A2MT Discussion: OW, Bosses, and Gimmicks

[Alex-R]

I find it kind of sad that it's so hard to find any actually useful constructive criticism though. Either it's "too hard 1/10" or "best thing ever 10/10"...

[CyclopsDragon]

I find it kind of sad that it's so hard to find any actually useful constructive criticism though. Either it's "too hard 1/10" or "best thing ever 10/10"...

Truesay.
Also, did you see the one guy whose review was so long that he had to put it on LiveJournal? My thoughts are "If you've played Kaizo hacks that were easier, then they weren't true Kaizo hacks".

[raocow]

The major vibe I get from a big chunk of smwcentral users is the vibe of the modern gamer who doesn't appreciate a challenge, and expects to clear any obstacle within minutes.

[tatanga]

Maybe we should submit a SMWCentral version with all obstacles dumbed down, twice as many coins and powerups, and a 1-up at the start of every level? Oh and everything should be pink, too.

[Paralars]

and after that we call this topic "SMWC Discussion", right? ;)

[Tails_155]

Well, keep in mind, SMWC is for ALL levels of gamers, and people like me (who are terrible) want games to play, too... but all the really well done ones get tedious-hard for people like me.

[Cecil Deacon]

Keep the difficulty as it is. It's hard (I'm a horrible gamer and I need savestates) but the demo counter gives incentive to keep trying.

In any case it's a million times easier to beat a game without savestates when you've beaten it with them once. I managed to wreck luigi's adventure without savestates my second time around and that game is brutal

[kilon]

You could make the difficulty rise a bit later (world 4/5 instead of 3) but personally I don't think it is necessary.
Also remember that it's a collab hack so to have a good difficulty spike is one of the hardest things to get.
This is just a hard game. They exist (Ninja Gaiden).
And A2MT hopefully won't be a lot easier

[Kil2]

It wasn't even that hard until the final castle and the last 3 void worlds

[DaxterSpeed]

Hmm.

I've been looking at the reviews on smwcentral on this thing, to see what could be done better, but it looks like the stickinglest point is the difficulty. Which I find to be a bother, because as far as I'm concerned the difficulty is pretty much perfect, even with some of its highs.

Then again, I reminded myself that this is a TALKHAUS hack, and not a smwcentral one.

What I would like to see is more ACTUAL levels, instead of silly puzzle levels. The world with BlackDS's ghost house was really messing with me. Mainly the ghost house. As it was silly hard and stoopidly glitchy.

tl;dr: I'd like to see more levels, and less puzzles. P-switch puzzles are so SMWC. Try using P-switches for smart things. Like secret exits.

[flameofdoubt]

Remember guys, we're organising the levels after we receive them all, plus our world structure is different. This means that normal world to world difficulty escalation doesn't apply, and that we can order them in terms of difficulty, sort them by theme, and sort them so that each world doesn't have too many action/puzzle/whatever levels.

[BlackDS]

ASMT2 doesn't have to follow on from ASMT's plot, it could be something completely new.

Yes, but it woule be hilarious if Demo got back, and the boss thing said "go throw those things away please".

Also, I want raocow's face to be revealed in this game, like after each world you get a piece of some picture, and then after all the pictures are collected, they form a picture of chuck norris, and there is acaption that says "Haha- you should have known".

[Tails_155]

ugh, chuck norris jokes.

[tatanga]

and after that we call this topic "SMWC Discussion", right? ;)

haha wow I forgot about that

[Tails_155]

666th reply for this thread: Wut.

What do you mean "SMWC Discussion Thread?" Did I miss something? Or do you mean it's getting off topic?

[Chdata]

This is the SMWC Discussion Thread just look at my subject.

Also where are you going to find a 16bit picture of chuck norris drawn in HQ.

[kilon]

ON-topic:

let's take a look in the past: some people wanted scores, demo counters and a bunch of other counters. I believe the main problem was that it didn't fit in the HUB. So what about inserting this pause menu? That way, when you pause the game you can see every counter there is. Plus possibly more (23/150 chests found etc.)
Unless the problem is that it isn't possible to keep track of so many different things at once.

[Tails_155]

That has been my concern with all the "Hey we should..."s is I don't know what truly is feasible and what isn't.

[cozyduck]

Well, since you guys are looking for some opinions beyond "it's too hard 0/10 lol" here goes:

- If you're gonna do plot, try to spread it out a bit better. The intro was clearly "too long", specially given that the resistance base part followed immediately. Of course, "plot skip doors" would also be welcome.

- Don't rush testing. While the current version gets rid of many problems that raocows had, there are still bugs.

- You should be more strict with turned in levels this time around. I know it's hard to do so, but you should be ready to force people to revise "average" levels many times, or they'd face the threat of losing their spot. ASMT has quite a couple of levels which are kinda unmemorable.

- Since you guys are doing the OW at the end, this might solve the difficulty curve problem to some extent. It was really all over the place in ASMT. We'll see.

- I beat ASMT toolless and found the difficulty okay, but I'm pretty experienced in SMW. An easy version might be a good idea, but don't use it as an excuse to make the normal version kaizo.
I'd say that levels like KC's castle or Currents were pretty borderline. Of course, difficulty is subjective, but I think most people here in the talkhaus are okay with how ASMT was, and since this is a talkhaus hack you guys should seriously prioritize the talkhaus over SMWC in this regard.

- I found the enemy design very inconsistent, but there's hardly anything you can do about it, given the nature of the hack.

- Puzzle levels are okay, but they shouldn't go on for too long IMO. Sorry chdata and Personalness.
I actually though BlackDSs was okay.

- You must have a boss fight against the Cotopaxi Parrot. Please?

[Cecil Deacon]

yeah like some parts were pretty rough, like the KC boss, but since i'm assuming we're having multiple midpoints that makes it a little more acceptable.

I like puzzle levels. You should put a limit on how many there are in the game though. like five or six?

I agree about the multiple revisions.

[Alex-R]

- If you're gonna do plot, try to spread it out a bit better. The intro was clearly "too long", specially given that the resistance base part followed immediately. Of course, "plot skip doors" would also be welcome.

This is sadly because of a fundamental disagreement, and putting the story in the beginning and end didn't end up being a very good compromise for the players. With the addition of "skip plot doors" we can hopefully avoid this.

- Don't rush testing. While the current version gets rid of many problems that raocows had, there are still bugs.

I agree, but you also have to realize that it's almost impossible to find every possible bug and actually release the hack sometime.

- You should be more strict with turned in levels this time around. I know it's hard to do so, but you should be ready to force people to revise "average" levels many times, or they'd face the threat of losing their spot. ASMT has quite a couple of levels which are kinda unmemorable.

I both agree and disagree. Of course I think we should raise the bar for this one, but it's kind of hard to know where to draw the line, and who.

- Since you guys are doing the OW at the end, this might solve the difficulty curve problem to some extent. It was really all over the place in ASMT. We'll see.

Don't expect the difficulty curve to be perfect though. I mean a lot of people contributed to ASMT and the chance for everyone to have the same view on difficulty is very small. Of course we will try our best to make a much smoother curve (if possible) this time around.

- I found the enemy design very inconsistent, but there's hardly anything you can do about it, given the nature of the hack.

What do you mean exactly? If you're talking about graphics, then Terry is already on it.

---

Thanks for your input, but I'll just remind you that it's a collab hack, which means consistency most likely will take a hit, but hopefully make room for variety and creativity.

[kilon]

- If you're gonna do plot, try to spread it out a bit better. The intro was clearly "too long", specially given that the resistance base part followed immediately. Of course, "plot skip doors" would also be welcome.

It will be spread out more. Although I still think that the intro wasn't too long. It just seemed long with the Resistance Base immediately after and the lack of plot until the end of the game after that (although people shouldn't forget that those message boxes from Con are somewhat plot related. Just not in a direct kind of way)

- Don't rush testing. While the current version gets rid of many problems that raocows had, there are still bugs.

If it isn't nearly finished a month before raocows birthday, I don't see this being a problem.

- You should be more strict with turned in levels this time around. I know it's hard to do so, but you should be ready to force people to revise "average" levels many times, or they'd face the threat of losing their spot. ASMT has quite a couple of levels which are kinda unmemorable.

Partially agreeing here. Sure, all levels should be of the highest quality possible, but we should give everyone a change to participate. And if that results in a couple of mediocre levels, that's okay. As long as at least 70% is in the good->best level ever region

- I found the enemy design very inconsistent, but there's hardly anything you can do about it, given the nature of the hack.

This won't change unless one person makes all graphics in his style and there is some global unity and less randomness.

- Puzzle levels are okay, but they shouldn't go on for too long IMO. Sorry chdata and Personalness.
I actually though BlackDSs was okay.

That is a personal thing. I like puzzle levels and while some of them where somewhat tedious and long, only 2 or 3 of them where not a joy to play in my opinion.

- You must have a boss fight against the Cotopaxi Parrot. Please?

No

actually, yes. Somewhere near the end. Maybe in a level that opens up after collecting a certain amount of parrot coins. They are parrot coins after all

[DaxterSpeed]

ON-topic:

let's take a look in the past: some people wanted scores, demo counters and a bunch of other counters. I believe the main problem was that it didn't fit in the HUB. So what about inserting this pause menu? That way, when you pause the game you can see every counter there is. Plus possibly more (23/150 chests found etc.)
Unless the problem is that it isn't possible to keep track of so many different things at once.

Actually, we can have both the normal status bar and an extra pause menu. I know some's over at SMWC is reworking it. And if we can't use his version, then we can use my version (just a few very simple edits to fix a few bugs.)

[Tails_155]

YCZ, I think it's all clear to swap Chdata for FoD, let Chdata have a bit of a rest. I already know FoD will be somewhat busy, too, but he said he's okay with the job. Chdata, from now on, you can report your updates to both FoD and me, that way there's a chance one of us will at least respond that we got it.

[yoshicookiezeus]

oh hey I get to use my usergroup leader powers again