Ends 12/22/2010 12:00 AM

The star that ends a level is the SMB3 star, not the SMW star. Sorry for not making it clear, I'll update the rules so people know what star to end with (thankfully it's a pretty quick issue to fix).

Alright, finally started playing some levels. Note that my comments are NOT formal approval or denials, I'll be sending those via PMs. Also my comments aren't Word of God, feel free to defend the levels and design decisions or call me out on any bullshit comments. In other words, regard my comments as a fellow RMN'er, not the guy in charge of RMN Bros.



Crazeland 1
A definite first level. There's issues all over the place. The first three are general so I'll bold them for everybody to read:

Avoid giving mushrooms to Big Mario from ?'s boxes without good reason.
Big Mario has no advantages over little Mario besides being able to take a hit and hitting a ? block as Big Mario always has a bit of anticipation of what upgrade you'll get. A leaf? Fire flower? Maybe something exotic? A mushroom is such a big letdown it's like getting kicked in the balls. Remember that small Mario will get a Mushroom from a fireflower/iceflower/leaf ? box too.

Remember the player can move off the top of the screen.
Place walls above the top of the screen border so the player can't jump up to them and hide offscreen. It's sloppy. Example: That blue coin by Yoshi at the first area? Jump up and to the left and you'll end up on top of the side of the level where the block indicates that the side wall should keep going up. (Also make sure you finish your walls if the player can get to where you cut them off, like the second area's upper left wall).

Watch what your background is covering!
In the second area where the 1-up is, Mario hits an invisible obstacle. I went into the editor and found out there was a platform there being covered by the background. Make sure that your backgrounds and obstacles are playing right with each other! SMBX can be rather weird at times with backgrounds, make sure they aren't hiding anything!


The level in general doesn't know what it's doing. The first part has the backtracking Yoshi (which you don't have to backtrack for, you can jump to the clouds with the jumping Koopa and if you want the jump to not require timing kick the koopa with a goomba). Immobile Koopas function weird (spat out a shell with Yoshi that.... didn't move at all) and are about as exciting as watching paint dry. Koopas should move! The parakoopas should be set to move too, set their AI to hover up-down, move them between clouds, and you can have your immobile parakoopa until he's bopped on the head.

I don't know what the second half is trying to do. There's a no-Yoshi pipe (which you can bypass with a running jump with the yellow blocks, you can run across one tile gaps!) which takes you right to the star? I figured I'd be going into the underground area first, do some stuff, and come out and get the star but instead the underground area is optional for a fireflower (don't make the area above ? blocks one tile big if something is going to come out, Big Mario can't fit in there that well!) and a 1-Up. The star should be the end of the level, not right after the checkpoint with bonus content after it. Yoshi is barely used in this level too. It seems like you meant Yoshi to be used to get the Moon and to disappear from the pipe. You don't do much else with him, partly because if you take the backtrack path to get Yoshi you're already done 90% of the level.

Also, your NPC generators don't work right. You should set the generator direction to be the way the enemy appears. If an enemy comes from the top of a pipe, the generator direction should be "Up". Once generated the enemy will take it's proper path, like left/right.

It could use some extra cosmetics too, but that isn't too important.


Crazeland 2
Already much better than #1: The level doesn't immediately end after the checkpoint! Mushroom from ?'s, wrong generator directions, single tile space above ? boxes that give an item, and tiles that don't cover going off the screen are still there but the level itself actually has something happen in it. It doesn't do much with the obstacles provided and it's still pretty short and it can get cramped with all the bats.

I'm not sure how bad SMBX is fighting with your computer but, SMBX permitting, you need to start adding more to your levels. Length, variations of obstacles, ect. Add some meat to your levels! Hopefully playing through SMW will give you some ideas of what to do and how a good Mario level should go.


Dudes3
Mushrooms from ?'s blocks again. In fact you start tripping over them because there's so many! There's three in the start of the underground section! I think one was meant to be out of reach but Mario can jump five tiles high with a running star and hitting the fifth tile at the apex of the jump. I don't know why you gave out so many, the level is incredibly boring. Most obstacles and platforming are about as exciting as waiting for water to boil. You also have two 1-Up blocks that have a cover on top which causes the 1-Up to glitch out, one of them flying way off and into a pit. The slide sections aren't great either, it's just a boring slide with goombas to score lives from and hitting some pipes. No lead up, the end is the player hitting the side of a pipe, and it's just plain boring.

Finally, warps into pipes should be placed on the ground otherwise Mario will enter the pipe though the air and it looks weird. Move your pipe entrances down half a tile so they're flush with the bottom of the pipe and it'll look right. Empty coin blocks also make weird mushroom stalks; I think the intended stalk is the pillar in the SMB1 backgrounds and it looks better (but it isn't impassable if that's important). Not critical though, just a small aside.

Come on Dudesoft, I know you can do better than this. Both of your RMN Bros 1 levels can take this thing and beat the stuffings out of it, blindfolded and without any limbs!


Fatal Fall Fortress
Where the player starts shouldn't be a danger area. Let the player get their bearings in safety and let the level start when they advance, not when they enter the level. Even the autoscrolling levels of SMB3 had the start of an area safe for a while.

I'm not a fan of the obstacles for this level. They're only really two types:
* Wait for enemies to get out of the way, advance. See the Dry Bones in narrow corridors that if you hit them you'll hit the spiked ceiling (jerk move there). Or the Thwomps at the end. Sitting and waiting isn't engaging or interesting gameplay.
* Ignore any not-open ? blocks, advance. See the Boomboom or the area after the checkpoint. Once the player realizes that nothing worth anything will be in those checkboxes they'll just ignore them and move onto the "wait for enemy to move" segments.

It makes the whole level incredibly dull. Give a real reason to risk yourself going for ? blocks and give the level fewer blatant blockages in play so the player finds the level more interesting than whatever they just pulled out of their nose.

On the plus side, no Mushroom ?'s! :D


Fish Bone Basin
You really should add a roof so the player just doesn't skip the entire level!

Pretty decent level. Still has Mushrooms from ?'s and there's a fish floating around up at the HUD that I'm not a fan of. No other issues.


Snowy Spiny Summit
Spin jumps trivialize this level (except trying to make single block jumps on ice but spin jumps help a lot there too). Again, Mushrooms in ?'s blocks. Especially on an ice level with ice blocks you can melt with fireballs? Why?

The second half was, after the first bit, felt just like the first. Same enemies in the same general pattern and it started feeling like there was nothing left in the level. Otherwise a good and fun level.


Crabby Coast Crossing
The bottom path is far too narrow to do any sort of decent maneuvering. In fact, I don't know why you would ever take the bottom path, the top is ten times easier simply out of having room to do pretty much anything. Then you get the Takooni Suit by simply swimming a bit and doing a spin jump and the entire level is now easy as cake. It's very powerful, why did you make such an easy to get Takooni Suit just sitting around in the open? The obstacles here are pretty lopsided but it's still a fun level.

Also Mushrooms in ?'s.


Batty Bungalo
Mushrooms. And it's short. No other comments, there's no real issues with it besides it being an average level that doesn't do anything exciting.


Up and Down
Mushrooms in ? blocks. (I am beginning to think it should be a rule). The one in the one-tile hide block is mean, I was hoping for a good power up and I got something that ran away :(

You can also skip half the level using the green shell to get to the platform where the star is. Move it up a block or two! (Peach could also probably make the jump, or Luigi).

Why did you use the Yellow blocks? Like Brickroad said, you can get in a no-win situation if you spinjump off of them (but you can still die at the very least). The level never uses the properties of the yellow blocks (become passable if hit from below) to any effect. You could replace every yellow block with a pure impassable and unbreakable one with no functional change in the level.


Ankylo's Underwater Cavern
Muuuuuuuuuushroooooms. Front heavy on power ups, there's only one after the checkpoint. Second half of level is weird since one path is right to the exit and one is a weird optional area. Could try and combine ice and water together for a more interesting level. Obstacles are few and not too interesting.

(sorry Anky I'm in a rush to get my thoughts down, I'll whip up a real commentary later)

I am trying to make a boss lvl. I can't figure out how to make the star appear only AFTER you have beaten him.

After hours of ARGG! I figured it out. :)

Pretty much ignore my levels for now GRS, I uploaded them here for ease of DL when I got home from work. Thanks for the tips / notes though! I'll have to fix those.

Just delete them from your locker.

I just perfected the whole lock screen unlock screen for boss battles. SMBX makes it a lot more challenging than it needs to be.

I will be uploading an old school Mario 1 castle for everyone to challenge. 4 / 5. I can beat it without dying, but I have played it far too many times :-)

author=Link_2112
I'm working on a sweet new level where you hit blocks to change all the tiles on map. It's a fun idea.

That's a really cool idea! Why didn't I think of that?

Finished this last night but forgot to upload it, my bad. It's finished as is, but I'm sure my first level (Ever, not just for this project) could use some improvements, so please feel free to give me some feedback and advice.

Grassy_Hills.rar

Edit- Oh yes, I would rate it as 1/5 or 2/5 difficulty, at best, since it's really kind of short and pretty simple.

Edit 2- I've already edited it to take into account what GreatRedSpirit said about the player being able to fly off the top of the screen, but I'm going to wait to upload the next version of it until I get some feedback. I want to be able to incorporate what people say, and the next version is going to be much longer since I know it is far too short right now.

I played your lvl Oloeopia.

I think the length is fine for a world 1 style level. The idea of a yoshi is VERY good for this level. I think you should change the name to "Yoshi Plains" though.

The area with where you have to jump on the pipes needs some work. First of all, when you come out of one of those pipes yoshi dissapears. Try checking the "allow NPC" box on both entrance and exit warps.

It is not very obvious that those are pipes are warps though. I didn't realize they were until I looked in the editor. Try making pipe one and it's transfer yellow, pipe two and it's transfer orange, ect.

The area right after the pipes with the Rexes and the chomping plants needs to go.

I also think you should trash the musical note block path.

The room where you get the star is very boring. Jazz it up.

Other than that I enjoyed your Level.

GRS the reason you said all those things is because you failed physics.