The fact that something is unlikely or rare is not an excuse not to account for it.

And like I said it is literally impossible to prevent the 2P from being Link. And the only way to "prevent" the 1P from being Link is to make a part that automatically kills them or is impassable if they are Link. Which is bullshit.

author=kentona
How did you intend to "force" the single player to use Mario in each level

I did just that in my Turning Tricks level(because of the cutscene) and when you start the level you don't even know it happens ;)

First you use an empty section to place the starting positions. You put a trigger NPC, usually the axe, in the same spot as the starting position so that it triggers an event immediately. The event makes the hero jump into the M player block and as they jump the floor is taken away so they fall into a instant teleport event that takes them to the actual start of the stage. To make it seamless you fill the screen with solid black background tiles that appear in front of the hero and everything else, so the player doesn't see it happen.

Except that in the current cutscene I think you see the 1000 points graphic when you get the mushroom, but you can replace the point values graphic with a transparent values graphic so nothing at all shows. (if you wanted to get really picky about it being seamless)

The only problem is that when you reach the checkpoint, and die, the game defaults you back to the character you were on the world map. Or you can just change your character on the world map and start at the checkpoint. So to really make it stick you'd have to have something visible for the player to use with the M block and corresponding outline blocks. It's not hard to do but I don't think we need to be that strict about it.

author=LockeZ
The fact that something is unlikely or rare is not an excuse not to account for it.

I'm not saying "don't account for Link" but I doubt you fully realize what accounting for him might do to the level. I've made a Mario game and a Link game so I'm very familiar with how they each play. Link's sword is such a different game mechanic that a regular Mario level won't play right and if you change too much to accommodate Link you risk alienating Mario. It's better to just make sure it plays right as Mario and Link will have to make do. Unless, of course, you find a simple fix to some impassible area. I'm not suggesting it's impossible! Link can usually stumble his way through any Mario level unless it has a very tricky gimmick that he can't perform.

The biggest thing is that Link can't pick up stuff and needs room to start running. But he can destroy blocks in any direction at any time and damage any boss at any time because of the sword.

It doesn't make much sense to make a level harder for Link at the possible cost of making it damn near impossible for Mario. This is a Super Mario engine. This is "Mario's Mansion". Screw Link(I never thought I'd say such a thing). It would be worse if every character was in the game. Do you have any idea how hard it is to make a nice level for Mario while taking in account Peach's floating? Not to mention the fact that a 2 player game with any set of characters breaks just about every level. At some point you have to forget about making it work for every possible character.

Fact is, most people new to using this engine don't know how to account for Link unless they make the mistakes and change stuff. That takes time. The best bet is to make a Mario game and allow Link to participate..if he really wants to.

And like I said it is literally impossible to prevent the 2P from being Link.

Nobody is denying that.

However...

And the only way to "prevent" the 1P from being Link is to make a part that automatically kills them or is impassable if they are Link. Which is bullshit.

This is false.

And, it's not bullshit to make the player turn into Mario to continue. It's a design choice. If I make a level designed specifically for Mario it only makes sense to not allow other characters. It's taking Link into account by not letting him in!

For that matter, I guess you could also just make said switch turn the player into Mario. Or make the change happen automatically upon entering some door. Link is correct, it was foolish of me to suggest that it's impossible to force the player to be Mario.

Btw. Davenport's levels are gone from the list...

I think one of Link's stages was deleted from the list also. Weird. Are you guys withdrawing those submissions from the project?

I figured that was what happened, but wanted to ask and make sure they didn't remove them on purpose.

I overwrote mine five or six days ago (after Deckiller suggested changes to it) and it stayed on the list. This was after the submission period had ended. So that method is apparently safe, as long as we let you know we changed something so you can redownload it.

I assume you never even downloaded mine in the first place until after I changed it, since you didn't give me feedback until several days after I changed it. But I guess I should ask and make sure, since you didn't list mine as one you had updates for. The biggest change is that I moved almost all the punchable blocks up one tile, and I also moved a fire flower to directly above the NO ESCAPE message block. If you have those changes, you have the newest version.

So it's the end of the day I was feeling rather UNinspired as I stared at the sprite sheet in the editor, so I won't bother making any more custom Mario sprites. I was also meaning to make the trail of Mario's fireballs blue, but again... if you feel it looks strange just remove my custom blue fireball.

And I guess Turning Tricks will remain as is. It should be ok.