What are some trends in SMBX episodes that annoy you?

[Emral]

I'll be more detailed. I don't like the "checkpoint right before boss battle" because in most episodes the Impossible and dangerous boss is just an overused Boom Boom, or any easy boss. If it's a REALLY tough boss, the "checkpoint right before boss battle" can/must be applied especially for final bosses. And I'm not going to talk about the boss' difficulty. I think too many people knows about that topic.

Just dodge the checkpoint for extra challenge! No need for the option to be removed.

[Okton3999]

One thing I am not a big fan of is when, after finding a secret path in a level, you discover that you need a specific power-up to finish it, so you have to take the normal exit, search for the needed power-up, and take the exact same path to conclude the level. Personally, I prefer when everything you need for a secret is obtainable in the level.

Also, painfully slow autoscrolls.

In general, I would say anything that slows the player down without adding a challenge/something interesting.

(Sorry for my bad English).

[Cedur]

The checkpoints are supposed to be the middle of the level, not a reset place.

For the record you can have multiple checkpoints, so, one for the middle and one for the boss. Perfectly reasonable.

[IcyGuidance]

Bosses that are just a Mother Brain reskin with a couple of generators. There are SO many of these...

Ah yes, MOTHER BRAIN RESKINS. Good god, I hate those.

[KurttheKing]

I don't like when SMBX Episodes use EXCLUSIVELY Built-in Stuff. You should get creative with your Episodes, fill them Custom Graphics. And even if you're a novice at Making/Adding Custom Graphics to Episodes, look up some tutorials or just find pre-made Graphics Packs. Just be sure to thank them for the Graphics

[ShadowStarX]

I don't like when SMBX Episodes use EXCLUSIVELY Built-in Stuff. You should get creative with your Episodes, fill them Custom Graphics. And even if you're a novice at Making/Adding Custom Graphics to Episodes, look up some tutorials or just find pre-made Graphics Packs. Just be sure to thank them for the Graphics

Custom assets don't define an episode.
They open up a lot of possibilities, yes, but they do not define the episode. Plus the amount of basegame assets is quite massive compared to pre-2019.

[Luna]

You should get creative with your Episodes, fill them Custom Graphics.

Custom graphics don't equal creativity in the slightest; you can get insanely creative with just the built-in stuff as shown by the Vanilla Contests.

[kr4k1n]

Yeah, I'd say making the most with what you have is the best way to get creative

[KurttheKing]

Custom graphics don't equal creativity in the slightest; you can get insanely creative with just the built-in stuff as shown by the Vanilla Contests.

Custom assets don't define an episode.
They open up a lot of possibilities, yes, but they do not define the episode. Plus the amount of basegame assets is quite massive compared to pre-2019.

Yeah, I'd say making the most with what you have is the best way to get creative

Alright fine, I was wrong. I shouldn't have said that.

[Sandomer]

Added in 1 minute 50 seconds:

I get really annoyed when people put a super serious novel-size story in their episodes even though Mario isn't a series known for its story, or when they put in characters that have no reason to be in a Mario game.

yeah i regret that i use sonic.exe to my episode but now i can't do anything with this, because i'm sick of updating this 50 times in one hour

[ShadowXeldron]

Still using MP3s instead of either looped OGGs or emulated audio files. That and removing lives.

[Wohlstand]

Still using MP3s instead of either looped OGGs or emulated audio files. That and removing lives.

Their worst forms are:

• "Extended" versions for the hour length and with the huge file size (the example is here)
• Using of WMA files, however, this case is very very rare. This format sucks because it's a proprietary mess which is supported by a small number of libraries, like, FFMPEG which is a very heavy thing.

For me, there are so-called "lazily-made" sprites very annoying cases: there are vanilla sprites that have mask images copied from the front image, but with a white background. They are often sources of conversion problems and unexpected transparency mess. That is why I developed the "LazyFixTool" in 2014 among which GIFs2PNG and PNG2GIFs to simplify the future works. Anyway, I am glad that usage of masks is now the past because of PNG support by most of the SMBX-based engines.

[ShadowXeldron]

Still using MP3s instead of either looped OGGs or emulated audio files. That and removing lives.

Their worst forms are:

• "Extended" versions for the hour length and with the huge file size (the example is here)
• Using of WMA files, however, this case is very very rare. This format sucks because it's a proprietary mess which is supported by a small number of libraries, like, FFMPEG which is a very heavy thing.

For me, there are so-called "lazily-made" sprites very annoying cases: there are vanilla sprites that have mask images copied from the front image, but with a white background. They are often sources of conversion problems and unexpected transparency mess. That is why I developed the "LazyFixTool" in 2014 among which GIFs2PNG and PNG2GIFs to simplify the future works. Anyway, I am glad that usage of masks is now the past because of PNG support by most of the SMBX-based engines.

To be fair, I've only ever seem WMAs used once, and even then that was just because I saw an Eclipsed video where an episode used it and therefore couldn't play back correctly in SMBX2.

[Wohlstand]

To be fair, I've only ever seem WMAs used once, and even then that was just because I saw an Eclipsed video where an episode used it and therefore couldn't play back correctly in SMBX2.

About WMA I know two cases:

• the "Island of Dreams & Illusions" episode by Nicholas-Link used WMAs a lot, and I had to make the "TheXTech Edition" port where I replaced most of the music with VGM chiptunes (from Sonic games) and converted WMAs into OGGs with adding of loop points instead of ultra-long files.
• Mentioned WMA usage somewhere by SAJewers who asked me about WMA support because he had some, but no explicit mentions of what the stuff is.

Added in 6 hours 17 minutes 8 seconds:
Anyway, WMA is still not supported by MixerX, and there are controversial reasons for adding that support. But, that would go off-topic from this discussion.