Congrats LGL!!!
Little late posting here, but I just want to say I was ecstatic when I saw I placed 6th after literally not making a level for a decade, and that the level was an entire point higher than the last level I did make. I was rusty, had to rush the level a bit, and had to compromise on a lot of parts of it, but despite that, it came out decently, which I'm super happy about. I forgot how fun it was to make SMBX levels, so who knows, maybe I'll make another one soon.
The judging surprised me as well, there were a bunch of levels that placed way differently than I predicted. Before the results came out, I played and ranked every level and found myself placing 12th. My goal was to place in the top 50% (13th minimum) so I thought it would be a close one, but man, little did I know.
I expected No Time to Chat and Break the Targets to place relatively low, thanks to how bizarre the former was, and how most of the fun in the latter came in optimizing it (I feel), which was a completely optional objective. But they both placed way higher than I thought, and I'm super happy about that, cause man those were cool levels.
Factory at the Edge of Reality genuinely blew me away, I thought it was an absolutely fantastic level and I'm so sad it didn't make top 3, because in my eyes it was the top 1 no question.
Speaking a bit on my level, I'm super glad I got the Best Setpieces award. I really wanted to make a whole storyline out of mine, hence Section 0 being the door to the boss that you see before starting the level, and then you start the level and you're smack in the middle of a boss fight which leads into the main arc of the level (an escape sequence). Originally, I wanted to have the castle have a used checkpoint and a bunch of already-hit blocks, implying the player has already been through here, but I figured without the player themselves having played the level, it wouldn't have much of an impact on them. The used checkpoint might seem like an unintentional mistake, and giving the player powerups in a level with already hit blocks is rather cumbersome.
I wanted to have the escape sequence come off as "they're trying to kill you no matter what," hence the name Ambush Mario. There's a bunch of enemies not really trying to attack you, and a ton of enemies end up dying from falling blocks and such, plus there's a koopa that locks a crucial door who the player likely kills immediately. Unfortunately, I found it hard to tell a story like this in a limited 100 second window during an intense sequence, and if I wanted to, I needed to make it more obvious. In addition, it's kinda hard to make a level that's "trying to kill you no matter what" without it feeling unfair, and as a result, I got concerned about the level's difficulty and made it a little too easy.
There's a lot of other things I learned, like, well, the SMBX2 editor lol. Plus multiple judges commenting on how the vertical section had too many enemies surprised me since I didn't figure that was the case. I'll try to have people test my level next time.
One last tidbit: here's me trying to brainstorm making a transition in the level. I was originally going to post this image in the SMBX discord before I ended up realizing the solution while making it. (the upper route was later scrapped)
