Super Mario And The Ancient Stars

[ThePieSkyHigh]

This seems super interesting and well done, and for having 50 levels I think it'll be one of the first episodes I've ever beaten?

Added in 34 seconds:
Ill download once I fix me laptop hopefully tomorrow when the part arrives. Good job!

[FireyPaperMario]

The world map in the trailer looks like the world select map from Super Mario Bros. 3 Mix imo

[Tomex7]

Thanks for playing my ep!

1: Difficulty Balance: im playing on this world order: Jungle (completed), Ice Mountains (completed)

The preferred order is to start with the jungle, then the desert, mountains, lava, and the city. The difficulty just raises with the correct order :/

The Jungle boss had a pretty cleaver and readable moveset, but his hitbox was bigger than the boss itself, causing you to getting an unfair hit that could cost you the battle.

Well, I'm changing this in the upcoming update, but thanks for noticing.

The Ice Mountains boss was a quite interesting choice, good first phase but annoying and frustrating second phase. Frustrating cause the combination of ice floor and springs makes movement and dodging very difficult, and if you dosen't jump properly the boss ohko you by wall crashing. I suggest you to add some extra springs near the existing ones, so the risk of missing the vital jump is softned.

I think that the boss is supposed to be harder than the player would expect from a goomba I think that this fight is good, but I might make it somehow easier. Who knows?

Im now at the metropolis world, and this was a pain in the A hole since the first level. The train mystery level was a pretty creative one but some factors made me hate it. The annoying chef's oven that costantly harms you while trepassing it, the SPOILER guy/s boss/es fight that is a chaotic madness where winning is impossible (i was forced to cheat some items in order to complete this level) cause of the MASSIVE enemy flood that dosen't let you harm the boss/bosses with the bombs (that 4/5 times also explode in your hands cause of collisions with enemies).

Oh, yeah. I COMPLETELY agree with anyone who thinks that 5-1 boss was too hard. It was. He is much easier in the updated version

Rooftop level, basicly a trial and error based level with some unvaiable paths (a noteblock jump placed on a pit that makes you collide with a pipe instead of bouncing on the next noteblock) and another mini boss fight at the end of this level. Metropolis Capital level is difficult cause of the lacks of mushrooms in the slums area.

Not sure what kind of errors you've experienced during the playthrough of 5-2, but I'll check out that once again Also, I'll add some slums to the slums area too

A jungle world enemy sports a twitching sprite sheet of the purple bad guy toad as idling sprite instead of his correct one. On metropolis capital the mini boss of the slums area dosen't properly trigger the unlocking item that is required in order to finish the level, and also i can't transport the hidden key to the elder toad apartment, cause it vanish when you open the door on his house.

Yeah, that 1-1 enemy was glitched because of me putting a .png file in the episode's folder. The unlocking item was just meant to be a switch that you don't see. And I don't know what happened with that key, but I'll fix that.

Added in 4 minutes 50 seconds:

The world map in the trailer looks like the world select map from Super Mario Bros. 3 Mix imo

Haha, which one? I never heard about Super Mario Bros. 3 Mix

[TheKingmario2]

Thank you Tomex for reading my "feedback" about the map. The project itself is wonderful, it just needs some little improvements.

1: This explain why the difficulty vertically rosed so fast (like driving a car on a perfectly flat road, then you crush your car on a wall that is in reality the 90° bent road)!
2: Im glad of helping you with a sort of "beta testing"
3: The Ice king is fine , the problem is just the floor of the second arena that makes you lose lifes randomly cause of a missed/glitched jump.
4: Nice to hear! im a terraria player that defeated the final boss on expert mode, and holy moly.....after playing 5-1 boss/es fight i experienced a new meaning of "madness and frustration" xD
5: Sorry, i wasn't clear enough. The level 5-2 (rooftop jumps) is ok, is a classic trial and error level, but i found that one of the 2 possible jumps was impossible to practice. Here an image of the jump with jumping options: https://imgur.com/a/lEXT5gX
6: Ok so isn't a problem related to my smbx version the weird apparition of the purple guy. The text chat said that the boss lost this item, hinting that maybe i picked it up, but when i gone back to the elder toad it said "im waiting", hinting me that maybe something dosen't got triggered properly. Thank you! That area with those brick piles and dead fishes took an huge part of my soul!

[Tomex7]

Thank you Tomex for reading my "feedback" about the map. The project itself is wonderful, it just needs some little improvements.

1: This explain why the difficulty vertically rosed so fast (like driving a car on a perfectly flat road, then you crush your car on a wall that is in reality the 90° bent road)!
2: Im glad of helping you with a sort of "beta testing"
3: The Ice king is fine , the problem is just the floor of the second arena that makes you lose lifes randomly cause of a missed/glitched jump.
4: Nice to hear! im a terraria player that defeated the final boss on expert mode, and holy moly.....after playing 5-1 boss/es fight i experienced a new meaning of "madness and frustration" xD
5: Sorry, i wasn't clear enough. The level 5-2 (rooftop jumps) is ok, is a classic trial and error level, but i found that one of the 2 possible jumps was impossible to practice. Here an image of the jump with jumping options: https://imgur.com/a/lEXT5gX
6: Ok so isn't a problem related to my smbx version the weird apparition of the purple guy. The text chat said that the boss lost this item, hinting that maybe i picked it up, but when i gone back to the elder toad it said "im waiting", hinting me that maybe something dosen't got triggered properly. Thank you! That area with those brick piles and dead fishes took an huge part of my soul!

Nice to see you enjoy this episode, by the way. Thanks for explaining these glitches to me, too!

[DrMekar]

Here I'm again.

I haven't much played much yet, but I can already say that I really love the concept of choice your world. It's
really rarely used and fits this perfectly. I will also make a Playground of it on my Channel of it

So far I've played the first 3 levels of the Jungle World.

The first one was a nice introduction with inner Tree passages and
the introduction of the annoying Bee's. The Only point of critism I have here is that the BG Vines, especially the ones in the tree
look pretty simiulair to the climbable ones, I died once because of that, still no Big Deal thought.

The Second one.. damn. Simply Amazing and somethink I've never seen before, not in SMBX or even an SMW Hack. The only thing I have
to say is, that it is not a Chainsaw chasing you xD

The Third one (normal Exit) is also a pretty nice level with alot of detail to it. I like it alot. The only changable thing is that the Music should switch
when fighting the Boss, to make it feel like a Boss.

Overall I only entcountered two buggy Graphics which are broken Cryptos as the YIDS Worm and a Piranha Plant, otherwise Great.

[erkyp3rky]

I see a lot of potential.

[TheNightingale]

I see a lot of potential.

There's a lot of potential.

[Tomex7]

I see a lot of potential.

There's a lot of potential.

Wow, thanks a lot

The Only point of critism I have here is that the BG Vines, especially the ones in the tree
look pretty simiulair to the climbable ones, I died once because of that, still no Big Deal thought.

Yeah, now in the update they are darker.

The Second one.. damn. Simply Amazing and somethink I've never seen before, not in SMBX or even an SMW Hack. The only thing I have
to say is, that it is not a Chainsaw chasing you xD

Yeah, I know. I wanted to have the level's name a little more constructive. Saw Chase sounds kinda worse than Chainsaw Chase

The Third one (normal Exit) is also a pretty nice level with alot of detail to it. I like it alot. The only changable thing is that the Music should switch
when fighting the Boss, to make it feel like a Boss.

I thought about that, but every vanilla boss theme sounds very energic and this squid is just slow and doesn't attack you in any other way than just to follow the player.

Overall I only entcountered two buggy Graphics which are broken Cryptos as the YIDS Worm and a Piranha Plant, otherwise Great.

About the Crypto, I get that a lot. You can see in the upper posts that this problem occurred only on 2.0, but it is fixed. About the Plant, which one?


Overall, thank you for the feedback, I hope you'll enjoy this episode as you progress

[DrMekar]

I see a lot of potential.

There's a lot of potential.

Wow, thanks a lot

The Only point of critism I have here is that the BG Vines, especially the ones in the tree
look pretty simiulair to the climbable ones, I died once because of that, still no Big Deal thought.

Yeah, now in the update they are darker.

The Second one.. damn. Simply Amazing and somethink I've never seen before, not in SMBX or even an SMW Hack. The only thing I have
to say is, that it is not a Chainsaw chasing you xD

Yeah, I know. I wanted to have the level's name a little more constructive. Saw Chase sounds kinda worse than Chainsaw Chase

The Third one (normal Exit) is also a pretty nice level with alot of detail to it. I like it alot. The only changable thing is that the Music should switch
when fighting the Boss, to make it feel like a Boss.

I thought about that, but every vanilla boss theme sounds very energic and this squid is just slow and doesn't attack you in any other way than just to follow the player.

Overall I only entcountered two buggy Graphics which are broken Cryptos as the YIDS Worm and a Piranha Plant, otherwise Great.

About the Crypto, I get that a lot. You can see in the upper posts that this problem occurred only on 2.0, but it is fixed. About the Plant, which one?


Overall, thank you for the feedback, I hope you'll enjoy this episode as you progress

The one in the Ruins level, it seems to be a Generator. Anyway for my Real Playground I'll record, I started in the Ice World. The Levels where again pretty got, except for the second half of the Ice Caves. This part was really hard and weird. Seeing the spring in Action is hard enougth, but catching the Green Platform is true luck and left me Dead with 2 Game Overs.

[cato]

Final Boss and Final Level
Toutou themed, i.e spamming rinkas and other projectiles.
Also, the ending spamming the jump button is too fast.

[Tomex7]

Final Boss and Final Level
Toutou themed, i.e spamming rinkas and other projectiles.
Also, the ending spamming the jump button is too fast.

I mean, it wasn't planned to be so, but I still think it's better than just a SMB3 Bowser or Mother Brain with different graphics and 10 rinkas.
Also, by too fast you mean that it ends too early or it is too hard to jump so so fast?

[Cedur]

It's an open secret that you've been influenced by Reign of the Gatekeepers - something you should definitely not have adapted though is the consistent lack of higher order power-ups.

[Tomex7]

It's an open secret that you've been influenced by Reign of the Gatekeepers - something you should definitely not have adapted though is the consistent lack of higher order power-ups.

Yeah... Well... It seems my totally and unbelievably secretly secret is now well-known . Though it is only an inspiration... right? And about those power-ups, I always have thought that tanooki and hammer suit should be the rarest things in the game and available only if got with hard work i.e. from minigame or bonus level.

[Cedur]

by higher order power-ups I also mean fire flower / ice flower / leaf

RotG had many levels with just mushrooms and here it seems like there's only mushrooms completely (though I haven't played very far yet)

[erkyp3rky]

I always have thought that tanooki and hammer suit should be the rarest things in the game and available only if got with hard work i.e. from minigame or bonus level.

I have always seen it that way too. In fact, that’s exactly how SMB3 handles it. I do it the exact same way in my project; Ice Flowers (outside of their native world) are extremely rare to come by, and often require you to beat mini vase puzzles (Like in SMB2 and how coins where considered a luxury.) in order to aquire them. The same goes for hammer suits and tankooi suits. Those are very powerful and therefore require hard work in order to acquire them.

[Tomex7]

by higher order power-ups I also mean fire flower / ice flower / leaf

RotG had many levels with just mushrooms and here it seems like there's only mushrooms completely (though I haven't played very far yet)

Humm... In the first levels of W1 there are in fact not many power-ups, but I wouldn't say they're rare. On the other hand - all the bonus levels are not very hard to find, which makes power-ups (Fire and Ice Flower, Leaf and some Yoshis and Shoes) kinda easy to get. I think that ratio to the difficulty of the world matches the ratio of the variety and amount of power-ups, but that's just my opinion and it may not be very accurate to what you feel.

I always have thought that tanooki and hammer suit should be the rarest things in the game and available only if got with hard work i.e. from minigame or bonus level.

I have always seen it that way too. In fact, that’s exactly how SMB3 handles it. I do it the exact same way in my project; Ice Flowers (outside of their native world) are extremely rare to come by, and often require you to beat mini vase puzzles (Like in SMB2 and how coins where considered a luxury.) in order to aquire them. The same goes for hammer suits and tankooi suits. Those are very powerful and therefore require hard work in order to acquire them.

Exactly, that's what I think is fair, and making tanooki very easy to get is making the game kinda unfair...

[cato]

Final Boss and Final Level
Toutou themed, i.e spamming rinkas and other projectiles.
Also, the ending spamming the jump button is too fast.

I mean, it wasn't planned to be so, but I still think it's better than just a SMB3 Bowser or Mother Brain with different graphics and 10 rinkas.
Also, by too fast you mean that it ends too early or it is too hard to jump so so fast?

It is too hard so I used cheats and beat the final level for more than 30 mins.
Also, I have to change the speed from 0.27 to 0.1

[Tomex7]

It is too hard so I used cheats and beat the final level for more than 30 mins.
Also, I have to change the speed from 0.27 to 0.1

Wow. 30 minutes?! Never thought it would be that much of a problem Now it is slower and easier

Added in 4 hours 59 minutes 48 seconds:
Also, the updated version of the episode is now released. It replaced the original link if you'd like to know. Some minor updates were done and level 3-1 was completely redesigned, too! Have fun and tell me about any bugs you will notice.

[Shadow_Flame]

by higher order power-ups I also mean fire flower / ice flower / leaf

RotG had many levels with just mushrooms and here it seems like there's only mushrooms completely (though I haven't played very far yet)

Since Reign of the Gatekeepers' initial release, I have added more fire flowers and leaves instead of mushroom power-ups. There is still only 1 place in my episode where you can acquire the hammer suit and as long as you reach a secret house in each world, you can get unlimited amount of that higher order power-up.

Saying that, I do feel that Tomex7's episode could've used more fire flowers and leaves in a lot of the levels (especially in the fire and city worlds).