SM63 LDC Discussion

[Venexis]

Alright, so, nightly update. First room is functionally done- this means that all hazards, paths, and "story" are established and work, although there may still be glitches and tweaks to be made. There were a couple changes from the original plan though. I had planned for a human looking boss to actually throw the projectiles, but due to a quirk in the designer's math, they do not ever line up in such a way that it would be believable. Not to mention that many rotating blocks, moving or not, would lag a lot more than necessary. Instead, it's simply a stationary totem (for the first room at least) that summons olympic-themed projectiles and throws them at you, triggering stage hazards in the process.

This also means there will be a slight departure from the "long-/high-jump" based attacks I had wanted to do for the second phase. I think it'll still work, though. Our boss is a polymorphic "totem", so he could easily possess the room itself in such a way that Mario needs to do the jumping (this will be SO much easier for me to make and coordinate, as well). Third phase is still completely on track, though, I played a little with flame towers and they can absolutely do what I want them to do I've also altered the story slightly to be more interactive and less... all at the end. Hopefully this can be used to add some humour as well as highlight the symbolic ♥♥♥♥ as the player is seeing it, in addition to disguising some of the stranger design choices.

So. We've got five days left. I plan to finish all of the second phase tomorrow (the 29th) for sure, and tackle the third phase completely on the 30th. This will leave us three entire days for testing, tuning, and making the arenas all pretty. Let me know what you guys think so far, though. Also, if anyone has suggestions for a name or alternate music, post 'em here. I think that suggestions are fine, as long as I'm the one who makes the actual choice? Maybe music and stuff doesn't actually count as the level at all and it'd be totally fine, but regardless, I'd definitely like to know what sort of music you guys are imagining so that I can find similar stuff.

[Venexis]

Turns out I've got some stuff to take care of today, should still probably be able to finish the third form later today, though.

Also, if there's any technical issues, let me know ASAP. They're so much easier to find before the level code is cluttered with scenery pieces, especially if anything needs to be cloned again or have some values adjusted beyond the limited scope of the designer.

[Venexis]

Anyone still alive here?

Anyway, I planned to wrap up the third room today but that didn't happen, turns out diagonal flame towers are pretty much the worst item in the game. When placed at an angle, their hitbox is a rectangle- the base in one corner, and the tip of the flame in the opposite corner. This... causes a lot of problems when your flame towers are several blocks long, as Mario takes substantial damage from touching their enormous hitboxes, even if it appears visually safe. Good news is, I was eventually able to salvage it, because only angled flame towers are affected. Ones placed at 0, 90, 180, or 270 degrees behave exactly as expected, so I still fully expect the final fight to be kickass.

In addition, all of the second room should also be functional. It's not as nice as I'd like it, but it seems decently challenging. It's a lot less... um... bossy, than the first room, though. Personally, I would like to revisit this room, so if you've got ideas lemme hear them. Right now though, a showstopping final fight is my top priority.

We've now got four days left. Tomorrow, I would like to finish the level in terms of functionality (finishing the third room, concluding the dialogue/story, playtesting for gamebreaking bugs and general polish on the technical side of things), with graphical stuff for the 31st.

Starting tomorrow, it'll become extremely important to hear your feedback on stuff, especially the block mechanics, because the code will likely double in size due to graphical things the day after. It's just slowing us all down if I need to search through the mess to change something that would be comparatively easy to find now. As for the last two days (the 1st and 2nd of August), I'd like to keep those free in case something comes up and I get delayed or for last minute polish (both on the level, and things like a titlecard and alternate music).

[ChaosYoshi]

... I only just now realized that you put the code in the OP.

Anywho, I only have a few minor complaints atm. To start off, there's the first room. The first thing that irks me is the part where you start jumping across the bone platforms. The first part where you jump in time to avoid the shot-put is fine, but the part after that is much more strict because the javelin comes down just around the time you land. I only got past it because I somehow managed to jump off the tip of the javelin as soon as I jumped off the bone platform. Also, the shards from the explosive shot-put can push/pull players off the bone platforms that they move through, and from my experience, it almost always pulled me into the fire. The second room is not nearly as brutal, but at the same time it makes it a bit jarring. The part where you climb the moving platforms while avoiding the giant flame is rather easy, too, as all you have to do is repeatedly jump on the green platform until the fire's gone. Since the flame is on such a long cool-down in the first place, maybe make it envelop the entire chamber so that you have to climb it in one go? Also, I cannot for the life of me make that jump over the two flame pillars without hurting myself with the flames.

Otherwise, I didn't really find anything in terms of glitches (unless you count my issue with the shot-put fragments). I can't really advise you anything in terms of aesthetics since I'm not really innovative in my design style, but I hope that the rest of this helps.

[Venexis]

3 days left, team.

Okay, so, I wasn't really feeling it today at all, so progress was slow. Decided I should do something, though, so let's start at the bottom and work up. In the first room, I reduced the angle of some of the flame towers, as well as fiddled with the duration of them (particularly the shot-put ones), as well as shortened the bone platform path. Hopefully this will make the projectiles less annoying to get by. Otherwise, we may just need to settle for a path that is only minimally affected by the projectiles (not super keen on this idea) or set up a warp pipe leading back near the level's start point and then have platforms crossing the projectile area all the way back to the boss (this is my personal preference, but I'd rather not unless the current path is still an issue. In my mind, bossfights should be just you and the boss, no warping around), so give it a try and let me know.

Second room saw a massive overhaul. In addition to some background tilework, the flame tower in the green platform section has been expanded to fill the whole chamber (did not realize it didn't already, thanks Chaos). All other flame towers had their cycles lengthened slightly, and are also easier to predict. The previous final ascent, which had composed of platforms spaced for the player to triple jump across twice, has been replaced by a single triple jump segment and a rotating green platform segment.

Finally, the third room looks.... pretty much the same as it did. The only real difference is that the flame towers are now timed to fire as the boss center (the green rotating block) passes over them. Not much to say here just yet.

Tomorrow, I would like to wrap the level up. This includes scenery in all rooms, story/dialogue in the third and final wrap-up rooms, as well as completely finishing the third phase boss aesthetics and attacks. I didn't get as much done today as I had hoped due to general lack of motivation, so it'll be extremely tight tomorrow, but still doable.

[Venexis]

I'm not done for the night yet, so there will still be a summary post that covers all the changes, but for now there's a rough draft in the changelog.

Anyway, I'm really happy with the first room and satisfied with the second- barring graphical stuff that'll happen later tonight or tomorrow afternoon, I think they're done. That's all I wanted to say, let me know what you think so that I can tackle any lingering issues tonight and finally be done with two entire rooms

[ChaosYoshi]

I played through the latest build, and I think that the first and second room seem pretty much golden now. There's not really anything that frustrated me that wasn't my fault, and the changes you made made it so that while it's completely different, it's still challenging and more doable. I'm really curious to see how the last room will turn out.

[Venexis]

Two days left, and good news everyone- the first two rooms are virtually done, aside from playtesting and any necessary fixes. This will actually be a really short update because of that. ha I lied

Anyway, to business. All last night, I was thinking about the first room's platforms. Eventually I came around to the idea of a warp pipe leading to the higher landing, where Mario would need to cross platforms while dodging the projectiles. Turns out, it actually feels like a much better fit than haphazardly cramming something in right beside the boss. In the second room, not a whole lot of the technical stuff has changed. The boss core is now wreathed in flames and I added one to make the rotating green platform area less of a freebie, but apart from that, most of the work here (excluding graphics stuff) was with timing of various elements.

Third room... alright, here's where I'm conflicted. I made an actual shape for the boss now, a dark shine sprite (because this is SM63, of course), but the level is getting to the point where adding or removing any form of item is taking several seconds. This is not ideal for obvious reasons, so I've started to work on attempting to modify level4's programmable goomba script in the hope that it can generate all the miscellaneous hazards in the third room. Not going to lie- it's a bit of a gamble. If I can't get it working, or it works incorrectly, it'll be three hours of code tinkering down the drain that could have otherwise gone toward placing stuff by hand, however slowly. I'll know first thing tomorrow morning though, and at this point, I'm more worried for our competitors than I am for us, lel. We've got two full days left, maybe 75% (at most, it's shaping up to be pretty difficult, so probably less) of the third room to finish, and a final wrap up room (which will take virtually no time at all in comparison). That'll leave an entire day for playtesting and bugfixes (or celebrating our easy win. :p Doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of issues you guys have found so far).

I'm feeling pretty confident.

[Asterocrat]

If the hazards are only items, you could start another level, make the new level the same dimensions and then place here in the exact same spor the items you can't place in your level. Once you are done with the bloss/item placement, simply copy the item part of the code back to the original level. And your bloss will be here.

If you need the tiles in that auxiliary level just take the original code and get rid of all items and that will be it.

Be careful with the starting position in both cases though.

That's how I do to make the bloss at the end of a level that is already laggy.

Just a heads up to make things easier; hope it helps.

[Venexis]

Version 13 is up. It's a little rough in a couple of places, but I think we can very nearly (if not already) call it done.

Also, thanks for the tip Star. Hadn't even considered making it in a different, empty level.

EDIT: This means you guys can yell at me even if it's about not important stuff too