Episode 2 Discussion Thread

[raocow]

I don't know about the other people, but that seems fair to me

[FrozenQuills]

Not sure if towns count but
I have the main layout for the world 8 town done, but I really want an example town (or any town) done before I do any cinematX shenanigans. I want to keep things consistent and make building it easier (plus I have no idea how cinematX works).

[SAJewers]

I don't care about towns or other stuff right now, just the levels that need to be made. That should be priority.

[Holy]

Are there still open spots level-wise or are we just waiting on peeps?

[SAJewers]

Unless someone claimed the free spot in World 3-1, then there might be a spot in World 9.

[Sturg]

I was wanting 3-1 yeah

[SAJewers]

Are there still open spots level-wise or are we just waiting on peeps?

Actually, now that I think of it, there are a number of boss levels that are open that you could do. Take one or two.

[pholtos]

Boss levels, eh?

[Rixithechao]

A couple things I've mentioned on Skype but figure I should probably post here:

1 - I really think we could benefit from having a few completely optional mini-levels in each world like the ones in Shovel Knight; these levels would be unlocked via normal progression through the world as a branch off the main path, perhaps with a unique symbol in their name so players can differentiate them. We could use them for content we couldn't fit elsewhere in the game, they could be built with sidequests in mind so we could have quests that extend beyond towns without troubling people to shoehorn sidequest-related content into existing levels, and they'd give latecomers another chance to contribute to the game besides the remaining boss levels.

2 - Last week I decided I was going to try and wrap up my contributions to Ep. 2 by the 10th myself so I can focus on school and other projects. Then I was told by the main dev of one of said projects that he'd be focusing on something else for a few months, and an important bugfix for cinematX (cancelling coroutines properly, thus allowing cutscenes to be skippable and boss battles/races to be more cleanly interrupted) got pushed back in favor of restructuring the library to make the code more manageable without sacrificing backwards compatibility. And that's going to be a lot of work, so I ended up procrastinating by making a parallax background/foreground library, so, uh.. idk.

At the very least I'm going to try and have Aquatic Grotto (my W4 level) and the W3-1 boss code-complete by the 10th, but both are severely impacted by the cinematX bug. The 3-2 boss and the W1 town will be uploaded to their respective threads at whatever state they'll be in at the time, and then if I haven't finished the work on cinematX by then I guess I'll wrap that up before taking my break from SMBX stuff.

[SAJewers]

I'd personally be against #1 simply because I believe the project should more or less just be a collection of levels made by raocow fans for raocow himself to enjoy, with a plot and a few flavour things to glue it all together.

If you all really want it, go for it, but I don't think it's necessary at all.

[raocow]

to give a head's up on my progress, I ditched everything from my old level idea except for like the first screen, and am building just a more solid, fun platforming level rather than the... experience I was aiming for.

the result is that I'm having more fun building it and I actually got progress done, so I hope that by this weekend I can offer a first draft for testing.

[SAJewers]

If anyone's currently working on a level (especially people who've claimed stuff for Ep2), it would be a good idea to post what you have currently, and give people a chance to look it over and provide feedback, before submitting it as final.

[raocow]

I've noticed that POSTGAME WORLD has one slot left.

Is it okay if I reserve it, with the knowledge that I probably might not be able to produce somethign for a little bit ?

[SAJewers]

We might actually have a level for that spot. If I don't hear anything about the claimed levels in Worlds 3 and 5, then you might be free to take one of those.

[raocow]

I really want to make something super-hard but I understand, it can wait for chapter 3

I might grab another earlier slot though, keep me informed about those

[raocow]

wait, one of them is 'temple' world ?
yeah, keep me informed please.

[SAJewers]

Two people have claimed levels for the Temples/Pyramids half of World 3, but I've hard nothing from them. If I don't hear from both of them by the end of the week, I'm gonna free those spots up, do a bit of shuffling to fit in "a stroll through the forest" (assuming that gets submitted in time), and I can give you that other spot.

[Sturg]

Proof I'm working on it:

[SAJewers]

For Those who wanted to go test levels, I uploaded a Fishmarket world.wld on the OneDrive, so people can test levels right from SMBX.

[SAJewers]

Just to summarize what was mentioned on Skype, I may have missed things:

• "Intro levels" won't work like Ep1; they'll look more like regular levels.
• Cutscenes will be added into the intro levels afterwards
• Cutscenes will be kept shorter compared to Ep1. Expect a new thread soon with a rough draft of the plot and cutscenes for people to look at.
• There should be more transparency regarding the plot and cutscene development, compared to Ep1.
• We won't have gameovers, nor will the player have to worry about managing lives.
• You will be able to have negative lives.
• Still a HUB and OW, like Ep1
• HUB will mainly be for flavour, and world selection
• OW development won't start until everyone is mostly satisfied with the world order. Please test using the fishmarket OW on OneDrive if at all possible

[ztarwuff]

Just to summarize what was mentioned on Skype, I may have missed things:

• OW development won't start until everyone is mostly satisfied with the world order. Please test using the fishmarket OW on OneDrive if at all possible

Oh dear. It never occurred to me that you might switch levels out. The World 6 castle I'm working on depends on the current level list for World 6 being the final copy.

[Slit08]

Just to summarize what was mentioned on Skype, I may have missed things:

• "Intro levels" won't work like Ep1; they'll look more like regular levels.
• Cutscenes will be added into the intro levels afterwards
• Cutscenes will be kept shorter compared to Ep1. Expect a new thread soon with a rough draft of the plot and cutscenes for people to look at.
• There should be more transparency regarding the plot and cutscene development, compared to Ep1.
• We won't have gameovers, nor will the player have to worry about managing lives.
• You will be able to have negative lives.
• Still a HUB and OW, like Ep1
• HUB will mainly be for flavour, and world selection
• OW development won't start until everyone is mostly satisfied with the world order. Please test using the fishmarket OW on OneDrive if at all possible

Alrighty,
as I wrote to you in the PM I'm going to create the other remaining temple level starting on the 15th once I've written my final test for this semester.
But since intro levels will be designeed as well as bosses and towns it doesn't have to be done within the next three days. I'll keep posting screenshots though.

[SAJewers]

I sent Minnakht a PM, waiting to see if he responds. If I don't hear anything within like a week, I'll have to assume he's AWOL.

Otherwise, maybe we can use whatever level you want to make as an intro thingy.

Just to summarize what was mentioned on Skype, I may have missed things:

• OW development won't start until everyone is mostly satisfied with the world order. Please test using the fishmarket OW on OneDrive if at all possible

Oh dear. It never occurred to me that you might switch levels out. The World 6 castle I'm working on depends on the current level list for World 6 being the final copy.

I honestly doubt we'll make that many changes. It's mainly the order the levels are in each world. I don't forsee swapping that many levels between worlds like happened in Ep1.

[ztarwuff]

I honestly doubt we'll make that many changes. It's mainly the order the levels are in each world. I don't forsee swapping that many levels between worlds like happened in Ep1.

That's cool. By the way, I can't quite get the hang of the World Editor. I just wanted to see whether my choice of name would actually work, as it uses an â and an ó, both of which are characters that the SMBX Level editor do not recognise.

[SAJewers]

Was just thinking: since "intro levels" are now just regular levels with a short cutscene attached to the beginning afterwards, wouldn't it be best if we just allow 9 more levels to be submitted, then pick 1 level in each world to the starting level that we attach the cutscene to?