6-1 Whiteout Trepidation

[The Thwomp King]

So here's a level I made in Suckerman's Snow Contest. It's for my current project, Super Mario Country, and it's dedicated to one of my favorite DKC levels, Snow Barrel Blast. For those groaning at the mention of Snow Barrel Blast, you'll be disappointed to know that this level is very difficult as well. I'm open to any suggestions to improve the level too.

I hope you guys will enjoy it!!!

The Sexy Screen

Spoiler: show

The Super Sexy Link:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/h1sro ... dation.zip

[Witchking666]

There is cutoff in the sand
Uhh i mean ropes.

[Cedrik]

I played this level befor 3 days.
The part with the Bees and the storm was UNFAIR!
I die 7 times, because I glitch to the right.

[The Thwomp King]

I played this level befor 3 days.
The part with the Bees and the storm was UNFAIR!
I die 7 times, because I glitch to the right.

Yeah I have no idea how to fix that. Any suggestions on what I have to do for that?

[Cedrik]

I played this level befor 3 days.
The part with the Bees and the storm was UNFAIR!
I die 7 times, because I glitch to the right.

Yeah I have no idea how to fix that. Any suggestions on what I have to do for that?

1st) Are this backgrounds?
2nd) If yes, try to create a second layer with invisible background and put them everywhere.
So there aren't no backgrounds at anytime. So the background can't you.
[Only my idea.]

[Emral]

Reviews featuring Enjl, 2nd human servant of the Ultimate Rinka

Well this level was good. And by level, I mean everything leading up to the midpoint. Really. You could've ended the level there and all my problems with this level would be gone. Most. There's a few stuff which I have to complain about which happens in the first half.

Before we get to the harsh beating of your original gimmicks, though, I'm gonna talk about some of the stuff this level does right:

The level has a well-crafted atmosphere to it. While most of the narrative end of the story is redundant, it helped craft an uneasy feeling of fighting nature and trying to overcome great obstacles (which I'll get to later...). The switches between inside and outside sections kept the level fresh, as the inside portions were a short moment for me to relax from the arguably more stressful outside portions.

I'm not addressing stuff like geometry or bgo placement as they were completely fine, but also didn't do anything noteworthy.

So good level, right? 7.5/10!

Now, the issues I see with this level.

First off, let it be said that you may also place coins in places which aren't described as "above pipes". In fact, coin placement is a good indicator you could've used to guide the player through the snowstorm sections. Instead, you decided to place them directly above piranha plants, tricking naive players like me to jump towards them to get a reward. I got my reward, which was damage:
[rimg]http://i.imgur.com/wNw8Lck.png[/rimg]

The blizzard was a nice concept, don't get me wrong, but it was executed poorly. In combination with the flawed coin placement and, to be honest, slightly spammy NPC placement overall, it came out of nowhere and forces the player to count how much time has to pass til they have to essentially wait for 3 seconds. A small indication would've been nice. I think the best way to go about this would even be making enemy silhouettes visible during the blizzard portions, but this requires lunalua and I don't know whether you're up to learning how to write 10 lines of code. Lua would also not have you spend billions of background objects on the blizzard.

Apart from its "fuck you"-ness, it was also WAY too much during the rope section. Speaking of the rope section, cut that. Just get rid of it. It's glitchy and therefore has no business existing. I don't know what made you think including a glitchy, precision-based section where you can't see anything half the time was a decent idea.

Also the level kinda dragged near the end and dying becomes a ragequit moment as it means replaying the section I talk about above. I'd say there should've been a 2nd midpoint right after the glitch section, if you do intend of not getting rid of it.
Finally, some random moments from my playthrough which I wanted to share:
[rimg]http://i.imgur.com/MocmEqx.png[/rimg]
This one is self-explanatory.

[rimg]http://i.imgur.com/yuRBuNY.png[/rimg]
Nice 4th wall break. Oh, this reminds me: You could've really replaced a toad with the thwomp. Just to get rid of the AI. By the way, this dialogue is 100% redundant, even viewing this from the standpoint of the episode this belongs to.

Final score:
Just get rid of the second half/10

To be fair though, there are some really bad decisions you made that really really hurt this level which started out genuinely good. 5.2/10

[The Thwomp King]

Reviews featuring Enjl, 2nd human servant of the Ultimate Rinka

Well this level was good. And by level, I mean everything leading up to the midpoint. Really. You could've ended the level there and all my problems with this level would be gone. Most. There's a few stuff which I have to complain about which happens in the first half.

Before we get to the harsh beating of your original gimmicks, though, I'm gonna talk about some of the stuff this level does right:

The level has a well-crafted atmosphere to it. While most of the narrative end of the story is redundant, it helped craft an uneasy feeling of fighting nature and trying to overcome great obstacles (which I'll get to later...). The switches between inside and outside sections kept the level fresh, as the inside portions were a short moment for me to relax from the arguably more stressful outside portions.

I'm not addressing stuff like geometry or bgo placement as they were completely fine, but also didn't do anything noteworthy.

So good level, right? 7.5/10!

Now, the issues I see with this level.

First off, let it be said that you may also place coins in places which aren't described as "above pipes". In fact, coin placement is a good indicator you could've used to guide the player through the snowstorm sections. Instead, you decided to place them directly above piranha plants, tricking naive players like me to jump towards them to get a reward. I got my reward, which was damage:
[rimg]http://i.imgur.com/wNw8Lck.png[/rimg]

The blizzard was a nice concept, don't get me wrong, but it was executed poorly. In combination with the flawed coin placement and, to be honest, slightly spammy NPC placement overall, it came out of nowhere and forces the player to count how much time has to pass til they have to essentially wait for 3 seconds. A small indication would've been nice. I think the best way to go about this would even be making enemy silhouettes visible during the blizzard portions, but this requires lunalua and I don't know whether you're up to learning how to write 10 lines of code. Lua would also not have you spend billions of background objects on the blizzard.

Apart from its "fuck you"-ness, it was also WAY too much during the rope section. Speaking of the rope section, cut that. Just get rid of it. It's glitchy and therefore has no business existing. I don't know what made you think including a glitchy, precision-based section where you can't see anything half the time was a decent idea.

Also the level kinda dragged near the end and dying becomes a ragequit moment as it means replaying the section I talk about above. I'd say there should've been a 2nd midpoint right after the glitch section, if you do intend of not getting rid of it.
Finally, some random moments from my playthrough which I wanted to share:
[rimg]http://i.imgur.com/MocmEqx.png[/rimg]
This one is self-explanatory.

[rimg]http://i.imgur.com/yuRBuNY.png[/rimg]
Nice 4th wall break. Oh, this reminds me: You could've really replaced a toad with the thwomp. Just to get rid of the AI. By the way, this dialogue is 100% redundant, even viewing this from the standpoint of the episode this belongs to.

Final score:
Just get rid of the second half/10

To be fair though, there are some really bad decisions you made that really really hurt this level which started out genuinely good. 5.2/10

Hey I really appreciate this review, and I'll do my best to clean this level up. The moving rope was simply a risky concept I wanted to try, and it has failed. XD hahaha

To explain the checkpoint I must have accidentally left the checkpoint graphic out of the graphics folder for this level. That's an easy fix, so it'll look nicer when I update this.

So given I get rid of the rope section, lower the amount of npcs, and change up a couple other things, the level would be much better?
I'd hate to just have the level just be the first half, so I want to make the second half much better.

[Emral]

Speaking of second half, there's one thing I forgot to mention: The reason why it got stale.

The second half felt like a re-hashed version of the first half, with absolutely nothing new thrown into the mix. I think adding a new enemy type might be enough to actually make the 2nd half interesting, though I also came up with a bunch of lunalua gimmicks you could place there. Since the level's based on DKC, how about having these small crocodiles occupying the ropes in the 2nd half of the level?

[The Thwomp King]

Speaking of second half, there's one thing I forgot to mention: The reason why it got stale.

The second half felt like a re-hashed version of the first half, with absolutely nothing new thrown into the mix. I think adding a new enemy type might be enough to actually make the 2nd half interesting, though I also came up with a bunch of lunalua gimmicks you could place there. Since the level's based on DKC, how about having these small crocodiles occupying the ropes in the 2nd half of the level?

Okay that sounds fair. Is there a graphic that has the rope crocodiles from DKC2? There still aren't too many DKC enemy graphics I stumbled upon (which makes sense since this is more Mario related than anything). I'm not good at making new graphics, so I'll take what I can get. XD hahaha

[Emral]

Speaking of second half, there's one thing I forgot to mention: The reason why it got stale.

The second half felt like a re-hashed version of the first half, with absolutely nothing new thrown into the mix. I think adding a new enemy type might be enough to actually make the 2nd half interesting, though I also came up with a bunch of lunalua gimmicks you could place there. Since the level's based on DKC, how about having these small crocodiles occupying the ropes in the 2nd half of the level?

Okay that sounds fair. Is there a graphic that has the rope crocodiles from DKC2? There still aren't too many DKC enemy graphics I stumbled upon (which makes sense since this is more Mario related than anything). I'm not good at making new graphics, so I'll take what I can get. XD hahaha

I think there are some for its ground walking sprites. You can just turn them 90°. A frontal perspective would probably cause them to not look like the original enemy unless done extremely well.

[FanofSMBX]

Speaking of second half, there's one thing I forgot to mention: The reason why it got stale.

The second half felt like a re-hashed version of the first half, with absolutely nothing new thrown into the mix. I think adding a new enemy type might be enough to actually make the 2nd half interesting, though I also came up with a bunch of lunalua gimmicks you could place there. Since the level's based on DKC, how about having these small crocodiles occupying the ropes in the 2nd half of the level?

Okay that sounds fair. Is there a graphic that has the rope crocodiles from DKC2? There still aren't too many DKC enemy graphics I stumbled upon (which makes sense since this is more Mario related than anything). I'm not good at making new graphics, so I'll take what I can get. XD hahaha

Dragonmaster146's graphics pack has Neek, the rope rat.

[SecondScolipede]

To be honest, slow down the ropes and my biggest gripe is gone. Or at least, make them stop when they hit the end of their course, giving the player time to jump onto them.

[Emral]

For the time being, I have moved this to "Average". I see a lot of potential in this level, so please send me a notification if you end up updating it, and I'll update my review and score accordingly.

[PROX]

Speaking of second half, there's one thing I forgot to mention: The reason why it got stale.

The second half felt like a re-hashed version of the first half, with absolutely nothing new thrown into the mix. I think adding a new enemy type might be enough to actually make the 2nd half interesting, though I also came up with a bunch of lunalua gimmicks you could place there. Since the level's based on DKC, how about having these small crocodiles occupying the ropes in the 2nd half of the level?

I'm pretty sure that you could also do that with hoopsters. You could replace hoopsters with clap traps and it should do the same thing. Although it wouldn't work the same way as it would in DKC, but it's something.

[The Thwomp King]

Sounds good guys. I'll be sure to update this as soon as I can.