Super Mario Bros. X Forums

The name is as303298 or, as I like to be called, Wraith Admanknight. I am a semi-regular Let’s Player who commentates on generic SMBX games and various Steam related games for fun. I am a college student studying to become a Game Design major. After three years of Let’s Playing SMBX levels, I noticed a pattern of great and absolute shit levels pop up, and I decided I should do something about this constant occurrence of bad level design. So following is my personal rendition of Level Design Breakdowns, based on the experience and observations I have had over the last few years playing the game.

Authors:
-Wraith Admanknight-
-Valtteri-

Now the document exists in one main formats: Microsoft Word. This is because it was written and specifically designed to be read in Microsoft Office's format.

Microsoft Office Paper:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/7546am
https://www.mediafire.com/?7gbvnt7lm77t471


I hope this paper will be useful in helping people understand the purposes and uses for each element in SMBX. While most of the information listed is very generic, they are also attributes and elements that are commonly overlooked for unknown reasons.
If you know anyone that could use the help of this paper, do be sure to link the document.
-Wraith Admanknight-
-Valtteri-

We're clogging forums up with stickies.

...wait, that's a good thing.

Awesome info, I'll have to read this entire thing sometime.

Hey man nice to see you back! Been following on YouTube for a while.

I'll be sure to give the document a read and get back to you with my thoughts on it

It's DOCX file.I need a 2007 Install Pack

ffffff wrote:It's DOCX file.I need a 2007 Install Pack

Get OpenOffice, it's free and should open this file without any issues

You can also open DOCX files with WordPad.

I disagree with some of the things in your guide. There are multiple inconsistencies in your paper that were pointed out by people on IRC. You wrote that Yoshi's Island world maps have paths going all over the world but that's Super Mario World, not Yoshi's Island. The part about plagiarism says that not giving credits and using other people's graphics is considered plagiarism but it's not. As Zelda said on IRC, claiming YOU made them is plagiarism. You should review your guide and rewrite it.

Raster wrote:I disagree with some of the things in your guide. There are multiple inconsistencies in your paper that were pointed out by people on IRC. You wrote that Yoshi's Island world maps have paths going all over the world but that's Super Mario World, not Yoshi's Island. The part about plagiarism says that not giving credits and using other people's graphics is considered plagiarism but it's not. As Zelda said on IRC, claiming YOU made them is plagiarism. You should review your guide and rewrite it.

The plagiarism part was written incorrectly, I will admit that. However I have no experience with YI, so I had Valtteri write that part up. And perhaps actually point out these acclaimed inconsistencies so that I may correct them.

Joey wrote:You can also open DOCX files with WordPad.

Didn't think about that, aren't there limitations to what it can display though? Not sure on the contents of this file yet

Raster wrote:You wrote that Yoshi's Island world maps have paths going all over the world but that's Super Mario World, not Yoshi's Island.

In that part he talk about the LEVELS of yoshi's island, not the world map.

Christian07 wrote:

Raster wrote:You wrote that Yoshi's Island world maps have paths going all over the world but that's Super Mario World, not Yoshi's Island.

In that part he talk about the LEVELS of yoshi's island, not the world map.

...right, my bad. The way that part was written gave me the impression that the guide was referring to the world map.

very well written and very accurately describes different design elements that go into designing a good level good job

People could benefit if you elaborate more about what you're talking about with examples or even pictures of gameplay. Of course, what I'm suggesting isn't all that easy and may take a lot of work, but I'm just saying.

For example:
"This type, while it can be used spectacularly well, can also fall apart rather easy. These elements make this design style haphazard and risky in nature for any designer."
Stuff like this, you can't learn much from. It's vague. It's essentially saying "If you're going to do it, do it well." without much instruction on what specifically constitutes what you call "bullet spam and obstacle-heavy", and when such a thing is actually too much or too little.

Really, the overall gist that I'm getting from the article is that beta-testing is extremely helpful. As designers create a level, they have the innate ability to beat their own level without much difficulty. However a beta-tester could come on and play that same level and face enormous difficulty and confusion, showing the designer how the level wasn't intuitive at all and/or that it made the game restrictive and not actually fun.

As a supplement, people coming here looking for further understanding about the depths of level design could also look at Egoraptor's Sequelitis episodes on YouTube. The dude knows what he's talking about and his arguments can inspire an informed and directed passion, showing you at least in part what kind of mindset you would need to be in to design a fun game that a lot of people will enjoy. Also the videos are funny and entertaining.

By objective criticism, which episodes would you say are the best that the SMBX community has had to offer?

Magician wrote:People could benefit if you elaborate more about what you're talking about with examples or even pictures of gameplay. Of course, what I'm suggesting isn't all that easy and may take a lot of work, but I'm just saying.

For example:
"This type, while it can be used spectacularly well, can also fall apart rather easy. These elements make this design style haphazard and risky in nature for any designer."
Stuff like this, you can't learn much from. It's vague. It's essentially saying "If you're going to do it, do it well." without much instruction on what specifically constitutes what you call "bullet spam and obstacle-heavy", and when such a thing is actually too much or too little.

Really, the overall gist that I'm getting from the article is that beta-testing is extremely helpful. As designers create a level, they have the innate ability to beat their own level without much difficulty. However a beta-tester could come on and play that same level and face enormous difficulty and confusion, showing the designer how the level wasn't intuitive at all and/or that it made the game restrictive and not actually fun.

As a supplement, people coming here looking for further understanding about the depths of level design could also look at Egoraptor's Sequelitis episodes on YouTube. The dude knows what he's talking about and his arguments can inspire an informed and directed passion, showing you at least in part what kind of mindset you would need to be in to design a fun game that a lot of people will enjoy. Also the videos are funny and entertaining.

By objective criticism, which episodes would you say are the best that the SMBX community has had to offer?

I am kind of annoyed you are redirecting people away from my stuff by saying "he know's what he's talking about." Its one thing to suggest, but another to disregard and redirect. As for examples, that would take ffor-fucking ever because I have no examples of my own to display for each and every segment. If I had help, I would be happy to display pictures.

As for suggestions, I recommend Zephyr's Mario Class or Super Talking Time Brothers 2. Whiel true both had flaws, they are obviously better than the common output in this community. I would also recommend Sednuir's Lowser's conquest, but it isnt finished yet.

In my defence, I mentioned the videos "as a supplement" and said that people "could also" look at them. To be fair, the part where I said "the dude knows what he's talking about" might have been redundant, and thus could be construed as subtly negative towards you, but it was still fully meant to be taken within the same context as the paragraph it's contained in, as well as the rest of the sentence that it's a part of, which I believe frames it not to be targeting you in particular.

Nonetheless, I wasn't "disregarding" your work in any way, shape or form—that paragraph was only a fraction of my post. I was still directly responding to your work with feedback.
I'm aware that building pictures as demonstrations would be a lot of work. If it's too much, here's another idea: since youtube video URLs can be tagged with a time stamp, it might be easier to sift through your SMBX videos and flag down rants/criticisms/demonstrations of any kind that would come up as you were playing levels, and you could link to them in relevant sections of the document. As someone with your experience in playing levels it wouldn't be surprising to find many instances of you reacting to specific sections of levels with problematic design, and you could elaborate further in the document as to why it's problematic if the videos themselves aren't sufficient.
I actually watched a bit of your Lowser's Conquest videos the other day and I was amused at one point when you were slightly impressed that Sednaiur had prevented you from being able to get above the screen and walk on top of the level, since it was his first project. It's things like that that you can include, where you can show specifically how certain block placement (or lack thereof) can be exploited or when it is too harsh for the player, and you can link to it in the document and elaborate on what you're talking about whenever necessary.

I literally bet one of the "s***" levels you played was mine, but if you'd read the Youtube comments, maybe you'd know why.
Here it is:
"All right, let me just admit that I think I know why you hated this level. It was actually incredibly out-dated, and it was in the middle of updating it WHEN I sent it to you AFTER I forgot to save. Maybe you could despise me, perhaps you could despise my level designing skills, or if you only despise this level and nothing else I could consider developing something else or COMPLETELY remaking this level. It's your option, if you feel that you don't want me to send you anymore levels, or if you want me to send you more RECENT, better-quality levels. Regarding the boss, I had no idea what I was thinking when it was being created lol."

---

See, you need to think about these things beforehand. What I'm saying is that the fact you're accusing other SMBX newbies of sending them "s*** levels" is a direct sign you're a hater. YOU used to make preliminary, orifthat'stherightword levels like all other people used to do, so why not give the other beginners at least a fair chance? That's my only problem with you in your type of videos. It's just a frequency of whining, complaining and criticizing while you SHOULD specifically remark calmly, "This (whatever) clashes with (whatever), you need to fix this." You treated ME like I was Chad making a terrible level and then when it wasn't my fault for sending it at the wrong time. Besides, you find one bug in a let's play, and the WHOLE rest of the play through you're just constantly thinking about it, like it ruining the entire universe.
You are very picky with how you actually criticize things in your genre, but I must say the tutorial was decently worded and easily comprehended. I should read some more of it before I comment regarding it, though.

I'm sorry if this was exaggerated or obnoxious, but frankly I'm expressing my reasonable opinion so yeah.

Magician wrote:In my defence, I mentioned the videos "as a supplement" and said that people "could also" look at them. To be fair, the part where I said "the dude knows what he's talking about" might have been redundant, and thus could be construed as subtly negative towards you, but it was still fully meant to be taken within the same context as the paragraph it's contained in, as well as the rest of the sentence that it's a part of, which I believe frames it not to be targeting you in particular.

Nonetheless, I wasn't "disregarding" your work in any way, shape or form—that paragraph was only a fraction of my post. I was still directly responding to your work with feedback.
I'm aware that building pictures as demonstrations would be a lot of work. If it's too much, here's another idea: since youtube video URLs can be tagged with a time stamp, it might be easier to sift through your SMBX videos and flag down rants/criticisms/demonstrations of any kind that would come up as you were playing levels, and you could link to them in relevant sections of the document. As someone with your experience in playing levels it wouldn't be surprising to find many instances of you reacting to specific sections of levels with problematic design, and you could elaborate further in the document as to why it's problematic if the videos themselves aren't sufficient.
I actually watched a bit of your Lowser's Conquest videos the other day and I was amused at one point when you were slightly impressed that Sednaiur had prevented you from being able to get above the screen and walk on top of the level, since it was his first project. It's things like that that you can include, where you can show specifically how certain block placement (or lack thereof) can be exploited or when it is too harsh for the player, and you can link to it in the document and elaborate on what you're talking about whenever necessary.

Linking video timestamps is actually a genius idea. I might look more into this.