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The First Mad Scientist ASM Contest - Final Round Voting

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Here's my vote.

1.-Wart: We don't see much of this character in smw, and i like that wart has some love in a original battle with original graphics.

2.-Ludwig: This has some work in it, and we don't see much use in mode 7 that I remember, it looks like a good battle, but i would like that the difficulty was toned down a little, that's my complain about this boss.

3.-BirdoBot: Eh, idunno, i like this boss and all of it, but it doesn't seem like an original one, it is well made and all of that, but it's basically a port of a boss... Still pretty good tho.

Also, I want to say, maybe wasn't a good idea to ask for bosses for the second round, maybe all the people that didn't send a boss were a little afraid? idunno. I was hopping to see some crazy stuff, but well... maybe next time :P.
Made you look. Now Breath Manualy.

I believe I made a good decision when I actually played these entries instead of just judging from the videos...

1. Birdo. Well-designed, keeps you on your toes. I think perhaps less hits or another attack would have helped, but it was a fun boss that doesn't overwhelm you. Also, if standing on its head or just staying on a vine isn't fun... then don't stand on its head or stay on the vine and try to stay on the ground for a challenge. I think that's neat.

2. Wart. First, the boss gets broken if you hit it on the very first phase. Anyway, I liked the first bubble attack, except maybe the boss should be higher so there is more time to react. The expanding bubbles felt kind of random because it spirals in a certain way, and the only way to avoid it is to stay on the correct side of the arena, which is hard to parse. The earthquake attack was too difficult to figure out. The super fast fireball was not very fair. Overall, messy transitions, but it was okay and looked pretty I guess.
EDIT: OK, I just beat the boss once and the level did not end. This is a minus but I still think it's better than Ludwig.

3. Ludwig: After about 15 tries, I finally got past the first two phases just to die to the magikoopa section because Ludwig goes faster than I can run. Too much absurdly fast reaction and precision required. This isn't that fun.

777th post :D
1. Wart.
2. Birdo.
3. Ludwig,
Layout by Erik557
Hi.
#1: Wart
Well designed. Could look better if the bubbles appeared in front of the sprite.

#2: Birdo
A port of a boss. Could look better if it fired eggs more commonly instead of rarely.

#3: Ludwig
Good but requires fast reaction & precision.



1) birdo: super mario advance 1 is an unironically good game that makes smb2 better, but this is one of its additions i barely remember. i'm not entirely sure if this is supposed to be played with traditional mario health, but i guess that's the issue with doing a direct port ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
2) wart: ...just two hits? also i cannot avoid the bubble storms at all. i did it once or twice but now that i try it again it's almost impossible. it's pretty flashy but the projectile spam makes it pretty unfair, which is a disappointment because this could have been a really cool and cinematic boss (and nice empty message box)
3) ludwig: what is even going on here this makes no sense aaaaaaaaaaaaa

first round was better :^)
Here are my votes:

1) Birdo
2) Wart
3) Ludwig


For the detailed reasons, look into the comments of each respective video. To sum it all up: all three bosses kinda lacked polish, especially in the department of animations and transitions (attacks spawning and despawning with no warning, bosses changing states abruptly), but the Birdo boss seemed to be the one that was the least negatively affected by this, probably due to its slow speed. I'd say it's a case of "less is more". The other bosses had a bunch of different fancy attacks, but most of them were rather unpolished, whereas Birdo had only two or three simple attacks, but those felt like they worked well enough and the lack of polish, if present at all, didn't matter. Since I consider the gameplay the most important aspect of a boss, my natural choice here has to be Birdo. It's just a simple idea, but it works.

In general, I think picking a boss battle as a round in the contest wasn't a good idea. I think people underestimate how much time it takes to program a boss battle, let alone a boss battle that is acctually polished and fun. I'm programming a boss battle myself right now and I've already been working on it for several months, yet still haven't gotten anywhere near its completion. Granted, I can only work on it much on weekends and can only put a few hours into coding on regular week days, but then again, people taking part in contests here probably have similar time constraints. I simply think that unless you can work on your boss 24/7, the time given by a contest like this is too little to actually make a boss that is good and somewhat unique, unless you're actually giving people, like, half a year of time (which isn't a good idea, either, because in that case, people will just procrastinate).
Feel free to visit my website/blog - it's updated rarely, but it looks pretty cool!
1. Ludwig - Probably too hard, but interesting attack patterns.
2. Wart - Good attacks and sprite, but needs a better way to damage itm (it's too simple).
3. Birdo - too similar to the original, and only three attacks.
1) Ludwig - Hardest Boss Ever
2) Wart - Some.... Boss from Gimmick! Games?
3) Birdo - Good Job!
1. Birdo:
It's health could be lowered to like 3 hits, because it doesn't change up that much after a hit. You should have removed the chains because you can wait for it to shoot and grab it from there, making the stun attack useless.

2. Wart:
Mostly SLIGHTLY disappointing. There was a time where wart didn't appear for like 15 seconds and I have no idea why (many other weird bugs happen). The projectiles could have had more variety (the bubble circle with a hole thing didn't really do much?) and some attacks only happen once or too many times (too random).

3. Ludwig:
I hated it.

I didn't really adore any of them. They all had fairly major flaws.
1. Ludwig
2. Birdo
3. Wart
1) Ludwig:
I see a lot of work, here, boss is hard and looks a little bit strange... but I think this is hard to make this boss...
2) Wart:
I can't say too mush about this one... sorry.
3) Birdo
This is nice recreation of original boss, but...it is a little bit boring to fight it, I guess?


It really is a shame so few people submitted their entries for this round, especially considering the theme for this round. There is so much you can do with custom bosses. But then again, I can understand why so few people did actually submit their entries. The theme is just difficult. Alas, at least we got three of them.
Here are my votes:

#1. Birdo (7.2/10) - A nice port of an existing boss. It's simple, but effective. Not original in the slightest (hence: port), but that works out here. I enjoyed playing this boss. One thing that irked me a little bit, in terms of gameplay, was the egg hurling. You couldn't really throw the egg in any regular manner, at least I did not succeed in doing that. Instead, you just had to drop the egg in order to hit the Robirdo. What might have been nice also: if the player is on the chains while Robirdo does its earthquake attack, make it so that the player falls off. That would've been pretty cool. Now it was a little too easy to just hang on there and get atop the eggs, staying well above the danger zone. Apart from these two little quirks, quite a nice boss fight and a definite winner!

#2. Wart (6.4/10) - In terms of gameplay, a cool fight. I especially like how you just built upon the "bubble attack", his most defining attack in SMB2 (well, his only attack really). This boss has a nice variety of attacks that aren't TOO hard to avoid, except for the first waves of seperate bubbles. However, the boss fight is just too unpolished to really give it a high mark. It is very buggy indeed: sprites randomly tend to disappear, including the boss itself. Furthermore, the boss' hitbox is somewhat flawed. If you just touch it from underneath even, you can already hit it. Also, I think two hits is a -little- too few for a boss with this variety of attacks. I like how you did not draw out the fight as often happens with custom bosses (i.e. 10-12 hits before they die and it's all the same thing really, making the fight boring), but this was exactly the opposite. It could be drawn out a little more. Anyway, yeah - the thing I disliked most were the bugs. That's why this boss did not end up first in my ranking. Otherwise, it probably would have.

#3. Ludwig (5.0/10) - While technically quite impressive, I really did not enjoy this boss at all. The attacks are certainly diverse, but they aren't fun at all. The whole fight feels a little bit odd and unpredictable. Now, unpredictable is not necessarily bad, but here the screen is just littered with attacks. It's almost as difficult as an average Kaizo level and projectiles are spammed by this boss like Moonymoonymoons would spam his precious 3-UP moons. It's just too much. It's also not immediately evident how this boss should be defeated. The nice technical features do not compensate for all these flaws, unfortunately, so that's why this entry ends up last in my rankin
--------> Don't follow "Find Roy's Dignity", my hack. Because it's pretty outdated. <--------
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