SMW clown car - Overpowered?

[Alagirez]

I don't see and find any custom levels or episodes (expect The invasion 2) which using SMW clown car for some kind of gimmicks. Is that overpowered?

[Ness-Wednesday]

I don't see and find any custom levels or episodes (expect The invasion 2) which using SMW clown car for some kind of gimmicks. Is that overpowered?

Quite funny that you mentioned that, however I think the CC3 winning level: "This level contains Tohou music" used a clown car.
But if PGE's coding can't change an enemy's allowance to make it immune to this this then I guess it is a bit overpowered.

JOKE: You got mail!
It is a SMW clown car, you go around the levels to kill npcs with it.
But when you drive it through the SICK ASS swamp romp, you get killed by the Sparky generators and lose it!
The ghost of the devoured Toad takes it over and crushes you with it and since it was your last life, you get the usual SMBX game over.

[bossedit8]

SMW Clown Car, although those NPCs are rare on the use at the recent days apparently, they actually do have an use if you execute them correctly. I don't consider a clown car be that overpowered though since an impact relative to any projectiles onto that clown car you will get damage since your hitbox is literally that giant clown car (basically it makes it even bigger, like 4x4 block big). Other than that, it's basically as of how SMW Bowser works, most NPC dies at the bottom, left and right while at the top it will hurt you if they touches the green top of it.

[HeroLinik]

Yeah, the SMW Clown Car is incredibly rare nowadays. I've seen in older episodes like the classic Invasion where there's a level that revolves around using it, and it was executed pretty well. The fact that any enemy NPC that touches it is automatically killed can make it slightly overpowered, yes, but the real problem is its size. This is why not many people use it anymore, and when they think about flight-based items, they turn to the Propeller Block and the fairy pendant. Some years ago, I tried to make a Clown Car vs Clown Car Bowser battle in which the player must use their own Clown Car to chase after Bowser's Clown Car. It didn't work.

[Chip Potato]

I think it'd be used more often if things like its size could be more easily adjusted, and if it didn't just switch to the default skin when a character is in it.

[The Thwomp King]

The clown car has a case similar to superman. This issue is that it's hard to make something a challenge when the clown car is really good without spamming too many enemies or making the level near impossible. It's difficult to find that gray area with clown cars.

[Gameinsky]

I thought the main issue with the clown car was to make it work without making the level feel claustrophobic, cause it's so big. If the clown car could be resized It'd be fine.

[Kyoya]

Actually the clown car is underpowered... without the usage of a bullet bill shooter item it has no offense accept the earthquake it makes on contact with blocks on the bottom of the rig. The top is completely open to attack and due to the controls of it (u can use the direction buttond) it makes ducking impossible.
I do agree the massive size needs to be resizable... maybe it could be through lunadll manipulation?

[Enchlore]

It's all really on the execution of a gimmick with the Clown Car. A lot of interesting things can be done with it but it's not that easy to put these ideas into motion (as mentioned, the size brings possibilities down a bit).

The Clown Car is not necessarily overpowered. It defeats any enemies that come into contact with the car but the top is open and your character is subject to normal conditions. It's just a matter of thinking about that when designing the level.

[HeroLinik]

A lot of interesting things can be done with it but it's not that easy to put these ideas into motion (as mentioned, the size brings possibilities down a bit).

In this case, I guess we should bring up the secret airship piece. The Clown Car and the secret airship piece have rather a lot in common in that they are both flight-based and allow you to move freely through the air, but the issue is that the Clown Car is too big, as you mentioned, and the graphic for it is hardcoded so you can't scale its size down without hacking into the .exe file itself, thus forcing people to abandon that and instead go for the secret airship piece, because you can customise the size of that. Unfortunately, its fallback is that it's quite hard to implement and it's really glitchy, and for all the reasons listed above, both items are rare. I will also have to mention that the secret airship piece doesn't obliterate everything in its path and you can't fire Billy Guns and Piranha Pipes off the side (although the bullets move twice as fast), so they both have their niche.