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Super Mario Maker |OT| Miyamoto Simulator 2015
- Thread starter daydream
- Start date
(mat)
Member
I hope so! I narcissistically love playing my own levels over and over, and being able to test them from each checkpoint to ensure my level works properly under all circumstances is awesome!
Edit:
Also, did anyone else notice that if you clear your course all the way through in the editor (using the "-" button and starting from the beginning), and hit upload without making any further changes, it allows you to upload your course without playing through it again?
Yes, but he has an "easy" part where he can breathe and maybe come up with a solution. Hasn´t it happened to you that you are stuck trying to find a solution to something, but as soon as you start thinking about something else the solution pops-up in your head? This easy stroll before the hardest part could have that effect in the player. What I was trying to say is that "placing the checkpoint before the hardest part" isn´t an absolute truth and other decissions may be as valid.
Yeah, but Super Meat Boy isn´t Super Mario: it´s a game revolving around obstacle courses where reaction and skills are all that matters, whereas in Mario games those are only a part of the many different type of levels you can find.
Mario games don´t place the chekpoint right before the hardest part: they usually do it somewhere around the middle of the level and most times, it´s after a hard part and before an easy part to ease the player back into the game after a death, precisely to avoid fast, repeated deaths and kill pacing.
I think you are thinking exclusively about fast paced obstacle courses and not about the "standard" Mario levels, though I admit I may be doing the opposite and focusing too much in what SMW does as it´s the one I played the most.
What I meant is that if we have 2 checkpoints (confirmed), the last one you activate is the one you´ll use when respawning. Usually in Mario levels you cross a checkpoint, then later cross another, die and you always respawn at the last one you passed. But in non-linear levels there may not be a "first" and "second" checkpoint, so both checkpoints work exactly the same and it only matters which one you crossed last. Think about Wiggler´s Steampunk Tree, players who choose the conveyor belt path at the beginning will cross checkpoints in the opposite order as players who chose the spring path.
A bit quiet on the level front round here, is everyone holding off for tomorrow's update to unleash their latest and greatest?
Time to buck the trend then:
Submerged in chaos
D02E-0000-00D4-A9CD
This is my second water level, and like the first I had a lot of fun experimenting with ideas. It started life as SMB3 but my boy said it looked "bleurgh" and begged me to give it a NSMBU skin. Little did I realise how much work this would involve changing stuff around.
Anyway, had an earlier build running this morning and it had about 5 plays and 7 attempts, mostly from Japanese players. Those are depressing statistics considering the lower level I pitched it at, and confirms a trend I've noticed where fewer players seem prepared to work at completing a level.
Time to buck the trend then:
Submerged in chaos
D02E-0000-00D4-A9CD
This is my second water level, and like the first I had a lot of fun experimenting with ideas. It started life as SMB3 but my boy said it looked "bleurgh" and begged me to give it a NSMBU skin. Little did I realise how much work this would involve changing stuff around.
Anyway, had an earlier build running this morning and it had about 5 plays and 7 attempts, mostly from Japanese players. Those are depressing statistics considering the lower level I pitched it at, and confirms a trend I've noticed where fewer players seem prepared to work at completing a level.
Spam blocks all over the level (and use each new item at least once so it loses the exclamation mark) until you get the news of a soon incoming delivery, then continue spamming blocks (delete them again if necessary) until it arrives. Rince and repeat!
Nocturnowl
Member
What happens when you're happily enjoying an overworld stage that then takes a pipe down into the briny deep halfway through?
like quarter of my stages
its mainly me going
"ugggggggggggggggh"
KittenMaster
Member
The only time I put in a water section in a level it was a screen and a half long and relatively non-threatening, and I still had a way to skip it (I am actually not sure if I kept in the way to skip it, but that was my line of thought at the time).
Agent Unknown
Member
Sorry if this has already been asked but will the update allow you to add and save checkpoints for your levels which are already on the server or do you have to pretty much just delete and re-upload if you really want a checkpoint added to an existing level?
And not all of us agree with Super Meat Boy, I think it's a, sub optimal approach. Miyamoto put it better then I could:
http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/wii/nsmb/0/8
Simbabbad
Member
What on Earth does this have to do with what we're talking about? The question is, if you have a hard part in your level, do you put a checkpoint before or after it? It has absolutely nothing to do with what Miyamoto is talking about here.
The general trend, because it makes sense, is to put the checkpoint just before the difficulty peaks. That way you avoid repetition and frustration.
And Super Mario Maker isn't Mario. People do all sorts of levels in Mario Maker, and here we're talking about levels with difficulty peaks, not fun romps with overall balanced difficulty.
Except you don't really die after difficult parts in a level, that's the definition of a difficult part vs. easier ones. And since obviously you die more at difficult parts, it makes sense to put the checkpoint just before them to avoid repetition.
I would be extremely surprised to see we can suddenly modify our levels. Be prepared to republish. Personally I won't touch a thing since my levels were already designed considering the lack of checkpoints so....
KittenMaster
Member
Making levels that are challenging but can still be beaten in one go is a lost art, IMO. Most players see checkpoints as strictly a convenience but often don't see how it can affect design if used as a crutch.
Thanks for the feedback. I appreciate it. The three yellow blocks is something I can work on and fix their position or take them out. Yeah the P switches in the beginning are there to have up to three chances. I didn't put them in a pipe because it messed with the symmetrical aesthetics I was going for in the design of the area. But I can see how you could get the impression the puzzle was more complicated.
In the cave area, the grinder was there in case for whatever reason the player missed the feather and the wasted the p-switches, they can kill themselves instead of being stuck. (supposed to be goofy I guess) The feather is there to fly up to the top of the cave or you can climb the vines like you did. It's there to have options.
The level overall is supposed to be simple-minded, lighthearted, and easy. Hence the silly name. I was experimenting more with the look of the level than actually making something super complex or deep. I have noticed from watching people play it is that the beginning is a little bit harder for them or more confusing than I anticipated.
On the subject of checkpoints. this is my two cents. I prefer if they are after a difficult section. If you're prone to skipping a level because you have to redo the earlier, more mundane sections, then those easier sections shouldn't be so long or they should be easy enough to breeze through once you know what you're doing. I'd rather someone call my level terrible than mundane, something I heard about Hopsichord.
Ultimately I don't take any pleasure from my level not being beaten. So checkpoints will allow me to make a more challenging level, without forcing the player to play perfectly every time.
My main concern is about the player character turning big, because the reason I like using costumes is that it allows me to give the player a second hit without having to design around different player height. Sure I can force the player to be hit, but it's not a solution I like. Designing the underwater sections of Snake Oil with Super Mario in the mix would have been hell.
In response to this and all the wonderful feedback, like with They Follow I'll provide a little post-mortem on Snake Oil.
If you'd like to give it a go before skipping over all this text spoiling the whole thing, you can find the level here http://www.mariomakerhub.com/makers/OhAxiom
First my internal rules whenever I go to design a stage -
My main wants for Snake Oil were to a) design an underwater section I would enjoy and b) design an air-ship stage that takes into account the inherent movement of the screen.
Focusing on the "Snake" water first, my main frustration with water stages is that people seem to design them one of two ways:
So for Snake Oil I wanted to flip the switch on that and make the water fast paced, with clear obstacles and direction. The wigglers are invaluable to this, but are incredibly hard to test around and ensure consistent behavior from.
Seriously, try it.
Angry wigglers have this habit of just not chasing you after a while, which had the side effect of requiring me to keep the water sections short and designing everything with a dual purpose. I had to keep the player moving in a clear way without feeling boxed in AND ensure the wigglers never break pursuit. These two things are at active odds with each other.
This can still happen, but I've tried to minimise it as much as possible. At the end of the day, I'd rather the wiggler's break off their pursuit than have player feel they have no freedom of movement. Which would defeat the point of placing anything underwater and just render it a slow version of an above ground area.
The Big Mama wiggler at the end was even more difficult, as I had to playtest the player going in multiple directions with the wiggler acting appropriately in every instance.
There is an ideal player movement I've tried to encourage, but one of the most valuable things you learn from watching people play your level is that you can't count on a player doing what you want - indeed I've found the more experienced the player is with Mario the better odds there are of them not following your obvious coin trail.
Don't get angry at a player for playing in an unintended way, design with that in mind as best you can without invalidating the core idea of what you want to do.
Onto the air-ship, or the Oil.
When it comes to air-ship stages my biggest pet peeve is that there's often far too many 'off-screen' obstacles and platforms. Testing an air-ship stage is difficult because you'll need to play the level from the beginning every single time to properly test the effect of the screen movement on your layout.
The air-ship (which I didn't make clear enough was an Oil Rig) is a complete exercise in subtlety and as the feedback demonstrates, what I consider the biggest failure. What I wanted to do was to have the player make a change to the 'world state' and not even realise it until they returned to an altered earlier section.
The idea being I force the player to hit the 'big' Mama Wiggler and her kids start running about all pissed off. The mistake there is that in trying to be subtle, the player doesn't register they did anything special when hitting her.
Obviously there is no way to change the world state in Mario Maker, so what I did instead was duplicate the air-ship and not clue the player in. I've not seen anyone even suspect this until they end up back at the donut block. Which is a victory.
However because the player isn't as familiar with the level layout as I am and don't have one clue what I'm going for, most don't tend to register that they are in the same place. They instead assume for a moment they've backtracked but conclude they're just in a confusingly similar section of the stage
I built to the height limit in the first portion of the level, showing you glimpses of places you cannot get to through the camera movement. Then I built the 'duplicate' a few blocks lower so these places that were glimpsed are now reachable.
I think another reason this fails to register is a change I made later on. Initially the underwater sections were back to back. For reasons of pacing I moved the initial underwater wiggler pursuit earlier. However if I wanted to make it clear to the player they've 'changed' the level, it needed to be more immediate and obvious.
In terms of pacing and gameplay, it was the right move. But I did not foresee how this would make the air-ship hook even more obscure.
The wiggler "following" you out was a very last minute thing, but probably my favourite part of the whole level.
Hopefully in all this TL/DR there's some useful information for someone, and my previous TL/DR on They Follow is here.
Ultimately I don't take any pleasure from my level not being beaten. So checkpoints will allow me to make a more challenging level, without forcing the player to play perfectly every time.
My main concern is about the player character turning big, because the reason I like using costumes is that it allows me to give the player a second hit without having to design around different player height. Sure I can force the player to be hit, but it's not a solution I like. Designing the underwater sections of Snake Oil with Super Mario in the mix would have been hell.
In response to this and all the wonderful feedback, like with They Follow I'll provide a little post-mortem on Snake Oil.
If you'd like to give it a go before skipping over all this text spoiling the whole thing, you can find the level here http://www.mariomakerhub.com/makers/OhAxiom
First my internal rules whenever I go to design a stage -
- This is Mario Maker not a mainline Mario game, thus I take a cue from the Donkey Kong Country series and ensure most levels have some kind of hook, ideally related to gameplay that leaves an impression.
- Design in a way that never requires a one way block or arrow. Use them if needed, but try to make player direction natural.
- Take into account the sound and music. Ensure sound effects always have a clear purpose and are not arbitrary. For example in They Follow. there is no music, but I tried to keep things from being dead silent through the use of burners. There is only complete silence at any part of the stage once you open the final door.
My main wants for Snake Oil were to a) design an underwater section I would enjoy and b) design an air-ship stage that takes into account the inherent movement of the screen.
Focusing on the "Snake" water first, my main frustration with water stages is that people seem to design them one of two ways:
- Tightly packed and full of enemies that are annoying without a flower (so even if you give the player a flower, if they lose it they stop having fun)
- Incredibly open which tends to make things very slow and can even invalidate any obstacles you offer up.
So for Snake Oil I wanted to flip the switch on that and make the water fast paced, with clear obstacles and direction. The wigglers are invaluable to this, but are incredibly hard to test around and ensure consistent behavior from.
Seriously, try it.
Angry wigglers have this habit of just not chasing you after a while, which had the side effect of requiring me to keep the water sections short and designing everything with a dual purpose. I had to keep the player moving in a clear way without feeling boxed in AND ensure the wigglers never break pursuit. These two things are at active odds with each other.
This can still happen, but I've tried to minimise it as much as possible. At the end of the day, I'd rather the wiggler's break off their pursuit than have player feel they have no freedom of movement. Which would defeat the point of placing anything underwater and just render it a slow version of an above ground area.
The Big Mama wiggler at the end was even more difficult, as I had to playtest the player going in multiple directions with the wiggler acting appropriately in every instance.
There is an ideal player movement I've tried to encourage, but one of the most valuable things you learn from watching people play your level is that you can't count on a player doing what you want - indeed I've found the more experienced the player is with Mario the better odds there are of them not following your obvious coin trail.
Don't get angry at a player for playing in an unintended way, design with that in mind as best you can without invalidating the core idea of what you want to do.
Onto the air-ship, or the Oil.
When it comes to air-ship stages my biggest pet peeve is that there's often far too many 'off-screen' obstacles and platforms. Testing an air-ship stage is difficult because you'll need to play the level from the beginning every single time to properly test the effect of the screen movement on your layout.
The air-ship (which I didn't make clear enough was an Oil Rig) is a complete exercise in subtlety and as the feedback demonstrates, what I consider the biggest failure. What I wanted to do was to have the player make a change to the 'world state' and not even realise it until they returned to an altered earlier section.
The idea being I force the player to hit the 'big' Mama Wiggler and her kids start running about all pissed off. The mistake there is that in trying to be subtle, the player doesn't register they did anything special when hitting her.
Obviously there is no way to change the world state in Mario Maker, so what I did instead was duplicate the air-ship and not clue the player in. I've not seen anyone even suspect this until they end up back at the donut block. Which is a victory.
However because the player isn't as familiar with the level layout as I am and don't have one clue what I'm going for, most don't tend to register that they are in the same place. They instead assume for a moment they've backtracked but conclude they're just in a confusingly similar section of the stage
I built to the height limit in the first portion of the level, showing you glimpses of places you cannot get to through the camera movement. Then I built the 'duplicate' a few blocks lower so these places that were glimpsed are now reachable.
I think another reason this fails to register is a change I made later on. Initially the underwater sections were back to back. For reasons of pacing I moved the initial underwater wiggler pursuit earlier. However if I wanted to make it clear to the player they've 'changed' the level, it needed to be more immediate and obvious.
In terms of pacing and gameplay, it was the right move. But I did not foresee how this would make the air-ship hook even more obscure.
The wiggler "following" you out was a very last minute thing, but probably my favourite part of the whole level.
Hopefully in all this TL/DR there's some useful information for someone, and my previous TL/DR on They Follow is here.
Agent Unknown
Member
Yeah, that's kind of what I figured and I pretty much agree with your sentiment on leaving them be. Just that I have one or two stages I'm sure would get more stars or completions if they just had a checkpoint or two. In any case it will be interesting to see how much of a difference it makes going forward.
I'd like to be able to see levels my Friends specifically have made. I can't believe this is not a thing.
Is the new Patch out yet?
Love your in-depth posts!
Btw I recorded my playthrough of Snake Oil, in case you missed it <
-> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcRaC4QpISw
btw ya, the wiggler following at the end was brilliant
Sixfortyfive
He who pursues two rabbits gets two rabbits.
I only just now discovered that you can spawn enemies on the title screen demo by tapping the screen.
I haven't played much of the game in the past week cuz I got a really bad cold, but right before Nintendo announced the update I developed a version of the checkpoint system that takes up exactly half the vertical space of the one in Junior Airship Showdown and still allows 2 checkpoints. It only uses 20 munchers and 1 sideways trampoline, too, so it significantly reduces the amount of enemy budget it uses; cuts it in more than half. Plus it doesn't use p-switches at all. As soon as you enter a correct passcode you get a result. Since people seem to still be interested I uploaded an example of it:
DA94-0000-00D5-789C
The extra trampoline and shell are to mask the sound of the one above so people don't try to play safecracker.
It uses two 7-digit keypads instead of 1 10-digit keypad, so the number of possible combinations is reduced but still high enough that randomly guessing the codes shouldn't happen often.
Love your in-depth posts!
Btw I recorded my playthrough of Snake Oil, in case you missed it <
-> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcRaC4QpISw
btw ya, the wiggler following at the end was brilliant
Thank you! Writing it all down is just as much for me as anyone else. I want to make good levels so it's important to reflect on the things you did right and wrong, and I think in doing so if you can help others learn from your own mistakes then all the better.
It'll be interesting to see what people learn from checkpoints when it's an actual thing and not just a theory.
Oh ok, yeah I think it will work like that, you respawn at the last flag you crossed, but you can only use a flag once.
If there´s one thing we should all have learned by now with SMM is that people die everywhere. This is a lesson Nintendo has known for years and they have developed a design layout around this. What you´re basically saying is that that design layout is bullshit and you have a much better obvious solution. You talk about a "general trend" of putting checkpoints before the harder parts while Mario games have been doing the opposite of this since always. I really don´t know where that "general trend" comes from, I don´t think that it even exists.
Let´s look at Dark Souls for example, a game that is vastly regarded as difficult but fair , has many difficulty spikes and is praised for it´s awesome level design. The most diffcult parts of the game are the boss encounters and the checkpoints are never located next to them but with some challenges in between. The trickiest part in the game outside bosses (the Anor Londo archers) has a checkpoint right after it. I don´t think this is coincidence.
It all comes down to this: when placing checkpoints think if you are going to listen to the guys who´ve been churning out the best platformers for 30 years or if you think you really are so clever that you´ve come up with a much better, obvious solution.
As a player, I personally preffer when checkpoints come after a hard part, that way if I die later in the level I don´t have to repeat again that hard part where I may die, killing all progression.
It seems you really gave thought to the level, I couldn´t see the reason behind all those things but they´re totally justified. Also, I have to say that I tend to overthink things too much and that I made the first puzzle harder on myself than it really was.
Robin64
Member
Yep. This is the problem with worldwide updates, someone somewhere will suffer. (Usually us!)
Kiavik has asked me to post his latest level here (he´s not a member yet so eh can´t post it himself):
Ashley Through the Looking Glass
E8B6-0000-00D4-EFC6
I tested a previous version yesterday and liked it a lot, though I won´t give any details on the level itself as I think it´s an awesome moment when you "get" what it´s all about. The last act
was a very cool moment. He checks the OT daily and would be very grateful for any feedback.
For reference, this is the guy who made Egg Carrier Yoshi and The Pit and the Pendulums, 2 awesome levels. You can check Egg Carrier Yoshi (a very clever puzzle level) in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1olb0oRrfv4
Ashley Through the Looking Glass
E8B6-0000-00D4-EFC6
I tested a previous version yesterday and liked it a lot, though I won´t give any details on the level itself as I think it´s an awesome moment when you "get" what it´s all about. The last act
getting out of the mirror
For reference, this is the guy who made Egg Carrier Yoshi and The Pit and the Pendulums, 2 awesome levels. You can check Egg Carrier Yoshi (a very clever puzzle level) in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1olb0oRrfv4
AjNimajwalHansel
Member
Wow, this was indeed very cool. I haven't seen anything like it!
My first time through it actually took me so long to do some of the things that time ran out, even though actually figuring out it was a mirror only took a few seconds. The upside down maze was really hard the first time for me for some reason, couldn't focus on the mirroring aspect very well. The part with the little clouds was very annoying the first time, it might be nicer to have double clouds on the third highest one because it's so easy to fall off when you have to jump on one side while focusing attention on the mirror, but then again it's nice to have challenge...
Agent Unknown
Member
Is the update live in the U.S. now? Anyone get a chance to try out the checkpoints?
Robin64
Member
Another 9 hours to go, man.
Agent Unknown
Member
Crap, obviously misread the time on that, ha.
CharminUltra
Member
Yiss should be ready by the time I get home from work
Agent Unknown
Member
The update also adds the "event" channel which will used eventually by Nintendo for their own official stages, correct?
balladofwindfishes
Member
Where was that confirmed?
Robin64
Member
Yep! Really looking forward to that part.
Agent Unknown
Member
Nice, that is going to be amazing. NCL peeps will school us hard.
No.
Nintendo made stages will be on the Makers space.
Event are special stages, like the Arino made ones, the one made at that facebook "hackathon" and MAYBE one or other Nintendo stages like the PAX Mario Maker Stages.
The Event ones might have a costume mario icon meaning that if you beat it you will unlock a special costume mario like Arino himself
Need my Arino fix.
Just for the record, the levels made at PAX Australia Devs vs. Journos challenge were terrible and you don't wait to play them.
Both sides were completely unfamiliar with the game and seemed equally prone to spam stacked enemies and provide spike walls and death traps at every turn.
That said, the journalists level was much much better and could have actually been something with more time.
Both sides were completely unfamiliar with the game and seemed equally prone to spam stacked enemies and provide spike walls and death traps at every turn.
That said, the journalists level was much much better and could have actually been something with more time.
Agent Unknown
Member
Yeah, I'll do whatever it takes to get the Arino skin, ha.