Restored Hope (Version 3 Released)

[WilhemTehLynx]

(Episode for Beta 4)

STORY:

Spoiler: show

Welcome to the world of Xyilah, (Also known as the Mushroom Kingdom) a place inhabited mainly by Toads.
As the world is on the verge of war with Darkland, a young Toad hero wakes up with little to no memory, and now must try and regain it-- as well as stop the oncoming conflict.
Welcome to...

RESTORED HOPE

In this journey across Xyilah, stop evildoers, regain your memory, and discover what's really going on in the world.

SCREENSHOTS:

Spoiler: show

Download the episode HERE:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/ws8oxw1hm ... 9.zip/file
A complete, from-scratch recreation of the episode has been made! This old version is buggy and not very great, and can sometimes be impossible to beat without cheats, so I strongly recommend against playing it. You can find the much-improved, more polished remake on this thread: viewtopic.php?f=36&t=27883

NOTES:
This episode can be difficult. But, this really depends on the player's skill. I wouldn't recommend this episode to new players.
If something goes wrong, (A glitch I didn't catch, perhaps) I sincerely apologize in advance.
Some custom GFX came from Valtteri's Graphics Pack-- some custom GFX were also taken from some episodes I have, so credit to whoever made them. Some of the custom GFX were made by me as well. (Except all of them are recolours of pre-existing sprites)
This episodes takes about 3+ hours to complete on average.
This is my THIRD episode, but it's the first one I've finished and released. I'm going to be very modest and say I'm not that great at level design.
I get that there's going to be plenty wrong with the episode and I'm okay with constructive criticism, but can I at least have some feedback on what I did well? Favourite level, something you liked, anything like that? It'd be very much appreciated and wouldn't make me feel like I didn't do very well.

VERSION 2 CHANGES: (Spoilers)

Spoiler: show

-Removed "Restart Level After Death" which also fixes some glitches
-Some difficulty changes-- clear instructions on how to pass the rainbow shell ride
-World map edits-- split up Bowser's Castle
-Added some bonus content-- extra stars and challenges
-Level edits-- some levels are now in .lvlx

VERSION 3 CHANGES:
Thanks to Eclipsed, who streamed playing this episode, more stuff was found and have hopefully been fixed. Yes, I mean a day after V2 was released. Spoilers!

Spoiler: show

-Fighting In The Dark has been reduced in difficulty. A LOT.
-Fixed an error where you could open a pathway without beating the level.
-More minor level changes.
-Final Defense has been reduced in difficulty.

-WilhemTehLynx
(Wilhem)

[Chanceux2]

Im really not a new player! I played since 2016! I joined the forums in 2019! Im not really new here nether so I gonna play this game! I HOPE ITS GREAT!

[Cedur]

I just downloaded this. It's been several months since I last played an episode, I think I'll use this to get back to it.

[Daring Tombstone]

The difficulty wasn't too bad . . . until you get to bowsers castle. Having to fight all the bosses and go through all the things without getting a game over was kinda frustrating, especially the rainbow shell ride part. I got game over twice here and had to start the entire thing all over again. Plus the part during the ride where your head scrapes the ceiling knocked me off the shell a few times without me doing anything different than before.

The final boss where you automatically go left onto the elevator actually bugged out on me. I died and since auto restart the level is on it goes back in but the event didn't trigger, so the elevator never rose. Had to quit the episode and go back in to try again.

The parts with the floating statues with the lineguide platform, I'm assuming you know that the platform interacts with these statues and sends them off flying yeah? I spent most of my time during these parts riding on top of them before colliding with another statue and stopping, waiting for the platform to reach me.

Last thing I can remember is the very last level after the credits is that you can actually walk off screen and go back to the world map before you beat the final boss.

Other than these things it was decent. I rarely play other episodes but I try to post my thoughts on what I play. I'm a sucker for mystery dungeon music so hearing anything from those games automatically put me in a good mood. I played this in beta 4, assuming it was made for that. You should mention in your top post what version this episode is made for.

Also I just noticed that some of the soundtracks used in this episode is like 20-40 MB. That's kind of a ton. Why not use ogg files and make them loop? You can do it in audacity pretty easily if you know what you're doing. It may not seem a lot of space but it builds up. A track thats 40 MB can be cut down to 2 MB tops with this method.

[Chanceux2]

The difficulty wasn't too bad . . . until you get to bowsers castle. Having to fight all the bosses and go through all the things without getting a game over was kinda frustrating, especially the rainbow shell ride part. I got game over twice here and had to start the entire thing all over again. Plus the part during the ride where your head scrapes the ceiling knocked me off the shell a few times without me doing anything different than before.

The final boss where you automatically go left onto the elevator actually bugged out on me. I died and since auto restart the level is on it goes back in but the event didn't trigger, so the elevator never rose. Had to quit the episode and go back in to try again.

The parts with the floating statues with the lineguide platform, I'm assuming you know that the platform interacts with these statues and sends them off flying yeah? I spent most of my time during these parts riding on top of them before colliding with another statue and stopping, waiting for the platform to reach me.

Last thing I can remember is the very last level after the credits is that you can actually walk off screen and go back to the world map before you beat the final boss.

Other than these things it was decent. I rarely play other episodes but I try to post my thoughts on what I play. I'm a sucker for mystery dungeon music so hearing anything from those games automatically put me in a good mood. "I played this in beta 4, assuming it was made for that. You should mention in your top post what version this episode is made for."

Also I just noticed that some of the soundtracks used in this episode is like 20-40 MB. That's kind of a ton. Why not use ogg files and make them loop? You can do it in audacity pretty easily if you know what you're doing. It may not seem a lot of space but it builds up. A track thats 40 MB can be cut down to 2 MB tops with this method.

Yeah, I got a little confused for what version this game was for

[WilhemTehLynx]

Seems there's a lot I missed. Sometime, I'll try and fix some of these.
I'm not very good at making episodes, nor am I good at coding. I'm not sure how I'll be able to fix the elevator bug out, though-- I've never encountered that in my test playthroughs.
I'll cut down the soundtracks to ogg files and fix other things listed here.
And yes, it's for Beta 4.

[Emral]

Seems there's a lot I missed. Sometime, I'll try and fix some of these.
I'm not very good at making episodes, nor am I good at coding. I'm not sure how I'll be able to fix the elevator bug out, though-- I've never encountered that in my test playthroughs.

It's an inherent bug with SMBX 1.3, which SMBX2 builds on. If "auto restart last level" is on for the episode, ALL "auto-start" events (and Level-Start) will fail to run after a player's death ion the level. Until we get around to addressing this problem (since nobody wants it and nothing ever relied on it), you have to do a workaround.

Thankfully, workarounds for this are easy! Don't use the checkbox!
Okay, but how do you trigger the event? Easiest way to replicate the auto-start behaviour is to go to Scripts -> lunalua -> level local (luna.lua) and create/open the lua file.
The template will provide you with an onStart function. Inside, you can trigger vanilla SMBX events. Here's an example:
function onStart()
triggerEvent("myRadEvent")
end
The thing in quotation marks is the name as written in the editor. Make sure to never use Level-Start with this method, cause if you did, it would run twice on initial playthrough (because that's when the vanilla logic still works, in addition to the call from lua).

[Cedur]

So yeah, the instant retry is really not advisable here not only for glitch reasons in later levels but also since you can't refresh powerups after death. Speaking of which, it's not good if the fact of "might be difficult at times" just comes from a real scarcity of powerups. I also got a gameover because I first chose that fish fiasco level ...

Also the world map structure can make it hard to mesmerize which stars you already collected if you switch between different worlds. It's possible to introduce star indicators. It also happened that I played a level twice because I wasn't sure if I already did it or not, and due to instant retry, I had to play it all over again.

[SBells27]

Finished playing this. Overall, this episode was alright. There were a few annoying and tedius levels, and there were too many chasing koopas troopas as well. But at the same time it had a lot of good stuff, like its creativity, its world map, its ambition and I had fun playing this. I do agree with Daring Tombstone in that the difficulty got too much in the final castle. 6/10.

[WilhemTehLynx]

Alright, I'm going to making a V2.
This will include bug fixes, some difficulty reduction (especially with Bowser's Castle, and even more so the rainbow shell part.) and some other suggestions... and also getting rid of the "Restarting after death" because that didn't go as planned. I don't know how much better this'll make the episode. Who knows? If I feel like it, I might make some postgame content. This won't be decided until I've fixed up some of the things you've listed above.
Although there's been more constructive criticism rather than "What I liked", that's okay. Thanks for the support anyways!

OTHER NOTES:

Spoiler: show

I don't know how to make polls, but I want to know which "Final Dungeon" people liked the most. By that I mean, the Ancient Pyramid, Icy Citadel, Flooded Tower, etc.
I get that people might not like having only the boomerang at your disposal, but I'll at least put more of them around. Hint: Go to towns to collect some powerups! It might get a little boring having to go back and forth, I know.
You're purposely allowed to ride on the floating statues in those two levels so it doesn't get really annoying having to dodge the fireballs.

[Cedur]

I don't know how to make polls, but I want to know which "Final Dungeon" people liked the most. By that I mean, the Ancient Pyramid, Icy Citadel, Flooded Tower, etc.

if you edit the first post, you'll find a button called "poll creation". I don't expect many votes though.

[higgorgao1new]

Looks good

[Chanceux2]

Oh Restored hope does update! I would fix the enemy spam and thats it really

Added in 2 minutes 23 seconds:
Re: Restored Hope

I don't know how to make polls, but I want to know which "Final Dungeon" people liked the most. By that I mean, the Ancient Pyramid, Icy Citadel, Flooded Tower, etc.
I get that people might not like having only the boomerang at your disposal, but I'll at least put more of them around. Hint: Go to towns to collect some powerups! It might get a little boring having to go back and forth, I know.
You're purposely allowed to ride on the floating statues in those two levels so it doesn't get really annoying having to dodge the fireballs.

When you make an topic it says options at the bottom so then press polls and make a poll about your.. yeah

[Chanceux2]

This is still ailve right?

[Cedur]

This is still ailve right?

he hasn't responded again after announcing an update, so nobody knows

[WilhemTehLynx]

This is still ailve right?

That update already came.

Yep, I'm still alive. This is still alive, but I'm taking a break from SMBX. When I get back into it I'll begin looking for things to update.

[lan vuhoang]

This episode is cool. I like the idea of branching from the usual Mario formula of playing as Mario and saving the princess.