Per some suggestions from Model 500 and Kinsei, I made a "2.0" version of my level "A Safe Landing For Yoshi." Per their feedback I made the fortress section longer with more enemies and also fixed a few platform placement issues which were causing a couple of blind spots:
I also attempt to create stages that are based on the classic formula (introduce - expand - modify), while hopefully keeping the difficutly low enough to not become frustrating but remain challenging.
Here's a level I made that I'm pretty happy with:
It revolves around a slight puzzle mechanic that is introduced at the beginning and then continually expanded upon. I would gladly appreciate any sort of feedback.
Ship Security Shells
ID: CF6C-0000-0023-1B29
It's always surprising to see how much easier your own stages appear to yourself, whereas other players struggle at parts of your level that appear trivial at first. It's kinda hard for me to put myself into the role of a random player playing the level for the first time and to introduce the level mechanics in a "fail-safe" way.
The game actually recommended this one to me after playing one of my own levels, so I gave it whirl. First impression is that it's pretty awesome, a nice puzzle level, and some pretty sweet shell bounces. Easily Star-worthy.
However, I do have some things that could be improved. First of all, Cloud Blocks aren't solid, so Small Mario can bypass the puzzles by jumping through the clouds. Secondly, Super Mario can spinjump and destroy yellow blocks, making it possible to just smash his way through the puzzle on top of the ship. But on the other hand, leaving things like that in on purpose to allow a sneaky player a faster option would be a fair choice, too. There is a certain satisfaction in thinking you're breaking things, even when it's an intended break.
Oh, and thank you for being a creator that uses Spike Traps appropriately. One or two in the right spots are plenty to discourage players from doing things. Well, it's okay to spam them in underwater and Starman rush stages, I suppose.
Tower Wars
ID:F7D4 0000 0034 196C
Tile set: Super Mario World
Worlds: Ghost House, Airship.
Was aiming for a sort of self contained adventure or "epic" level, the concept is there is two towers, you climb up the first, reach the roof where a bunch of airships are battling each other, enter the second tower and descend to a boss fight.
It's about 6 rooms + the Airship sequence, Bowser can take about 20 galoombas to the face if you fight him without power ups, but i actually littered the whole level with power ups in almost every screen (some of them in plain sight, some hidden) plus about three 1up mushrooms.
Note: If you lose the spring in Room #3 you can still proceed! You have the tools there, in any case, answer on how to proceed in the following spoiler:
Take a Galoomba to where the spring should be and use it to boost you up. The spring does not respawn if you re enter the room, but Galoombas do.
You get the Dizzy one by shaking the telephone, while the Big Mario is done via that Super Mario Maker Amiibo.
Thanks for all the praise for that stage guys! I can't beleive its at over 50 stars now! While I'll certainly make more super tough stages (since I like those kinds of stages), I'll make some more... interesting stages like this one too now!
For those of you that missed it, presenting the story themed level: The Goomba: A Sad Tale of Madness BDAB-0000-0033-2697
Sweet moon, this thread! Nothing like having friends over for the weekend to fall behind on this!
Anyway, spent most of the day working in this one:
Tower Wars
ID:F7D4 0000 0034 196C
Tile set: Super Mario World
Worlds: Ghost House, Airship.
Was aiming for a sort of self contained adventure or "epic" level, the concept is there is two towers, you climb up the first, reach the roof where a bunch of airships are battling each other, enter the second tower and descend to a boss fight.
It's about 6 rooms + the Airship sequence, Bowser can take about 20 galoombas to the face if you fight him without power ups, but i actually littered the whole level with power ups in almost every screen (some of them in plain sight, some hidden) plus about three 1up mushrooms.
I like what I see so far, but twice I had a problem where I had to reset. In the room where the Hammer Bros are you need the hidden spring to move upwards. The problem is the spring can disappear if you get far away enough from it. I failed making the bullet jump above, but failure might as well been death because there was no spring to get back up there. It's an engine thing unfortunately, but if you have a hidden spring that is required you can't have that part be too large. But I found the design otherwise very fun, but I didn't progress past that point.
SMB2 tiles would be very tricky if Nintendo would implement them. They'd have to introduce new level themes as well ala Desert, and more bosses aside from Bowser (I'm ok with this). I could easily see two or three pallets of exclusive objects from that game alone, maybe even four.
Vertical levels as well since SMB2 was all about doing that, and SMB2's exclusive mechanic could be digging and the duck jumping thing. You'd also have to make up a power up to put it in the Mystery Mushroom slot, and what exactly could they do? There was also never any Fire Flowers in SMB2 either
I like what I see so far, but twice I had a problem where I had to reset. In the room where the Hammer Bros are you need the hidden spring to move upwards. The problem is the spring can disappear if you get far away enough from it. I failed making the bullet jump above, but failure might as well been death because there was no spring to get back up there. It's an engine thing unfortunately, but if you have a hidden spring that is required you can't have that part be too large. But I found the design otherwise very fun, but I didn't progress past that point.
I had someone play one of my levels, beat it, and leave a comment saying how awesome they think it is, but they didn't star it. I love getting feedback but it's pretty disheartening when someone who goes out of their way to comment that they like it doesn't even star it.
In the meantime I've been working on another level. Slightly gimmicky but I don't think it's hard. Although I'm quickly learning that I'm my own worst play-tester since I know my levels inside and out.
Don't Lose the P-Switch!
3C68-0000-0035-5B59
This one has 3 hidden 1-ups, I'm not sure if their locations are too obscure, especially given the pacing of the level.
Just made my first level with the basic tool set for SMB.
Super fun to make, and it took a lot of strength to save ideas I'd come up with for later instead of jam-packing the level with too many elements.
Anyway. This level is short but contains high level trampoline skill. It's very difficult, but hopefully not annyoingly so.
I like what I see so far, but twice I had a problem where I had to reset. In the room where the Hammer Bros are you need the hidden spring to move upwards. The problem is the spring can disappear if you get far away enough from it. I failed making the bullet jump above, but failure might as well been death because there was no spring to get back up there. It's an engine thing unfortunately, but if you have a hidden spring that is required you can't have that part be too large. But I found the design otherwise very fun, but I didn't progress past that point.
I made it to the eleven-thousandth room (or, at least, it felt like it), and died by falling onto a Boo that I couldn't see prior to the fall. I guess I could've been more patient with that room, but I expended my patience on the prior airship rooms and was actually at risk of running out of time. It's well-designed, but the unforgiving length doesn't encourage one to try again - especially when you get stuck in the third room for the fourth time due to a disappearing spring.
I made it to the eleven-thousandth room (or, at least, it felt like it), and died by falling onto a Boo that I couldn't see prior to the fall. I guess I could've been more patient with that room, but I expended my patience on the prior airship rooms and was actually at risk of running out of time. It's well-designed, but the unforgiving length doesn't encourage one to try again - especially when you get stuck in the third room for the fourth time due to a disappearing spring.
I think Nintendo could largely fix the worthlessness of coins if they just made the percentage of coins collected a stat for each level, sorta like the 100% rating for Yoshi's Island levels.
One obvious problem would be coins that are placed in areas that are physically impossible to get, but the percentage could instead be based on the highest number collected by anyone who's played the level.
But as is I don't feel compelled to include them in my levels at all, unless they're being used with a p-switch as a structural part of the level.
I had someone play one of my levels, beat it, and leave a comment saying how awesome they think it is, but they didn't star it. I love getting feedback but it's pretty disheartening when someone who goes out of their way to comment that they like it doesn't even star it.
Played the first 3 stages from the OP and gave all of them a star. Very good courses people!!!
And my god the bullshit of some stages in the hard 100 Mario challenge. Worst parts for me were:
- Stages that can't be completed without a item.
- Arrows pointing out contrary directions (trolling at max)
- Blind jumps
- Hidden ítems (with no hints) that make impossible to advance in the stage if you don't get them
- Throwing you a mushroom just at the beginning followed by a thousand enemies (seriously, WTF)
I'm not a negative guy but maybe there should be a "dislike" button for these kind of stages. Made me lose and hour yesterday trying and skipping most of them
And one question: I still can't make sub-stages (through a pipe), is that something that is unlocked later?
I think Nintendo could largely fix the worthlessness of coins if they just made the percentage of coins collected a stat for each level, sorta like the 100% rating for Yoshi's Island levels.
One obvious problem would be coins that are placed in areas that are physically impossible to get, but the percentage could instead be based on the highest number collected by anyone who's played the level.
But as is I don't feel compelled to include them in my levels at all, unless they're being used with a p-switch as a structural part of the level.
if someone wants to make a google doc, they should definitely go ahead. i'm just not sure what purpose it would serve. a list of creators with a sample level id to search them by and follow them would make more sense, for example!
My first level with a clear design and intent. It's pretty difficult for me but doable. I think I will make more changes to this level in the future, but I'll post the rough draft version for now. Let me know what you think!
Fire, Thwomps, Flying Things
4CCE-0000-0035-9AF6
And of course I plan on trying the levels provided here when I come back from work tmrw
Ramparter, its a good start, but the way it looks when you view the actual list, might need a little more organization. It doesn't really line up username and level.
Yeah, I see what you mean. You basically beat the level. Obtuse in what way? I can try to fix it. I wish the time limit was longer. :/ It really limits the potential of puzzle stages. Yeah, I actually intended the ringing to be annoying. I guess I could tone it down a bit though.
Obtuse mainly for getting the fireflower and star. Yeah I could tell I was really close.
Here was my experience;
For the fireflower, I need the mushroom to break the blocks, walking into the room it looked like I needed to make a staircase going up by breaking blocks under the trampoline. But the staircase of trampolines doesn't get me enough height to the next level even if I run and jump off it, and then I realize I'm screwed because the blocks don't re-spawn. I might have misread your intention there, but I solved it by starting over the level and then leaving a trampoline up on the blocks without breaking one of them to jump on from the partial staircase.
The fireflower room just takes a while to digest what the heck is going on, and it looks by design you have to do it twice at least the first time. Eventually I would kinda just brute force it by sprinting to the other side, getting the fireflower, killing things and keep getting the fireflower until I had enough room to activate the vine, which was messy.
Also the pipe spawns are kinda screwy in Mario Maker, when I first got to the boot, nothing came out of the pipe because I was so close, and then I lost my invincibility and died trying to get it to spawn.
The elevator and the icons in the wall are brilliant by the way.
I´m enjoying this much more than I thought I would
Is there a way to somehow "time" things? Like enemies spawning from a pipe, or lava fireballs starting to move...I know everything starts working once the player is at a certain distance, but can you alter this?
Also, can you change level height? the default height is not enough if you want to create some developed vertical challenges.
I know this thread is mostly used for level sharing, but did we discuss how good the presentation of the whole thing is? (Probably 50 pages back or so).
Not just the mechanics and the interface, but also the manual (which is hilarious, read the Q&A section) and the characters like whats-her-name and undodog.
Also, one time after I fell into a pit you could hear mario making struggling noises to get out of it, and getting into a car/rocket saying "bye bye" followed by engine sounds.
I think Nintendo could largely fix the worthlessness of coins if they just made the percentage of coins collected a stat for each level, sorta like the 100% rating for Yoshi's Island levels.
One obvious problem would be coins that are placed in areas that are physically impossible to get, but the percentage could instead be based on the highest number collected by anyone who's played the level.
But as is I don't feel compelled to include them in my levels at all, unless they're being used with a p-switch as a structural part of the level.
Maybe, since it seems like Yoshi games have produced dud after dud as of late. It'd be smart to kinda consolidate ideas from Yoshi (and Wario Land) back into Mario or Kirby since those series aren't doing much of anything as of late.
Ramparter, its a good start, but the way it looks when you view the actual list, might need a little more organization. It doesn't really line up username and level.
Maybe separate the level name and level ID, since basically the idea is to get the usernames and level IDs into an easily readable format so you can use a level ID to find the user and look at their collection.
Ramparter, its a good start, but the way it looks when you view the actual list, might need a little more organization. It doesn't really line up username and level.
Maybe separate the level name and level ID, since basically the idea is to get the usernames and level IDs into an easily readable format so you can use a level ID to find the user and look at their collection.
Bear in mind some entries could eventually become broken since the game states that unpopular levels could eventually be deleted from the server, or the user might choose to delete it for any reason. Too bad you can't just search by NNID in the game.
Sweet moon, this thread! Nothing like having friends over for the weekend to fall behind on this!
Anyway, spent most of the day working in this one:
Tower Wars
ID:F7D4 0000 0034 196C
Tile set: Super Mario World
Worlds: Ghost House, Airship.
Was aiming for a sort of self contained adventure or "epic" level, the concept is there is two towers, you climb up the first, reach the roof where a bunch of airships are battling each other, enter the second tower and descend to a boss fight.
It's about 6 rooms + the Airship sequence, Bowser can take about 20 galoombas to the face if you fight him without power ups, but i actually littered the whole level with power ups in almost every screen (some of them in plain sight, some hidden) plus about three 1up mushrooms.
Note: If you lose the spring in Room #3 you can still proceed! You have the tools there, in any case, answer on how to proceed in the following spoiler:
Take a Galoomba to where the spring should be and use it to boost you up. The spring does not respawn if you re enter the room, but Galoombas do.
Thought I'd share what I've made so far with GAF. I was going for levels that could be in actual Mario games, with an intermediate difficulty, some of the clear rates are crazy low though, so get those up guys! Feedback is very welcome, and don't pay a lot of attention to the names, I never know what to name a level lol.
Bowser JR's Airship:
A2D7-0000-0012-1FA0
Blooper Grotto:
AEEF-0000-0012-42D0
Peachy's Got It!:
6D8C-000-0012-6063
Chillin:
A86B-0000-0018-AD64
Wooh World:
2620-0000-0019-A6F4
Bowser's Castle:
6DB8-0000-0023-E363
Can you get out?:
677D-0000-0027-D4F5
Koopa Express:
44B1-0000-0032-3CAF
That's the order I've made them in, sorry for the lack of preview pics, photobucket is being a jerk right now and I don't know how else to upload pics from the Wii U.
This game really needs a big upgrade on online functionality. Especially if they want the game to stick around.
It's really hard to find some decent levels out there. You should be able to search on friends, NNID, themes, difficulty, creativity or classic design,...
I mean, it's really fun to build and play. But when time passes by, I think we're going to get tired of crappy levels.
Is anyone here interested in collaborating on a Super Mario Maker level sharing platform?
I don't know whether one already exists or if I can even squeeze in enough time to build it, but I've been kicking the idea around.
You'd be able to submit name, id and screenshot, maybe a small description, too.
Users could rate and award levels they like and there would be collections of levels (as in people from a specific community could filter to only display levels from their community).
Maybe also a tagging system?
I can do both front-end and back-end, mainly need someone familiar with user-created content so they can tell me what features the platform should have. If you're interested, drop me a PM.
This game really needs a big upgrade on online functionality. Especially if they want the game to stick around.
It's really hard to find some decent levels out there. You should be able to search on friends, NNID, themes, difficulty, creativity or classic design,...
I mean, it's really fun to build and play. But when time passes by, I think we're going to get tired of crappy levels.
