky's Flights?

Maybe a new fast travel location is unlocked whenever a new rest area becomes available? Then on the overworld, the player is taken to the fast travel selection screen with the press of a button (if that's possible). That seems like the best way to handle this without making the maps too cluttered.

I have yet to see anything on smwc that says that's possible. I'll keep looking though

edit: also not we don't really have any free buttons on the ow for this unless we remove the select save patch (though this can be rectified by adding a save block to 105)

[Luckwaive]

I actually mapped out a design in LM last night with the sky and forest worlds swapped, and it went a lot better than my other attempt from a few months ago. I quickly scribbled in some land forms underneath the pathways to help show what I'm going for. I'll also attach Nao's layout again with level numbers to help make better sense of everything.

Level Order 7.28.2023.png (217.65 KiB) Viewed 6583 times

Overworld Sketch.png (753.55 KiB) Viewed 6583 times

Minus the world swapping, this layout follows Nao's very closely. Most differences are pretty minor things like Aileron Moonbounce's secret exit skipping two levels instead of three, or Use of a Goal Post's failure exit feeding back to valley of wheat instead of warping to the other side of the map.

Most of the underground levels were grouped together and had secret exits that seemed to stretch to all sorts of different locations, so I found it logical to kinda carve out a separate spot for them, with a network of pipes that lead to those far reaching areas.

Obviously this layout isn't final or anything, I just thought I would share it even if we're likely going to make further changes. If possible though, I'd like to use this design as a potential jumping off point.


Now, regarding the forest and sky worlds:

I think Forest world is easier than Sky world on average. Instead of swapping the worlds around, my thought is to swap Red Radish and Fungus Forest Flow. Then one of the exits of Fungus Forest Flow can lead to Forest world, which would make more thematic sense. However, I see your point about Red Radish leading to Sky world. Maybe I would further swap its position with Baby Catnips? Regarding Thornbush, that level leading into Sky world sounds plausible to me (the brambles climb up into the sky). If I could have a day or two, I can try to rearrange things on the main map while still accommodating theme and in-level Switch Palace blocks.

I mulled this over a bit today, and came up with a potential solution. My initial idea was to keep things as is, but have the "path of least resistance" (only taking normal exits) take the player to the forest world instead of blocking them off with the obstacle. Forest Fungus Flow's normal exit would instead lead straight to the forest world, and after the forest could be Thornbush - one exit leads to Aileron in the sky world, the other leads to valley of wheat. The obstacle and doing things the hard way could then be relocated somewhere else. Baby catnips secret would instead redirect to the fishmarket instead of leading to doing things the hard way, as the path previously leading to Aileron would now be occupied.

I think that this could be improved though. Similar to what you suggested, we could scramble the first few levels as to discourage the player from easily reaching the sky world, nudging them towards forest instead. So my idea for this would be Rachel, then Freshman. Then Forest Fungus, the normal exit leads to the forest world, and the secret exit leads to back up the mountain to Red Radish. Normal exit for Red Radish can take Forest Fungus' previous secret exit towards the cave of monsters, and the secret exit can lead to the sky world.

The joke in THE OBSTACLE lands its best if it's one of the earliest levels the player can come across while also occurring before the yellow switch palace. Maybe make it the 2nd level after whatever the 1st one ends up being (while leading to Doing Things the Hard Way), and have the secret exit of whatever level 1 is lead to yeah! get down! ONE MORE TIME! (the main exit of which leads to The Feeling of a Freshman and the secret exit leading to forest town)

So this is the biggest remaining issue: where do we put the obstacle? I was originally thinking in between Thornbush and valley of wheat. The thought process here being that if the player found the yellow switch in the forest, they could proceed past the obstacle to valley of wheat, and if not, they could go back to find the yellow switch, or take the secret exit in Thornbush through the sky world. Since the sky world feeds back to valley of wheat, The Obstacle would function as a "shortcut" of sorts.

While I liked this concept, it could ruin the joke of the level. So maybe we can plug "yeah! get down!" before or after Freshman, have the normal exit lead to obstacle, and the secret is actual progress. So the order would look like this:

NewEarlyLayout.PNG (8.83 KiB) Viewed 6583 times

Nao put a lot of thought into the overworld layout to account for things like Switch Palace blocks and to avoid pointless secret exits, so we have to be careful about moving stuff around. But looking at the diagram again, it's not perfect. For example, Red Radish is way at the start of the main map, but it heavily features Red Switch blocks (the Red Switch Palace can't be found until the Sky world later on). And the Castle of Spirits/SERIOUS BUSINESS both have Yellow Switch blocks, but you can't access the Yellow Switch Palace until after those levels. We could fix some of these inconsistencies by removing/replacing the offending Switch Palace blocks in such levels, or attempt to shift levels around. In the worst case, we may have to accept that there is no perfect solution.

I think we should probably move the yellow switch earlier on - maybe after Captain Blackpowder? Then we just have to figure out where the secret exit for Serious Business should lead. Could have the normal exit lead to the plains area, and secret exit leads to thornbush, or vice versa.

As for Red Radish, that's a tougher one. A thought that popped up for me though: I'm not sure exactly how you're planning on implementing post game access, but maybe something for postgame could be located in this level, but it requires the red switch to be active to get it? Having so many red switch blocks in a stage where you wouldn't have them filled yet could even act as a subtle hint to come back again later.

I definitely think removing switch blocks in levels themselves should be avoided if possible though.

Just wanted to confirm that the rest area is the very first spot on the map? Where it is placed will affect how I approach designing it. For the record, I would be perfectly fine with having it right at the beginning.

I put it there because I was under the assumption that it was going to be the cabin from the intro cutscene, but I found out just the other day it's actually going to be an archeological dig. Maybe we could move it up on the mountain after pipe town or bunn canyon, but it doesn't particularly matter to me. I'm fine with it at the beginning too.

[Lord Ruby]

Overworld Sketch.png

This looks amazing.

But looking at this, I realize there was one minor change we discussed at one point for the postgame that seems like it never made it into the graphs:

Screenshot_20231024_090554.png (32.42 KiB) Viewed 6568 times

Essentially, the point was to make PREHISTORIC DOOM CASTLE a mid-world fortress, splitting the world into two halves for a smoother difficulty experience, with a relative breather or two right after it. Coincidentally, a tank level (replacing Good Ol' Days) right before a castle also follows another Mario convention.

[PSI Ninja]

It's cool to see a sketch of the overworld with all of the paths like that. Now it's easy to visualize what you meant about progressively climbing a mountain from TRIPLE THREAT up through Rotorcrafts. I think there's something to be said about having Sky world accessible early - it's a theme that lots of hacks tend to put later in the game, because it tends to feature athletic levels with more "pure" platforming. Doing it this way would be subversive, but in terms of difficulty balancing, I still think Forest world should be the first submap to become available, because it has the easier levels overall (the exception being Redwoods).

Seems like it worked out surprisingly well to have the underground levels grouped together. But I don't know how I feel about it being secluded to the corner of the main map and only connected by pipes - it looks very patchwork-y. I noticed that there's one free submap (only five out of six are used in your design). Maybe we can use the remaining submap to house the underground network of pipes? I know that we rejected the idea of a cave world before, but this might be a more naturalistic way to include these levels (and offer another place to put a Switch Palace, too).

So this is the biggest remaining issue: where do we put the obstacle? I was originally thinking in between Thornbush and valley of wheat. The thought process here being that if the player found the yellow switch in the forest, they could proceed past the obstacle to valley of wheat, and if not, they could go back to find the yellow switch, or take the secret exit in Thornbush through the sky world. Since the sky world feeds back to valley of wheat, The Obstacle would function as a "shortcut" of sorts.

While I liked this concept, it could ruin the joke of the level. So maybe we can plug "yeah! get down!" before or after Freshman, have the normal exit lead to obstacle, and the secret is actual progress.

The unfortunate thing about THE OBSTACLE is that it eats up the secret exit path of a two-exit level, because it forces the player to backtrack out. If we want to make the joke land by placing it early in the main map, I think the solution is to have Freshman lead to The Cave of Monsters, which has three exits. The normal exit of The Cave of Monsters is relatively trivial (arguably a failure state), so it would make sense to lead to THE OBSTACLE, which can't be tackled right away. Then the player would need to go back into The Cave of Monsters to find the other more meaningful exits. Maybe the second exit of this level could unlock Fungus Forest Flow and the third exit can unlock Red Radish, which would then open up Forest and Sky worlds, respectively. This would quickly expand the game laterally. The downside though, is that The Cave of Monsters heavily features Blue Switch blocks, which are not activated until a later submap. On that topic, I agree with the following comment you made:

As for Red Radish, that's a tougher one. A thought that popped up for me though: I'm not sure exactly how you're planning on implementing post game access, but maybe something for postgame could be located in this level, but it requires the red switch to be active to get it? Having so many red switch blocks in a stage where you wouldn't have them filled yet could even act as a subtle hint to come back again later.

Basically, I'm planning to have a bunch of clues on how to access the postgame scattered throughout the game. Maybe levels like Red Radish that have these early Switch Palace blocks can be used to hide these postgame clues, requiring the player to go back after the corresponding Switch Palace has been activated. If we're not going to be editing levels with Switch Palace blocks, this would be a good way to ensure that these blocks won't be effectively useless.

I put it there because I was under the assumption that it was going to be the cabin from the intro cutscene, but I found out just the other day it's actually going to be an archeological dig. Maybe we could move it up on the mountain after pipe town or bunn canyon, but it doesn't particularly matter to me. I'm fine with it at the beginning too.

Let's make it the first level spot, then. That way, it won't be missable if it's on an alternate path.

These are just my late-night thoughts for now. I'd probably need to spend a bit more time thinking about all of this tomorrow with a clearer head.

[SAJewers]

Just a reminder/now that I think about it, but Rachewl/105 doesn't have a proper exit; it's like Top Secret Area or Yoshi's House in SMW