(Old level) Light Blue Mountainshrooms

[Alagirez]

Oh hey my first level that submitted in the serious level forum
I made this level 1 year and 4 months ago.
Some screenshots :

Spoiler: show

Screenshots from PGE

Link download :http://www.mediafire.com/download/ufn26 ... batara.zip
ENJOY IT

SORRY FOR BAD ENGLISH my english is weird

[12Me21]

Cool, the contrast on the coins is a bit low though

[Alagirez]

@12Me21
Thanks. Sorry about low contrast, hehehe......

[AirSeus]

Your level design has improved alot aince MxW1, well done here!

[Alagirez]

thanks @AirSeus! twitter mode? I don't care

[CreatorForce]

Okay, Seems pretty good so far, also your skill design looks okay. The graphics looks fine. Looks pretty good. Good Job

[JupiHornet]

I've decided to review this! Level downloaded, review will come soon

Edit: UNOFFICIAL REVIEW of LIGHT BLUE MOUNTAIN by andialifbatara

This level was certainly a thing... ^_^;

Design (3.5/10)
This is one of those levels that throws everything at you all at once, without any time to get used to it. The blocks attached to firebars are way too fast, and they often glitch you through the ground and kill you. One of the firebars attachwd to a mushroom is broken. The red coins are a nice little challenge, but I got every one I could find and nothing happened. This level also has a TON of NPC spam. Some of the Goombas don't walk off the edges, which is confsing. Jumping Koopas and Piranha Plants were also heavily abused. That all being said, there is a lot of nice layer attachment and events going on in this level, but the difficulty and glitchiness of it all is overwhelming.

Atmosphere (5/10)
Let me start by saying that the dragon insignia is a really neat touch! It looks a bit glitchy but it is a great way to identify your levels! The graphical recolors are also really nice, but the music used in this level (Mushroom Gorge) does not fit at ALL. You should have used Shiver Mountain, or some other song that fits on both an icy level AND a mountain level. The moving blocks don't make much sense in a level like this. They pretty much ruin the level designwise and atmosphere-wise. If you removed them the level would be much better.

Other Comments:
Total number of times getting squished by moving blocks = 14
Total attempts this level took me = 16

Overall 4.25/10 (Average)
This level isn't TOO bad, but the flaws outweigh the strengths. The difficulty needs a bit of a nerf, but this level has potential.

[Alagirez]

thanks for your unofficial review, @turtwig!
4.25 is okay score....... :'(
about spinning mushrooms and spikes, too many enemies, pipe maze, and GLITCH : if you don't like these, sorry about that. Maybe my design level is still bad. I'll improve it later.

-sorry for bad English-

[JupiHornet]

thanks for your unofficial review, @turtwig!
4.25 is okay score....... :'(
about spinning mushrooms and spikes, too many enemies, pipe maze, and GLITCH : if you don't like these, sorry about that. Maybe my design level is still bad. I'll improve it later.

-sorry for bad English-

You aren't a bad designer, it takes a lot of skill to make hazards like that

[silent_]

The moving blocks don't make much sense in a level like this.

How's this a problem? No matter what the level theme is, moving blocks are always a nice touch.

[JupiHornet]

The moving blocks don't make much sense in a level like this.

How's this a problem? No matter what the level theme is, moving blocks are always a nice touch.

Not when they move as erratically as the ones in this level

[Yogi_Bear]

I'd suggest switching those rotating blocks attached to firebars into blocks you can jump through, like bridge pieces, so they dont squish you and enemies.

The graphics here are very nicely done, I like the atmosphere, the moving blocks do feel a bit out of place, but its a mario game, nothing has to make sense. The music felt repetitive though as I proceeded to die over and over from various problems of the moving blocks. i.e. squished, flung around, pushed off platforms, nerfed jumps, etc. I never even finished the level because all the moving platforms and bottomless pits. Try slowing the platforms down a little.

[Alagirez]

I'd suggest switching those rotating blocks attached to firebars into blocks you can jump through, like bridge pieces, so they dont squish you and enemies.

The graphics here are very nicely done, I like the atmosphere, the moving blocks do feel a bit out of place, but its a mario game, nothing has to make sense. The music felt repetitive though as I proceeded to die over and over from various problems of the moving blocks. i.e. squished, flung around, pushed off platforms, nerfed jumps, etc. I never even finished the level because all the moving platforms and bottomless pits. Try slowing the platforms down a little.

thanks for you comment! about your critic :
sorry about "squished, flung around, pushed off platforms, nerfed jumps,etc."
i'll try to slowing down the spinning mushrooms.
maybe I will release my level (v1.2) later.....

bad English? sorry

[Imaynotbehere4long]

Um...

This level was certainly a thing... ^_^;

Yeah, that sums this level up quite well.

And now, my review:

Okay, so as soon as the level is started, Mushroom Gorge begins playing, and this is one of the most annoying default songs in SMBX, second to SMB1's cave theme. Not only that, but like Turtwig wrote earlier, it doesn't fit a snowy mountain level. Also, like Yogi_Bear wrote, the song doesn't work well for a level this long; even if the player doesn't die, the song will still fade out multiple times before the end, or even the midpoint. You should change the song to something longer and more fitting.

Anyway, the biggest complaint about the level are the blocks attached to fire-bars, and I agree that they shouldn't be placed in areas where they collide with other blocks because of the aforementioned glitches. If you want to have a level where the player has to use blocks attached to fire-bars to jump across pits, you should provide a "practice section" of sorts where the player can figure out how to jump from fire-bar-blocks without fear of dying. Also, you should tell the player that it's best to jump from fire-bar-blocks when they're moving up and to the right because first-time players won't know about how layers affect the player's momentum and will most likely get killed, especially since fire-bar-blocks are rarely used due to the aforementioned glitches. The fire-bar-spikes are okay since it's obvious that those are supposed to be hazards.

Plus, the fire-bars won't even appear properly at times:

Spoiler: show

Also, like Turtwig mentioned, one of your mushroom stems is on the wrong layer:

Spoiler: show

Although the fire-bar-blocks are your biggest problem, let us not overlook the other, lesser problems that your level has, problems that have been overlooked by others simply because the fire-bar-blocks are such a terrible design choice. For example: many of your custom sprites have masking problems, like the blue fire-bars, the hammer sprite-swaps, and your dragon-insignia-thingy. Make sure that the mask sprite (the "m" sprite) is white everywhere you don't want random pixels to appear, and make sure that the normal sprite is black in those respective locations.

But this level has more than just fire-bar and masking problems:

Spoiler: show

For starters, you shouldn't have pipes that send the player back to a previous part of the level; that just forces the player to re-do that entire part of the level, and that's just annoying.

Second, Super Mario cannot fit through this area between the block and the pipe without duck-jumping. Move the slopes one unit to the right.

Third, don't put background images in front of sizabes; it looks awkward.

Fourth, remove this invisible block. Chances are, the player will be standing here when he/she tries to jump over the spiny, and since the player won't know about the invisible block, he/she will hit it and get hit by the spiny. I got hit, then got the item from my item box before taking this screenshot.

Lastly, you have this text box appear after a normal ? block is hit, which is unintuitive. You should switch the ? block out for a normal message block (block-281).

Also, the Goombas that are supposed to be walking on the mushroom platforms mentioned in that text box will glitch through them and fall off-screen. I recommend moving the Goombas up by one unit.

It's a shame, too, because if it weren't for this levels problems (especially the music and the fire-bar-blocks), this would be a pretty good level. The block placement is well done and NPC placement isn't nearly as sparse as most levels, but it's not anything the player can't deal with easily. You even gave the Goombas different colors so that it was clear which ones had cliffturn=1 and which ones didn't. Plus, the part where the player needed to carry a spring from a secret section in order to collect one of the dragon coins was neat. By the way, if you don't want the player to jump over the blocks on top of the section boundary, you need to make a wall that goes more than one unit above the screen.

Summary:
GOOD:
-Most custom graphics aren't terrible.
-Block placement is well done.
-NPC placement is also done well and is intuitive.

BAD:
--FIRE-BAR-BLOCKS.
-CGFX masking problems.
-That terrible song choice.
--BACKTRACK PIPES.
-That annoying invisible block.
-Background images in front of sizables.

In conclusion:
Again, like Turtwig wrote, this level has potential, but the terribly-executed fire-bar-blocks outweigh everything else. I'd say this deserves a 4.5/10.


P.S. Near the beginning of the level, you have the rocks spell out "141." Is that the "secret code" you mentioned in the first post, or is it the "CC10 RANK 48TH" in Section 8? Or does it have something to do with the arrangement of the water backgrounds at the bottom of Section 8?

The red coins are a nice little challenge, but I got every one I could find and nothing happened.

I know that andialifbatara's English isn't the best, but even I was able to figure out that the red coins have individual events (they move the mushroom platforms on-screen) as opposed to a collective event. Just because SM64, Super Mario Sunshine, Super Mario Galaxy (1 & 2), and a bunch of SMBX levels have red coin hunts doesn't mean that red coins always need to have a collective event.

[JupiHornet]

I didn't realize that about the red coins
I noticed that they made the platforms appear but I thought they have you something if you got them all.

Oops.

[Alagirez]

average : not bad...
141 spell : this is my 141st level! (MxW2, level 141) -_-
secret code : you found it! it means : I was join CC10 and got 48th place. (uuuhhhhh.......... :'()
other problems : sorry about that . I'll fix it later.