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Proposal for a SMW-remake contest? Ideas? Thoughts?

So, I was thinking about how cool it would be to have a sort of "make a totally new, smw-styled level" in the same vein as the recent 24h smw contest. A lot of people complain that the vldc contests aren't truly vanilla contests, and those people are annoying. But, there is still some merit to their argument... I do really enjoy making straight up, totally plain vanilla levels. While the vldc contest is a great contest in its own right, what if we had a much more small scaled, relaxed contest where participants attempted to make a level that seems very in-place with the original SMW. What if we had some crazy restrictions like no palette editing, no map16, no anything. It would entirely rely on design skills, and authenticity.
I'm not demanding that this contest happen, I'm just saying the idea is interesting to consider for the future. Any thoughts? Also, how incredibly easy would a complication hack be if no map16 or anything was allowed. Also, I would say no to custom music as well, but I know people will complain about the repetitiveness of smw's soundtrack, so maybe we'd allow people to replace the songs with the respective vldc remixes.

What would this contest look like? Would you be interested in participating?
I would be interested in that.
Of course, the major difference between a SMW-styled contest and VLDC is that the latter only allows you to use Lunar Magic with some restrictions and some other ASM hacks while the former would be a bit more loose to custom stuff (after all, stuff were added while the levels were designed, not the enemies first and then the levels) but restricts the use of Lunar Magic much more.
>no palette editing
>no map16
>no custom music

I wholeheartedly approve.
inb4 lolyoshi makes 60% of the levels
Yeah, thems restrictions sound fun. I like making completely vanilla levels.
Sounds boring.

EDIT: I'll still play whatever level lolyoshi ends up making lol, he's one of my fave level designers
HackPortsASM"Uploader"

I think it would work better as either a pure vanilla or an authenticity-focused contest, but I'm not sure on both at the same time lol. I kinda like my remapping and such (unless we're considering technical aspects for the authenticity score, e.g. removing points from a level that uses buzzy beetles and spinies at the same time since that's not possible on the original SMW).

I guess I would prefer a simple, pure vanilla contest where you're still free to try out some crazier ideas as long as they don't need map16/custom palettes/etc, personally, but I'm fine with a "create a level that could be in SMW" contest as well.
Originally posted by GbreezeSunset
Also, I would say no to custom music as well, but I know people will complain about the repetitiveness of smw's soundtrack, so maybe we'd allow people to replace the songs with the respective vldc remixes.

That would seem kinda inconsistent if we're not allowing the other things. I would be okay with not allowing custom music.
Legacy custom music
A site with a non-useless dislike button
SMW hacking channel

Sounds great to me! I am very much in favor of this idea. Having the main/only focus on design/gameplay/authenticity would really require people to actually make fun creative levels, and not rely on pretty graphics.
YouTube | Music
100% yes. Not only because of it being harder to hide poor design behind graphics, but because I believe studying how the original game "does it" with it's levels and trying to emulate that could be a great exercise for those wanting to understand the design and layout techniques used in platforming games better for use in their own levels.
Originally posted by ft029
inb4 lolyoshi makes 60% of the levels

Contests generally have a limit of 1 submission per person.



Gbreeze, if/when you get a solid idea of what you want the concept to be you can PM Koopster and I'll see about having it happen "officially" (with announcements and all that is), sometime after the VLDC level design phase is over, during the judging at the earliest.
I don't know if you wanna host or not, but if not then we can host it and you can participate.
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Yes, I love this idea and I really wanted it to happen at some point, and the judging period of VLDCX may be a good time. As leod said, you can PM me (or hit me up over Discord) if you want to host the contest. Otherwise, you can leave it for me to take care of.
It's easily the best thing I've done
So why the empty numb?
Make it happen.

Originally posted by Aeon
I guess I would prefer a simple, pure vanilla contest where you're still free to try out some crazier ideas as long as they don't need map16/custom palettes/etc, personally,

Agreed. I wasn't really a fan of the authenticity category in 24h, felt like more of a creative restriction than anything. I'd rather be able to go all out with my ideas.
Also maybe force the partcipants to use an older version of Lunar Magic? No need to go right back to version 1.0, just use an older one with less built-in non-vanilla hacks.
Awesome, sounds good! And thanks for the feedback everyone! I would really enjoy participating in this myself, so I'd leave it up to the staff to host it. I'll PM you my solidified ideas, Koopster, but of course feel free to change whatever you like, I just want to make some suggestions. It's cool that this is gonna happen though!

Okay, so we have 2 different things we can do here, a pure vanilla contest where participants try to emulate the original smw, or a pure vanilla contest that allows extensive creativity and such.

My initial worry is that, the second will basically turn into a vldc that looks graphically more simple and plain. I'd rather see levels that are more smw-y and less like using glitches and tile 1f0 and all that in this contest. However, since we're saying no to all map16 whatsoever, that means no tile 1f0, and a lot of vanilla trickery we see in the vldc's is impossible. I don't mind seeing unique and creative ideas, but in the vldc's, it's kinda an unspoken rule that the winners usually are insanely unique, mind blowing levels.

Rather, I'd like to see participants make levels similar to Blue Leaf's vldc7 entry, for example. A lot of people were confused why that level won. Yes, it wasn't a "wow" entry like One Sunday Morning or Pandora's Cave, but it was still a really well designed, smw like level.

Then again, I also enjoy seeing these unique displays of creativity. Like you were saying Lazy, it's better for people to go all out with their ideas, so they can exercise their creativity and not feel limited. I guess what I'm trying to emphasize is, I'd personally think the contest would benefit from purely vanilla rules and a more design oriented focus, rather than a creativity oriented focus. At the same time, creativity should be rewarded.

Basically, I'm in favor of taking out the authenticity category and allowing some crazier ideas, but we'd really have to completely restrict the use of map16, exgfx, palettes, etc.

LHB also has a good point though. It's actually pretty fun designing a level to emulate smw's style. I'd be interested in hearing other people's opinions before the staff decides on the rules.
When you say "no map16" do you mean no editing of the map16 tiles, or no placing tiles from the map16 menu and only using the "add object" window? I'm guessing the first option?

Edit: I could go either way on the authenticity part of this. On one hand, having authentic levels would make a resulting compilation pretty awesome, but not worrying about authenticity would allow for some really unique individual levels.
YouTube | Music
No map16 meaning no editing the map16 in any way whatsoever, but you can still place map16 objects of course. Meaning, you couldn't edit the bottom of the triangle tile (1f0) into an upside down rail. But you can still place tile 1f0 as a grass tile if your heart so desires. Basically, this restriction in itself will be the biggest thing that makes the levels closely resemble the original smw.

Yea, that's how I feel about thevery issue too, I'm on the fence about it.
A really simple way to enforce pure vanilla is to let people submit mwl instead of bps and insert that into a clean rom. That'll guarantee no Map16, no ASM or tools of any kind and no optional Lunar Magic fixes.

You'll have to manually check that the level uses a shared palette but that's simpler and can generally be seen just by looking at the level.
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Originally posted by leod
A really simple way to enforce pure vanilla is to let people submit mwl instead of bps and insert that into a clean rom. That'll guarantee no Map16, no ASM or tools of any kind and no optional Lunar Magic fixes.

It doesn't guarantee no GFX bypass or ExAnimation, though. If a contest is enforcing no custom Map16 tiles, then I'd assume that sort of loophole (creating custom graphics by selectively overriding existing tiles) shouldn't be allowed either.

What about entrance positions/types? Unmodified SMW has no "Method 2" or water/slippery checkboxes, after all-- in particular, every water level must start with a downward pipe, and slippery levels can never start with a pipe (possibly a factor toward SMW's low number of slippery levels). How far should the restrictions go?

I'm guessing this contest won't go so far as to require every room to contain exclusively either primary or secondary exits, for instance. Given how that restriction has little effect besides introducing those nearly-identical duplicates of sublevels that SMW has everywhere, differing only in the location of their main entrance.

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Advynia: a Yoshi's Island editor - Alyssa's Unlikely Trap demo 3
I'd personally just set the limit at things that ~could~ be worked around.
If the entrances thing can be worked around in a vanilla way by duplicating levels, fuck it and let people use the convenient method. Not to mention literally everyone would have to learn how it works and that's boring and will keep people from entering.
The water and slippery quirks wouldn't affect gameplay or really anything at all so I'd personally not care either, but that's up to gbreeze.


And yeah it wouldn't guarantee no bypass or ExAnimation, but those are things that can be easily checked for, while asm is terribly hard to detect without actually going into the level and paying close attention to even the slightest under the radar tweaks.
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After some discussion with some of the contest team, we figured we'd rather host this contest sometime after VLDC altogether, most likely in the middle of the year. After two design contests in a row and a map contest upcoming, it may be a good time for a breather. (Besides, a different plan for an event - although not level design related - has arisen today, so stay tuned for that~)

I'll give the idea some personal input tomorrow btw. I still haven't because I've been on mobile while checking this thread and writing is kinda a pain
It's easily the best thing I've done
So why the empty numb?
or just create a collaboration hack, as this would be quite similar to the 24hosmw, and I think we all know how much better levels would be with beta testing and all that fun stuff

(so basically pretend to be Nintendo I guess. They hire beta testers too, my uncle said so)