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115: Fantastic Elastic - S.N.N./Lightvayne

Complete

Claimed by: S.N.N./Lightvayne

World: 6
Exits: 1
Theme: Carnival Castle
Music Options: Carnival Castle, or compose your own.

Briefing: This will be a difficult level to design, so be sure you know what you want to do before you claim it. While it can still be a castle, it should definitely incorporate carnival ideas into it. Think of a giant "fun house", if you will. There should be trickery and fun gimmicks, but nothing too extreme. You may even decide to create some outside portions as well to compliment the inside.

The boss design for this castle has been chosen.
Since I was probably going to snag a second level in the morning anyway, and this one is .. you know, 100% open with no reserves, I think I'm going to snatch it now.

If you have a problem with this, you're more than welcome to send me a PM and rant about how my level will likely be a terrible contribution to the project and how this theme is so easy to design that anyone could pick it up.
Okay, PM sent
So Atma started on a second concept for his level which ultimately fell through. He was working on having the entire ground act bouncy, and then have the level take place on the outside of the blimp. Having played his sample level and not ultimately being satisfied with how it was turning out, I decided to take matters into my own hands.

This is the carnival castle, so .. why not have it actually be a literal bouncy castle? I have quite a few ideas for this, including which obstacles I plan on using and such. As Vic Rattlehead's level showed us on a smaller scale, sprites can be extremely amusing when they're bouncing all over the place, so .. yeah.

I was going to compose my own carnival castle theme, but Blind Devil's is already really good, so I'm not really going to bother. As for the level name, I'm thinking Fantastic Elastic would work, unless I can come up with a synonym for "bounce" and a synonym for "castle".

That being said, I'll see about having some screenshots up by the weekend. In the meantime, I'd love to hear some input and/or other ideas with this.
Well, since your level is going to be bouncy, maybe you should use enemies that jump high like ninjis, clappin/bouncing chucks, green bouncing para-koopas, and maybe some custom sprites too.
...It's Blind Devil's and mine composition, right? :P
Your layout has been removed.
Originally posted by aj6666
maybe you should use enemies that jump high like ninjis, clappin/bouncing chucks, green bouncing para-koopas, and maybe some custom sprites too.


I've got some plans to utilize sprites that wouldn't typically bounce (such as Thwomps, hence why I requested the smiling frame for them). I've also thought of using a wooden spike disassembly and making "punching gloves" fly out of the wall. We'll see where that goes.

Bloop: Yeah, sorry about that.
Considering how unusual this theme is, I'm glad that an experienced level designer is making it. Anyway, the name Fantastic Elastic is just fantastic, but I'll propose a few names for the heck of it:

Chateau Carom
Sproing Stronghold
Vault Villa
Rebound Redoubt*

*Redoubt [ri-dout]
noun
1. An isolated work forming a complete enclosure of any form, used to defend a prominent point.
2. An independent earthwork built within a permanent fortification to reinforce it.
Maybe you could theme it similarly to that one game show on ABC called "Wipeout"? You know, the one with the big red balls you have to bounce over?

Maybe something similar could be applied here. Maybe there could be some tougher bouncy obstacles where if you fail, you fall in a pool of water below. Your reward for completing these obstacles could be a SMWCP coin.
Mario's Vanilla Journey

Progress: 22/72 levels complete
Here is a video of the first A screens or so. I still have quite a few more plans for the last 2/3rds of the level. I'm rather digging akacesfan's idea there, so it might make an appearance somewhere. As I said in the YT description, I'm also thinking of having some areas of the castle which "pop" and shoot you really high, as well as some punching gloves which fly out and hit you (wooden spike edit).

Yep. The background isn't finalized, but any other comments are welcome.
That looks terrifically fun already! It's great that the side blocks actually give an upwards bounce too, since falling and steering yourself to safety has proven to be incredibly troublesome for me in the past.

I think you might want to do something about the great benefit that spin-jumping onto the bouncy floor gives, though. It was cleverly used to reach the SMWC coin, but it really makes the rest of the hazards a lot less... hazardous! Perhaps make the side walls make your jump back to a regular one? Or, from another angle, you could just put some sort of twisty blocks to enable spin-jump mode, so there's never that moment where you forgot to spin-jump and end up having a hard time for it.

I think there's a lot of potential here!
Wow, them thwomps are bouncy. The level itself looks pretty cool, I love the gimmick of a bouncy castle.

Originally posted by S.N.N.
As I said in the YT description, I'm also thinking of having some areas of the castle which "pop" and shoot you really high, as well as some punching gloves which fly out and hit you (wooden spike edit)

That idea sounds pretty cool too.
The level actually seems too easy IMO.
Remember, since world 5 is equivelant to World 6, this level should be harder than your other level. Just keep that in mind, since it's not really shaping out to be hard.
woag.....

(previously superdragonyoshi1. sup yall.)
Originally posted by Vic Rattlehead
Perhaps make the side walls make your jump back to a regular one?


I'm thinking of this, actually. Having designed a bit more since the video, I'm noticing that the spin jump is going to screw some things up if I don't reset it.

Originally posted by superdragonyoshi1
since it's not really shaping out to be hard.


Going to have to respectfully disagree with you since it took me about four tries to get that far and not die (AND I still got hit in the video). You can judge it for yourself once I post an IPS later, but I can almost promise you it is not as easy as you think.
It looks go so far, but as I have said on YT, you should perhaps add something different for the second section. Maybe a vertical level or something would be good.
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The level looks awesome so far and looks fun to play. I did try a little bit of it that was in the base rom but got stuck at the part on screen 02 where you had to bounce on the sides to get upward momentum. Getting up there is down right frustrating at times.

My apologies if I'm playing it a little early then I should be (I'll wait for an "official" test patch before saying anything more related to playing the level itself [or something along those lines]).


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Red Tales: Part 1: Hack is being worked on. Committed to finishing this time
Levels Complete: 6/29 Exits: 16/40
I'm not really the best at giving feedback in regard to the difficulty/playability of levels, but I have to say that I love the concept of the level and found it hilarious how the other sprites interacted with the bounciness as well. It was a lot of fun going through.

The only part I had a pretty hard time with difficulty-wise was the part where there's a thwomp that bounces upward, two thwimps that bounce toward you, and a ball and chain behind you (I'd post a pic of what I mean but I'm off of my main computer + I assume you know what I'm talking about. It's right at the end). I had trouble reacting in time to the thwimps, and thought there was too little room to jump around them without just tanking through it. But again, considering it's the castle of the fifth world, I wouldn't say there was anything undoable in there.
It's been a week. Where is your weekly update?

...right.

So I've been designing a vertical segment, and although I don't have much more to show right now, I figured I might as well explain what I'm going to be doing for the rest of the level while I'm here.

Lucas's level brought forth a very interesting idea - that is, the usage of the block eater sprite, which he used in a rather clever way. In the second segment of my level, I'll be including a vertical segment (as I said) with a few side rooms involving block snake puzzles. I might mix them with the bouncy nature of the level. We'll see. I still want to include those boxing glove-esque sprites I mentioned (wooden spike disassemblies).

Around the bottom of this section, I wanted to include the first midway, and then have the basement of the level be a hall of failed pranks. I was thinking of making a bunch of "joke" styled setups here - that is, a pit that you can endlessly fall down, springboards which actually die when you jump on them (that is, instead of springing you up, they just stay flat), and some other things. The P-Trick sprite might be useful here too. At the end of this, I'll include the second midway and the boss door.

Expect a playable IPS with at least the first two thirds completely finished by next Monday.
You mentioned that the midpoint will be at the bottom of the vertical segment, and that then you go into the basement after that, so does that mean that the vertical level will have you going down rather then up? A descending vertical level is fairly rare, and I'm interested to see how it will play out.

Anyway, all that I can say for now is that I love what you've done so far and what you're planning for the rest of the level, and that I'm looking forward to getting an IPS to try.
Finally got a chance to try this out. First off, the gimmick is great fun as are the graphics (love the rather decrepit appearance as well). The difficulty seems fair for W5 although those first two thwimps certainly turned my world upside-down. Other than those two guys, I've got nothing to complain about difficulty-wise. Really, it's all a matter of patience - if you rush the level, you're going to be utterly destroyed, but if you focus on timing your jumps, it's not that bad. It's still difficult, but not absurd by any means.

However, and I know you've already stated that you're looking into making it more obvious, but I had no clue what to do to get up that first vertical passage where you had to wall bounce. Took me a good five minutes or so to figure it out. Of course, once I realized what you needed to do, any other wall bouncing areas (which at this point weren't many, at least out of necessity) were easy to pull off.

It's unfortunate that the thwomps travel at such an absurd speed that they will kill you if you try to spin jump on them, but I guess there's not much that can be done about that, at least without ruining the overall effect that the bounce house has on y-speed.

I also noticed the following, although again, based on the way the blocks work (or is it all levelasm?), there's probably not much that can be done to prevent this:

Ah! I missed my chance to grab the mushroom and now it's forever stuck in the upper corner of the room. But...I guess that's ok - I can't even imagine trying to get through those first two thwimps with a mushroom.

One final thought: I wonder if it'd be possible to enhance the "bouncy" effect of the red perimeter blocks by adding custom bounce sprites or something to show a compression effect. Eh, might be more trouble than it's worth / just thinking out loud anyways.... Plus, I suppose it would be weird for Mario to cause a compression but sprites wouldn't. And besides, if it is all levelasm, then I guess the idea is moot.

Anyways, looking forward to the next update and it sounds like you have some really clever ideas in mind (seriously, who'd expect anything less?) Oh, and definitely like the sound of that springboard idea.

Complete