MaGL X2 - Cat Planet × Pokemon OTP

[FrozenQuills]

I believe the author tried to show the difference between foreground and background lava by overlay and minor contrast, but the background is not nearly dark enough to help with that.
Also you know something is wrong when people are considering elements in this level for kaizo levels.

[Fawriel]

................. lava puppy
....

lava puppy.

........... I'm willing to accept this.

[Zha Hong Lang]

I had a weird dream last night where someone predicted me getting first place for some reason (I think it might have been like "He's been really optimistic/helpful this whole time" or something like that, which makes me lol thinking back on it)

even weirder was that the person said it in this topic, not the actual prediction topic

(In all honesty I don't care where I place. After looking through all of these levels which have wonderful amounts of effort put into them, it's made me care less about the rank and more about the experience of being here in the first place)

[Kukironosuke]

this lava fall on the left kinda debunks my logic, it looks like its layered on top of the wooden beam so it should be in the forground where it can kill mario, but its actually on the same layer as the wooden beam

[Grounder]

Welcome to Hell back, raocow!

I detect another case of testing only with Godmode on today...

[KayhemMaus]

...this was not what I expected at all. o.o

Commentary, Day 21 [Week 3 down, good lord we're still in the 200's in week 4...];

220th, SuperArthurBros.: 'Lava Rockway' <ANGRYCOW WARNING, LENGTH WARNING, IGNORED CHARACTER/NAME GIMMICK WARNING> - Well firstly, two parts? Really? Secondly, ignored the gimmicks? Jeez louise... talk about a terrible first impression!

Ok, good music choice to continue the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Crash Twinsanity, right? The worst, buggiest of them all? Yay...

Using the lava falls as both BG and a genuine instakill area is NOT funny in the slightest. It makes you afraid of EVERYTHING, and that's not good gameplaying. There's only about... 30 dots difference in colour tone between BG wall/lava and FG wall/lava. That's not natural to see at first. Also, leap of faith over lava? You what, mate?

About 6 minutes in I want to stab out my earlobes. I hate this piece of music. So much. Thank the lord for the transition into Melon 2--OH GOD MORE TWINSANITY MUSIC. D=

I think the Spanish Toad wanted you to wait there. From what I understand, something kills you if you do. Translation: that toad is a dick.

Lava wall of death. Out of nowhere. Are you serious? Really? This is freaking stupid at this point. Then Floor Lava! Then a Vertical Lava Chase?! What is the THINKING behind this level?! Was this meant to be for Kaizo? I don't get it!

The worst crime is that there are great ideas hiding in a mire of terrible choices being made. raocow is right, this is Scarlet Devil Waltz all over again.

[Vergalon]

Also, we are still in world 4 out of 20.
Looking forward to the higher places if we're already seeing quality in the lower places

[Sorel]

...man.

This level. It could have been so great...

But it was too... "grand".

At least the music was catchy.

[Vergalon]

I do have to say I genuinely enjoy Twinsanity music.
I also think it fits ASMT-type games well
Total a cappella go~

[Voltgloss]

Today's level needed:
- midpoints in each half
- much clearer distinction between "fake" and "real" lava
- eradication of the BLD (Big Luigi Discrimination)
- advance warning of the two chasing lava sections

If those fixes were made I think the level could be genuinely enjoyable. I found the enemy placement in particular to be an interesting challenge. It's not often you see the hopping goombas used so effectively. But they just needed to be in a fairer level.

[Piter Lauchy]

Damn, that music is incredibly good. Why did it have to be wasted on such a forgettable game? It made me forget the music by proxy, apparently.

[S1eth]

I can't think of a way to score this level as high as any of the judges...

Character Use: 0 (ignored gimmick)
Level Name Adherence: 0 (ignored gimmick)
Graphics: <5 (5 is average vanilla, this is worse: poor lava graphics are misleading, distracting, kill the player)
Personal Fun Factor: close to 0
Other Person Fun Factor: close to 0
(level designed to get the player stuck at every opportunity, easy to get lost, too long without checkpoints, instant death)
Music: ~7 (at least the music was good)
Uniqueness: >=10 (unique in the sense that it does things that no other level does, but most of those things are mistakes)


That's 21 points, 31 at maximum.

[Willhart]

I can't think of a way to score this level as high as any of the judges...

Character Use: 0 (ignored gimmick)
Level Name Adherence: 0 (ignored gimmick)
Graphics: <5 (5 is average vanilla, this is worse: poor lava graphics are misleading, distracting, kill the player)
Personal Fun Factor: close to 0
Other Person Fun Factor: close to 0
(level designed to get the player stuck at every opportunity, easy to get lost, too long without checkpoints, instant death)
Music: ~7 (at least the music was good)
Uniqueness: >=10 (unique in the sense that it does things that no other level does, but most of those things are mistakes)


That's 21 points, 31 at maximum.

The combined fun scores were actually somewhere between 14 to 24 out of 50. It did have some better parts in there, and at least on my screen the graphics did not get in the way. That 24 was a bit high on my opinion too, but the level did have some enjoyable atmosphere thanks to the organic level design and choice of music. It's also possible that a lot of those jumps on the second part were easier for Mario.

Edit: We should have probably marked what characters the player can or can't use on a given level.

[Sturg]

incoming lengthy judging comment

Lava Rock Way - SuperArthurBros

Oh boy. This level was... something. I'm gonna go ahead and start with the good things about it, particularly the atmosphere. The level looks great what with the cool diamond/gem graphics mixed with the wooden infrastructure, not to mention you get an A+ in your choice in music as I love me some Twinsanity (although it probably wasn't the most fitting in the 1st section). The chase sequence from the lava is pretty creative especially when you have to 'jump' over a 'lava wave' as well as just being super intense so props on that. Now, with that being said, there were a lot a thing wrongs with this level, mainly in terms of level design. First off, the first section is kind of super vague on where you're actually supposed to go. Essentially it's a prettied-up pipe maze, although it may not be the most complicated, but because of the amount of space you have to move around, you can get lost fairly easy. There really isn't too much of an indication whether you're moving in the right direction or not, and it just becomes confusing and a pain when you die. Speaking of death, I died a ton in this level, and while some of it is due to me just being stupid along side some hefty difficulty, there were several due to REALLY strange design choices that came out more cheap than hard. There are a lot of places you could get stuck due to a jump you weren't able to make with either falling platforms or flying koopas, so essentially you had to kill yourself. One thing that just felt super strange was trying to determine what was a insta-kill lava space and what was just falling lava background. Both use the EXACT tile graphic and it's really easy to confuse the two. It's not intuitive at all and causes a lot of hesitation on the player's part figuring out whether someplace is safe or not. Another thing was that this level was just straight out hard and strict on what you were required to do. Some parts felt Kaizo-like in the 2nd section and there is just no let from it. You have to be big to get this reserve power-up, you have to avoid the spiny walking on the pipe you need to get into, you have to jump over three flames with an extremely low ceiling (which felt impossible with big Mario, and I eventually switched to Peach), you have to fall through a one-tile wide pit precisely with lava on both sides, sometimes paths were too narrow for the player to walk through big and you were required to duckslide or somewhere along those shenanigans, there were areas that had no point in being there besides being a dead end or just to look important/pretty, there was a TRAP npc that would crush you if you talked to it, jumping enemies in low corridors, sudden moving layers that screw you over (either due to framerate or surprise), a vertical section AT THE END of the level where it seemed very likely to get hit due to being rushed to platform with enemies with a 'screw you' dragon coin on the right side (which by the way is totally not worth it).

While I can enjoy a hard challenge once in a blue moon, there were so many sudden instances of cheap death in the 2nd section that it stopped being fun for the most part. And even though I actually beat the level and it felt great once I did, my attitude to the level up to that point was nothing but annoyance and frustration. Fortunately for you I'm a masochist when it comes to hard level design, and I enjoyed most of the level along with it's lovely atmosphere. There were just some areas that felt unreasonable to work with, along with the 2nd half being a bit too long.

tl;dr: This level looks and sounds great, but the design choices are just... out there. Like, this level would have been a lot more fun if it wasn't murdering my face on every strenuous obstacle.

[blue_kirby]

A double melon level involving a mountain? Very coincidental it ended up in the melon world.

Lava Rockway - Alright, positive points first. Well designed level with a pretty neat "green volcano" background that's an edit of the volcanos from World 8 in Super Mario Bros 3. I really liked how the graphics were integrated and it made the level look very beautiful visually. The music was also very catchy, especially at the first half, which I thought was very fun. However, the bad points ... not only is the level long, it's unforgiving. It has points where it gives you a powerup ... then forces you to shrink. There are also portions where it's easy to get hit by an enemy, which frustrated raocow. Also, that "angrycow warning" wasn't there for nothing ... raocow did curse and yell a few times in the level. Additionally, the "lava" could've been specified more. I thought the lava covering the foreground was just a visual that you could walk through (looks like raocow had to learn that the hard way), seeing how the rest of the level had beautiful visuals. The powerups could've also been easier to grab, as some were in harder to reach areas. The lava wall also came without warning - it's just a pity that raocow had to (unintentionally) finish the level in God Mode.

If it was abridged and had less death traps, I could definitely see this being in the relatively high tier.

[Zha Hong Lang]

Wait, SuperArthurBros made this level?

Hmm, that's interesting. It's a long time since I last saw anything from him in particular.

[ano0maly]

This is what happens when you completely ignore the rules and instructions.

[Kles]

This is one of those levels that would be significantly improved by a multiple midpoint system. Four or five midpoints would have made this much more tolerable!

[Zha Hong Lang]

This is what happens when you completely ignore the rules and instructions.

Well, given that the problems with the level had to do with use of graphics and room construction in general rather than level-specific stuff, I don't really think the problem was that he ignored the gimmick/instructions. It's more of a designer-fingerprint kind of a problem, which is especially noticeable among SMBX community members.

[ano0maly]

I mean that it felt like the level designer was only focused on what the creator felt like doing, and was not taking consideration of any kind of a goal to meet. The result is a too long and overambitious level.

[Dog In Da Grass]

Lava Rockway could quite possibly be one of my favorites I've seen so far. The music was amazing but just a little out of place but still worked for what it was. I loved the aesthetic of the level, so much was put into it. Overall I think the level could really of benefited of being only the first half and sticking a midpoint somewhere in it along with fixing the small Mario bias. The second half felt unnecessary but still looked aesthetically great but less than the first half. The lava chase scenes were kinda out of place though the explorative bits of that second half were still decent but not living up to the first half.

[Garlyle]

I mean that it felt like the level designer was only focused on what the creator felt like doing, and was not taking consideration of any kind of a goal to meet. The result is a too long and overambitious level.

Yeah, I feel like there's a display of just kinda... not caring about the fact that the level's being made for things (for a contest, for other people, etc). So what was crafted wasn't a level to be played, but just... a thing that was made.

A very pretty, interesting thing. But... egh.

[raocow]

Now that I think about it, I'd prefer if we used an exit star for the first half to make it mandatory at least for the post-game. I'll probably push an update to raocow with a couple other things and then he'll have to shadowstar/god mode through the first half again.

is that really necessary though? just leave it as-is. Like I know that I'll have future versions and whatnot anyway but I'm not super keen on having to redo a level, even while cheating through it. it's just busywork for me.

[Arctangent]

Randomly this is a concern I've been meaning to express but keep forgetting to: my level was designed for both characters I was given, but I did not know I would have to put the character blocks in the level itself because I assumed that would be handled for me ( after all, the entire concept was that you were given two characters ).

I dunno if anything can be done about that or if it ultimately means anything but it's something that keeps bugging me.

[Mr-Snrub]

Now that I think about it, I'd prefer if we used an exit star for the first half to make it mandatory at least for the post-game. I'll probably push an update to raocow with a couple other things and then he'll have to shadowstar/god mode through the first half again.

Wouldn't it have made more sense then to make the two separate halves of the one level into two individual levels??