A Second Mario Thing: free alex

[anonymousbl00dlust]

All the obstacles in my level can be beaten on the players first attempt without any 'future predicting'.

I honestly don't believe you. Like, are you just saying that to sound pretty, or do you somehow have some upper level knowledge that lets you know this?

I doubt that any player has beaten it first time. I also doubt that enough players have played the level for you to notice that each trap has at least been beaten without future knowledge.

Just going by the video you posted alone, I seriously doubt that the level can be beaten without trial by dying..which I don't mind too much, I just seriously have a hard time thinking that some of these can be beaten without knowing what's happening. (see: that weird autoscroll segment in particular, not the final segment)

I checked it by looking at the possible places/states the player could be at when an obstacle appeared onscreen, then did my best to make sure each of those entry points was survivable. The only real exception is the first obstacle in raocow's video. If you can't tell that the layer 2 smash is coming, it will get you once. I tried to make it as clear as possible that the layer smash was coming, but couldn't really think of a good way to do it. Since it comes immediately after a checkpoint and is fairly interesting, I left that obstacle in.

I feel like you aren't differentiating 'possible' and 'likely'. Yes, you need really fast reactions. Yes, it's extremely unlikely a person would make it first-try. But it's still possible.

[Septentrion Pleiades]

I feel like you aren't differentiating 'possible' and 'likely'. Yes, you need really fast reactions. Yes, it's extremely unlikely a person would make it first-try. But it's still possible.

You also need to no what not to do before there are any signs. You might as will make autoscroll hallways with dead ends and say "it's possible, but unlikely."

[truthordeal]

Kinda wishing this had ended at the Nitori.

[MrDeePay]

You all realize it's just a videogame, right? You talk about this as if you're sending him high explosives.

People warn others of terrible games all the time. This is nothing new.

Well, I can beat this pretty easily without savestates. I definitely can't beat Cool or Cruel without tool use. So there's that.

You're the author of a supposedly non-Kaizo level. You should be expected to.

[Grounder]

I sense a "protect the feelings of the creator" week incoming.

It looks to me like crud, its sole saving grace being that you can't really die

[Septentrion Pleiades]

Most of the problem with this level are pretty self-evident. If Anon didn't start going off about how fair and immaculate this level was, it would have likely avoided most criticisms.

[Zygl]

Yeah this level doesn't look humanly playable in the slightest. And yes anonymousbl00dlust, I'm aware you can beat it without savestates, but I'm not entirely convinced you're not some kind of machine sent from the future to inflict pain on raocow with Mario levels. For those of us definitely-humans this is completely over-the-top in terms of difficulty.
It does look nice, though, I'll give you that. Also I've been (very slowly) working out how to do something like that respawn-at-the-start-of-the-room thing for the past couple of weeks, so good job doing that way before I thought to do it.

e: I'm being told that was actually huflungdu who set that up. Still, though, it's a good idea and pretty well-executed, good job to huflungdu and whoever it was that decided to put something like that in the level in the first place, if the level were at a remotely reasonable difficulty it would've made a huge difference.

[Bryux]

The B-side level was super cool. Too hard for my taste, however, but seeing that run of it... It was beautiful.

[HuFlungDu]

e: I'm being told that was actually huflungdu who set that up. Still, though, it's a good idea and pretty well-executed, good job to huflungdu and whoever it was that decided to put something like that in the level in the first place, if the level were at a remotely reasonable difficulty it would've made a huge difference.

Actually I don't believe that bit was me, or if it was it was a simple edit from my Karoshi Mario level reset code that I immediately forgot about. If you watched jesus' video he uploaded, my contribution was in the room right before the end.

[Shard1697]

All the obstacles in my level can be beaten on the players first attempt without any 'future predicting'.

With what authority are you saying this? Has any first-time player done this? Do you think that being the person who designed it themselves, you playing it makes for a good test? This is a level that requires extreme timing and control, but takes longer to understand what the level wants you to do than it does to do those things. It's the kind of level which requires someone to die repeatedly on a section to figure out how to do it, then die more while trying to get the muscle memory down to actually execute that, all while having to get through a ton of obstacles without dying to even get to that point. Because you made it, you know all the ins and outs so you don't experience any of that. Not to mention that testing a level one obstacle at a time is a really bad way to get a feel for how it plays as a whole.
There's no way that anyone would play this through first time without dying, ever. It's not reasonable at all.

basically

If we use the metric that has been used for most of the LP, AKA judging a game as a game, this was one of the most horrible things ever.

[AUS]

Because pure platforming is just awful. Anon deserves to be lynched because this level isn't easily doable.

..Like sorry, but reading the above post reminded me of the game Cloudberry Kingdom, which was not only all about that but also freakin amazing. Seriously this level is waaaaaaaaaaaaay better than I thought it would be.

[Septentrion Pleiades]

Please explain this concept of platforming purity and how this level is more pure than say... 1-1 of Super Mario Brothers.

[Zygl]

Because pure platforming is just awful. Anon deserves to be lynched because this level isn't easily doable.

..Like sorry, but reading the above post reminded me of the game Cloudberry Kingdom, which was not only all about that but also freakin amazing. Seriously this level is waaaaaaaaaaaaay better than I thought it would be.

The difference being the levels in that game typically only take like 20 seconds at most.

They also don't generally have ridiculous abruptly-changing-direction autoscroll sections with multiple shelljumps like the section after where today's video ended.

[sedron]

If we use the metric that has been used for most of the LP, AKA judging a game as a game, this was one of the most horrible things ever. Still exceeds Further Over There by a long shot.

Well, yeah. That doesn't mean another critical lens can't be applied to it, or that it can't be appreciated for other reasons.

The metric I used earlier to find enjoyment in this level can be applied to any other level, too. Just as an example, let's look at Further Over There the same way.

Both levels are (arguably,) difficult to the point of being unfair, requiring extreme precision, reflexes/foresight, and patience. I can appreciate B-Side way more than Further Over There because it's much better made. There's a flow to play when it's done correctly, and the obstacles feel thought-out. FOT, on the other hand, seems very spammy. Enemies and the like are placed haphazardly to apply constant pressure in spaces where you don't have the ability to maneuver around a lot of it. Enemies like the plants suddenly halt progress, forcing the player to stagger constantly. B-Side uses sprites in interesting ways, whereas FOT does not.

You can look at any work from a multitude of angles, including game design. It's also okay to prefer one way of looking at things, but that doesn't affect the legitimacy of alternate viewpoints. Given B-Side's placement as the ultimate post-game, with reaching it being a nightmare in itself and it being totally optional anyway, I'm willing to look past the flaws the standard metric of level design reveals. I'd wholly agree that it's bad otherwise and I have no desire to ever play B-Side, but I can appreciate a different type of good design for what it is regardless.

[Isrieri]

This game was kind of crazy.

I see why it took so long.

[ano0maly]

So I watched anonymousbl00dlust's level, and I think that a good guideline for an intense post-game level is that it needs at least enough moments of rest to put save states. If your level is so continuously dangerous that you can't safely savestate, then it needs to be more lenient.

Reminds me of this video of the 9th door contest:
76th: notgoodwithusernames

[Mabel]

pfft. Its just a level out of most people's skill range...
Theres nothing wrong with that honestly.

this level's demographic is for those people who think Mario Must Die is a masterpiece

[morsel/morceau]

76th: notgoodwithusernames

I don't think you can beat the breath-taking arrogance of that "Be honest, notgoodwithusernames - did you test this without using any tools?". At least he seems to have calmed down a bit in his old age. There was no "Sorry I'm not part of the gaming master race like you are, anonymous bloodlust." There was no suggestion of savants. There is still the self-conscious parading of intolerance - "I've been playing for half an hour" - like a man groaning with toothache, but at least he doesn't dwell on it too much. Still, why not play it for two half hours? or three? This is an intolerable saw ride.

[Grounder]

Because he has limited time, and two games to record.

The frustration factor certainly doesn't help, either.

[raocow]

oh, hey, just so we are clear.. well, I don't know about back now, but when I mention the time to record nowadays, it's really for informative purposes, since single levels that take half an hour or more are still mostly atypical!

[Saturn Moriya]

B-Side is a good level. It's a fantastic level. For the TAS community.

But it's nowhere near acceptable for a normal video game. A real video game should always be playable, let alone beatable without tools. You can argue alot of things, but there's simply no way that anyone finds this level playable in such a way. There's a no-time-to-rest marathon of high-precision obstacles, more than a few of which require obscure movement to be traversed.

You could argue that it's suitable for the postgame. But in my opinion, having to resort to tool abuse drains all the fun out of playing it. And that (IN MY OPINION) makes it a terrible level for even the postgame of a proper game. There's people who still enjoy tool abusing through levels. But that doesn't give this level the right to be accepted into what was meant to be a2mt (going from the idea that we were trying to make an awesome super fun creative video game). It's a kaizo level, there's no way around it. But it's a good kaizo level.

...just stop shoving your casio keyboard levels into places where normal video games are the norm.

[truthordeal]

Maybe as a separate game of it's own this level would have been fine, but I can't believe that one of the people in charge saw this thing and thought it would be a good idea to include it at the end of a 70-something level collaboration hack.

[Voltgloss]

The bird song made it all worthwhile.

[anonymousbl00dlust]

Don't know what happened with the rom. But raocow still seemed to have a good time. So I'm happy.

The bird song made it all worthwhile.

I got such weird looks while I was recording that, haha.

Edit: I was going to wait, but I figured I should share the files now. It seems like a good time to do it.

msu-1 version + bsnes0.70 (warning: large filesize)

zsnes version

Enjoy!

[S.N.N.]

So, what was that about this level being beatable without any future predicting?

And with that, it looks like A2MT is finally done - what a relief. The small chunk of good levels really couldn't make up for the overall "meh" feeling of the game, and I'm not sure how much of that would have been fixed even with decent Q&A. I'll be looking forward to A2XT (with the bar set very high given how much I've heard people talking it up).