ASMT 11th Anniversary LP - Hey There Guy

[Le Neveu de Rameau]

Two out of two raocows agree: Master Snailington scores 100/100.

[Argumentable]

Honeypot Trivia

So did you notice the secret? Honeypot Trap is basically Overgrown Fortress 2. I seem to love my castles that have outdoor sections and plants and stuff. But seriously the second part is what Overgrown Fortress should've been. Also I should've asked for the bees to be jump on-able and I'm really not sure why I didn't do it. I WANT TO SAY it's cause a lot of people were requesting new sprites be added, but I added the wavy eerie generator in this and a couple more enemies for later(?) contributions. At least I think this was my second submission? Jumpable bees are my #1 change I'd do to stuff I contributed though. Maybe remove the generator, too.

Someone actually made a better looking version of the snails. I think I had no idea how it worked cause it used extra color palettes, so I just didn't use them. I thought I might have them somewhere but I have most of the stuff, if not everything (not just ASMT) I've worked on in Lunar Magic still and none of my files are properly documented. The snails are also the reason your powerups are taken away for no reason in this level. The green color palettes messed up how fire flowers and cape feathers looked, and instead of fixing that or just letting it happen, I was like "let's just remove them" and I still can't believe I got away with as much as I did in this level.

But going back to the outdoor section for a moment, that area is there mostly to make it feel more like a traditional castle level. It was just going to be snails and bees but I was like no, it needs a dry bones and thwomp section so it feels like a normal end-of-world castle. Funny how it's the first place you see some of those enemies.

Also, while it's true I'm not a fan of sprite replacements in general (funny for this level, I know), I absolutely hate the dry bones and bony beetle replacements. I actually remember them looking okay, black outline and white color, but then someone decided to invert the colors or something and now they're awful. Sorry whoever made them!


Anyway, this level is bad

Edit: Going off my old youtube videos, this was my 4th level it looks like. I'd share it, but it looks like the level is pretty much the same and I'm not sure the novelty of actual SMW graphics is worth linking

[KobaBeach]

黄色？スイッチの宮殿
さいこうのきちくれべるｗｗｗｗ
土管ダッシュ
ハニートラップ

Someone in the old LP's comments compared thwimpy boy to MetalKoromon/Choromon and they're not wrong.
For the sake of simplicity let's just call them Anvilchu (their ears look like they have black tips like leomon or ps3 rika or pikachu or a lynx so)
The bone friends can be called Bill (bony beetle) and Ben (dry bones) after the kids show flower pot men or the ninjas from trials of mana
Ben's green things are cucumbers

I remember levelengine whining about Honeypot Trap in the incident during one of Anikiti's ship stages in SER and I was like ? and then I saw eerie generator with layer 2 and boos and the boss and I aged about fifty years from that alone

[Grounder]

[KobaBeach]

[camwoodstock]

lesson learned: please do not put an eerie generator (or really any sprite generator) in an area where you are going to be waiting for seconds at a time for the terrain to slowly shift up and down so you may progress into it

it kinda stinks honeypot trap is The Way That It Is because like. the spritework is super cute! i like the idea of the boss! but man. the second and third parts of the level feel like they were designed for the lategame of an entirely different type of hack that asmt just isn't, and also it's put in the midgame??? it's so weird

[CleanBittyDrawn]

I thought the astronaut was a unit of corn, not time. Good to see that your name still has something to do with corn chips, though.

Also, to fulfill one of the two reasons I made this account:

These are the times that try fan's souls.
In the course of our LPer's history.
The people of talkhaus have spoken vainly,
Whenever the concerns of fans have been ignored.
Today, an old headbanger has arisen:
Some French-Canadian dude
Better known as raocow
Is attempting to play a burdensome level before the population,
In the form of one more leveling.
Talkhausers, hear me out!
This could be seen by you!

Well, let me tell you of the story,
Of that guy name raocow.
On this tragic and fateful day,
He plugged his controller in his PC,
Said, "Hey there everyone!"
Went to play a game on the Internet.

Well did he ever learn?
No, he never learned.
And his fate is still well-known. (What a pity)
He will play forever,
Through the games of talkhaus.
He's the man, who never did learn.

raocow pressed on that A
On the worstest stage (TM)
And he saw that Eerie generator.
When he got there his stubbornness told him, "One more goal!"
raocow couldn't get out of that level!

Well did he ever learn?
No, he never learned.
And his fate is still well-known. (Poor ole raocow)
He will play forever,
Through the games of talkhaus.
He's the man, who never did learn.

Now all day long
raocow plays through the level
Crying "When will it ever end?
How can I afford to end the vid on a sour note?
Or not having that which I sought?"

Well did he ever learn?
No, he never learned.
And his fate is still well-known. (Shame and blunder)
He will play forever,
Through the games of talkhaus.
He's the man, who never did learn.

raocow's fans go down
To the Youtube channel every day*
At quarter past seven,
And through the open comments
They scream at raocow, "No!"
As the fool goes charging forth.

Well did he ever learn?
No, he never learned.
And his fate is still well-known. (He will play forever)
He will play forever,
Through the games of talkhaus.
He's the man, who never did learn.

Type it, haus-y
... (kinda hurts my fingers)

Now you denizens of talkhaus,
Don't you think its a blunder
How the viewers have to cringe and cringe?
Fight the third level!
Yell into the past louder,
Get poor raocow out that fourth level!

Or else he'll never learn,
No, he'll never learn.
And his fate will remain the same. (Just like Xelpud*)
He will play forever,
Through the games of talkhaus.

He's the man who never did learn.
He's the man who never did learn.
He's the man who never did learn.
Et tu raocow?

---

*Couldn't think of anything better. Sorry.

Oh, and while I'm here, I might as well say that I started watching raocow around the middle of VIP 2 (2008), and stopped watching around the middle of Notte Luminosa I think, occasionally tried to play catch up, and then sometime around September last year or something, I blazed through probably around 2,500 videos, and started watching your current stuff with ascetic SMB3. I'm still around 1,900 videos away from being caught up (I'm at Jump ½/Star Fox/Sonic 1) and going much slower, but I'm glad to be watching again, and it's nice to have this nostalgia trip. I hope the endgame doesn't break your face quite as much as last time!

[Leet]

the level does a really good job at making you feel like you are beset upon by a swarm of bees though. because bees swarm in real life, you see. hence the reference.

also it's very important to put a variety of antagonists in your story. to contrast with king charles, a 'tyrannical king' villain, the midgame has a subarc about master snailington, a 'tyrannical king' villain

[Argumentable]

I think my reasoning at the time for leaving it hard was that you could skip the level completely so it didn't matter how hard it was. Not a very good reason but tell that to past me

[Crow]

insert your favorite bee joke here

mine: "man i hope the bee side goes okay today"

[KobaBeach]

Oh yeah, I actually dreamt about ASMT's postgame today.

Oh, and while I'm here, I might as well say that I started watching raocow around the middle of VIP 2 (2008), and stopped watching around the middle of Notte Luminosa I think, occasionally tried to play catch up, and then sometime around September last year or something, I blazed through probably around 2,500 videos, and started watching your current stuff with ascetic SMB3. I'm still around 1,900 videos away from being caught up (I'm at Jump ½/Star Fox/Sonic 1) and going much slower, but I'm glad to be watching again, and it's nice to have this nostalgia trip. I hope the endgame doesn't break your face quite as much as last time!

I started with watching VIP1-4 for walkthrough purposes and entertainment during the BMD/Chelsea LP, then started following for Hack and most of TSRP2 (gave up when I couldn't keep up with rao ingame), then started following For Real For Real on Hyperまりワールド５ (or as you luddites call it, Hyper V). Sometime between then and the heat death of Google Videos I managed to watch every pre-YouTube LP (everything up to TSRPR). Sadly that's impossible for me now due to not being into savescum LPs and raocow's old style of commentary anymore. His more mellow, slight wise guy-slight straight man sort of commentary feels more honest.

I think my reasoning at the time for leaving it hard was that you could skip the level completely so it didn't matter how hard it was. Not a very good reason but tell that to past me

that rules

[LunarRainbowShyGuy]

I liked the idea of "Yellow(?) Switch Palace", although my experience was marred by a few deaths that happened even though I didn't touch anything (according to someone in the youtube comments this also happened to raocow in his first playthrough). After these deaths I started getting impatient and dying in dumb ways, inflating my demo counter a bit. Incidentally this is where my 100th demo happened; before this level my demo counter was in the 90s, and I died here around 20 times.

"A Honeypot Trap"... I did not have a good time in this level. I mentioned that I died around 20 times in the switch palace, then I played "the hardest lvl" and "Pipe Sprint" and only died a handful of times. But by the time I finished this level my demo counter was 175, meaning I must have died here around 50-60 times. Having an eerie generator in a level with tight spaces where you have to wait around for layer 2 just seems like a recipe for disaster, but I feel like that could have at least been manageable if it wasn't for the boos constantly closing in, preventing you from being able to take your time. Between the eeries, boos, and layer 2, I feel like it would have been fine with just two of those three things, but having all three just makes things overwhelming.

I think the worst part of playing this level was when I would occasionally get a small taste of what could have been when there's so many eeries that more can't spawn. Actually, I'd say that's the second worst part. The actual worst part is that there's a boss at the end which is far from a pushover, meaning that even once you get past the level portion there's a good chance that you'll have to do it all again. Unlike raocow I wasn't able to get through consistently after dying to the boss. Once I finally got to the boss door a second time I put down a save state in front of the boss door. I didn't actually end up needing it, although I think just the comfort of having it there may have made a difference. In any case, this level was definitely a thing for me, but at least watching raocow struggle through it afterwards was a cathartic experience.

... I can't bee-lieve this level.

[1F0]

Huh... So I guess I wasn't the only one who was broken by this level. But yeah, I also got fed up with the bee RNG, and the boss was just salt in the wound, so I ended up saving at the boss door. And the fact that this is in world 4... I didn't find any levels in the maingame of JUMP or JUMP1/2 that drove me to this level of insanity.

[Jesuiscontent]

Wait, is the guy comparing the first lp' demos with the current demos accounting for the glitches that didn't increment the counter ? Like dying from pits ? I have a really hard time believing you're actually doing worse than back then

[Grounder]

wrogn thead im dumb

[raocow]

Wait, is the guy comparing the first lp' demos with the current demos accounting for the glitches that didn't increment the counter ? Like dying from pits ? I have a really hard time believing you're actually doing worse than back then

he is taking into account those glitches. like I reached 100 demos 'in game' but he was then quick to point out that my actual death count at the time was 141

[PSI Ninja]

I'm the one who's been tracking the demos in both playthroughs. I'm not only accounting for the pit deaths that don't increment the counter, but also the deaths that get erased when loading from manual checkpoints via savestates (which will happen in the endgame). In doing this, I realized that I've forgotten how much raocow used rewinds back then - as a rule, I decided not to count the deaths that get undone in this fashion.

One of my goals is to get a more accurate demo counter for the old LP, but it is not going to be perfect. For example, loading from a savestate checkpoint may cause the demo counter to be artificially deflated, due to not having to redo as much of the level otherwise. Another case would be if raocow died in a pit off-camera - there would be no way to tell in the final edited video. And lastly there could be some human error on my part - sometimes I do this first thing in the morning after I wake up, and I may not be 100% of clear mind.

[TiKi]

Fun fact: like the Chocolate Lakitu boss, Master Snailington is another SMWCentral boss but with a new projectile - in this case, mikeyk's Elite Sledge Bro. It's quite historical if you think about how much mikeyk did for custom sprites in general! However, as seen by the homing bees, history is better when it's not modified and/or about bees.

The

Rumia

boss is also extremely well done for 2009, and for someone who didn't even use Lunar Magic before contributing to the hack even, when we get there, it'll be a treat.

I get it has a few rough edges, and that, technically speaking, yes it is true that hacks nowadays that have custom (as in "not seen before") bosses often have them as being at par or better than the aforementioned boss. However, since at least 90% of hacks do not have custom bosses, this still makes

Rumia

something that would be seen as impressive today - certainly nothing to SNEEZE at. Like, hell. The final boss of this hack is

a completely vanilla enemy edited to have infinite health and break blocks that it normally wouldn't

and even TODAY that's miles beyond the creativity most hacks' bosses have.

SMW asset creators are in the unenviable position of having to give their stuff a buttload of customization options because if they don't then 90% of the users who... use those assets don't know and often aren't interested in learning how to add any. Basically the only three options you have as an asset creator are to do the tedious work of making your stuff highly customizable AND easy to set those options, releasing something that you know is gonna appear verbatim in the next 10 years' worth of hacks (I think Mouser and Boss Thwomp have kids by now), or just going full Ayn Rand and saying that SMWCentralers should only have the privilege of custom stuff in their hacks if they can code it themselves and your stuff is for your usage only. (It doesn't help that 65C816 ASM/SMW is MUCH harder to design, implement, and test custom stuff in than, say, LunaLua/SMBX2 so there's an extremely low pool of people who are even in the position to make this choice in the first place)

[KobaBeach]

Wait, is the guy comparing the first lp' demos with the current demos accounting for the glitches that didn't increment the counter ? Like dying from pits ? I have a really hard time believing you're actually doing worse than back then

[vip5] Well, look who decided to show up! You're already thinking of not responding to anyone's messages, aren't you?
I'm sick of how you're never reachable, Jesus' Incontinence! You try imagining for once how it feels to be disposable!
weenie [/vip5]

serious message under the spoilie

hello. how r u. i missed u despite being discord friends with u and also being on the falcom discord (#gagharvcoastbeastcoast). im trying to find out how to edit and export eiyuu densetsu 3 white witch pc's text, thankfully i have esperknight's c++ port of the legend of xanadu 2 decompression code on hand, as falcom has proprietary compression that they seem to use for most of their games, but i need to make it accept slightly largeish files (9 and 13MB iirc?).

i have peeked on snowman to check the assembly and c++ code of the game and the run value does seem to be either 12 or 15, which is what's on the xanadu 2 decompression (run += 0x06; run = 0x0E), so i shouldn't have to alter routines too much. also gonna hand convert it to c# because i havent really gotten the chance to use c++ seriously yet. hope they set up the control codes to good hex values else i might have to do some finagling to separate the shift-jis and ascii from control codes. im very much new to this lol

I get it has a few rough edges, and that, technically speaking, yes it is true that hacks nowadays that have custom (as in "not seen before") bosses often have them as being at par or better than the aforementioned boss. However, since at least 90% of hacks do not have custom bosses, this still makes

Rumia

something that would be seen as impressive today - certainly nothing to SNEEZE at. Like, hell. The final boss of this hack is

a completely vanilla enemy edited to have infinite health and break blocks that it normally wouldn't

and even TODAY that's miles beyond the creativity most hacks' bosses have.

SMW asset creators are in the unenviable position of having to give their stuff a buttload of customization options because if they don't then 90% of the users who... use those assets don't know and often aren't interested in learning how to add any. Basically the only three options you have as an asset creator are to do the tedious work of making your stuff highly customizable AND easy to set those options, releasing something that you know is gonna appear verbatim in the next 10 years' worth of hacks (I think Mouser and Boss Thwomp have kids by now), or just going full Ayn Rand and saying that SMWCentralers should only have the privilege of custom stuff in their hacks if they can code it themselves and your stuff is for your usage only. (It doesn't help that 65C816 ASM/SMW is MUCH harder to design, implement, and test custom stuff in than, say, LunaLua/SMBX2 so there's an extremely low pool of people who are even in the position to make this choice in the first place)

I'm gonna post a hot take here and that is "the koopalings + reznor are just fine, VIP has proven that". If you can't code just use the vanilla bosses, possibly a few pre-made ones if you have more than 7 worlds. imo, you don't need custom bosses to make a good hack, ASPE would be just fine if it didn't have the two bosses before Giga Phanto and Fortified Big Boo. Even mice just uses a slight adjustment of the vanilla Bowser battle as its final boss, YUMP2 is carol's SMB3 Bowser with enemies stacked on it through d^4's sprite stacking code.

[KobaBeach]

よぉ、ブルちゃ～ん
プレッシャーポイント

[LunarRainbowShyGuy]

I find it funny that I just talked about having my 100th demo, and now I'm already at my 200th demo in the level "Pressure Point", which I happened to finish at exactly 200 demos. I guess I can thank a certain castle for increasing my demo counter so much. If that really is one of the hardest levels then I can at least feel relieved to have it over with. Today's levels, while I did have some issues with them, were a much appreciated change of pace.

I think raocow summed up my thoughts on "hey there charlie" pretty well by saying that charlies are a "sometimes enemy". Incidentally, this is exactly the level where I started to feel that dealing with all the projectiles these guys throw was starting to get tiresome. It also became clear that the game wasn't exactly designed to have several enemies throwing projectiles at once, given that I would consistently get through the zigzag section near the start by waiting until there were so many baseball that the enemies couldn't throw any more.

As always, I tend to like gimmicky levels, and so I liked "Pressure Point". I kind of agree with raocow that maybe the sections could do with being in a different order, especially since it's really difficult to get through the tunnel at the beginning with a powerup, but the level does give you a powerup not long after so I don't mind too much (it is possible to get the powerup from that block; you just have to get to it quickly and then quickly grab it from the top of the block).

[CleanBittyDrawn]

Aw man, fulfilling the reasons for my account on back-to-back days! It's long, so here, let's spoiler it up again.

I've been observing your gameplay a lot in the past few months (as I mentioned yesterday), and one thing I noticed is that a lot of your weakspots are things that you don't have muscle memory for. Wind is a physics change which varies based on level. Green springy things are slightly better now that you've practiced enough to understand them, but they're still a weakspot. Throwing things is inconsistent for you, in part because you've never practiced with them and don't need to do it a lot. And this level basically destroys any attempt at making muscle memory because the number of coins you have changes your physics. (Unless you get to there with the same number of coins each time.) The times that strike me most with this is when you're startled that you didn't land about half a second after you miss, especially when you had a cape or double jump and just didn't use it. (That might also be input/video lag.)

Sure, muscle memory helps everyone, but I just think you're more reliant on it than a lot of gamers, maybe even most. I'm not better than you at most games. With Celeste, my death counts were roughly tied with you on the first two levels and worse on most of the rest of them, despite having done the B-sides as I unlocked them. But on level 4, the one with wind? Only about 60% of yours. Why? I'm guessing I'm not as good at automating my actions, but to compensate, I'm not as reliant on that, either. And wind, especially when it's not always the same strength, requires you to relearn jump distance and such.

Being reliant on muscle memory helps in a lot of the kinds of games you play: In fighting games, you need to spend less time thinking about how to react to an attack (and or worse, how to do an attack) and more on what comes next. In dammaku games, you can't be overwhelmed by the huge number of bullets on the screen, but rather learn to dodge each pattern based on what's around you. In other shmups, muscle memory still helps get you through a lot. And in platformers, usually you don't have to worry about more than a handful of physics changes, which is compounded by you playing a lot of older SMW hacks where they rarely added more.

I also think this partially explains your aggressive playstyle (apart from impatience): Not only do you not get good at a game by playing like a coward (like in Mario, where not holding run normally results in a massive difficulty spike), but you've learned to play aggressively. This may also explain why you often get myopia with how to solve something: You're used to trying and failing, until you learn the precise way to do it. You're also not used to thinking backwards (I need to get to the goal, and to do that, I need the switch to be off in the end, so how do I hit the switch while I'm beyond the blocks where it needs to be on?), because you don't play games backwards. And it's easier to get myopic when you're focusing on what you're doing than when you're focusing acting than on how to solve something.

And it might even be why you're good at solving harder puzzles: You're not as used to thinking in algorithms, and the tricky puzzles usually require you to not use the algorithms you already built up. Those of us screaming at the computer on easy puzzles quickly learn how to solve basic problems and try to solve harder ones by piecing those together, so it's tricky when it looks like we need them but it doesn't work. I was really struck by this in Sonic Hopping level 27, where you didn't seem to notice until the end that the solution had to be symmetric. But there were other puzzles where I thought I had a solution, but I expected a step to work that didn't, because I relied on an algorithm.

I'm probably way overgeneralizing this, and it's not the source of most of your difficulties/strengths. But it's a thought. And yeah, I think Pressure Point probably messes with everyone because of the coin-based speed up, but probably the most liked/disliked sections and how peeps feel about the level will vary on how much they automate their actions. And other stuff. Other stuff is important too.

(Now this account may rest in lurkdom. Probably.)

[raocow]

man that was a fascinating read though

[camwoodstock]

for a post that's a less fascinating read through;
the title says "an underwater autoscroll (not that one)" and i think that's kinda indicative of (lategame spoils)

just the sorta legacy Currents has on people that it's kinda just seen as THE underwater autoscroller

[Paragraph]

I think the clearest indicator that raocow mostly runs on muscle memory is that he's crazy consistent once he's done a level/segment once. He keeps saying that as well, do it once and you'll always be able to do it again, which is true for him but very much not for everyone. I am extremely inconsistent at games, and other people probably as well, because I do not like to memorize them - I love reacting to situations on reflex and coming up with new ways to do things, instead of doing the same thing over and over again just because it works.

That's why I have a weird sort of beginner's luck: I do things carefully and methodically the first time, then instantly get bored of doing the same thing again and try something quicker but riskier. Then I die again and again on what I did somewhat easily the first time, and THEN I'll have forgotten how I initially did it.