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Mario's Keytastrophe: -NEW- Final Demo!

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At long last. This hack is finally up to the third demo that so many people have awaited, and nagged me for. I must say, it has been a long and tiring journey to get this far, but in the end, it has paid off. I'd like to thank everyone who has supported me in this hack, and I really hope that you'll enjoy the time and effort I've put into it! (hell, I couldn't even sleep last night because I was very eager to release this.)

FEATURES:
-37 Key Spirits for you to find.
-Moderate difficulty that will not require save states
-Collectable items and skillful puzzle solving
-The signature theme of the hack: music!
-And much more.

Screenshots and the demo can be found: here

I have also included the soundtrack, which has about 35 songs in it, all directly ripped and rearranged by me. People showed interest, so yeah.

Thank you again everyone, and please, enjoy the hack.

EDIT: V1.2 is here - now with no slowdown! See the last post!
I love you SNN.
I thank you for all the hard work you put into making this, it will provide relief to people's boredom for centuries to come.
<3
Woah, it even comes with the soundtrack! THIS OWNS!
And just yesterday I thought you would never upload it! You read my mind. Cool. Creepy.

I'm downloading soon as I get home...
Finally! After 5 months of procrastination! I was fearing this was going to become the "Duke Nukem Forever" of Super Mario World Hacks. (Oh wait, we already have a Duke Nukem Forever of SMW Hacks, Super Mario Odyessy!)

Awesome stuff, S.N.N. You're the god at custom music. I look forward to the full version soon! :D
Well here goes my sleep tonight. I can't wait to play it.

Edit: Well I guess this was a decent 600th post. hmm can I make it better? /me thinks. How about:

"I love you SNN you're awesome and I think you are amazing at musicing. ;D"

Yeah, a little ass-kissing just in case. :P
Crap.

I mean, the demo is awesome, judging from the screenshots, but I can't play it today! D: I'm going on vacation today (I'll be back on thursday or Friday).


 
Nice, another demo :)

But it'll have to wait until tomorrow, it's getting late here... :(
Neat. A few comments so far.

- In the room of the World 1 boss, Mario's Fireballs turn gray. Not a big deal, dunno if it can be fixed easy, but it was odd.

- So I got 20 points or whatever to buy items with, and I excitedly go to the shop and hope that it'll give me a rope, but... I hit the block and it gives me nothing. Just makes a yoshi's coin sound and afaik, nothing else. Is this working properly? Am I missing something? This is where I get rope, right?

- In the first level of World 3, I go through the "secret" path only to discover that my progress is blocked by an "R" block that I have no idea how to deal with. Do I need another item here? It kinda sucks that it's not explained, I don't know what the block means at all.

That's as far in as I played, since it's getting late and I figured I'd just throw out these questions and get some answers before continuing on. I'll organize my thoughts better later.
Awww, hell yeah! I was waiting for this! Comments after I play it! *runs off*
Originally posted by hhallahh

- So I got 20 points or whatever to buy items with, and I excitedly go to the shop and hope that it'll give me a rope, but... I hit the block and it gives me nothing. Just makes a yoshi's coin sound and afaik, nothing else. Is this working properly? Am I missing something? This is where I get rope, right?


Yes, it's working properly. Just hit the block once to toggle on the "bonus". Hitting it again toggles it off.

Anyway, I played through most of the demo earlier, and I must say, this is well worth the wait. The puzzles are very cleverly designed and fun to figure out. I love how you've added replay value to levels as well, by giving the player new items so that they could explore different paths.

Also, the music was absolute win, too. It really contributed to the overall eerie feel of this hack.

Great job! Now I can only wonder what the complete version will be like. ;)
I like this demo, even though I have a problem finding the exit in Exodome Foyer.
Quite impressive SNN. I seem to recall the third demo originally being scheduled for last December or so, and I admit I was starting to wonder why things had been delayed so long. However, it's clear from this demo that you've hardly been fooling around in that time.

I quite liked the story developments--I came in expecting a simple stroll through a few music-based worlds with the occasional diary entry giving some background on the composers and so forth (much like the last demo), but this was by no means the case! It was much darker than I had expected (by no means a bad thing), and the major plot twist is indeed quite genuinely shocking.

One of my issues with the last demo was that though fun and innovative, it was rather too easy (then again, it was just the first two worlds). This is certainly not an issue this time round. However, I fear the pendulum may have swung too far in the other direction, and far too quickly--the difference in difficulty between the levels from the last demo and the new material is quite jarring--between the second and third worlds the game goes from rather simply to fairly challenging with virtually no intermediary stage. I think it's important not to underestimate the effect of infrequent, non-transferable powerups, as well as the scarcity of one-ups when you take away bonus stars, (most) coins, and large lines of enemies which one can hit with a star/shell/bounce off of repeatedly--especially with the trial-and-error nature of some levels demanding a few deaths.

Anyway, some more Specific Critiques:

- The new instruments are, of course, an improvement on the whole. However, there's a few changes I wasn't too keen on. The Pianist's Rest tune is a little too over-dramatic for my tastes now; the original had a certain subtlety to it that I think is lost here. The main overworld theme also sounds a little off for some reason; I keep expecting there to be an extra note each time it shifts instruments.

- Additionally, despite the appearance of an asortment new, better instruments, our good old friend Wheezey the Trumpet seems to have retained his starring role. I guess he must have a union contract or something.

- The R-block hhallahh mentioned should probably be explained in-game. Maybe I'm a bit slow, but I wasted far too much time on it when I first played Staccato Westwood and again after getting the rope before I finally realised I needed the ability from the Muse Mart (also not listed in-game).

- Considering the number of times the player has to return to Staccato Westwood (as well as the door leading back to the first screen), it might be better to put Boothoven's "Mozart defeated" message in a block, lest it seem like he's saying it over and over again long after the event has occurred. Mozart's demise must have really hit Boo hard...

- Speaking of Boothoven...

Though a fine composer Boo may be,
His lyrics are a travesty;
The way that he distorts a word
Is really something quite absurd.

But seriously, "Keep the code hidden / or you I shall ridden" is a bit of a stretch, even for doggerel. How's about:

Hide the code well
Or you I'll dispel.

or

Keep it out of sight,
Or you I shall blight.

or

Hide well the code
Or you I'll explode
(Err...)

or even

Hide it right good,
Ya twit, understood?
(All right, better quit while I'm ahead...well, less behind)

- Speaking of composers, It seems a little odd that Ol' Choppy perishes when knocked into the lava, but seems to have no issue with it flowing up into his face repeatedly beforehand.



- The grey block here blends in annoyingly well with the background, with the net result that the player accidentally bumps into it about 300 times when swimming past, sometimes falling into the spikes below when the water suddenly vanishes. It might be best to alter its position slightly, or better yet, chance the color to something more noticable.

- Stupid as it may sound, I found the area name "Rocky Duct" very...eww. I'm not entirely sure why, but those two words feel as though they should not be placed together. "Old Rope Hideout", on the other hand, I found terribly amusing, as it seems to assign volition and agency to the aforementioned old rope.

- Speaking of old rope, using the rope to access the infamous Pianist's Rest secret exit generates a vine instead of a rope.

- It's sort off odd that diving into the fetid Staccato swap lands Mario in a charming cavern filled with pure, blue water with the ancient-sounding, majestic music from the beautifully named Lamentable Sea in the background. Maybe something a little greener here, with the (new) normal water music?

And last but not least, a few Bugs:

- Where Mario stands when he places the last item on the podium in Staccato Exodome appears to determine where he starts in Access Lift X7.. If the last item is our yellow friend on the left, no problem. But if's our blue friend on the right, the lift is shifted to the left slightly...



Which means it comes to a stop here, with the door stuck inside the wall, forcing the player to kill themself.

- Also, in Leopold's castle...



Trapped forever?

- Finally, beating the S.S. Sorrowsong causes a never-ending overworld event until the game freezes. Was this perhaps the non-promised surprise for finding all thirty-seven exits? If so, I must confess that it did, indeed, surprise me. Not the most pleasant surprise, of course, but one must recognize that the surprise's being an unpleasant surprise was, in itself, a further surprise.

But enough griping. As I said, it was good fun to play, and featured some rather ingenious puzzles. It might benefit from a few fixes though, and a slight tweaking to produce a slightly curvier difficulty curve. I look forward to seeing what new surprises the final product brings with it (I wonder if Rameau is one of the Lost Composers?). Huzzah, Kudos, may the road rise up to meet you etc., &c.
Like the looks of that dome. And I passed the first area of it at last!
Okay, after the "SNN" after it loads, I just get an endless black screen. What now? I can save the state, open the ZSNES menu, everything, but I can't actually play the bitch.
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Mario's Nightmare Thread
You did remember to use an older version of zsnes, right?
Originally posted by Sind
You did remember to use an older version of zsnes, right?

Yup, I tried it with 1.42.
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Mario's Nightmare Thread
Thanks for the long critique Rameau's Nephew. I wanted to address a couple of your bugs.

-About the Exodome .. Golden Yoshi told me about this bug right before I released it, and I fixed the door by moving it over. I have no idea why it decided to retain it's original position.

-In Lair of Leopold, if you get stuck, use the door right at the entrance to the level. It resets the room.

Also, I more or less cover how to break the R blocks in Mart.txt, though I guess it could be explained a tad better.
Bug report, he were go.

First of all, SLOWDOWNS. Get rid of Jonwil's Block Tool and use smkdan's. It's not really fun with them.
Anyway, some bugs/palette errors I'd like to point out.


Change the black in the background to something brown-ish. It jusrt looks weird that way.


Again, background problem. Also, the big ice block's border could be a bit brighter. Look at the small ones and compare. :P


See above screenshot. :P


This BG cuts off and doesn't really connect to the other part.

If you would fix the slowdowns and bugs (even if they're minor), it would be really awesome.
Originally posted by S.N.N.

-About the Exodome .. Golden Yoshi told me about this bug right before I released it, and I fixed the door by moving it over. I have no idea why it decided to retain it's original position.


I haven't had the time to play it yet, but from what it sounds and looks like on the screen I might have a solution for that which might be better than moving the door around.

As Rameau's Nephew already figured out, the position of the Layer 2 depends on Mario's screen position in the room before. Just add a room before the Layer2-part which is only one screen long, so no scroll at all is possible, and guess what, that fixes the whole issue entirely. I did that in TSRP2 to avoid problems in levels like "Saws", "Ruined Ruins" & "Cursed Fountain" which all had some Layer2-stuff which needed to be in the right position.

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