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ASMBXT; Journey's end

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Re: ASMBXT; Journey's end

Post by darkychao »

SAJewers wrote:I think first we should come up with the plot, then decide on everything after that based how well it fits the plot.
You want me to post the notes on the plot that I've been writing?
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Re: ASMBXT; Journey's end

Post by SAJewers »

Sure, give us a start. I have some ideas, but need to know the plot, so this could help me as well.
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Re: ASMBXT; Journey's end

Post by darkychao »

All my notes are physical right now so I have to digitize them, right now I have to go somewhere, when I get back I'll get that done.
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Re: ASMBXT; Journey's end

Post by Holy »

I think all the world stuff should be left until after the levels are done. Any theme prompt is going to hinder the creativity of the individual, no matter how creative that prompt may seem. That said, grouping levels together with an underlying theme after the fact and basing the world around that seems fine.

People defaulted to the normal forest, cave, etc stuff because those are the tilesets smbx has. To make something truly unique you'd have to come up with your own graphics and things, which takes longer.

I'm excited for a2mbxmtmmxt to have have a bit more of a plot though! And I do think it'd be nice to have to have an overworld, or at least a more varied hub like the ones initially suggested.
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Re: ASMBXT; Journey's end

Post by Doctor Shemp »

How about we get the levels done and then sort them into themed overworlds or hubs and have every world available from the start? The catch would then be that the individual levels have star requirements. So there could be a hard level that needs 50 leeks right next to an easy one that needs 5. That would maintain a difficulty curve while letting the player choose what theme they wanted to play (do I feel like ice physics today?). The worlds could be different sizes too. For the leek requirements I'd suggest unlocking levels in bulk to maintain choice.
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Re: ASMBXT; Journey's end

Post by cheez8 »

Holy wrote:People defaulted to the normal forest, cave, etc stuff because those are the tilesets smbx has. To make something truly unique you'd have to come up with your own graphics and things, which takes longer.
This sounds absolutely correct. I think that Septentrion had a good idea, to just have available graphic sets for whatever silly environments people feel like making, and present that as an option without ruling out the usual ones.
Horikawa Otane wrote:So, currently, if you look at ASMBXT, basically all the levels currently follow exactly what you just said!

Though we didn't see beach, we saw plenty of "forest levels, lava levels, snow levels, ice levels, castle levels, grass levels, etc, etc." When given ultimate freedom, people typically relied on these tired and boring aesthetics and settings instead of pursuing something truly unique.

I'm arguing that we enforce an incredibly unique series of worlds with themes that are never seen. Hence why I recommended things like "Grocery World" and "Miniature Golf World."
Here's the thing. Outside of World 1, which was basically grasslands world, and World 5, which was more or less creepy/dark places world, we never had a large concentration of similarly themed levels. As a result, after World 1 I never ended up thinking "gee, I sure wish I had more variety in these levels' environments" because there already WAS variety.

Besides, if all of our worlds are themed with environments such as "Groceries" or "Minigolf" then that will just become the new norm. A level with an environment that comes completely out of left field will have much less of an impact if it's surrounded by similarly unconventional levels than it will if it's surrounded by a variety of traditional yet fun levels.

Also, I don't really think any level aesthetics are tired and boring until they're used in a tired and boring way. For instance, World 3's lava level felt mostly familiar, while World 2's lava level felt really awesome. Simply having a traditional environment type doesn't make a level boring.
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Re: ASMBXT; Journey's end

Post by SAJewers »

I actually would like to see more diverse sets of graphics. We had Different Big Boos, no reason why we can't do that for the other enemies.
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Re: ASMBXT; Journey's end

Post by here-haveacat »

I hate to cut in, but I really think the game was overall rad. In fact, you guys and gals are what's motivating me to get into hacking. Keep up the work, cool cats. Even the lesser levels in this game were pretty damn lovely in my opinion. So, I'm gonna start practicing with Lunar Magic and strive to make it in the next game.
You guys are pretty darn radical to make a whole series of games dedicated to one swoopin' and bumpin' dude. Keep it up.
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Re: ASMBXT; Journey's end

Post by BobisOnlyBob »

here-haveacat wrote:So, I'm gonna start practicing with Lunar Magic and strive to make it in the next game.
If you wanna get in "the next game" as in A2MBXT, that's the wrong tool to practice with (although for level design in general, it never hurts to learn any given game engine). You should try SMBX or the ASMBXT level editors for that... I think A2MT, the next talkhaus SMW project, is pretty much sorted for levels besides boss stages that are already being made by people. Again though, it's all mario-type-platformer-game-level-making, so best of luck either way!
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Re: ASMBXT; Journey's end

Post by ano0maly »

This is how Duke Nukem Forever A2MT got all hyped up. Don't let that happen again.
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Re: ASMBXT; Journey's end

Post by kil3 »

i think there should be 8 custom bosses (i wont be the one making them)
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Re: ASMBXT; Journey's end

Post by Eathanu »

ano0maly wrote:This is how Duke Nukem Forever A2MT got all hyped up. Don't let that happen again.
And it should have custom bosses and a shop system and the overworld should split off into seven different hubs with Metroid mechanics to get around, and
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Re: ASMBXT; Journey's end

Post by TRS »

A2MBXT had better be a thing because I came up with several level ideas while at work that don't really fit in any other context.
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Re: ASMBXT; Journey's end

Post by Ditocoaf »

I got the impression that ASMBXT actually happened, as opposed to languishing forever in development purgatory, because of its "anything goes" approach. Tightening up quality-testing a bit might be a good idea, but if you start geeking out with elaborate plans, then you're just condemning this thing to the same fate as A2MT.
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Re: ASMBXT; Journey's end

Post by Mineyl »

Doctor Shemp wrote:How about we get the levels done and then sort them into themed overworlds or hubs and have every world available from the start? The catch would then be that the individual levels have star requirements. So there could be a hard level that needs 50 leeks right next to an easy one that needs 5. That would maintain a difficulty curve while letting the player choose what theme they wanted to play (do I feel like ice physics today?). The worlds could be different sizes too. For the leek requirements I'd suggest unlocking levels in bulk to maintain choice.
This is a good idea in theory, but it could backlash if it's not handled properly because we'd potentially be making the player run around all over the place instead of going in a guided fashion like in the hubs we've seen thus far, not to mention knocking the linearity of the old hub formats would add extra stress to keeping track of what's been done and what's not been done.
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Re: ASMBXT; Journey's end

Post by darkychao »

okay here goes, sorry for being a little late.
Alright, this is how it's going to go down, yah know how in ASMBXT Kood, raocow, and Sheath came out of pretty much nowhere? Well in what exactly is going on this game that's explained in more detail. Remember how Kood had said that he followed Joey through several interdimensional portals before catching up with him in AUT(A Universe Thing)? Well apparently those have been showing up all over the place.
Upon returning to The Master's spaceship thing thing Demo and Iris learn that someone has managed to steal some "super leeks" which were being used to power the ship, fortunately the leeks brought back were enough to power the ship's life support temporally, the sisters are tasked to return to the surface of the nearby planet to search for the stolen super leeks; after searching about for a while they find that Kood has returned.
He has learned that someone has been using an interdimensional portal generator powered by stolen grand stars, these portals have been becoming increasingly unstable and that it's only a matter of time before they start to tear universes apart. The thing is that even though the forces of the Mushroom Kingdom have managed to return all the grand stars that these portals have continued to show up. Demo and Iris explain to him their plight and they figure that the generator has been using the power of the super leeks to continue working.
They call on the aid of raocow again as he was the most skilled of them (he did manage to beat fluffy quest after all). Oh... and Sheath is there to.
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Re: ASMBXT; Journey's end

Post by Septentrion Pleiades »

darkychao wrote:
They call on the aid of raocow again as he was the most skilled of them (he did manage to beat fluffy quest after all). Oh... and Sheath is there to.
Actually he didn't
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Re: ASMBXT; Journey's end

Post by darkychao »

Septentrion Pleiades wrote:
darkychao wrote:
They call on the aid of raocow again as he was the most skilled of them (he did manage to beat fluffy quest after all). Oh... and Sheath is there to.
Actually he didn't
raocow the player character not raocow the game player guy
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Re: ASMBXT; Journey's end

Post by Validon98 »

That story makes sense. Also, yes, he did beat Fluffy Quest. Although, of course I am getting tired of the whole "Fluffy Quest is controversial" thing. It's not that bad besides the one part with the invisible blue switch.
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Re: ASMBXT; Journey's end

Post by AUS »

Every level should have a different sprite set for beets. Bring in all the vegetables. All of them.
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Re: ASMBXT; Journey's end

Post by docopoper »

Yeah, because that wouldn't be confusing at all.
The first thing I would do with infinite power would be to make myself a cave where I could look at my shadow forever.

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Re: ASMBXT; Journey's end

Post by Octagon »

cheez8 wrote:
Holy wrote:People defaulted to the normal forest, cave, etc stuff because those are the tilesets smbx has. To make something truly unique you'd have to come up with your own graphics and things, which takes longer.
This sounds absolutely correct. I think that Septentrion had a good idea, to just have available graphic sets for whatever silly environments people feel like making, and present that as an option without ruling out the usual ones.
Horikawa Otane wrote:So, currently, if you look at ASMBXT, basically all the levels currently follow exactly what you just said!

Though we didn't see beach, we saw plenty of "forest levels, lava levels, snow levels, ice levels, castle levels, grass levels, etc, etc." When given ultimate freedom, people typically relied on these tired and boring aesthetics and settings instead of pursuing something truly unique.

I'm arguing that we enforce an incredibly unique series of worlds with themes that are never seen. Hence why I recommended things like "Grocery World" and "Miniature Golf World."
Here's the thing. Outside of World 1, which was basically grasslands world, and World 5, which was more or less creepy/dark places world, we never had a large concentration of similarly themed levels. As a result, after World 1 I never ended up thinking "gee, I sure wish I had more variety in these levels' environments" because there already WAS variety.

Besides, if all of our worlds are themed with environments such as "Groceries" or "Minigolf" then that will just become the new norm. A level with an environment that comes completely out of left field will have much less of an impact if it's surrounded by similarly unconventional levels than it will if it's surrounded by a variety of traditional yet fun levels.

Also, I don't really think any level aesthetics are tired and boring until they're used in a tired and boring way. For instance, World 3's lava level felt mostly familiar, while World 2's lava level felt really awesome. Simply having a traditional environment type doesn't make a level boring.
Exactly this!
Both overused and unusual themes can be varied or repetitive - it depends largely on the implementation.
Look at the coincidental themes in ASMBXT - world 2 was mountain world, and caves and jungles actually contributed to that impression, as they made you think "Okay, a mountain can be forested/have caves in it".
"Go make a mountain world", on the other hand, is likely to bring you many plain mountains, with one icy level and two athletic ones if you're lucky. And for each theme, there's a most obvious implementation like this...
And playing 9 straightforward hospital levels in a row, however well-made, is just as boring as 9 bland forest or cave ones.

In my opinion, themed worlds are to be preferred over random ones. And the shared graphics idea is amazing. But please play with themes and use them diversely! I assume that it would be intuitive to attempt making something as average or representative as possible, in order to stick to the theme.
But if this is applied to a a hospital world, you'd probably end up with an entire world full of things that play like cave or castle levels, but with sterile white walls, beds, operating tables and sliding doors...
while in a more interesting interesting - albeit cliched - example hospital world, you would encounter a level on the rooftops of a hospital complex, a hospital wracked by a zombie epidemy, something trippy, ViViD-like, a timed level about running through pathless terrain to fetch medicine, a slower/puzzly/exploration-heavy level where you talk to patients in order to find out what's going on, and maybe one or two of the aforementioned basic levels

aargh, this became one of these walls of text that I've been writing long enough for my mindset to change several times in the meantime, so excuse my inconsistency
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Re: ASMBXT; Journey's end

Post by RyutheXIIIth »

Ho hum.

As I've said before, I know I'm late, but I still gotta post this.

So I've just finished watching the whole LP. Or rather, I did so a few hours ago. By which I mean ten hours ago. And I've finally gotten over my speechlessness somewhat.

That was a totally wild ride. Honestly, I could have sat through that for two whole days and just not get bored, except for a part or two. Certainly a job well done, talkhaus. Clearly an awesome game. Not the best, but definitely one of the better projects you guys have made.

I feel bad for being unable to contribute to anything right now, but gimme a few months(maybe a year or two) and you'll have a worthwhile contribution from me, some way or the other. Even if not necessary, I just feel so obliged to do so.

Congratulations and my sincere thanks to raocow, for having LPed this game(although we all knew you were going to do so, but details), Shaman(although I really don't know the guy, let alone most of you) for delivering this project, and all you other contributors for making this awesome game. Hats off to you, and may you be blessed with a plate of tofu.


Man, raocow, you really have rubbed on me.
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Re: ASMBXT; Journey's end

Post by swirlybomb »

Man, I wish I didn't disappear for a month for literally no reason [sheer laziness], I missed the entire post-game and probably half of the 'normal' final world! Here's just some thoughts I can remember (I'm going purely by memory, so forgive me if I'm getting anything wrong):

Ascend was a pretty cool just-before-the-final-level level. It's tough, but not unfairly so, and it's not too long either.

The credits sequence was great- when I took a look at it via the editor, I was slightly blown away (I know it's probably a simple thing to do, but it just felt like a great ending (the music helped a lot, I'm sure)).

Seems like kind of a shame both of Sept's levels had to be right at the beginning of the post-game world. But I really don't need to discuss how bad they were, do I- I think literally everyone else handled that quite well. Making the switch blocks in Fluffy Quest NOT invisible/only findable by sheer luck would have helped it out a lot, though.
...I don't necessarily expect this statement to be seen or taken to heart, but seriously, raocow; if you've been playing a level for an hour with zero progress, PLEASE just stop and try again the next day, there's seriously no reason to continue playing for FOUR hours...
I really don't want to bring this up this big ol' can of worms again, but while I can kinda respect DeePay for being a critic in a certain sense, there's really a point where having a terrible attitude will cause everyone to not listen to you even if you're correct, because you're just coming off as a big stinky jerk. Calling Roo's animations 'tripe' unprovoked is kind of way past that mark. And being plain harsh is more likely to make someone want to give up than actually strive to improve.

Maybe I shouldn't bother with saying this at all!!

On the other hand;
MrDeePay wrote:[levels I liked]
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Geez, I feel bad that you died so many times to that one goopa at the beginning of GOTTA GO FAST, he really wasn't meant to be that much of a hazard... If you jump from the right edge of that first platform, you should bounce off him every time, or you can actually just fall down to the platform below without a jump and avoid him that way. I tried to make the first half allow for multiple options and not have just a single 'correct' path. An extra powerup at the beginning would have probably made that first half somewhat easier?
Also the level in general was very roughly inspired by Rayman Origins' treasure-chase levels. In a way. They're fast and punchy, but not too long.
I can recall a Youtube comment saying that the level could've been cooler by making stuff sync with the music, to which I can agree. If I ever make a similar level, I'd aim to try and do that (heck, Rayman Legends is even doing the same thing).
Eathanu wrote:For Gotta Go Fast, I think it'd be a little nicer to look at if you trapped Demo in an invisible sprite-passthrough box about three blocks from the edge of the screen. You get no control over horizontal movement either way, and this way her placement would be a little less stark. I don't think it would make the level easier in any meaningful way (which is a thing we would want to avoid for a postgame level), but it would allow the player's attention to shift to the center of the screen a little bit more, as opposed to the far left.

Or, y'know, the engine's buggy understanding of blocks would cause Demo to get shredded to pieces by touching the sides of her cage. Either-or.
I wasn't aware that this was possible in SMBX, but it's an interesting idea. Though even if it didn't kill Demo instantly due to glitchiness and whatnot, I kinda think leaving her at the left edge of the screen ensures that you know exactly where you are at all times (and gives you a little more time to react to things).
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Isrieri wrote:It still would have been better to start off with a few screens of flat ground. Just to establish that you are autoscrolling
But then every time you restart the level you would have to sit through those boring few screens of flat ground.
Given the choice between a single quick death due to not reacting the first time and adding a couple extra seconds to each run by having some empty space at the beginning, I think I'd side with the former.
Everything Switch Palace's boss was pretty neat, I'll say that much!

Luna Tower was crazy-impressive! I'm really inclined to say that either Luna Tower or Edge of the Universe should've been the 'actual final-final level' of the postgame world (granted, Flight Simulator does have the 'YOU ARE A THING' message...) because they really have a sense of an epic finale.
I think Edge of the Universe's boss could've been improved by making the second phase (with the first set of 'spellcards') only take one hit instead of two- as it is currently, it's just kind of unnecessarily long. And so forth. It appears to have that 'not visible when facing right' bug some other things did in the first phase, too.


...Yeah I dunno, I guess that's all I can think of!!
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Re: ASMBXT; Journey's end

Post by SAJewers »

Happy 10 year anniversary of this stupid thing 👀
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