The Sunken Sunder

[CaptainCalamity]

Ahoy thar! I be Cap'n Calamity, and I bring you the Sunken Sunder! This level is about how you are sent by famous explorer Sir Ivory Toadly to investigate a sunken, broken-up ship, invaded by Sushi sharks and Goomdivers, and also haunted by Captain Calamity himself!

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I hope you enjoy!
Link!

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http://www.sendspace.com/file/md4692

[Enjl]

Review: The Sunken Sunder
This one's more of a 1-Level-Story, it seems. Let's see how you did:

Graphics-wise this level looked rather basic, but that doesn't mean it looked bad. The ship tileset is perfect for the atmosphere you're trying to accomplish, but it has it's issues.

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The mask is messed up, as you can see. How did you not notice? It's the regular ship piece's mask.

Redigit misplaced the tile in the editor. Try the other one and check if it looks better.

Otherwise, I think you could've added a few more restyled graphics. The yellow pyramid tileset didn't make the level look like it's taking place at a beach or something, the yellow boxes kinda stand out in a bad way and you could've created different background-fillers (not block-79), maybe a darker ship block.
I just noticed you used one of these in the second screen I show. Why not use them in different parts of the level?

Now, I don't know what sunder means, but this ship is definetly not sunken. It float on the water like at it's best days. You'd have to either rename the level or move it completely underwater to get a fitting title.

At first I was confused when I died whilst backtracking with the key in my hands. I just jumped into the water. Then I remembered the sign which warned me about shallow waters. But aren't shallow waters just a bit of water with ground beneath? I don't get what you're trying to do there. I suggest you add water physics there, though. Speaking of water physics:

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Might wanna fix that.

I've found a few problems with the moving layers section, too. Basically, you had an overlap of touchable areas and water. You can fix that by making the ships slightly larger by adding a bigger rump to them. Then things like this won't happen:

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The level design in general seemed kinda flat. You got some long backtracking, flat floor, lots of free space on the screen (see first screen) and a serious lack of background objects and you could move some coins out of the blocks, too.

The music didn't fit. I don't know what kind of music this is but it gives the level a wrong atmosphere. The water music track was the only one which sorta fits, but the others are either too silent, too calm or too happy.

The boss fight was okay, I guess. But you could easily skip it, see here:

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If you do it in the other direction, it's even more effective. Maybe you could add some holes into the ground the boss can run over, but the fireballs fall into? Just a suggestion. Also, the Piranha Plants do nothing.

You put some humor into the dialogue, I like it.

Geez, I really don't have anything to add here. So let's get to your score:
Graphics: 2/3 You can definetly improve here. It's a very low 2/3 at that. Something like 1.5, because many graphics just don't fit and some of them are messed up.
Music: 1/2 Again, very low 1/2, sorta like 0.7. Pick some different tracks. I don't care if it's mainstream music you pick, but anything's better than this. But you still got some points for the sorta fitting water music and sorta fitting in-ship music which is too silent.
Gameplay: 2/5 If you see this level as a story, that's what makes you want to keep playing. But as a standalone level, the flat and boring areas and backtracking really killed the points here. The talking NPCs made this feel more like LoZ2, if you know what I mean. Talk to people, collect an item, kill enemies, accompanied by not very interesting areas.
Final score for you is
5/10
Approved
Try really changing this level up. Try making some more death pits, a shortcut to bypass backtracking and all that. Make it more INTERESTING. Please!

Anyways, I recommend this level to people who like a little story in their levels still and can look past rather bland level design.

[CaptainCalamity]

Ahoy thar'! I am here to reply about what you said, and I shall take all that you have to say into consideration.

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For starters: That first issue? I never had it. Ever. The mask cannot possibly be messed up, seeing as the folder I obtained it from did NOT have it's own mask.

Sunder means broken, and as some parts of the ship show, it is definitely broken apart. It's also just partially sunken, but I do admit this is something I should have noticed earlier.

How do the boxes stand out, I ask myself in response to your review. And I realize they may be too bright in comparison to the darker colors of the ship itself.

I also thank you for telling me about the SMB2 tiles. I was wondering why there'd be 2 SMB3 platforms in the first place, and I now know it's an error.

Dunno why I never fixed that one error with the lowering water in the ship. However, the shallow waters was to give it death pits, but even when I started it, I had a few doubts about shallow waters being insta-death pits, but I just rolled with it because the ship can't exactly float on air. What is this, Neverland?

About the moving layers in the shallow waters part, I didn't notice the lack of water tiles. My bad! I usually test to see if one of the layers is working right. I should also learn to also check for graphical errors in my tests.

Yeah, as I said in my intro, I don't consider myself great at making SMBX levels, and I sometimes have trouble with making airship levels less flat. Since this is basically an "airship-on-water", I could count it.

Another thing, I made every second of sound in the level, besides the boss music. I am an amateur when it comes to making music sound like what theme I am going for, but I made Sunken Sunder (the music, that is) sound like an adventurous theme, the interior does seem too calm though. The boss music is NOT silent, NOT calm and NOT happy all the time. Maybe calmer at the end, but still intense, so your arguments for those do not work as well for the boss theme. However, the boss fight is still short. If you can dodge the boss for a while (or just open the file in Windows Music Player or something), you can hear some more threatening parts of the song. However, even trying to get to the first timpani solo was hard, I simply tested as small Mario in the room before the boss, and tried to survive until the first timpani solo, and I died the second before it.

As for the piranha plants, they don't do much, I understand. At least I didn't go with my last 2 plans. The first was no addage at all, but upon replaying it after so long, I realized the battle was easy, even if the boss is bigger and faster. I was originally going to use Bullet Bills, but the Level Wrap made them outrageous, and upon getting the star, there were so many in the room, I got a couple of 5-ups and everything under due to the score.

Edit: HOLD THE PHONE! That IS sand! Even Nintendo used it as sand! If you check out http://www.mariouniverse.com/maps/snes/smb3, you can clearly see it is used as sand in levels 2-1, 2-3, 2-4, 2-5, and the pyramid! While it IS a tileset used for a pyramid, it is used mostly as sand in the other levels! Therefore, it is sand, and eligible for use as such.