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Stink Terios posted:Oh hey, Sky at The Weird. Serious contender for worst level in the game. I like the aesthetic, it's close to nice in transporting creepiness into Mario but holy poo poo that autoscroller part looks like Kaizo.
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Apr 21, 2017 03:22
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Mister Olympus posted:I like the aesthetic, it's close to nice in transporting creepiness into Mario but holy poo poo that autoscroller part looks like Kaizo. I agree. And while the first section and the secret exit are pretty good, the rest of the level is just horrendous.
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Apr 21, 2017 04:52
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Stink Terios posted:Oh hey, Sky at The Weird. Serious contender for worst level in the game. Yeah, how in the hell did it make it as high as 52nd? 
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Apr 21, 2017 10:37
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There's some really bad sprite replacements there. Mario sprites are generally well-designed to communicate how they behave, and if you're going to replace one sprite with another it needs to reasonably communicate the same. Why does the goomba explode? Why does jumping on the fish hurt? Why are the platforms held up by powerups that you can't interact with? The level designer clearly didn't have an understanding of what the sprites were telling the player, and just swapped stuff arbitrarily out of some attempt to look creative.
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Apr 21, 2017 13:11
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 Why would you ever put a Lakitu offscreen? It's completely unfair to the player because they can't see when or where the falling spinies are heading. And again, none of the 5 distinct level ideas in here match up other than because they're weird. You have: relatively basic platforming, cramped autoscroller, tiny leftwards moving layer 2 with bullets, leftwards swimming in the air with unfair lakitu and cramped autoscroll swimming with rip van yoshis. We were just not fans of this level. And sadly, I hesitate to say that this was even the worst one in the world. There's still another to come...
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Apr 22, 2017 18:45
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Well, hopefully that other level doesn't take you 45 minutes and two videos. Some of the levels in the "worst levels" world seemed less tedious than Sky At The Weird.
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Apr 22, 2017 21:01
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How is that level so high? It's offensively terrible in every possible way besides maybe visuals, and even that's debatable since the sprite replacements are awful from a playing standpoint.
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Apr 22, 2017 21:12
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RevolverDivider posted:How is that level so high? It's offensively terrible in every possible way besides maybe visuals, and even that's debatable since the sprite replacements are awful from a playing standpoint. A lot of the "worst" levels just had absolutely nothing going on. No difficulty curve, no interesting sprite work, no flow other than run right. There's clearly work put into this level and creativity too but it just cratered on designing a fulfilling challenge.
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Apr 22, 2017 21:15
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I really think you could be forgiven for using save states to get through levels like that. If the level designer isn't going to play fair with you, you don't need to play fair with them.
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Apr 22, 2017 21:15
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Loxbourne posted:I really think you could be forgiven for using save states to get through levels like that. If the level designer isn't going to play fair with you, you don't need to play fair with them. That's what I did. Once the bullet generator came up I just gave up. Made dealing with the offscreen Lakitu a non-issue! 
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Apr 22, 2017 21:57
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 FF6 Rando Part 11 - Everybody Doot Now Today we're joined by Faerie Fortune, along with the sort of chaos and various doots you expect Fae to bring with her. I know I never really formally made Thursday my update day, but hey, sorry for missing Thursday! I should be back on my implied schedule this week.
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Apr 23, 2017 01:05
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On today's roundup we finally find something that I can't beat (yet)
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Apr 23, 2017 01:38
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It's not a Fae guest appearance without tardigrade namedrops.
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Apr 23, 2017 08:11
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If you're looking to Vanish+Doom Doom Gaze, than you're probably looking at the wrong place. One of the default flags is a bugfix flag that fixes among other things the Evade and Vanish bugs. Despite this, nothing in the randomizer fixes the Sketch bug, so if the Relm and/or Strago stand-ins have Sketch you could gamble with Sketch to get some endgame poo poo. Bydoless fucked around with this message at 11:01 on Apr 23, 2017 |
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Apr 23, 2017 10:56
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liquidypoo posted:
"What would space taste like?" "It might be too complex for a dorito flavour honestly"  Apparently space tastes like lime and black pepper!
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Apr 23, 2017 13:33
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I noticed something while looking back over the footage of Episode 30. At 22:36 you can see a brown swinging platform that we never investigated and I got curious if there was a way to enter the green pipe after the goal using it. I replayed the level (with savestates, Offscreen Lakitu killed me a good dozen times) and found the following: Well it's no access to the pipe or anything, but here's the 5th Dragon Coin. Oh and as a bonus...  If you stand on the left side of the platform as it swings around, you get smashed through the wall and die. 
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Apr 24, 2017 05:35
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Such. A bad. Level. Like, I wouldn't want to make the creator feel TOO awful. The level had several interesting ideas, but MAN were they paired with a lot of bad ideas!
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Apr 24, 2017 05:39
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Is... there any way to, y'know, get that coin and still survive? It sure doesn't look like it.
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Apr 24, 2017 06:54
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Yeah, easily. Just don't stand on the left side of the platform and you'll clip through safely.
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Apr 24, 2017 06:58
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Is there a mushroom in there? I thought lil Mario couldn't pick up those purple blocks.
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Apr 24, 2017 18:20
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Mantis42 posted:Is there a mushroom in there? I thought lil Mario couldn't pick up those purple blocks. How else would you fight Big Boo in the original game? That would be a really weird oversight.
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Apr 24, 2017 20:38
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 The Cement Block Theory, to put a name to this idea, holds that if you were to replace all of the graphics in your level with basic cement blocks so that it functions on a basic level, it should still be fun and enjoyable to play. It's a good design theory to live by so that you don't get so wrapped up in making your level look nice that you forget to make it actually fun. As for the second level, gimmicks that take away the player's vision are rarely executed well and here is no exception. Why are there so many blind-ish jumps? Why are the line guides not visible on any of the three color cycles? You're requiring me to spin jump across moving saws with a low ceiling and (presumably, since we never saw what the P-Switch actually did) all under a time limit, but you give me no way to tell when the saws are going to turn around so I can adjust my movements appropriately? And why is that segment so far into the level, requiring me to spend upwards of one or two minutes to get back there just to fail again? There's a reason the level has a green door. And as an addendum, I looked up where the secret exit in this level is and it's absolutely awful. You need to use the P-Switch at 14:00 to find it. But you also need to jump over the ceiling of the level at 13:34 to find the Key because it's just sitting in an alcove up there. Then you have to juggle carrying both of these backwards through the level all the way to the horizontal vine at 7:00 and press the Switch there to make some invisible ? blocks appear that take you to the keyhole, suspended over the void. It is quite literally a blind stumble for the secret exit. I think I see why some people have said this is the worst level in the game.
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Apr 24, 2017 22:13
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Vaporwave World is a real alpha and omega world. Hopefully it ends as strongly as it started.
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Apr 24, 2017 22:35
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What the gently caress, Ninjaboy?
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Apr 24, 2017 22:38
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Oh goody, item juggling and searching for invisible P-Switch changes, two of everybody's favorite SMW romhack themes. Yet again, the level had a couple of interesting ideas and MANY MANY bad ones.
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Apr 24, 2017 23:39
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As far as I'm concerned, item juggling doesn't get worse than Misty Star World in Super Demo World. gently caress that level in general.
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Apr 25, 2017 00:27
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How the hell is that level 73rd? It definitely deserved to be far lower. Hell, the first one was better, yet it's five positions lower.
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Apr 25, 2017 00:46
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Ninjaboy giving it a drat near perfect score probably inflated its rank a bunch, plus I think it's been mentioned in-thread once or twice now that quality is secondary to wacky gimmicks (albeit not quite so bluntly)? And that level had a very wacky gimmick, that... honestly until the saws near the hopefully end seemed really simple outside of its rotating color scheme nonsense. But the 56/60 boosting it sure wouldn't have helped at all. I took the 0 second timer as the sole point of mercy in it, really. Even if that level IS as short as it should be, that kind of thing having a timer would be way too stressful to deal with.
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Apr 25, 2017 00:48
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Another improvement I thought of would be if there wasn't a pure darkness and it just cycled the colors constantly. Still no excuse for unintuitive line guides and blind faith jumps. IE: just because your coin line is technically safe because the last coin that indicates you need to fall over here is there but you can't see it from where you need to make the jump does not actually mean it's safe. Straight White Shark posted:What the gently caress, Ninjaboy? Ninjas love the dark 
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Apr 25, 2017 01:03
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I thought that level's gimmick was really cool but was implemented poorly. I think Ty nailed it with suggesting it can be improved by cycling only two colors. Also the blind jumps and invisible line guides were just dick moves. If your gimmick is making solid ground visible only some of the time, then don't complicate it with that kind of poo poo.
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Apr 25, 2017 01:59
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I have one possible answer for Ninja Boy's score. Allegedly, he liberally used savestates throughout his judging. This means that levels with higher difficulty curves won't have the same effect on him that it did the others and anyone playing without them. Player endurance is no longer a factor when you use savestates. If he used savestates to beat the level, he would've been able to try and retry the saws section until he got it right without having to spend two minutes carefully platforming his way back to try again. I don't have any proof of this other than some offhand comments made by members of raocow's forum during his playthrough of the game. But if true it would explain some of the high scores we've seen from him when all the other judges rate it much lower.
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Apr 25, 2017 03:17
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FPzero posted:I have one possible answer for Ninja Boy's score. Allegedly, he liberally used savestates throughout his judging. This means that levels with higher difficulty curves won't have the same effect on him that it did the others and anyone playing without them. Player endurance is no longer a factor when you use savestates. If he used savestates to beat the level, he would've been able to try and retry the saws section until he got it right without having to spend two minutes carefully platforming his way back to try again. Yeah, if that's true, then it would explain some of the scores he's given. Though, I just don't understand how you could give that last level a good rating, savestates or not. That was an extremely bad level. Sure, it had interesting ideas that could go somewhere if better implemented, but as it was, it was a slow crawl full of dick moves through a level you couldn't even see.
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Apr 25, 2017 03:51
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I'm gonna be honest here. "Triangle Dimension" has me worried.
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Apr 25, 2017 09:07
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Hmm, triangle goombas, triangle blocks... Oh God, get back in the pipe Luigi. This whole level's made of triangles!
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Apr 25, 2017 12:49
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Shei-kun posted:I'm gonna be honest here.
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Apr 25, 2017 15:47
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It's going to be nothing but a vast, glittering field of spikes. (Seriously, FPZero, use save states if you have to! Don't kill yourself on these crap levels)
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Apr 25, 2017 17:28
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Speaking of the Cement Block Theory, someone made a version of Gambly Night using only cement blocks and other basic tiles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-unQ2T2HMY Looking at it this way, I can see their argument that Gambly Night isn't actually that well designed. It kinda goes all over the place and doesn't really have a consistent theme. Goes to show you how graphics and aesthetics can mask underlying design problems in certain circumstances. We were definitely too blown away by the visuals of the level to do a proper design critique.
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Apr 25, 2017 23:33
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I think that video makes a really good argument that VLDC really should stop emphasizing graphics since they can dazzle people into placing awful levels much higher than they deserved. Gambly Night is really bad once you remove all the bells and whistles.
Araxxor fucked around with this message at 00:12 on Apr 26, 2017 |
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Apr 25, 2017 23:46
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On the other hand I'd argue that the presentation is part of the design since some of the things the level does don't make sense without the context of being in a casino. Without the glitz and glamour Gambly Night just isn't Gambly Night. Also while it was all over the place the only thing that wasn't intuitive was the short side trips to get Dragon Coins. And bouncing on the shell but that's from a non-SMRomhack perspective It's one of the problems I have with the Cement Block Theory. Presentation matters and fantastic presentation should be recognized.
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Apr 26, 2017 00:36
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I don't know if I'd say REALLY bad, but it could definitely use work on the gameplay front. It's a bit sparse for platforming and I have mixed feelings about the coin fall section, but the biggest issue is that a lot of the setups and roadblocks are placed...awkwardly. Like a lot of the basic ideas are fine, but enemies are often just off-screen or you could really use a couple extra blocks' room for maneuvering or fewer spikes in awkward places. A more consistent theme for the levels' challenges would have helped as well. I still don't think it's quite as bad in that respect as the Fabulatory, which has many of those same issues but even less to recommend it in terms of gameplay. And, yeah. Presentation counts, but that's why the score is broken up into categories. Some pretty good and very pretty levels in this set so far could have really used some editorial redirection for their gameplay challenges.
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Apr 26, 2017 00:37
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