Hack name: Legend Of Darkness One 0.3,5
Lenght: 43 levels
Author: Neo carld923
Description: This is the last demo of the hack... sorry, but is cancelled.. i got lazy whit ths and in dont translate to english... so i remove the history of the hack.
Thanks to every that make every resourse to make this hack... i really apreaciate (and sorry for the really bad english)
(Mods, please delete this version and this mesage http://www.smwcentral.net/?p=showhack&id=6200)
IPS link
Your hack wasn't that bad, at least it was better than most of the hacks I removed, but it was full of mistakes that reveal lack of proper testing and the level design could also be better.
Level design issues
Unlike most of the hack I have removed, your levels generally didn't suffer from emptiness, flatness or repetitiveness, at least not in the same way it appears in other hacks. The main issue in your levels about level design was item babysitting, as it was present in many of your levels and I had to go back and forth several times in order to take different items with me, in this level; sometimes I had to babysit items through long segments where I already killed all the enemies in the way, making the level not just repetitive but empty as well. Personally, I think these situations are alright if the player doesn't have to travel long distances, but doing the same segment back and forth several times is really boring.
Another issue with this hack was the difficulty. Now difficulty itself isn't a problem, but unless you want to make a really difficult hack (which doesn't seem to be the case), the first levels shouldn't be that hard. You seem to rely a lot on places where the player has litle time to react like this and narrow spaces (both screenshots taken in world 1!), not to mention many levels in the later worlds are really long and don't have midpoints until the end, or don't have midpoints at all, I advise you to use the multi-midway patch for this.
The ghost houses in your hack were really annoying, they are full of trick doors that take me to the begging and there's no way to know which one if the right one; that's just a cheap way to make puzzles. The ghost house in the cave world was the most annoying one, I had to take a door which could only be found by jumping on a pit with no indication at all to get a P-switch and take if back to the first room, then I had no indication at all of what I had to do, it took me hours to figure out I had to use the P-switch to take the key and then take back the key to the entrance and use it to enter the floating door, which was also more item babysitting and backtracking.
There's a couple of situations I found plain unfair: the first one in "Rio cascada", where you hid enemies behind the waterfalls, leaving me clueless about where I should jump. The second one was here, as this is an auto-scrolling level, if I take the upper path I'm forced to kill myself.
I don't know if you have tried to play your own levels without savestates, but if you haven't you should definitely try and you will see how annoying some of them can get.
Lack of proper testing
While playing your hack, I noticed a series of mistakes that show you didn't test your hack properly, and make it impossible for me to accept it. The most obvious one was in "cueva subterranea", where you left a goal sphere, a key and a keyhole at the begginning of the level. Similarly, in this level not only you left the test midpoint a the begging, but you also blocked the way forward, forcing me to take the midpoint and kill myself with the muncher in order to go on. A few more of these issues include
-here part of the twomp disappears because of sprite memory issues.
-here you left an empty message box.
-Yoshi coin of subscreen boundary
-Entering this door kills me instantly.
-If I walk right in the bonus game this happens you can fix it by disabling horizontal scroll on levels 0 and 100.
-In this level, if I press the P-switch too soon, or don't make it to the other side in time, I'm forced to kill myself, I think your forgot to add a reset door.
-you forgot to add a level tile here
-In one of your levels (I can't remember which, since I apparently forgot to take a screenshot), I die instantly if I enter the level after taking the midpoint.
Finally, the most important issue in your hack: in "Peligro - Alturas", when I reached the end of the level I couldn't find a way to go forth, meaning I had to quit here.
Other issues and observations
There is a couple of removal reasons I haven't mentioned yet. The first one: in some levels, the music crashed in accurate emulators, I don't know why you were still using Romi's addmusic, but you should use either addmusic 405, addmusic M or addmusic K instead. And the second one, this is not a suitable replacement for thwimps, actually, I don't get why you didn't use the thwimp GFX since you didn't use the platform with chain sprites in that level.
Also, this isn't a removal reason, but why did you use a cloud as midpoint here?
--
And that's about it. I don't feel like writing a Spanish translation of this because it takes a lot of time, and I have seen you posting in English and I think you can easily understand this; let me know if there's anything you don't understand though.
I remember you said you were quitting this project, but if you ever want to work on it again, I advise you to test and play your own levels without savestates and see how you can correct the things I mentioned. Also if you ever need some inspiration, try playing some recently accepted hacks. I know you are a good hacker and I have seen you making way better stuff than this, what happened?
Lenght: 43 levels
Author: Neo carld923
Description: This is the last demo of the hack... sorry, but is cancelled.. i got lazy whit ths and in dont translate to english... so i remove the history of the hack.
Thanks to every that make every resourse to make this hack... i really apreaciate (and sorry for the really bad english)
(Mods, please delete this version and this mesage http://www.smwcentral.net/?p=showhack&id=6200)
IPS link
Your hack wasn't that bad, at least it was better than most of the hacks I removed, but it was full of mistakes that reveal lack of proper testing and the level design could also be better.
Level design issues
Unlike most of the hack I have removed, your levels generally didn't suffer from emptiness, flatness or repetitiveness, at least not in the same way it appears in other hacks. The main issue in your levels about level design was item babysitting, as it was present in many of your levels and I had to go back and forth several times in order to take different items with me, in this level; sometimes I had to babysit items through long segments where I already killed all the enemies in the way, making the level not just repetitive but empty as well. Personally, I think these situations are alright if the player doesn't have to travel long distances, but doing the same segment back and forth several times is really boring.
Another issue with this hack was the difficulty. Now difficulty itself isn't a problem, but unless you want to make a really difficult hack (which doesn't seem to be the case), the first levels shouldn't be that hard. You seem to rely a lot on places where the player has litle time to react like this and narrow spaces (both screenshots taken in world 1!), not to mention many levels in the later worlds are really long and don't have midpoints until the end, or don't have midpoints at all, I advise you to use the multi-midway patch for this.
The ghost houses in your hack were really annoying, they are full of trick doors that take me to the begging and there's no way to know which one if the right one; that's just a cheap way to make puzzles. The ghost house in the cave world was the most annoying one, I had to take a door which could only be found by jumping on a pit with no indication at all to get a P-switch and take if back to the first room, then I had no indication at all of what I had to do, it took me hours to figure out I had to use the P-switch to take the key and then take back the key to the entrance and use it to enter the floating door, which was also more item babysitting and backtracking.
There's a couple of situations I found plain unfair: the first one in "Rio cascada", where you hid enemies behind the waterfalls, leaving me clueless about where I should jump. The second one was here, as this is an auto-scrolling level, if I take the upper path I'm forced to kill myself.
I don't know if you have tried to play your own levels without savestates, but if you haven't you should definitely try and you will see how annoying some of them can get.
Lack of proper testing
While playing your hack, I noticed a series of mistakes that show you didn't test your hack properly, and make it impossible for me to accept it. The most obvious one was in "cueva subterranea", where you left a goal sphere, a key and a keyhole at the begginning of the level. Similarly, in this level not only you left the test midpoint a the begging, but you also blocked the way forward, forcing me to take the midpoint and kill myself with the muncher in order to go on. A few more of these issues include
-here part of the twomp disappears because of sprite memory issues.
-here you left an empty message box.
-Yoshi coin of subscreen boundary
-Entering this door kills me instantly.
-If I walk right in the bonus game this happens you can fix it by disabling horizontal scroll on levels 0 and 100.
-In this level, if I press the P-switch too soon, or don't make it to the other side in time, I'm forced to kill myself, I think your forgot to add a reset door.
-you forgot to add a level tile here
-In one of your levels (I can't remember which, since I apparently forgot to take a screenshot), I die instantly if I enter the level after taking the midpoint.
Finally, the most important issue in your hack: in "Peligro - Alturas", when I reached the end of the level I couldn't find a way to go forth, meaning I had to quit here.
Other issues and observations
There is a couple of removal reasons I haven't mentioned yet. The first one: in some levels, the music crashed in accurate emulators, I don't know why you were still using Romi's addmusic, but you should use either addmusic 405, addmusic M or addmusic K instead. And the second one, this is not a suitable replacement for thwimps, actually, I don't get why you didn't use the thwimp GFX since you didn't use the platform with chain sprites in that level.
Also, this isn't a removal reason, but why did you use a cloud as midpoint here?
--
And that's about it. I don't feel like writing a Spanish translation of this because it takes a lot of time, and I have seen you posting in English and I think you can easily understand this; let me know if there's anything you don't understand though.
I remember you said you were quitting this project, but if you ever want to work on it again, I advise you to test and play your own levels without savestates and see how you can correct the things I mentioned. Also if you ever need some inspiration, try playing some recently accepted hacks. I know you are a good hacker and I have seen you making way better stuff than this, what happened?