8th VLDC: RIP Ningamer

[Mata Hari]

What's with having to wait around for the P-Switches? I don't understand that.

[Octagon]

Signs are Useless is the kind of level I'd make if I bothered with learning to edit smoo. (Hence, no big loss.)
The beginning of the crystal reef music made me expect a remix of Boards of Canada's "open the light". But no, it's SMW, Aquatic Ambience Edition with an Earthboundy bass!
The river segment of Log Jammer Jog was fun and could've been expanded on. I like nonlethal smashers.
Archaic Art Archive had a nice idea, but the level design was meh. Super janky pacing, and the visual moving parts felt cluttering combined with the enemy spam.
The cake level was fun to watch but I probably wouldn't enyoy playing it. The pastel spikes sort of blended into the background.
The way Big Boo clutched its digitized eyes looked really painful.
Trunk Trouble was pretty good but I have to question its treatment of powerups.

[yoshicookiezeus]

Izuna - Trunk Trouble

S.N.N.
CREATIVE USE OF VANILLA RESOURCES: 24/25
APPROPRIATE DIFFICULTY CURVE: 24/25
OVERALL LEVEL QUALITY: 23/25
AESTHETICS: 24/25

OVERALL: 95/100

COMMENTS: A superb level all-around. The design felt open-ended and creative. I especially loved your set-ups involving the Hammer Bros platforms + chainsaws - it's something I haven't seen before in a hack. The palette is lovely and the difficulty remains challenging yet consistent throughout. Excellent work - these are the kind of levels I love playing in the VLDCs.

Eternity
CREATIVE USE OF VANILLA RESOURCES: 23/25
APPROPRIATE DIFFICULTY CURVE: 24/25
OVERALL LEVEL QUALITY: 20/25
AESTHETICS: 25/25

OVERALL: 92/100

COMMENTS: Has some great difficulty (as in, it's really hard but it's atually fair) and the design is really great overall. Really love some of the setups there, the Line Guides are used in very creative ways in this level. The secret exit placement slightly bothers me, as it's in a random pipe just there.

MrDeePay
Creativity: 20/25
Curves: 13/25
Level: 14/25
Aesthetics: 25/25

Overall: 67/100

Comments: This level isn't as irritating as Signs are USELESS with its use of difficulty, but it's still annoying at parts in any case. Having to deal with the Amazing Flyin' Hammer Bro doing his best N.O.E. impression twice while the level is on a submap (causing the hammers to be thrown faster) is quite the pain. There is also the matter of power-up blocks being heavily guarded by saws and rotating platforms while over a pit. (And an invisible 1up being located on another platform with saws at the very spot the player would jump? No thanks.) Aside from that, this level is pretty OK with everything else it throws at you. It's just a shame that it other issues bring it down.

Wuthering - Conveyor Coppice

S.N.N.
CREATIVE USE OF VANILLA RESOURCES: 24/25
APPROPRIATE DIFFICULTY CURVE: 24/25
OVERALL LEVEL QUALITY: 24/25
AESTHETICS: 24/25

OVERALL: 96/100

COMMENTS: This is a level that feels like it could have been in SMW, yet in a somewhat hard-to-explain way. It really put the emphasis on making conveyors the main focus, and the set-ups with them were wonderful (e.g. the springboard falling off by itself). Well done.

Eternity
CREATIVE USE OF VANILLA RESOURCES: 23/25
APPROPRIATE DIFFICULTY CURVE: 22/25
OVERALL LEVEL QUALITY: 23/25
AESTHETICS: 23/25

OVERALL: 91/100

COMMENTS: Very nice level, with some interesting use of the convenyor tiles and some nice variety on the level's obstacles. I really like the spriteset used here, it works very well with the level's theme for the most part.

MrDeePay
Creativity: 15/25
Curves: 22/25
Level: 22/25
Aesthetics: 25/25

Overall: 84/100

Comments: Unfortunately, there's not that much you can do with SMW's conveyor belts, and if you remove them here, practically nothing would change. Only one thing is really effected, and that's the Springboard. Everything else is pretty well done, albeit standard.

dragoniante174 - Sea Side Course

S.N.N.
CREATIVE USE OF VANILLA RESOURCES: 15/25
APPROPRIATE DIFFICULTY CURVE: 13/25
OVERALL LEVEL QUALITY: 14/25
AESTHETICS: 20/25

OVERALL: 62/100

COMMENTS: I'm not really sure what to think of this level. It feels like it just goes on and on and on, with no clear focus. The midpoint came extremely early in the level, and every area after the first felt tacked on and pointless. I would have focused more on making one really good area rather than several mediocre ones.

Eternity
CREATIVE USE OF VANILLA RESOURCES: 15/25
APPROPRIATE DIFFICULTY CURVE: 10/25
OVERALL LEVEL QUALITY: 10/25
AESTHETICS: 15/25

OVERALL: 50/100

COMMENTS: An otherwise solid level ruined by its length. It just drags on without doing much different. It lacks focus and feels all over the place, goes through different environments and gimmicks without any sort of transition and fails to properly develop any of them.

MrDeePay
Creativity: 0/25
Curves: 0/25
Level: 3/25
Aesthetics: 10/25

Overall: 13/100

Comments: Oh boy, where to start. Do I even want to start?
You know in collaborations and compilations that there always seems be that one guy that tries to cram as much content into their level because they want to have the player being in it for as long as possible or because they can't decide on what to "properly" do with their level with no regard for how fun it actually is? This is one of those levels. This one doesn't even have a decent aesthestic or a proper checkpoint placement (placed LOOONG before the checkpoint), nor is that much of the sprite placement is that interesting and there is a chance of the game freezing because you an auto-scroll mid-level! (Pressing L or R where an autoscroll would begin will freeze the ROM.)

[raocow]

so that snow level next to sea shore.

Ha.

Haha.

Spoilers:

you may increase the 'raocow says a swear word' list by one

[S.N.N.]

Congrats on getting through the worst level ever!

[koplje]

From what we've encountered so far, I'm inclined to say MariYOLO is the worst level in hack. This one was tragic though; just cut out about 2/3 of its content and it would've been really good. Well, that and get rid of those few situations where Mario get crammed off the top of the screen, especially when there's a bomb/goomba generator going on.

MariYOLO isn't bad, it's just a kaizo hack. This level was just a bore. The gimmick that each little room holds a dragon coin is neat but the level is just terribly spaced out.

Also, MrDeePay is probably my favorite judge. He's like the Simon Cowell of the group.

[Mata Hari]

Spoilers:

you may increase the 'raocow says a swear word' list by one

Do tabernak and simonak and shit like that count as swear words? What does simonak even mean anyway??

[Grounder]

From what we've encountered so far, I'm inclined to say MariYOLO is the worst level in hack. This one was tragic though; just cut out about 2/3 of its content and it would've been really good. Well, that and get rid of those few situations where Mario get crammed off the top of the screen, especially when there's a bomb/goomba generator going on.

MariYOLO isn't bad, it's just a kaizo hack. This level was just a bore. The gimmick that each little room holds a dragon coin is neat but the level is just terribly spaced out.

Also, MrDeePay is probably my favorite judge. He's like the Simon Cowell of the group.

Let's hope the owls don't think so.

[Koopster]

Oh boy

I don't know, I still call that level the second worst of the game, but for the first one you're probably just gonna use savestates anyway. I mean, I was forced to myself

[lolyoshi]

Been a while since I heard "Fucking" in a raocow video

[AlchemistHohenheim]

Man, that "I'm glad I got the Dragon Coins, 'cause if I'd only played the level once my opinion of it would have been way higher than it actually deserved" bit at the end felt kinda...I dunno. Way meaner than I usually expect from raocow.

Not to say the level didn't deserve it though. Geez. Was it play-tested?

[Taigiry]

Well, the last two levels were a disaster. I actually think thet even the worst world had better levels than this.

wait a second. with the name it has, doesn't it mean that it should have been ragequitted, never to be finished? what gives ?!

Shots fired.

[Pheonix]

I wasn't aware regular, non-glitchy slope tiles didn't exist.

They wouldn't have stopped the inherent issues related to not being able to see where you're at half the time, but at least you wouldn't end up just falling off for no good reason.

[Arctangent]

Man, that felt like a level that wasn't made to be played at all, just looked at. It looks pretty nice, has an interesting gimmick, and hey, it actually kind of teaches you about the gimmick at the start. Except the gimmick has really unintuitive gotchas that can't be taught even through plowing through the level a hundred times, and even knowing the gotchas isn't enough to avoid them.

Honestly I feel like the level could've literally removed the wonky as hell blocks it used for collisions and just used standard one-way platforms, and little to no other effort would've had to be made to fix it. What I really can't understand, however, is how the creator didn't get so frustrated with the collision themselves and done that or just scrapped the level entirely, it gives the feeling that it wasn't actually playtested despite how many effects it had that require playtesting to make sure they all work.

Although. I guess they don't actually work, so it's possible they just guessed at it all working and were just really lucky / experienced with this sort of stuff?

[Oh Man]

Richard Nixon makes a pretty good stand-in for DJ Fishing Philter. More importantly, oh man 100% professional level design.

[Grounder]

I AM NOT A CROOK

[Mata Hari]

BUT I LIKE TO DO IT

[mellonpizza]

MOST LEVELS I MEET ARE QUITE SAVAGE

[Imipolex G]

Man, you know it's bad when I'm not even playing the level myself and I want to strangle the creator of it.

This Nixon deserves impeachment, no doubt about it

[10204307]

Alternate name: Tricky Dick's Terrible Treetop Tussle

[Willhart]

Having a level inspired by Fez would be really interesting. I'm not even sure of how it could be done with only two dimensions.

[Losoall]

Having a level inspired by Fez would be really interesting. I'm not even sure of how it could be done with only two dimensions.

It'd probably suck, as the game itself kind of did.

Also GG raocow on

wait a second.
with the name it has, doesn't it mean that it should have been ragequitted, never to be finished? what gives ?!

First person who mentioned that connection. Someone linked this on caffie.net's IRC (#smwc) and I was at first not tempted to watch because I've lost a good amount of interest in raocow's videos, but I always did enjoy the ones that took him out of character, and this one happened to do it just fine.


Note; I'm not sure if SNN caught on to it being a partial joke level when i told him that I wanted the original name to be "Fez sucks and you know it Torchkas!"

[Miyuron]

My favourite part of this video was the title. I have a soft spot for interrobangs. They need to be used at least once every three sentences, imo.

Ninja Edit: How did I just write that and forget to use an interrobang in the main part of the post‽

‽ = <3

[Octagon]

phil fish is a controversial dude but i think i'll take him over president nixon any day.

This level had some clever things going for it, but why does it exist in the first place.

Funnily enough it would be bearable if you had a two-dimensional Fez rotation ability, to turn the annoying foreground into a background and actually see the lava pollen.

What does simonak even mean anyway??

someone who sells letters of indulgence, i think

[yoshicookiezeus]

Richard Nixon - Fez 2

S.N.N.
CREATIVE USE OF VANILLA RESOURCES: 18/25
APPROPRIATE DIFFICULTY CURVE: 9/25
OVERALL LEVEL QUALITY: 11/25
AESTHETICS: 21/25

OVERALL: 59/100

COMMENTS: You've made a level that focuses solely on obstructing the player's point of view while not making it obvious what is solid and what isn't. As such, I found myself constantly a) falling in holes, or b) getting ambushed by enemies I couldn't see. It was extremely frustrating, and very rarely felt fair.

Eternity
CREATIVE USE OF VANILLA RESOURCES: 18/25
APPROPRIATE DIFFICULTY CURVE: 10/25
OVERALL LEVEL QUALITY: 12/25
AESTHETICS: 16/25

OVERALL: 56/100

COMMENTS: I would have enjoyed this level a lot more if not for the weird acts like settings on the trees (where you keep falling through it where you expect to go up like a normal slope) and how some of the enemies, such as the Volcano Lotuses, don't work very well with the obscuring gimmick. It's an interesting idea, but the execution was lacking a lot.

MrDeePay
Creativity: 8/25
Curves: 5/25
Level: 5/25
Aesthetics: 25/25

Overall:43/100

Comments: ...What did I just play?

Seriously, this level feels busted on a fundamental level that makes it a very unpleasant and unfun to play. Why could you not connect the tile behavior with the trees so the player doesn't fall through them everytime? Why did you use enemies that use small projectiles that can be easily lost track of and have them obscured by the trees? Why do you just spam enemies on top of that especially on small platforms that the player must land on? Why does this level play like it's so goddamn BROKEN?