GREATREDSPIRIT'S PROFILE

Thanks for the review! It's been a while so I don't remember most of the game dev cycle or design decisions so I can't elucidate too much on it. I think the Candy/Cherry mistake was entirely my fault. I don't know how I got Cherry into my head when Luishui named her Candy, but I kept putting this false name all over the place.

I'm glad you enjoyed it at least, it was a fun and interesting project!

Damn, I'm surprised you went through the game and reviewed it. I'm glad you enjoyed some of the levels. Thanks for playing and giving your thoughts on each individual level!

Mario's Mansion's target release date is the 31st so at best you'll have 24 hours from release to review if your target is before November.

It's really unfortunate is that SMBX players that can play with two people are so rare. It is really fun and I wish everybody could experience it :(

Quit making whiny strawmen and think about what it takes to make a level in P2 not "whoops you have to quit/die please try again". It doesn't even need a P2 to test because making a level P2 friendly is nothing more than a perspective shift and throwing out levels that are only possible with one characters.

1) Don't use character-only blocks or if you do place a switch after them that removed them once the player changes characters so the second character can pass through too. That requires one extra event and a layer you turn off via the event. If that modicum of effort is enough to make a level turn to shit then something horrible has already gone horribly wrong. Alternatively make it so two characters can pass, like say Mario and Luigi and have a single tile wall of alternating M and L blocks so both players can swap the appropriate character and go through the wall.

2) Use generators to create things like one way platforms/donut blocks or required NPCs (levels that require NPCs are dumb anyways). The perspective here is if a second player can beat the level after the first one went through it with regards given to the level design.

Two players barely changes the rules of the game:
- Character-only blocks still only allow the one character to pass despite their visual state

- Events pause when the other player is respawning (and there's no way to design around this and the circumstances where it's important are rare at best so it's already a moot point)

- The screen splits when the players move away from each other which is just as moot as the last point because it's impossible to design for. The difficulty from reduced screen size is the nature of split screen coop that people have put up with for forever because it's completely reasonable given the circumstances.

Moon Base Mario is perfectly P2 friendly and never was there some mass redesign of even a single level for it. There might've been a handful of changes for it and it consisted of "make that platform a NPC generator platform" which is *already* a good design move to avoid unwinnable situations.


Making levels when the player can select their character is actually harder! Hell a TT2 level is literally impossible as Peach (chasing wall gimmick that moves faster than her at top speed) unless you pick up a leaf in a separate level and bypass the level gimmick altogether. Another level is impossible as Link (well, unless you can make it to the very end with a leaf and do a super fairy jump) because, while relying on a bug in SMBX to do it's level gimmick, Link in turn bugs out and can't use it at the very end at the one time it is necessary.


Coop and multiple characters are some of the strengths of SMBX. Don't throw them out because a bit more might be required.