Super Mario Bros. X Forums

Super Mario: Spiral

Note: This trailer may contain minor spoilers

AppleTheTomato wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 18, 2022 1:44 am

Saw this in the SMBX Discord (Hi, it's Apple lol), and wanted to give it a shot. Before I give my overall thoughts, here's some notes on things that were cool and things that weren't:

Spoiler: show

- The "leaf timeline" used said leaf pretty well. I especially liked the mtn level's usage of it, like breaking the bricks to get higher or flying from one
section to another to get higher.
- Probably should put a checkpoint before the Kamek fight(s). In fact, this needs more checkpoints in general (The flying / fire on ice bridge part of the
mtn comes to mind).
- You can skip the Kamek fight(s), and so I did. Tho, the one time I actually played the Kamek fight, it was kinda buggy.
- The room transitions are a bit weird sometimes. You may wanna look into rooms.lua
- The red coin thing was neat, but that boo can really screw you over.
- The castle level is neat. Really liked the combination of past level elements.
- Bowser was super anticlimatic. Like, I was helping the Toad right before his area, and Bowser was just jumping and spitballing right there. Kinda weird.
- HOLY CRAP I wasn't expecting a "twice twice." Going through the levels again via a "fire timeline" was super cool. Speaking of which, the usage of the
fire flower, like the leaf, was pretty well used.
- I would put more powerup blocks around. An area in particular that could benefit greatly from that is the cave part of the mtn. It was super annoying
to have to backtrack if I lost my flower to some random bat.
- The story is pretty decent. Gaps I missed through one "timeline" were filled in the next. I actually kinda cared for the characters, which rarely happens
to me in SMBX episodes.
- I can see where the Kamek platforms would troll people, so some indicators may help.
- You can actually skip the final Kamek fight if you get his magic to fly up. Then, you can spinjump on it to reach Peach and progress.
- You can still hear Bowser after he falls. Is there a floor underneath the screen?
- Peach's GFX are inconsistent across her playable and NPC. I would either change the playable to these:
viewtopic.php?t=21374
Or change the NPC. The usage of Peach is really cool, tho.
- I couldn't backtrack for what I'd assume is the 15th Star, died to reset progress, but because I got the checkpoint, I was softlocked.
Quit the game to hopefully try the Peach level again, and was sent back to "fire timeline" Koopa Keep.
- Bit weird that when you talk to Peach before the final Kamek fight, it's Kamek talking. I figured Peach would at least say SOMETHING lol.
- I died in the Peach part before the checkpoint, and got stuck in the black room before her part. I had to switch to Mario, and then upon hitting her
block, I got back to the level. I'd change that, either via lua or some other tricky shenanigans.

And now, my overall thoughts:

Spoiler: show

At first, I thought this was going to be a super basic SMBX episode, but I was super surprised by the "twice twice" or, as the story puts it, spiral concept.
It was so cool to see the levels I had just played changed in new ways. Like I've already said, the story is pretty decent, and I was constently wondering
what was going to happen. I'll admit, all the bugs soggied the playthrough, but I still had fun. I'd give it an even 5/10 right now. Lots of good elements
mixed with some kinda nasty bugs and inconvenient setups.

I'm hoping you'll make an update to this, as this was pretty good, but had quite a few issues, so I'd love to play it again when some stuff is fixed.
Have a great day!

Mystery Man Bro wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 18, 2022 3:40 pm

Thank you so much for the detailed review, I really appreciate it! It's going to help a lot for the next update!
Some responses to the issues:

Spoiler: show

- The episode actually had 2 checkpoints per level (this can be seen in one of the screenshots). I limited it to one checkpoint since I was having problems with events starting early (might have just been from "restart last level on death" being checked) and remembered that having more than one checkpoint used to mess with levels on previous SMBX versions. If this is not the case on SMBX2 then this will be an easy fix to just add the checkpoints back.
- It's kinda sick that you can just skip the Kamek fight, great find. I'm tempted to leave it in to make the game more speedrun-able if anyone ever felt like doing so. Although it would be better design-wise to fix that. Indicators would also be good QoL changes but I'd probably have to get a graphic for it. Was the plains level fight skip-able? The only way I can think to is due to the exit warp appearing early which is something that I would definitely fix and not sure how I missed.
- Bowser has no floor below the bridge also thought that was strange but assumed it was just how the NPC worked since I don't usually use Bowser.
- Many thanks for finding that Peach graphic! Should be pretty painless to implement that.
- The Peach segment was intended to be backtrack-able but I have discovered that one block being out of place prevented that so I've fixed it. EDIT: Just realized that I had flat out missed the warp on the door lol...
- Wasn't sure how big the episode file size was in comparison to the usual, so if it's a bit much I'll look into those methods. Converting the music would reduce the file size by like 20 MB alone.

Glad you liked the story and aspects of the level design, and hopefully once I get all of the bugs ironed out it will be a much better experience!

AppleTheTomato wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 18, 2022 4:48 pm

Looking forward to the next update!

Mystery Man Bro wrote: ↑

Mon Dec 19, 2022 2:48 am

AppleTheTomato wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 18, 2022 4:48 pm

Looking forward to the next update!

Got a lot of quick fixes out today and now everything seems to be working as intended at least until more bugs or design oversights are found! Next update will take longer though since I'm going to start working on my next project as well as entering level contests. But I'll still come back to this episode to update it when needed for any future players who may stumble across it ^-^

Once again, thanks for all your help, Apple!

Detailed patch notes for everything changed are below the new download link in the main post.

AppleTheTomato wrote: ↑

Mon Dec 19, 2022 3:17 pm

Mystery Man Bro wrote: ↑

Mon Dec 19, 2022 2:48 am

AppleTheTomato wrote: ↑

Sun Dec 18, 2022 4:48 pm

Looking forward to the next update!

Got a lot of quick fixes out today and now everything seems to be working as intended at least until more bugs or design oversights are found! Next update will take longer though since I'm going to start working on my next project as well as entering level contests. But I'll still come back to this episode to update it when needed for any future players who may stumble across it ^-^

Once again, thanks for all your help, Apple!

Detailed patch notes for everything changed are below the new download link in the main post.

Hooray! Definately gonna play again.

Spoiler: show

- The two Toads in this screenshot have the same dialogue after unlocking the ladder and saving the one Toad. You can probably do some event stuff to change them to different Toad NPCs with different dialogue:

- During the second Kamek fight, he tells you to remember spinjumping. 1: Why would he help me and 2: it isn't needed lol
- The projectiles from Hammer Bros and Kamek are still present after you win. You should be able to remove them by hiding "Spawned NPCs" in the event
If that doesn't work, try putting this in a luna.lua file inside those levels:

Code: Select all

function onEvent(eventName)
 for _,n in ipairs(NPC.get()) do
  if eventName == "whateverTheEventNameIsCalled" and (n.id == 30 or n.id == 300) then
   n:kill(HARM_TYPE_VANISH)
  end
 end
end

- During the haunted cave part, I never got that Toadsworth didn't trust Rex, so the whole "he double-crossed us!" thing didn't make a whole lot of sense. Like, Rex came off more as "wow! this cave is cool and spooky!" and Toadsworth and Mario were just like "well, I guess he knows what he's doing." Then, Kamek pops in, we all get tricked, and Rex takes all the blame? I'd get it if Toadsworth was all "this guy is sus" but he isn't. He's just mad with him for no reason lol.
- How is the player supposed to know that there's going to be a Hammer Bro right here:

AppleTheTomato wrote: ↑

Mon Dec 19, 2022 6:46 pm

Spoiler: show

-The two Toads in this screenshot have the same dialogue after unlocking the ladder and saving the one Toad. You can probably do some event stuff to change them to different Toad NPCs with different dialogue
- During the second Kamek fight, he tells you to remember spinjumping. 1: Why would he help me and 2: it isn't needed lol

Spoiler: show

- The projectiles from Hammer Bros and Kamek are still present after you win. You should be able to remove them by hiding "Spawned NPCs" in the event
If that doesn't work, try putting this in a luna.lua file inside those levels:

Code: Select all

function onEvent(eventName)
 for _,n in ipairs(NPC.get()) do
  if eventName == "whateverTheEventNameIsCalled" and (n.id == 30 or n.id == 300) then
   n:kill(HARM_TYPE_VANISH)
  end
 end
end

Spoiler: show

- During the haunted cave part, I never got that Toadsworth didn't trust Rex, so the whole "he double-crossed us!" thing didn't make a whole lot of sense. Like, Rex came off more as "wow! this cave is cool and spooky!" and Toadsworth and Mario were just like "well, I guess he knows what he's doing." Then, Kamek pops in, we all get tricked, and Rex takes all the blame? I'd get it if Toadsworth was all "this guy is sus" but he isn't. He's just mad with him for no reason lol.
- How is the player supposed to know that there's going to be a Hammer Bro right here:

You have to spin jump their shells or fire ball the koopas in order to progress the fight. Most SMBXers are already gonna know that, but if you don't it could be a helpful hint though. I'll have to think on it.

There is one text box where Toadsworth kinda says that, and there's the detail that Rex was lured by Kamek if that helps:

That's still a completely fair criticism though since that cave section is a bit bloated narratively. There is another Toadsworth text box where he comments on saving the Toads in the level, so perhaps that could be swapped for more dialogue about distrusting Rex.

As I said, the next update won't come out for a while, but I'll implement these changes when it does! Gonna give the episode some time to simmer while I work on my next episode so that there'll hopefully be more reviews so I can see different perspectives and come back with one big update of fixes.