Amplitude Area (Featuring the most awesome boss in SMBX)

[Beyond]

Here's my review, sir:

Spoiler: show

I really loved that level. It's awesome. I really liked the custom graphics and how you used Kirby things to use in this level (enemies/Kirby friendly NPC/blocks). The tileset is really impressive. The level atmosphere is perfectly fine, I loved that. The soundtracks matches perfectly too. The multiple paths in the section 2/3 was a very good idea and gives a value replay in this level. And I can say: It's the best custom boss in the SMBX history! It's challenging, with a good difficulty, with really good hazards and, despite the time you have to kill Marx (it's a very long battle), it's perfect. I liked this level, but I have some minor complaints about some enemies. The Waddle Dee can't be killed by a spinning jump. The Bullet Launcher make some parts (some cramped) really hard to avoid. And I think you can remove some enemies in the Stations section in some parts. But I quite enjoyed myself with this level/boss.

Design - 4.60/5
All the design system works perfectly fine. I just can complain about some cramped parts in the Station section with a lot of enemies and in the parts with the Bullet Launcher things who makes the part more harder than could be without them. But all the details/tileset/scenario help to make a good level with a perfect design. And I quite enjoyed myself with this level/boss. I like how you have to explore the level to find secrets/"Dragon Coins".

Placement - 3.95/5
Well, in the section 1 I can't complain about the enemies placement. It's perfect. The coin placement here (and in all the level) is really good. The "Dragon Coin" placement is good too. But, in some parts, I think this level have two minor problems: The grand amount of enemies in the cramped Stations parts; The Bullet Launchers in grand amount in some cramped parts. I just dislike that in the entire level.

Atmosphere - 5/5
It's very unique, it's perfect how you have used this tileset and how all the graphics (since the tileset and the Kirby enemies) have matched perfectly fine and how the music gives a more perfect ambient. Original as well. I can't any complain about this, but I can do a suggestion, no? It is not really necessary, but I think you can modify the SMB3 for another coin or recolor them, something to help a little more the atmosphere.

Aesthetics - 4.75/5
Good graphics, good design, good placement, good atmosphere, good music... Everything is good here. If you fix the problems I've talked and if you look for some other problems, the aesthetic will be better.

Overall - 18.3/20 or 9.15/10

Congratulations. You deserve that by your good job.

[Mudkip]

Thank you really much for the review! Gonna fix the level when I have the time to. Currently I have plenty other thing to do :3

[Mista Epic]

This looks very good! Did you make the custom GFX yourself?

[Mudkip]

Look at the credits ;)

[GeneralShyGuy]

Hello mudkip!!You level is very good and hard(not to mention the boss L L)Which makes it difficult boss is that he has MANY, MANY blows everything way quanter.But your level is very good and have
many puzzles.







I translate from google translator.If are some word incorrect,PLEASE SORRY!!

[Ness-Wednesday]

I wish this was in a community contest!
Too bad that the reason why it isn't is because the boss battle is a seperate level.
How was it possible to abuse events like this for a boss that "finally dosen't replace one npc especially either Mother Brain, Wart, or one of the Bowsers."?

[DerpMcSkerp20]

gonna play this level soon!
also, this is one of the ONLY levels with bosses out there, so good job! its hard and easy to make a boss depending on what you are doing

its probably best doing bosses as in phases

[Expected]

I wish this was in a community contest!
Too bad that the reason why it isn't is because the boss battle is a seperate level.
How was it possible to abuse events like this for a boss that "finally dosen't replace one npc especially either Mother Brain, Wart, or one of the Bowsers."?

I need to know this as well. Did you use LunaDLL or something? You perfectly recreated

Spoiler: show

Marx

, down to every last one of his attacks. That's some insane skill.

[FanofSMBX]

It's so cool how you can jump on the boss!

[Imaynotbehere4long]

I beat Milky Way Wishes not too long ago and was actually thinking of making a Marx boss myself (as I had seen it done in Brutal Mario), so when I saw that it was already done and was being boasted as the "most awesome boss in SMBX," I had to try it out.

And now, my review of Amplitude Area:

This is definitely a really well made level. I liked all the little details you added to make it work, like having the spring board appear on a layer rather than inside the block so that it wouldn't get off-screened forever. My only complains would be that the Shotzos can be difficult to see before they fire (not sure how to fix this, though), and that the left path in Section 2 is objectively more difficult than the right path in that same section (there's even a 1-up on the right side!). I recommend not making the player jump on a moving note-block, moving the power-up for that path further back, and maybe adding a 1-up on that path as well. However, these are both minor complaints; the level was well made and I had fun playing it. Good job!

And now, stuff I didn't have a problem with, but I do have a solution to:

1. The shotzos only turn when they fire, which is kinda misleading

Well, I don't know where we've got a problem here. It looks better when it is set like this. And it looks more confusing, which kind of the theme of this level is.

Um, first of all, you shouldn't make a level intentionally confusing, much less theme the level around being confusing. Second, I encountered the Bullet Bill Cannon bug in one of my early levels, but didn't think of a solution until now: make the cannon's graphic invisible, then have what you want the cannon's graphic to be sprite-swap a friendly NPC set to "Don't Move" and place one in front of each cannon. It may take a bit of experimenting to keep the cannon from pushing the friendly NPC away, but I'm sure it's possible.

2. The Bombers effects are really icky-looking - they only have a few frames and it moves quick

Bombs have a quick effect, I can't do anything about it. And I can't make them bigger.

But what you can do is make their effects invisible, then sprite-swap an NPC to be their effect instead. Put each NPC on their own layer, make each layer invisible, then attach each NPC to their respective effect layer, and have them trigger an event on their death that shows their "effect." Don't forget to have another event hide the effect after a second or two. For an example, check out the Metal Storm level from my now cancelled project: http://www.smbxgame.com/forums/v ... f=34&t=824

And now, my review of your custom boss:

I know that this is the main draw of the level, but this is actually where things start to fall apart. While the boss is quite ambitious, it's also quite buggy. Honestly, I wouldn't hate this boss as much as I do if you had only put a 1-up at the start of that boss level; as it is now, the player can get Game-Over on that boss, and if that happens, he/she will have to go through the entire level again, and as well designed as that level is, it gets old after having to play through it multiple times, split-paths and everything. Plus, the player only has ~4 lives at this point, and since the boss's bugs cause cheap deaths, this will make having to go through the level again all the more frustrating.

Anyway, the bugs:

Spoiler: show

This is the bug that made me want to know just how you made your boss. While it is clever that you used note blocks (I would have never thought of that and tried to find a way to use NPC generators), there's a bug in SMBX that makes it so that note blocks won't bounce the player if the note block is on a horizontally moving layer (note the skid effects when I land on Marx). Because this is also the only part of the fight where Marx's wings harm the player (and that's unintuitive), I recommend shortening the width of npc-46 to 64 pixels (the same width as npc-156)

Spoiler: show

Although this isn't exactly a bug, and although I understand why you did this, it's impossible for first-time players to react to, and it's what killed me the most. I just recommend putting the note block on another layer and making the event not hide the note block until c3.

Spoiler: show

At the end of the event, there's a noticeable gap in the projectiles that can kill the player, and since the projectiles move quickly, it can be difficult to reliably avoid it. Although this only happened to me once, it's still an issue I have with the boss, and the most simple to fix: decrease ar2's Trigger Event Delay to 1.9 seconds.

Spoiler: show

This happened to me quite a few times, and this is probably the most severe of the boss's problems, as it appears I'm stomping on the boss, but I still get killed. After analyzing the level without CGFX, I noticed that you only placed one note block on this layer instead of two like some of the others. You should go back and make it so that there are two note blocks on this layer and on the h13 layer.

On top of that, I have three more issues with the boss: First, the seeds spawn too slowly; I recommend having the next one spawn with the same event that hides the previous one. Second, the black hole is unintuitive, for both first-time players and those who've already played Kirby Super Star, as the original black hole didn't do damage unless it sucked you in. Even if you didn't (want/have enough events) to recreate the original black hole with invisible blocks and instant warps, you could have at least made the lava sprite-swaps expand from the black hole (reverse the order the layers are shown), giving first-time players a chance to run away. Third, the events that move the health bar take longer to activate than the player has the ability to hit the note block(s) again, meaning some jumps will be nullified by a previous jump triggering the event that stops moving the health bar. I recommend decreasing hit's Trigger Event Delay to 0.1 seconds, then increasing bar's movement speed to -10; that way, each bounce causes Marx's health to decrease by the same amount.

Lastly:

5. Might I suggest looping several backgrounds together to make the star background smoother?

Unfortunately we don't have eight backgrounds which share the same size and we don't have a limitless amount of events.

True, but since it has already been established that you used NPCs instead of backgrounds for the animation, you really could have added more frames, then just set the "frames" code equal to however many frames there ended up being. In fact, since there are still some coins and rupees that haven't been sprite-swapped, you could have made the sunsets and the actual starry background loop as well, but even I admit that would begin to burden the download time.

--EDIT--

Actually, if you wanted to make the sunsets and the actual starry background loop as well, it would probably be better to make them one-frame NPCs (or BGOs), put them on a layer, and have them move with events (to keep them from running out, have each NPC/background object be on its own layer, then when it moves off screen completely, have an event hide it and move it back behind the next one, then show it and re-trigger the event that makes it scroll, like what I did with the Gradius III level in my cancelled project), assuming there are still enough events left over after the boss's events are accounted for.

--END EDIT--

In conclusion:

As much as I admire your ambition to recreate Marx in SMBX (SMBX needs more custom bosses like this), there are a few problems with the boss that lead to cheap deaths, as shown in my GIFs, and these, combined with the fact that the player can Game-Over and have to go through the level again, make the boss more frustrating than fun.

P.S. If you wanted to do a better job at recreating the part where Marx's shadow chases you before Marx jumps up after a few seconds, you could have the shadow sprite-swap a nogravity=1 Bully, then use the Attach to Layer option to make it so Marx always jumps out where his shadow ends up.

7. Is it just me or does he run on the same attacks in a loop?

I re-played the KSS Marx fight just now, and his attacks run on a loop, too. The only difference (aside from the order and speed of his attacks) is that his attack loop is programmed to change when his HP reaches a certain point, and that's something that would be really difficult to recreate in SMBX.

FanofSMBX, did you ever made a level by yourself or did you ever learn how to use events?

I wonder that myself sometimes. I swear, he pinpoints all the problems that can't be fixed with vanilla SMBX, then complains about them and only them.

[Mudkip]

Oh I wouldn't have ever thought somebody would still write something in here. I'm grateful for the feedback IMNBH4L (is there even a short version of your name) and I will try to fix it, but really unlikely this month since I'm going to be busy for a while. Also I shoulda remove the "Featuring the most awesome boss in SMBX" in the title as I have done a couple better ones by now. I'll try to fix most of these and I totally agree about the "first time playing" part. Marx is impossible when playing against him for the first time, you have to study his moves a bit and you don't even get power ups during the fight. But that's something I generally don't do when making bosses. It also was impossible to recreate the black hole with invis blocks or instant warps because
A) invis blocks would have glitched you out of the black hole 99% of the time
and B) instant warps tend to disappear at times. I don't know how to fix that nor do I know how that bug occurs.


Also the cannons were like this in the actual games. They always turn. too bad we can't do a turn animation for them. (it's possible with events and layers, but that'd have taken too many)

[Imaynotbehere4long]

A) invis blocks would have glitched you out of the black hole 99% of the time

I meant that the invisible blocks would push the player toward the black hole as soon as they appear (and if the player is stuck in a moving block, that's an insta-kill, but so is the black hole, so I figured it'd be appropriate).

Alternately, you could have the black hole appear closer to the ground, then swap the floor with increased-speed-conveyor-belts (I know you already swapped the conveyor belts with something, but you could make that graphic swap Mother Brain instead, then have the current Mother Brain sprite-swap swap a coin since it only represents the floor's animation).

instant warps tend to disappear at times. I don't know how to fix that nor do I know how that bug occurs.

The only bug I found with instant warps is that, when the player exits a warp, it takes a second or so for SMBX to register warp entrances again, and this can sometimes allow the player to pass through an instant warp without being warped. Because the Marx boss doesn't use any warps until it's defeated, this shouldn't be a problem.

Also the cannons were like this in the actual games. They always turn. too bad we can't do a turn animation for them. (it's possible with events and layers, but that'd have taken too many)

I'm not entirely sure I understand what you're trying to say. I agree that making it so their circular turning animation plays out would be difficult, but that wasn't what I was suggesting. All I was suggesting was a way that would give the illusion that the cannon always points in the direction of the player on a horizontal plane; in other words, if the player goes from the left side of the cannon to the right side, the cannon would appear to flip to the right instantly rather than be static until it fires another shot.

[Mudkip]

I get what you mean about the cannon now. I totally forogt I did it like that lol. I'll be sure to fix that then for sure.

The thing for instant warps is, that I tried it before the lava thing. Either the death warps did bug away or just the black hole ones. Then I got the lava idea :U