Super Mario Maker

I think I found a second path: Third pipe, jump off the P-Switch.

Helpful Scripts and Stylesheets here.

I'm abusing the skip button more and more. I feel like everyone's abusing the same lulz mechanics over and over and I spend more time rolling my eyes and skipping levels than actually enjoying them.

And this is not even on Expert.

I had one level where it was just SMB 1-1, but now in 30 seconds! And a giant Thwomp at the flagpole!

Remember, these idiots drive, fuck, and vote. Not always in that order.

@Lala: I was considering doing something similar by making a level called "DON'T GO THROUGH THE DOORS" where going through any door kills you instantly, but if you just ignore them and go through the level normally it isn't that bad.

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That sounds fun XD

The Protomen enhanced my life.

hAY gUIZE i mAYDE a aTOMATTIK kORSE!

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edited 4th Oct '15 12:10:07 PM by Geist-Fox

Okay, so I finally started going through the spreadsheet and playing levels. To start with, I went through all of 32_footsteps levels. Here are my thoughts:

• Ancient Airship: Most platforming with a lot of projectiles and hectic stuff going on. Overall pretty good, though it's a bit hard to find your way around because it branches so much.

• Deep Sea Search: Pretty short. Not too hard, though if you move slowly there's a bit of Fake Difficulty at the end with the mob of bloopers. You can cheese through it if you have a fire flower though.

• Follies sous-terre: Some fun platforming. Nothing too rough here.

• Pipe Dreams: This level feels kinda random. Some minor annoyances with stuff popping out of pipes at random, but once you learn where everything is, nothing too bad.

• Precarious Pillars: More platforming. I like the fake-out with the Lakitu cloud ( the only place you can fly to is an area with Bowser in it)

• The Right Combination: This is the one level I didn't manage to beat. I probably could if I went through it a few more times, but I didn't have time to keep playing it at the moment.

• Twisty Run: More underground platforming. Lots of wall-jumps. I enjoyed this one. Tricky in places without being cheap.

• Bowser's Gauntlet: Holy crap this level is long. None of the individual areas are too hard, but it took a while to get through because of having to replay through everything every time you die. Would definitely benefit from a checkpoint or two, but overall not bad.

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Fixed the P-switch pipe exploit.

https://miiverse.nintendo.net/posts/AYMHAAACAAADVHkgJuT_XQ

The Protomen enhanced my life.

Ack. My older brother played my Super Mario Maker levels and had a harder time than I was expecting. I really need to tweak the difficulty. The completion rates for my levels are lower than I'd expect, yet, surprisingly, I tend to get a roughly 25% star ratio for most of my levels nonetheless.

I am learning the hard way that making levels that are "fun for everyone", as Miyamoto put it, is very hard.

edited 4th Oct '15 3:57:29 PM by BonsaiForest

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Why is this my most popular level?

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Same here. I made a few fairly straightforward levels, but I guess I underestimated the degree of precision required to reliably complete them.

Also, I uploaded that level I was talking about earlier, but I forgot to get the code so I'll have to add it to the spreadsheet later.

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Awesome! Can you put the code here too? *unsure where the spreadsheet is*

The Protomen enhanced my life.

This is probably my favorite Mario Maker level so far.

I've got fanfics for Frozen, Spectacular Spider-Man, Crash Bandicoot, and Spyro the Dragon.

Spreadsheet is here.

Time to go revise some of my older levels... either tonight or maybe tomorrow. :/ They really need it. Seeing my older brother fail at levels I thought put up a reasonable challenge was just painful, and not in the "wow he sucks" kind of way, but in the "damn, I thought that was more reasonable" kind of way.

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That's a really cool concept. I never would've been able to beat it without knowing what to do, though.

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The way the completion rate is determined is a little screwy- If I play your level, die once, and finish on round two, that gives me a 50% completion rate, making the level sound much tougher than it might be.

I sure said that!

Yup. I totally know that, and that's cool. However, when completion rates are in the single digits, and the level was never intended to be that hard, there's a problem!

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Squidbuster: It's a ghost house...with squids!

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I'm a bit at a loss with my completion rate as well. I look at how low it is, and I feel that, even accounting for the deaths that come from learning my courses, the completion rate for those courses should be somewhere between 5%-25% higher ("Twisty run" in particular puzzles me - I expected well north of 50% for that one). I don't do much in terms of precision sections, dense enemy formations, or difficult puzzles (outside of "The right combination"). I may be overestimating how familiar many players are with the various game engines.

Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.

I really wish the system factored both death rate and completion rate into things, though. Like, a completion rate that only gauges lives lost plus a gauge that shows how many individual players, regardless of lives lost, finished in the end.

I sure said that!

This. So much this. I was thinking exactly the same thing last night. I'd love to see that exact same system somehow. It would tell us a lot more.

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@32: In general it's hard to get a grasp of the difficult of a level you design. I mean, yeah, I don't think it's very hard, but I've played through each obstacle multiple times while designing the level. So not only do I have way more practice at my own levels than everyone else, but the level is also designed specifically with my individual playstyle; i.e. when designing a level you tend to do so in a way that you personally enjoy the most.

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One level I designed it has a really low completion rate because people trying to go where they shouldn't have in the level. All you have to do is walk right go through a door and spin jump on the Thwomps.

Two levels I have should have 100% completion rate because they play themselves so each playthough is suppose to be the same exact experience every time it is played.

edited 5th Oct '15 8:07:08 AM by Halberdier17

Batman Ninja more like Batman's Bizarre Adventure

I think one thing that hurts is that a lot of people don't know the unique mechanics of each game.

So if you make a Super Mario World level that requires throwing an item upwards, a level that requires the use of the spin jump, or a level that involves flying, then the people who are familiar with only the most basic mechanics won't be able to do it.

One thing that might help is forcing players to demonstrate an understanding of the move at the beginning of the level. For instance, if you want to teach players how to spin jump to break blocks from above in Super Mario World, you could make a level that starts them off in an area with a Super Mushroom that can't be avoided, and make it so they have no choice but to spin jump the blocks apart in order to move on.

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@1371 I suppose that's true. For example, in "Ancient Airship," it never occurred to me that people would try to backtrack to explore portions of the level that they missed by taking another route - in retrospect, I should have placed the guide arrows at points to let folks know that going right (whichever path they wanted) was the way to go. In my experience, it probably should take, at most, 250 clock tics for a moderately experienced player to reach the end regardless of route chosen. Maybe I also should have had a shorter clock; I think people are more prone to just going right as much as possible if their time is limited.

@1372 Actually, as someone who did die on that level, I was victim to not knowing how the mechanics were changed. I knew (from a previous level) that they changed the spin jump to not let you safely jump on certain enemies (Boos in particular). I had thought that meant that spin jumps weren't effective to prevent any enemy damage. I did a running jump because I thought there was a platform I couldn't see (at a speed where I couldn't read the note you left). Sure, once I knew what the mechanics were, it was pretty easy, but it didn't help that I was at a loss as to the mechanics at first.

I wish the reminder blocks from Super Mario World were in this to help people with some of those finer points. I can understand that Nintendo wouldn't want people to abuse text entry, but it could have a few stock phrases that you could select when placing the block. If I saw a hint block sign telling me "spin jumps can let you safely jump off certain enemies," I would have tried the spin jump first.

I've found that automatic levels will eventually dip below 100%. Either someone who doesn't speak your language won't realize it's an automatic level from the name, someone will try to control the level anyhow, or there will be something not as deterministic as you thought in your level that will throw everything off (Bowser and Bowser, Jr. in particular - I've played several "automatic" levels that had one of the two where whether you live or die depends on just where they spat fire).

@1373 Well, think of how often people forget about those mechanics when they build levels. I'll admit to being guilty - upon further testing, I found a fourth way to clear "The right combination" that relied on kicking items up that I completely blanked on, one much easier than either of the two ways I thought when building the course or the one Meophist used to bypass the main level challenge. I'm going to leave that be, if only because anyone who sees it all together deserves to use it.

Unrelated to that, in addition to my mirrored main area/sub area level (which is coming along slowly, but at least I have my background theme for the level - NSMBU Ghost House), I'm thinking of a take on the spiny hat gimmick level. You're in a remake of a classic level, but it's upside-down and underwater. Instead of stomping on your foes, you have to swim up from under them and hit them with the spiny hat. I'd call it "Lake Reflections - (level name and original game of level)"... does that sound too gimmicky, or might it be fun?

Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.

Would like to note some things about difficulty I noted before:

Helpful Scripts and Stylesheets here.