Grassy Mountain(Level 1?)

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Frogge
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Grassy Mountain(Level 1?)

Postby Frogge » Sat Feb 20, 2016 1:49 pm

Heyo! Did you miss me? Oh you don't know who I am? I guess that's reasonable I joined only 2 days ago. But I have made another level! Yay!
I spent the whole day on this and didn't eat lunch, so I hope you like it!
Image
Image
(I know the screenshots look a little dull. It looks better in-game. I think.)
It's pretty short(I haven't held time but I'd say 3-5 minutes)and linear but challenging(but not to a point where you will go insane from dying over and over again). The level is a mix of overworld and underground levels. I do want to make an one-world episode like this as I had many ideas I didn't have time to add in.

Video(by me):
Spoiler: show
Download: http://rpgmaker.net/media/content/users ... ntains.zip

Credits
Jammin Jelly
Valtteri
DarkMecha
Prox
Mario and Luigi by Valtteri + lucasadrianogb + Xander + Gorsal + Rapid TH + Supah Luigi

P.S: The level's folder and filename is ''vine caves''. I changed it to grassy mountain later.

Changelog
Spoiler: show
Version 1
Finished
Version-1.5
Added some more coins
-Increased amount of dragon coins and moved one
-Made the second section less cluttered
-Added warning sign before ramp of lava
-Made it so that you can not skip the chases
-Made the switch disappear after hitting it
-Replaced two wigglers with bullies(with wiggler sprites)
Version-1.8
-Added a few more friendly little critters
-Replaced snake block graphics
-Moved one dragon coin up slightly so you can not get it simply by jumping up
-Removed the ramp of lava at the end of section 3 and made the snake blocks not fall through the ground
-NOW you can't skip the chases
-Made the second a chase a little slower
Last edited by Frogge on Wed Feb 24, 2016 2:59 pm, edited 9 times in total.

CopyLeft
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Re: Grassy Mountain(Level 1?)

Postby CopyLeft » Sat Feb 20, 2016 3:08 pm

Wowie gee, this was interesting.

Goods

You stuck with the theme the entire way through: a SMW forest level with poison and switch-block rides. Using the NPC switch blocks is great on you, because that's something you rarely see. Your NPC placement wasn't bad either. You had good background placement as well.

Bads

Your coin placement was not good, as most of it was just set on the ground. You also only had three Yoshi coins, when there should be five, maybe more. The Wigglers were just a Rex, and you could just stomp on it twice, when normally, the angry Wiggler cannot be killed by just jumping on it. Doing so will make you just bounce off. This isn't exactly a major complaint, though.

One big complaint is the poison. It doesn't look good in the level. Emphasis on the word look. I am all for using poison in any level (with some exceptions), but it just doesn't look well with the level. It looked out of place, though it did not feel out of place.

The propeller-flamethrower section was nice, and I don't have any complaints about it being short, honestly. Though,the last room in that section was a bit cluttered. The vines here and later in the level had cutoff as well. Those two bridge pieces also cut off at the bottom.

The next section was a pretty cool concept, though it was not executed greatly. Still I had fun, except for this little part at the end. My first time playing, I never suspected that hill would have killed me. Not to mention the next attempt, I tried to jump to the platform, but it fell into the lava. I felt that small part was a little cheap. The fact that you couldn't see the lines which the platforms rode wasn't bad for the level, though that part at the end needed it. To fix that, just give a warning of some sort.

The next section was a chase-gimmick, where you would hit a switch and run away. One flaw here: you can not be chased at all if you want. You can just hit the switch and let the poison go by you, as long as you were in an area where you could not be hit by it. I actually let the poison chase me, just to see how it would go. The first one never stopped. I can see what you did in the editor, but for the Stop 2 and Stop 3 event, you forgot to set the layer to move. If you had done that, it would stop. Though, due to the way it was designed, this wasn't much of a flaw for either chase-areas. The first chase-sequence was pretty good, but the second was way too crowded and difficult if you chose to be chased by the poison. Also, in that section, the block that showed the Yoshi coin should have hid itself after being hit.

The final section was pretty basic, no complaints there. It was a bit interesting to see a warp-exit, though. Rarely seen. One thing I just couldn't fit in the review is that you have only wiggler-critters. More on that in a bit.

Unused Content

Something that's always fun to see in a level is the stuff that went unused. Now, the Wiggler in the level was a Rex. However, there is a normal Wiggler replacing an SMB3 goomba, killed in one hit, obviously, and there was an angry Wiggler replacing the Bully. You had Monty Mole and Swooper critters, which really should have been used to give more life to the cave-sections. There was an SMW Bomb-omb replacing the SMB2 Bomb and Bomb-omb. Probably just an unused enemy.

There was an unused Buzzy Beetle, which would have gone well in the cave-sections. The SMW Beach Koopa/Blue Shell Koopa without a Shell was invisible, no clue why.

Finally, I think an entire section was scrapped. There was a SMW-floating platform in there, but it had really weird AI! It would leap to the right, into the death barrier. No clue why that was. Though, it might have been used for an unused cave section, which Section 6 (section 5 was the final one) had cave music. He put a pipe there to end the level, but it would originally lead to the cave section, though he felt the level would just run on. Just my two cents.

Score

I'd give this a 4.5/10 or so.
Great idea(s) for a level, just not executed well.

Frogge
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Re: Grassy Mountain(Level 1?)

Postby Frogge » Sat Feb 20, 2016 3:41 pm

Thank you! I'm going to work on the things you pointed out now. I'll update it now :3
Yes, the 6th section was cut-off. It was originally going to be somewhat similar to level 5-4 from new super mario bros wii, but I decided to remove it. (That's actually why I used a pipe exit too haha). For the wigglers, I actually got them from a resource pack. I will replace them with the bully versions. Hopefully it will be fine.

Edit: There. It is updated now. I couldn't do everything you said(change the poison for example)but I tried my best to fix up issues ~<3
-Added some more coins
-Increased amount of dragon coins and moved one
-Made the second section less cluttered
-Added warning sign before ramp of lava
-Made it so that you can not skip the chases
-Made the switch disappear after hitting it
-Replaced two wigglers with bullies(with wiggler sprites)

hyper
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Re: Grassy Mountain(Level 1?)

Postby hyper » Sat Feb 20, 2016 6:41 pm

good for a beginner, nice work! (im a beginner too lmao)

Frogge
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Re: Grassy Mountain(Level 1?)

Postby Frogge » Sat Feb 20, 2016 6:45 pm

Thank you! I'm glad to hear you enjoyed it!

PixelPest
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Re: Grassy Mountain(Level 1?)

Postby PixelPest » Sat Feb 20, 2016 7:05 pm

Why can no one spell Valtteri correctly? Doesn't look too bad, but coin placement looks like it needs some work.

Frogge
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Re: Grassy Mountain(Level 1?)

Postby Frogge » Sat Feb 20, 2016 7:20 pm

Whoops sorry for that XD Fixed up the typo. I don't really know how I could improve the coin placement though. Any tips?

Alagirez
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Re: Grassy Mountain(Level 1?)

Postby Alagirez » Sat Feb 20, 2016 7:28 pm

You forgot to credit DarkMecha. He made the purple lava (poison?), also you misspelled Valtteri.

Frogge
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Re: Grassy Mountain(Level 1?)

Postby Frogge » Sat Feb 20, 2016 7:50 pm

I already fixed the issue with valtteri(I only misspelled their name once). I credited DM now too. Thanks for pointing it out.

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Re: Grassy Mountain(Level 1?)

Postby PixelPest » Sat Feb 20, 2016 8:33 pm

Frogge wrote:Whoops sorry for that XD Fixed up the typo. I don't really know how I could improve the coin placement though. Any tips?
I personally learn best from experience. Try playing levels from The Best and see what they do, and also keep coins off of the ground; there are a few cases where it does work, such as along walls, but my general rule is at least two blocks of space between coins and the ground.

Frogge
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Re: Grassy Mountain(Level 1?)

Postby Frogge » Sat Feb 20, 2016 8:35 pm

I see. Thank you! I'll definetly give some other levels a try to see how they do it :3

diamantico21
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Re: Grassy Mountain(Level 1?)

Postby diamantico21 » Sun Feb 21, 2016 3:28 pm

you didn't change the lava effect
and you forgot to change the name of the folder/level

Frogge
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Re: Grassy Mountain(Level 1?)

Postby Frogge » Mon Feb 22, 2016 6:41 am

The second one is because I was too lazy :P I don't really intend to change it either haha

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Re: Grassy Mountain(Level 1?)

Postby diamantico21 » Mon Feb 22, 2016 7:19 am

Frogge wrote:The second one is because I was too lazy :P I don't really intend to change it either haha
I mean that the folder and the level have two different name so the custom GFX doesn't load :roll:

Frogge
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Re: Grassy Mountain(Level 1?)

Postby Frogge » Mon Feb 22, 2016 10:45 am

Oh I see that! I fixed that now then haha :P

as303298
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Re: Grassy Mountain(Level 1?)

Postby as303298 » Tue Feb 23, 2016 3:51 am

My Review:
Apparently, I am the only one who keeps doing your levels...funny huh?

Atmosphere [4/5]
The only thing I dislike is the poison. For one, this type of "lava" typically exists in a swamp level, not a typical grass level. I like that you didn't just use regular lava, but I still feel like poison in a grass-type level feels just off. Almost reminds me of pokemon setups, makes sense in practice but feels weird once you get crazy with it.

Level Design [3/5]
Again, everything was spot on except two big issues. The line-rider pieces are a great way to implement a innovative way to platform, but without a clear distinction as to where htey are going...it can lead to a lot of misjumps and death.
Next, your lava chasing section is incredibly broken. For one, I feel like its speed is much too fast in the second portion. Lastly, and this is the biggest issue, your switch block is set to toggle, meaning I can activate the event and backtrack so I dont need to deal with the lava.

Best way to overcome this issue is to make the activation switch be on a layer that turns off as a result of the lava chasing you. Otherwise you can lead to a completely broken and useless gimmick, as you'll see in the video.
Last issue, in the third section you die if you touch the tiny lip of lava at the end of the snake ride. On top of this, the snake falls through the lava but ABOVE the tileset. I recommend just having the line dip down into the lava so they despawn correctly.

Graphical Continuity [4/5]
Two issues:
-I still don't think purple poison fits with such a bright level as this. I recommend altering your levels to incorporate a more swampish feeling i you intend on experimenting with this atmosphere again.
-If you are going to use a snake graphic, make it easily recognizable. Using the SMW "Hit" block was rather confusing. I recommend using a simple re-colored version, preferably not just using typical hit blocks.

BGO Placement [5/5]
No issues whatsoever. However the third section feels like it lacks something, which may be due to being conditioned to seeing a swamp background and canopy.

NPC Placement [5/5]
Excellent usage of the npcs you hand available. But a majority of this score comes from your eye-candy.
Those tiny enemies were fucking ADORABLE. Tiny wigglers, moles, goombas and bats...my gawd. This was such a cute addition, and I truly hope this becomes a staple in designing in general.

Difficulty / Replayability [4/5]
I would play this again if it wasn't for the exploitable glitches in your even triggers. Aside that, I really can't much else to say that hasn't already been said.

Overall Score: 25/30
Final Score: 8.3/10
Judgement:
Video:
Spoiler: show

Frogge
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Re: Grassy Mountain(Level 1?)

Postby Frogge » Tue Feb 23, 2016 3:04 pm

Again, thank you very much! I'll get around to some of those tomorrow. Also, I only have two levels so far :P Who knows maybe the next one will be judged by someone else X3

Frogge
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Re: Grassy Mountain(Level 1?)

Postby Frogge » Wed Feb 24, 2016 2:40 am

Updated~
-Added a few more friendly little critters
-Replaced snake block graphics
-Moved one dragon coin up slightly so you can not get it simply by jumping up
-Removed the ramp of lava at the end of section 3 and made the snake blocks not fall through the ground
-NOW chases cannot be skipped
-Made the second chase a little slower

Next update:
-Secret area?


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