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Cool Zone 2 Progress

Super Mario WorldScreenshots

What style of very hard hack do you like? (READ BELOW BEFORE VOTING)

36.4% (4 votes)
18.2% (2 votes)
45.5% (5 votes)
0.0% (0 votes)
Some level previews of what I've been up to since last C3. Hammer Bros, featuring the new Custom Bro sprites. In the water level, I've added the Sushi. Also there will be some frog power shenanigans going underwater too. Lastly, a nice palace, and an ice palace.









Aside from this I've been mostly coming up with concepts, deleting a bunch of stuff, making more stuff only to delete it again later. I want this hack to be nothing less than my best work, so in order to do that, I've been going back and forth on different design concepts, from "Do I wanna be a little bit like mice, or more like normal mario, or more like VIP or brutal mario". The only concrete design decision so far, for overall gameplay, is this game is STILL going to have a kaizo side and standard side. As for the difficulty... I'm now aiming for normal difficulty kaizo, very hard standard.

Also some concepts I've wanted to explore...

1: Lore. Lots of lore. The villain in this hack is chaotic evil. The concept for the villain has been tossed back and forth, however I did leave a clue in Cool Zone 1 as to WHAT caused this villain to erupt. Nobody has found this clue to my knowledge.

2: A different way of unlocking content that involves both the kaizo side and standard side communicating with one another. Whether it be through a password system, hidden walls or pipes or doors, one side will discover a clue and communicate it to the other side. IF a player is doing one side solo, that player can either take the spoiler guide, OR take a look at other players figuring out these puzzles. There will be lots of these, each of them being pretty easy to deduce once you know they exist. Each puzzle unlocks something related to the final world, or it might unlock lore, or just a little fun secret.

Oh, and the initial release comes without a spoiler guide, which only releases AFTER the first player of either side clears the game.

3: SA-1 out the wazoo. Mostly using it as a way to eliminate unintentional lag, but also planning on using it to create the levels themselves. For instance, imagine being boxed in a bunch of giant urchins in the underwater area, while dodging fish coming at you. Awful, I know.

4: Custom power-ups being centric to the game, or de-centric to the game. This is a concept I've had the MOST trouble going back and forth over. If custom power-ups are centric to the player experience, then the kaizo side needs an instant-death mechanic while the standard side needs either a health patch mechanic (A-LA Mario & Luigi: Power Blast, a hack i made) or just lots of power-ups to get through difficult areas (Think of Mice, powerups after every section. You lose it, you start the section over)

If I were to make powerups de-centric, then they would be optional, and only be used to help the player along. I would only do this to the standard side, which allows for more traditional Mario platforming.

Ultimately, these two choices drive the very core of the player experience AND the way I design the game. So I'm gonna throw out a poll! Do you enjoy hacks with section-based design (Stick Mice in my head), hacks with a health mechanic (to keep your power-ups through an entire level), or more standardized levels (power-ups are not needed, but helpful)
This looks like a cool hack :)
Looks like a toss-up between standardized and section-based level design. I've currently got drafts for levels in both styles, maybe it'll be a mix depending on how even the poll is.

Edit: based on the poll results, I guess it will be.. exactly as I've already been making the levels! Standard levels with some section based areas inbetween, but I also don't have to give myself the headache of adding a health system. Nice!

ALSO! Did I mention custom bosses? Bosses like, Ganon, Meta Knight, possibly a giant blooper, so much more! I plan on working with talented ASM devs to build up custom fights to fit both a kaizo scene and a standard scene, once the hack is getting closer to a rough draft of all the levels I'll be focusing more on boss battles. I've also toyed with the idea of ending normal levels with really basic mini bosses, though I don't know if it'll work out in practice.

Super Mario WorldScreenshots