28th Level Designer Contest

[MessengerOfDreams]

Yep

Please tell me we're through now

I know we wanted five judges but with this barren LDC we can't be picky

[NanTheDark]

We're done now. I think.

[Supershroom]

Will I be able to crown myself and reach my first big milestone? Or will Peter finally reach the stars after his long career of level designing? Or will KABOOM put a spoke in everyone's wheel and complete his trophy collection?

The fact is, no matter who wins, it will be his first win. *starts the drumroll*

[NanTheDark]

You don't get to crown yourself though, someone else gives you the medal.

If you even get one, of course... muahahahaha

[MessengerOfDreams]

Poor Coinshower doesn't even get a mention

Mostly I'm interested to see where the winner places in the grand scheme of LDC winners

[KABOOM]

The fact is, no matter who wins, it will be their first win. *starts the drumroll*

Oh...wow. That's actually pretty cool. Now I'm very hyped...............

[CedarBranch]

TIME FOR THE CEREMONY

...Thank you for the drumroll, Supershroom. :3

This LDC was pretty small compared to the others held here, but that doesn't necessarily make the levels any smaller of worth. Let us see how they all fared...


In fourth place, with an overall score of 8.4375/20:

Spoiler: show

Coinshower

No need to feel down or anything; nobody wins every time, even less their first time. Take this as a learning experience, and maybe next time you'll do much better!

Let's give him a hand, everybody! Hope you stick around for the next LDC!

In third place, with an overall score of 14.8125/20:

Spoiler: show

1018peter

Third isn't too bad. In fact, it's anybody's to take. Good work!

In second place, with an overall score of 15/20:

Spoiler: show

Supershroom

Looks like you're doing a finer job this time around. Who knows, maybe next time you'll strike gold!

And now... In first place, with a grand score of 15.525/20, is none other than:

Spoiler: show

KABOOM

That was a pretty nice display there. Gold comes to those who continue to strive for it, and you are no exception. Solid play!

All scores: show

KABOOM: 15/20 (NanTheDark) 15.1/20 (FrozenFire) 17.5/20 (MessengerOfDreams) 14.5/20 (Supershroom)

1018peter: 14.5/20 (NanTheDark) 16/20 (FrozenFire) 14.25/20 (MessengerOfDreams) 14.5/20 (Supershroom)

Coinshower: 9/20 (NanTheDark) 7.5/20 (FrozenFire) 9.25/20 (MessengerOfDreams) 8/20 (Supershroom)

Supershroom: 14/20 (NanTheDark) 13.25/20 (FrozenFire) 17.75/20 (MessengerOfDreams)

And that concludes our 28th Level Designer Contest!


Judges, please post your reviews.

[MessengerOfDreams]

Why are the scores always so ♥♥♥♥ low? Those were two incredible levels! D:

[Supershroom]

I can already guess why I've "only" got second. The ♥♥♥♥ loading time. And maybe other technalities. But second is definitely something I can be content with, it goes uphill step-by-step and with 15 I would also have placed at most other contests. Welcome shiny silver medal

Congratulations KABOOM! Especially for relieving Amp with the lowest-scoring winning entrant of all time! XD

Teh Judgings: show

Coinshower – Mushroom City

FUN: 3.5 I didn’t have much fun playing this, sorry, because platfor-ming is kept at a very simplistic level, and I also can’t see that much of a structure, I start off on plain golden tiles, go into a small house, and go outside again and jump over brick tiles. As long as my keys don’t break up for a moment, I can hardly die in here. Long story short, I can pass the level very quickly without doing something noteworthy or being challenged, but it’s not totally boring as well, mostly thanks to the search after the stars. Try to make it a bit harder and longer. A bit of action, a bit of puzzling, an appropriate dose of difficulty, good surroundings and atmosphere, that is what makes a fun level.

GRAPHICS: 1.5 The whole level is sort of unappealing. Tiles are used correctly, but in a very simplistic and undevelopped way. The entire ground at the start is formed by one single tile group, as well as the mansion only consists of mansion tiles and hieroglyph tiles which are a bit out-of-place. Also some various parts of the level aren’t separated by level transitions, which means that you can look into one part while being in the other. If you fall off the clouds with the 1-UP’s, you can only see a bit of background beneath the mansion. In the second half I see a row of golden bricks, a few other roofs and even more golden bricks. Don’t be so thrifty with tiles, instead use various tiles to create slopes and structures and buildings as this is supposed to be an urban level. Furthermore, there’s no décor. No trees, no plants, no rocks. Décor is also very important to graphics and you should try to use them whereever they are senseful and make the level look better. A few good points are the cloud placement, the roofs and the sewer tube.

OTHER: 3
Note: The music choice isn’t bad, but it’s mostly recommended to take a soundtrack from another game or even a song as an alternate music, there should be always one that fits well. If you can't find one on your own, try checking out the Big-ol Alternate Music Co-op Library.
+0.25: no loading time and no lag
+0.25: The moving blocks are a neat touch as well as the roof formed by metal platforms.
-0.25: Many signs are floating a bit over the ground. Sign placement is a bit buggy because they move up 2 or 3 pixels.
-0.25: The starting position is misplaced. I have to backtrack through half the level to see where it starts.

OVERALL: 8
This level isn’t bad, but it still needs a lot of improvement. It feels sort of rushed, considering that you’ve still had a few days for it. Well done for your first try nonetheless, you definitely have potential to do well, and make some levels with spirit and effort. Especially judge by yourself if you enjoy your level or not. You can also play famous levels and learn from them as well.

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KABOOM – KoopaCorp™

FUN: 7 Yes, this is basically a sort of sweet exploration level with some platforming. It was mostly enjoyable and the level sprayed a nice comfortable atmosphere, but in opposite to that the platforming was very hard at some times. It already starts with the first red coin, which can take a lot of tries to get mostly due to the continous and fast rotation of all squares, just give them a bit of waiting time between each rotation and it’s by far less annoying. Getting the fifth red coin was a very slow matter due to many squares blocking your path and you can hardly get crushed by most of them, so this was more-or-less useless braking without difficulty, and I also have to backtrack through this tiny passage. Furthermore, the elevator looks neat with the arrows, but it would be more convenient if it was a connected chamber with moving platforms. However I must say I’ve definitely liked the bloss, I’ve really thought this was neat and nice to play through.

GRAPHICS: 3.5 It looks good and the décor with plants, fences, tables, koopas etc. is done well, but you could have done so much more by using more tile variation and working with background tiles, windows etc. to create an even better office atmosphere instead of leaving big background holes.

OTHER: 4
+0.5: The bloss looks cool.
+0.5: I also like the conversation via signs.
+0.25: Good loading time and no lag.
+0.25: The alternate music fits the level well, but it gets sort of annoying listening to it over 10 minutes of gameplay, it would be even better with additional musics.
-0.5: The quiz isn’t ideally executed, even though I’ve paid attention pretty much, I couldn’t remember e.g. the placing of a single water bottle or the exact naming of the 6th floor, and, at worst, you either have the choice between random-answering the last question or searching for the pipe in the 7th floor without any clue, which can be both annoying.

OVERALL: 14.5
A solid, good level. I recommend you to keep your style, but also pay attention to platforming (first red coin) and spice up graphics a bit more.

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1018peter – Primetal City

FUN: 6.5 The silver star route of Act 1 is very enjoyable and I’ve had a lot of fun with Turbo FLUDD. However the red coin route is very hard and required a lot of precision platforming, especially the one between rotating blocks and strangely moving platforms was very annoying to get. I’ve also liked the way through the cooling tube. So long story short, the silver star route is very nice to play, not too easy, not brutally hard, but the red coin route is in fact too hard to be worthy to try it.

Then, Act 2. There’s a lot to be said about it. The flames at the start are extremely fast so you don’t have even the slightest millisecond to cool off, and especially you have to hit a tiny switch within a very wide jump, and I’ve needed many many tries to find the optimal jumping route. In fact, there should be three or four switches in a row so it’s not that “lucky” to hit one. Then the switch bricks go too high to be climbed with very far Turbo Jumps, I’ve always crashed against a row, and if I try to wait for a short moment, the flames get me, so in fact I should hope to get far enough to survive two or three hits. The areas between the start and the bosses are nice to play, so I have to give you props for that, but as soon as I battle against the Magmadon, things get annoying again. Not only is it laggy (see below), but there’s also troublesome bullies and a slightly diagonal flame tower, but diagonal enough to cause the well-known glitch. Then the thing with the huge goombas. I’ve seen it in previous levels of yours and I’ve never known how to do this, it took me several tries to see that spinning is the solution, but even with spinning I sometimes jump on the head of a goomba and have to restart. And if I have to restart, I also can’t heal myself at the end because all the coins are gone.

So I've had a troublesome road to the final boss. Jeez, that boss was very hard as you needed pixel-perfect jumping and very exact timing to maneuver through with the Rocket FLUDD, mostly because the distance to the lava is too low to let yourself fall from the lavacube pillars. I also dislike the trap ending as there’s no arrow showing me the right way. Then I was finally done.

Moral of the story: Whenever you do such tricky races and blosses, you should test them multiple times to see whether you can solve them properly or not, I guess you should be skilled enough to decide this. I know you’ve done Act 2 very spontaneously at the end of the deadline, but if you don’t have much time, you should try to do things that are rather manageable and don’t require that much of testing and finetuning. It’s sort of sad that your Fun score is hold back by such technical things.

GRAPHICS: 4.5 The buildings in Act 1 look great and the background tiling is very detailed and successful, I’m almost remembered of SK’s Neon City but it’s special enough to stand on its own, and Act 2 is also well done with the patterns of lava and roof tiles, the fire-connected pipes, it truly looks like a collapsing construction where no stone will remain on the other. However, the cooling station in Act 1 shouldn’t uncover any outer space background as it’s a closed station, and décor could be more present (e.g. twisted trees in the free areas of Act 2), therefore I can’t give a 5. But it’s nicely done.

OTHER: 3.5
+1: Magmadon just looks ♥♥♥♥ awesome.
+0.5: The alt musics fit well. Good job on that.
+/-0: very good loading times regarding the sizes of both levels, but also noticeable lag in both levels, especially when fighting Magmadon, especially because of 19 large goombas, and bob-ombs/bullies/bullet bills as well.
-0.5: malfunctioning sling star at the end of the Red Coin path in Act 1. It’s at the default speed and doesn’t shoot you high enough.
-0.5: As if the start of Act 2 wasn’t hard enough, the checkpoint is also oddly placed and causes forced damage. The flames should really give you enough time to enter it without greater problems.

OVERALL: 14.5
That’s a bit of a pity. I’ve really liked most of the gameplay and the graphics. You’re on a good way, pay more attention to “little” details and you’ll do even greater next LDC. I have strong beliefs on that.

Also updating the eternal Medal table in the Hall of Fame right now. Kab has 22 points now, going up to 8th and tying with Murph. Peter has 9 points and jumps from 36th to 24th. I'm taking Peter's earlier place with 5 points (I LOVE HOW I SHARE MY PLACE WITH JJJ). And Coinshower will get a cookie from me. So we're all winners.

[KABOOM]

Thanks to everyone who participated in designing and judging! Honestly I'm a little shocked that I actually managed 1st place, but now's not the time for that.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna play some of the other entrants. I'm pretty impressed with the overall scores, even if we had so few entrants.