Superiorstar wrote:Dude, autoscroll doesn't work with pipes.
It doesn't work with doors, either. It only works if the player starts in the Auto Scroll section and never has to return.
dragonfan96 wrote:I tested everything 100% to make sure it playable and fun.
I don't believe you. You used unmarked invisible blocks
way too often (sections 3, 4, 5, and 8), you used a door warp when it should be a pipe warp (section 3), you used incorrect directions for some
actual pipe warps (section 10), and there are a couple sections where the player can skip certain areas by jumping, then jumping out of his/her Podobo Shoe or Yoshi (namely in section 7 and for the secret star in section 3), not to mention the whole Auto Scroll not working. Did you ever wonder why you kept instantly dying most of the time you entered that section? It's because the Auto Scroll starts, well, automatically, and if the Auto Scroll is in such a position that the exit warp causes the player to get stuck in the floor, that's an instant kill. Even if that doesn't happen, chances are the player will warp on or near an enemy and end up taking unfair damage. Also, you forgot to sprite-swap the Goomba's effects, and the effect for the red Koopa shells is incorrect.
And now, my review of Red-Hot Pain in the Depths:
Okay, so the level starts off pretty good; there are some ? blocks, some enemies, some platforming, then a skull raft area. Pretty standard stuff, until you make it to the door, for you see, this door leads to
The Twilight Zone an Auto Scroll section which has already been set in motion, but I've already explained why this is bad design, so I'll move on. In the Auto Scroll section, there's a pipe that will lead to section 3, and if the player jumps up a rocky area above the door-pipe, he/she will reach a secret area, where the star is located. However, the way that the player is
supposed to get the star is by hitting an invisible block that has no indications whatsoever. The way I got it was by jumping up the rocky spire, then jumping again to spawn the saw-blades. The reason I didn't get the second secret star was because I was running when I pushed down on the pipe, only to realize that that didn't work, and I nearly fell off of the ledge. I had to abandon my Podobo Shoe to survive, and it wasn't until a few seconds later that I realized the warp was actually a door-warp. I entered the door-pipe to end up in front of the aforementioned door back in the starting section, and when I entered it, I was immediately killed by a Goomba (or the floor; I couldn't really tell).
By the way, for the second secret star, you have 1-up mushrooms in bubbles over lava. If the player pops a bubble, but misses the 1-up, a run-time error will occur when the 1-up hits lava.
Anyway, if you make it past all of that nonsense, you reach the midpoint, but you will soon realize that the nonsense has only just begun. There are four grey pipes, each one leading to a key, and each key is needed to unlock the locked pipes that block the exit. The upper-right pipe leads to an okay lava raft section, but this is also where the secret exit is, and it's hidden by an invisible block that doesn't have any indication.
Moving to the bottom-right pipe, I'm pretty sure section 6 is impossible due to the placement of the red ! blocks. Basically, the whole section is a switch puzzle where you have to activate the switches to make a path from the key to the exit pipe, but you have to do it as a fairy so that you don't die in lava. Not only is it really annoying to solve due to the slow speed of the fairy, but the red ! blocks are placed in such a way that if they're active, the key is blocked by a wall, and if they're deactivated, the pipe can't be reached while carrying the key. There's also no way to activate/deactivate it once out of fairy form.
The upper-left pipe can only be reached by activating invisible blocks, and the entire section is based around invisible blocks, as indicated by a pretty clever riddle, even if you did mess up the first two phrases (it should be "You see me right before death" and "I become solid when others ascend higher"). This section wasn't too bad, until I got to the top, where the key is. Basically, the key is surrounded by ! blocks, but their respective ? switches are invisible and unmarked, so this section is purely luck based. I didn't even find all of the switches here, so I got the key by deactivating one set of ! blocks, then activating it again so that the key fell down multiple rows at once.
For the bottom-left pipe, the player needs to activate a blue ? switch first. There's nothing really noteworthy to say about this section except that the entire section can be broken by jumping out of the Podobo Shoe, then bouncing on a Koopa Troopa (since their height has been increased).
The pipe for the third secret star is locked and blocked by blue ! blocks, but there's no indication that the pipe is any special since there are hollow blue blocks blocking the "main" pipe forward (which is also locked), meaning the player wouldn't have any idea which one leads where. Plus, the branching locked pipes that you had before this only lead to dead ends, so if the player goes into the pipe on the right instead of the one in the middle first, he/she will have no incentive to check the other pipe. When making secrets, you need consistency. As for the third star's section itself, it's pretty annoying. It may seem like an ordinary Level Wrap section at first, but the section isn't one screen wide, so the player won't be able to tell if he/she will run into a Podobo after crossing the level boundary for the first time. After that, it forgets that it's a Level Wrap section and has the player jump up lava walls and into other Podobo Shoes, most of which can be skipped by walking or jumping.
One more thing: you say that only purple pipes are locked, but there's a grey pipe in section 11 that is also locked.
In conclusion:
I'd say this deserves a 3/10. You do a good job of imitating top tier levels, but you lack the capacity to actually
make top tier levels. Keep trying, though; if you learn from your mistakes, I'm sure you'll improve.
