Description

~ LOOK! ~
"In anticipation of Super RMN World 2: Bro-shi's Island (or whatever it will be called), I'm taking it upon myself to issue a call to all potential SMBX devs! Even if you've never touched the engine, now's the time to give it a shot!"
It's like what Isrieri said, and I'm saying the same thing for this sequel to the Castles Masterpiece Set!

Time to give SMBX a shot and make a level!


Sign Ups: 4/02~4/05
Development: 4/05~5/05
Compilation: 5/05~5/08
Release: 5/09

~ Hey, Listen! ~

This is important, as it'll affect what your levels are!

All levels must be made as if a part of one continuous castle. The continuous castles themselves each have their own theme and hub, five in total.

  • Shroomland ForestThis area's castle has many plants, especially mushrooms, and many piranha plant enemies! The foundation of this castle is blue-green bricks.

  • GreyOcean Ravine
    This area's castle has lots of water and grey-blue bricks.
    Many fish enemies should be used, remember your level doesn't have to be completely submerged, just use water!

  • Redbrick Desert
    This area's castle is basically dry, sandy with red-ish bricks for the foundation. Dry Bones (SMB3 Version/Resized SMW Version), cacti and various other Desert enemies should be here!

  • Sky Domain
    This area's castle is A giant floating castle, include many clouds and grey to white bricks! (SMW Castle tiles would work fine here)
    Enemies should consist of lakitus, parakoopas, bullet bills (Restrict the amount of homing koopas) and various other flying enemies.

  • Industrial Zone

This zone is to have aztec like bricks with many metal frameworks around it, this is because toadly is there, and he like steel.
Oh, and he also likes poison mushrooms, Mind-controlled toads and various spike traps, but that's just him.
Yes you must include those, if you want the graphics download them here:
http://rpgmaker.net/media/content/users/17331/locker/Industrial_Zone_enemies.zip



The first four areas listed are all avalible from the starting point, so you can do them in any order. Keep this in mind! This means that each continuous Castle needs to have easy and hard levels, not one or the other! If there are too many easy levels in a castle, we'll force the new additions to be harder, and vice-versa!

The exception to this rule is the fifth Overall Castle, the Industrial Zone. You should make your levels for this area more on the difficult end, as this area is only unlocked by completing the other four.

Fitting into the theme is not enough for the level to be accepted! Levels must have:

Be saved with THIS naming theme:
<dev>_<zone>_<level>_<diff>_<version>
Example:Ratty524_3_PursuitPalace_4_2

The Difficulty section is assumed to be out of 5, do not put 6 here (you might even want to refrain from making a 5 until the "Industrial Zone"

  • One checkpoint, and only one.
  • The game will only utilize Mario and Luigi as characters
  • All water must be swimmable. Waterfalls must not be.
  • An average castle should take no longer than 2 to 4 minutes to complete. (And no shorter than 1 minute)
  • The game wont be 2-player, so don't focus on it, but make sure it is at least possible for 2 players.
  • No secret stars.
  • At least two power ups, one at the start and one at the checkpoint.
  • Use invisible blocks wisely. No putting them over pits or other nonsense of that sort.
  • THE LEVEL MUST END IN ONE SMB3 STAR
  • THE LEVEL MUST CONTAIN 5 DRAGON COINS!
  • LEVELS CANNOT CONTAIN BOSSES-Mini bosses are okay, however. Just make sure that they are indeed mini!
  • LEVELS CANNOT HAVE: SMW Dry Bones (This is due to a height issue, if you fix this issue you may use them) SMW Bowser Statue. (This is again because of a height issue, if Mario st0od on top of the statue when it fired, Mario would get hurt.) Wall Zipping, this is when you have a 1-tile high hallway, super mario ducks and enters, and when you stand up you "Zip" through the wall. It's Extremely glitchy and can often break your level.


A participant can only submit up to 5 levels, 1 level for each Overall Castle.

~ WATCH OUT! ~
The story of this event is simple: You've received a letter from someone by the name of Mr. Zoad, an Archaeologist! He has asked you to explore a small but diverse island in search of an ancient relic. He warns you, however, that his competitors might be after the same thing.

You must explore the four ruined castles to find the whereabouts of this ancient relic, and be paid in big coins by Mr. Zoad!

Details

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Posts

Thanks for the comments.
Further updates are pending..
masterofmayhem
I can defiantly see where you’re coming from
2610
Ok, if you absolutely insist Alexander I'll find another MP3. I've got another level in the works too. I really should get around to completing it.
author=masterofmayhem
Ok, if you absolutely insist Alexander I'll find another MP3. I've got another level in the works too. I really should get around to completing it.

I should note that, aside from my vitriolic Nintendo fanboyism (i.e. Genesis music is going to sound wrong to me no matter what), I think the song itself fits the level, it's just that the instrumentation sounds off compared to, say, the Mushroom Hill Zone MP3 used in Talking Time Bros 2.5.
Seiromem
I would have more makerscore If I did things.
6375
Although it's not really a problem, I'd like to stress that Redbrick Desert Isn't a lava castle it's a DESERT castle. Spirit temple and the like.

Doesn't mean the lava levels we have don't think, just remember that.

Also, Here's my BOSS level (Since we're going to have each castle end in a boss, I decided instead of having 5 levels, I'd make 5 boss levels.)

Motherbrain is a placeholder


Greenhouse Garrison!
Ratty524
The 524 is for 524 Stone Crabs
12986
author=AlexanderXCIII
author=masterofmayhem
Ok, if you absolutely insist Alexander I'll find another MP3. I've got another level in the works too. I really should get around to completing it.
I should note that, aside from my vitriolic Nintendo fanboyism (i.e. Genesis music is going to sound wrong to me no matter what), I think the song itself fits the level, it's just that the instrumentation sounds off compared to, say, the Mushroom Hill Zone MP3 used in Talking Time Bros 2.5.
The mushroom hill zone music master is using is the remix from Sonic Generations on the 3DS. I personally like the music and I don't think it should be changed.
masterofmayhem
I can defiantly see where you’re coming from
2610
author=Ratty524
author=AlexanderXCIII
author=masterofmayhem
Ok, if you absolutely insist Alexander I'll find another MP3. I've got another level in the works too. I really should get around to completing it.
I should note that, aside from my vitriolic Nintendo fanboyism (i.e. Genesis music is going to sound wrong to me no matter what), I think the song itself fits the level, it's just that the instrumentation sounds off compared to, say, the Mushroom Hill Zone MP3 used in Talking Time Bros 2.5.
The mushroom hill zone music master is using is the remix from Sonic Generations on the 3DS. I personally like the music and I don't think it should be changed.


Well one of you is going to have to agree on something.
author=masterofmayhem
author=Ratty524
author=AlexanderXCIII
author=masterofmayhem
Ok, if you absolutely insist Alexander I'll find another MP3. I've got another level in the works too. I really should get around to completing it.
I should note that, aside from my vitriolic Nintendo fanboyism (i.e. Genesis music is going to sound wrong to me no matter what), I think the song itself fits the level, it's just that the instrumentation sounds off compared to, say, the Mushroom Hill Zone MP3 used in Talking Time Bros 2.5.
The mushroom hill zone music master is using is the remix from Sonic Generations on the 3DS. I personally like the music and I don't think it should be changed.
Well one of you is going to have to agree on something.

The song itself is fine, I just don't like this arrangement. I also don't even think it's a dealbreaker, so you can go ahead and keep it if you want.
masterofmayhem
I can defiantly see where you’re coming from
2610
Actually I may have a solution. See, I edited the track somewhat to make the looping better and when I did I saved I drooped it down to 128kbps to reduce it's size. I think if I bump it back up to 160 that may fix the problems with Alexander's sound.

I'll update it now, but If that doesn't work, I got nuffin'.
Updates are complete. I addressed all the issues.
So I started work on a industrial zone level. it sucks so far and is pretty easy - I am out of practice. Anywho, I have no fucking clue was "INDUSTRIAL AZTEC WITH PIPES" is supposed to look like, so I just downloaded AlexanderXCIII's level and mimic'd the style. I even got some other Mr. Gimmick! soundtrack songs.

Hopefully I will have a draft up tonight.
masterofmayhem
I can defiantly see where you’re coming from
2610
author=kentona
So I started work on a industrial zone level. it sucks so far and is pretty easy - I am out of practice. Anywho, I have no fucking clue was "INDUSTRIAL AZTEC WITH PIPES" is supposed to look like, so I just downloaded AlexanderXCIII's level and mimic'd the style. I even got some other Mr. Gimmick! soundtrack songs.

Hopefully I will have a draft up tonight.

Screw the Industrial Aztec with pipes. When I get round to making my Industrial level I'm setting it in space.
Ratty524
The 524 is for 524 Stone Crabs
12986
Submitted my third level: Tired Towers

It's a bit more outdoor-sy for a castle level, but the whole world is supposed to be a floating castle, right?

Let me know if I need to tweak the difficulty on this. I want it to be a 1/5 difficulty level, yet still have some challenges to keep the advanced players engaged. It also has Spryo music for extra kick-ass points. :)

I have some notes on the recent levels submitted, but I'll get around to posting them sometime tonight. I can tell you right now, though, that all of Davenport's levels (minus the one he pulled) are APPROVED.
I have a working computer and will get back to reviewing stuff when i've finished a level i've been working on.
Ratty524
The 524 is for 524 Stone Crabs
12986
Solitayre
Tower of Rain
+ That intro effect was awesome.

- Remember that you need to update the name of your custom music when you change your destination folder. None of the music in your level played until I did this.

- You have a brown column in one of your outdoor sections that looks really out of place in this level, considering every brick here minus the traps (whose colors are fine as it helps them stand out) are gray.

- In the section where you are traveling along lines of coins and dodging thwomps, you have SMW coins mixed with SMB3 ones. Was this intentional? If not, keep it consistent by picking one or the other.

- Speaking of graphics, the rain in the outside section looks visually disorienting, like my eyes were seriously being strained trying to make out what anything is in them. You could solve this by recoloring the rain graphic to make it look less saturated or bright, possibly sticking to grays or other neutral colors, to make it stand out less compared to every other object on the screen.

- You've got a strange wall-zip hazard in this section of the level:


- I love your levels in general, they are well-designed and almost always create a sense of atmosphere. However, one thing I notice is that you rarely, if ever, put any secrets, bonuses, or anything that increases the interactivity of your level. You did it, to an extent, with Dragon Coins, but you could go further! There are many areas you can access in this level by say, bouncing on a Swooper or making a well-timed running jump, but you don't really do much with these extra spaces. As much as you hate invisible blocks, they really CAN work in areas were they are somewhat expected and don't cause any inconveniences for the player.

- Lastly, I'm not convinced this level is a 2/5 in difficulty. It's actually harder than that, contrary to whatever kentona might say! You've got tight corridors, with tons of roto-discs, thwomps, swoopers and the likes you need to dodge. Many rooms have low ceilings and also utilize thwomp traps very well, in the sense that you can't just blow through them as doing so will get you killed easily. I would say this level is more in line with a 3/5 difficulty level, but nothing's stopping you from changing the level's difficulty rating to that.

Current Status: DENIED I think you need to spice up the level a bit more in terms of bonuses/secrets, and fix the graphical issues in order to get my stamp. It's still an enjoyable level, however.



Seiromem
Greenhouse Garrison
- As a whole, I strongly feel that this is WAAAAY too long for a boss level. Sure, in terms of screens it should be short, but you also need to think about what you are doing with every screen: Tossing mushroom blocks to proceed. In itself, you have to get the positions of the blocks right and you generally spend a majority of your time just doing that. Worse yet, that boss of yours is tough! Not everyone has the coordination to dodge fireballs and jump between gaps like this, dude, and once you die, you have to repeat the same time-consuming puzzles over, and over, and OVER again. You really need to do some restructuring and cutting in this level in that regard, because I can see this level's welcome becoming really worn out with the way it's set up now. The checkpoint should be directly before the boss, especially if that said boss is as hard as this.

- That aside, the first hoopster-tree that you encounter could be extended by a tile or so, or possibly raise the ceiling to allow more room for error. I don't know how many times I've died due to hitting my head on the ceiling and missing that vital jump.

- God, I hate the default fighterflies. There is nothing in their design, from a visual standpoint, that suggests that they are dangerous to jump on, yet they are. The only reason they aren't safe to jump in the original Mario Bros. is because you couldn't jump to kill any enemy in that game to begin with! Here, they are especially obnoxious in the second mushroom block area after the checkpoint. They'll either cross the warp pipe, where you have to wait 'till they get by you to complete the puzzle, or they don't. They just need to be removed from that section altogether.

- I think the bubbled P-switch could be lowered by one tile, right now I feel like it almost requires TOO much finesse to get.

Is it okay for me to deny your levels? If so, then it's definitely DENIED in my book.
Solitayre
Circumstance penalty for being the bard.
18257
author=Ratty524
- In the section where you are traveling along lines of coins and dodging thwomps, you have SMW coins mixed with SMB3 ones. Was this intentional? If not, keep it consistent by picking one or the other.


- I love your levels in general, they are well-designed and almost always create a sense of atmosphere. However, one thing I notice is that you rarely, if ever, put any secrets, bonuses, or anything that increases the interactivity of your level. You did it, to an extent, with Dragon Coins, but you could go further! There are many areas you can access in this level by say, bouncing on a Swooper or making a well-timed running jump, but you don't really do much with these extra spaces. As much as you hate invisible blocks, they really CAN work in areas were they are somewhat expected and don't cause any inconveniences for the player.





Haha, believe it or not, that section with the coins on the floor AND the outdoor section were both intended to be bonus areas, but I ended up integrating them into the main level because I felt like it was too short without them. If you look at the level in the editor you'll see the sections are all out of order because I changed the layout a few times.

On the bright side, I think I know where I'll hide something now.

I'm not really sure how to fix the rain but I'll give it a shot.
level: Impastable
Difficulty: 2 (it's not very hard)
Description: Maze-lite area where you need to retrieve a key, then an infinite falling pit where you need to find the exit, then a short battle vs bam-bam (can be removed if you want), then star.

I think I made it end on a SMW star... sorry.
Davenport - Brownstone Castle
* First is something that's insignificant to the level itself: the lead-up to the castle, which goes against the idea of a continuous castle that Seiromem wants. This can probably be remedied by finding (or making) a background with castle walls layered over a forest.
* I still think the stakes in the first room are too slow, but now I noticed (read: had not forgotten by the time I wrote these notes) a multi-coin block with ten coins; this takes a ridiculous amount of time for Mario to collect, so I recommend either lowering the block or reducing the number of coins.
* The spike ceiling is lower, but now the entire thing is *slightly less* than one block away from the ceiling, which looks safe but is still deadly. You should raise it up slightly so that there are only a few pixels (less than about a quarter block) between it and the actual ceiling.

* I still have to say DENIED, but you are getting very close.

Davenport - Sunken Castle
* The level itself has no real problems, but you still haven't added a start point for Player 2. You'll have to add that (and do the same for all your levels) before I'll accept it.

Davenport - Brimstone Barracks
* I still find the lava-falls in the first room to be distracting; at least set them to appear behind the other objects.
* You mix SMB3 coins and SMW coins in the first room; not a huge deal but good for consistently (all the SMW coins can be replaced with yellow SMB3 coins).

* These are all minor details, but I'm still going to DENY this level because you haven't added Player 2's start point.

Seiromem - Greenhouse Garrison
* First off, the dark brick sizable is grainy, which is likely due to the image being saved with the wrong dithering settings. You really ought to look into that.
* The second switch to spawn a mushroom block is ridiculously high, so I need to know in advance to bring an extra mushroom block (since the previous one despawned, blocking the way back) or make a difficult running jump to hit it.
* The music in the boss lair wouldn't play until I edited the file path under Level Settings. You really ought to look into that as well.
* The boss itself is just annoying to fight; the method to damage it is tedious, and having to dodge the fireballs, which are unpredictable, just makes it take longer.
* Actually, the main problem I have is that losing to the boss (which will happen, given the difficulty) forces me to redo a fairly long portion of level, not helped by the two rather tedious "puzzles" involving mushroom blocks. Either shorten the level after the checkpoint or move the checkpoint closer to the boss lair.

* Final verdict: DENIED.

Solitayre - Tower of Rain
* You have a typo in the file path preventing the music from playing (which was almost identical to an error I had in one of my own levels, funnily enough). As for the music itself… I didn't like it. It may be because I hate the techno style, but I think the level would be better off with a different arrangement, even if it's just the original castle theme from Yoshi's Island.
* Aside from that, the level is pretty much ready to go, but because I'm petty I'm going to DENY just because of the music.

Ratty524 - Tired Towers
* A nice level, albeit much more energetic than the name would suggest.
* The koopas riding balloons are a nice touch, but it's a little misleading that the balloons themselves hurt. Perhaps you could edit the sprite to better telegraph this.
* It's possible to die at the very end of the stage by using the Tanooki's statue form on the moving layer. I'm guessing it's also possible on the other moving brick platforms, but I haven't tested this.

* It's very close, but I'm afraid I have to DENY this.

Kentona - Impastable
* I really like the astetics of this level. You certainly utilized the toad enemies better than I did. Out of curiosity, did you get the songs from the original Famicom version of Gimmick, or the international version (both use different sound chips, and these sound a little different than the ones on my music playlist)
* The frozen Munchers in "Bam-bam"s lair was a clever idea, but I'm not sure about the music choice. Gimmick has some great boss music, why not use some of that?
* Placing a checkpoint before the boss might be a good idea. I didn't experience this firsthand, but I'd imagine it would be pretty frustrating to have to redo the maze room after losing to the boss.

* While I don't see any real reason not to accept the level, I highly recommend looking into the music for the miniboss.
oh crap, I totally forgot a checkpoint! And the Gimmick songs I found were ripped from a playlist (hence the fade in/out). If you happen to have better quality copies of the songs, let me know! I'd rather use them.
The ones I have are FLAC format, so I had to find an MP3 in order to use it in SMBX. The songs themselves are fine, I was just curious (and too lazy to fire up the game and check for myself).

However, I think the tracks "Aporia" or "Identity Believer" would fit better during the mini-boss fight.
Seiromem
I would have more makerscore If I did things.
6375
No one denies my levels, I am perfection.



In any case, guess I'll have to rethink a few things.
Also, for the boss, are you guys tossing the mushroom blocks from the side?
If you are I pity you.