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Things you find annoying in hacks

Sorry if this isn't the right forum for this sort of thing, I'm really not sure.

First of all, P switches are used for nothing but annoyance. You come across a blue P switch, and half the time you're given NO indication of what you're supposed to do with it. Are you supposed to activate it right where it is? Is it vital to completing the level or does it just make a bunch of coins appear? Do you need to carry it along with you until you reach a wall of brown blocks? Is there a random hidden door somewhere on the level?

Grey P switches are rarely ever used for anything besides getting rid of muncher walls. What's wrong with a level with a semi-hidden or hard to reach Grey P switch that doesn't have a wall of black piranha plants you need to cross?

I do not enjoy any ghost houses. I didn't even like the houses in the original game. I have learned that I'm never supposed to enter a regular door, as it will invariably send me back to the beginning of the room I'm in. Almost all "puzzles" involve you frantically running about trying to find the P switch door you just activated.

I really hate when you're not given any powerup or only 1 powerup through an extremely long difficult level. This forces you to go back to a previous level or a top secret area to get powerups, which is just obnoxious. What's so wrong with giving the player a mushroom near the beginning of a difficult level?

There's a bunch of other things but these bother me the most, and I just wanted to share. Please don't harass me about not appreciating the effort and time and thought that goes into hacks, I just notice these things a lot and it bugs me.
One thing I find annoying IS WHEN PEOPLE DON'T MAKE AN IPS PATCH. ROMS ARE ILLEGAL, SHOULDN'T THEY KNOW THAT?
Good fucking bye.
I find annoying the cutoff, the bad palettes, and the people overrating the OW.
i just lurk sometimes
I'm not really annoyed by much, but what I don't like is generally anything that screams "This is a hack!" I like hacks that really try to be their own game.
What really makes me stop playing a hack is bland, uninspired level design, or just a messy presentation in general, such as using bad graphics.
Bad level design.
Theres a reason why I've never really played through Brutal Mario.
floating, stacked munchers and clusters and clusters and clusters of 3-up moons. i mean, it should be common sense that floating and stacked munchers looks horrible. :P also, horrible smb/smb3 level remakes...
Things that annoy me:

-Rips from other games, people should really get into making thier own GFX... it makes the hack feel more like a game on it's own.

-Music that doesn't fit a level really annoys me. Like a boss battle music in a bramble level. Boss battle music for levels should only be used for dramatic or epic levels that take place in the final or semi-final worlds. It is also okay on cutscenes. (and boss battles themselves)

-Floating munchers, messed up backgrounds, things of the sort. I don't mind bright palletes.
I don't like...

-Boring level design
-Falling spring board jumps
-Glitches needed to beat the level (double pick up)

I find it disgusting to play through hacks whose level design is quite bland and straightforward. Also, the way the plot interacts with the game itself as you progress further the hack is something I find pretty interesting in SMW edits, and thus I, myself, am not too fond of hacks that don't feature such kind of story with them.
(Sorry yoshicookiezeus) One of the levels in The Cookie Crisis just made me stop playing. I think the level was called "Cliffside Climb". The last section, Lava chases Mario while you have to avoid hitting spikes and dropping into the lava while having a re-goddamn-diculous time limit.
Oh yeah! Bug/glitch abuse (Double grabbing, carry-while-climb ect. ect.).
Cheesy plot.
I will become alive again sometime soon.
Well...
One thing that invariably gets on my nerves is levels being too long. A normal level really shouldn't go past 5 minutes in length. After that point, Its starts to be a drudgery to play the level.

Now, onto the list...

1) Water Levels. These days, they just consist of Torpedo teds and Bullet bills, in a straightaway. It's not fun. Even if there's good level design, water levels are not fun.

2) Cave levels. Why? Because they are usually paired up with some insipid autoscroll, or invovle not getting smashed by a blinding yellow layer 2.

3) Hacks that use layer 2 too much. WE GET IT. YOU KNOW HOW TO USE LAYER 2. That does NOT mean that every other level needs some form of Layer2 scroll! It gets boring to see the same stuff over and over!

4) Autoscroll Levels. Because they kill that sense of exploration you get when playing, and fill you with a desire to stay on the right side of the screen. They usually involve timed buzz-saws, Chainsaws, Flying Koopas, or Magikoopas. The level design sometimes does not function well with the sprites, and as a result, can trap you.

5) People who don't change the Intro message. You are lazy junkies, and I salute your dedication to being mediocre.

6) Music that is bad. Don't use it. It rarely fits the level theme, and it just lets the players infer that the creator is tone deaf.

7) Scarcity of Powerups. If I'm playing through a hack with a good difficulty curve, there oughta be 2 powerups per level. (3 sometimes in Castles). There shouldn't just be the mid-way gate as a Super-mushroom powerup.

8) Inconsistencies in stated material. For instance, I played a hack which stated that I could jump off a Green switch (a walljump block). However, in the next level, I could not walljump off of the EXACT SAME BLOCK.

9) Spelling errors in Message Blocks.

Originally posted by example

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I'd have to say blocky overworlds, cutoff, bad pallets, very bad level design, and text boxes that have mispelled words in them.
what i find annoying in hacks is cutoff tiles floating munchers and stuff like that
http://www.youtube.com/user/MegaKidicarus this is my youtube account
Anything Kaizo. Geez, I hate Kaizo-esque hacks.

Repeated nothingness, where the screens just go on and on and on with nothing.

Cutoffs. These are the worst kind.

Overused Munchers, Floating & Stacked Munchers.

Poor grammar and spelling in Text Boxes.

Palettes that don't fit the level.

Anything that looks impossible to beat without savestates.
Originally posted by UltiMario
Theres a reason why I've never really played through Brutal Mario.

Why the hell does everyone pick on the level design of Brutal Mario? The levels were quite good compared to some hacks I would not like to mention.

And yes, they'd be good without ASM too.



Now back on-topic. My pet peeves in hacks include:
- Bad music or SMW music. There's a reason we have hundreds of custom music tracks here.
- Eye-murdering graphics and palettes. Bright is okay to me but if I have to watch blinking red tiles for a whole level I'll send hateful messages to the author of the hack via PM.
- Bad grammar. Come on, there are millions of people who understand and can write English well. If you can't, ask someone who can to make your message boxes and such for you. I really don't want to play a hack that has "teh igiels casstel is lokkatedd in koppa hils" message boxes everywhere.
- Annoying level design such as a ceiling that's too low or trap power-ups. PROTIP: If you have trouble clearing your level without savestates, chances are you will be smitten upon.

I have more but this wall of text will do for now. It's not like anyone's going to read it anyway :/
Vah'Neela's Mansion coming soon.
Originally posted by Gladel
Why the hell does everyone pick on the level design of Brutal Mario? The levels were quite good compared to some hacks I would not like to mention.


I completely agree. Heck, I'd say the hack's design was more interesting than the original SMW's.

One thing I find annoying is blatantly-obvious custom blocks. I'm fine with levels that use a lot of custom blocks. I just find it annoying when the blocks' visuals make it blatant that they're new and custom. For example, instead of drawing a logo of a shell on a shell-breakable block, make it look like a cracked stone block. Try to at least make custom blocks look like they could've actually been a part of the original SMW instead of showcasing their "customness". That's all I can think of right now.
Anything with a name like "Super Awesome World" or "Super Deadly World" as it usually means the hack is going to be very nOObish or Kaizoesque.....or both. I'm also not to fond of bad level design, bad palettes,cutoffness etc. (but i'm not a nazi when it comes to a few of these things, unlike some people I know.)
Aside from what I've already seen mentioned...

- Level design that doesn't take into account the fact that the designer knows what's coming and the player doesn't. Obstacles that must be avoided before there is any visual cue, "move or die" stage openings, randomly hidden blocks in non-suspicious places, stuff like that. Any designer can have a some trouble telling how difficult things will be for a player to figure out, but that's why there's beta testing.

- Places where you can get stuck but don't/can't die. If you're screwed, you shouldn't still be alive, especially if it might take some time before you know you're screwed.

- In general, reusing any of the original bosses is a bad idea. They're just far too easy and anticlimactic, especially if they use the original Bowser.

- Anything that boils down to being random. Hidden coin blocks that bump you down into pits, "pick a path, all but one kill you!", bosses that might give you a chance to hurt them or might not, pipes that lead to death rooms, etc. I want to play a game, not have the game play me. Many of these come from designers that make things with savestates in mind, which is also a bad idea.

- Exact lookalike rooms. At the very least make there be subtle differences.

- Time limits that might actually run out, unless that's the gimmick of the level. IMO the time limit in the original is a pointless vestige from older games and shouldn't be a factor (or there at all) unless the idea of the stage is to escape within a time limit.