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| Posts by Serebel |
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I hadn't noticed this brought up after a cursory read of the thread, but forgive me if it's old news. There's a relatively minor oversight in 2-6: Icicle Cave. In the open area containing the mid-ring, there's a tunnel in the far upper left corner that leads to a flower. You need to micromanage icicles and navigate a series of mushrooms to reach this tunnel. The problem lies in the randomly selected lengths of each icicle. Oftentimes there will be a medium/large-sized icicle in the second-to-last icicle position before the tunnel.
In these instances, the 'stem' of this broken icicle makes it impossible to hover to the adjacent mushroom without using save states to gain vertical distance. I've played around with it plenty, and it seems to effectively lock Yoshi from reaching that final mushroom by combination of its length and the close proximity of the mushroom the player would be coming from. The only immediately apparent option is to intentionally suicide until you draw a small icicle in that position. With some trial and error it's possible to position a penguin from elsewhere in order to allow Yoshi to bounce to the mushroom from below, but this seems fairly non-intuitive to the extent that I'm doubting it's the intended solution. If it is, ignore me.
To summarize a long-winded explanation, ideally you would encounter this:
But you have a decent chance of encountering this:
Making reaching the next platform ostensibly impossible without a rather obscure workaround.
I don't mean to make it sound like I only came in here to bitch. I simply noticed this and thought it was worth bringing to your attention. So far this hack has blown my expectations out of the water. A lot of partial YI hacks I've toyed around with have the creativity but not the quality level design required to forge that creativity into something enjoyable. This one, on the other hand, has been a pleasure with every level. I'm constantly being reinvigorated by a clever new puzzle or simply an interesting layout, the palette choices and general flow of terrain are beautiful, and the challenge has been on a pitch-perfect incline since I began. I can rather clearly remember the overt distinctions between each level I've played so far, and that's not something I can say often of a romhack. Usually even ones of impeccable quality as with SMW2+2 tend to mesh into a singular entertaining experience in my mind, but I've been stricken by each stage from this. I'm eagerly awaiting the final version.
On an aside, Extra 1 is downright evil to perform fluidly without save states or items. I'm a little nervous about tackling the rest of them, now. Really exhilarating stuff.
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By whatever blessing (curse?), the level doesn't experience lag in the emulator I'm using (ZNES). That one extended gauntlet of post pounding, star collecting, and item sharpshooting in the midst of an angry tap-tap and a spiked-ball-vomiting flower murders me at full scroll speed. It also leaves me woefully egg-free when the second spewer comes around, even given what eggs I can squeeze out of the flower in-between. Given two posts directly below that spewer, the combination of rapid ground pounding and exciting the spewer don't make for a very healthy yoshi. I'm ashamed to say it took several attempts to clear that stage even given as much exploitation as possible in the final area. You've actually got a 12-star grant if you forge yourself some red eggs and hit the invisible cloud and flower with them. Not that it did me much good.
Nothing about it was unreasonable, no. Rather it's a pretty exciting stage for an auto-scroller.
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| Last edited on 2011-08-11 10:14:41 PM by Serebel. |
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The solution to that gel block + switch puzzle for the third flower in S-3 is so damn obscure I was convinced to come here and ask if I was even supposed to be using the gel block at all until I thought of the far rightmost wall. That's some really clever design right there. Good work on that level altogether.
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4-8 is completely beyond me to accomplish right now. The stretch between the level's two mid-rings is just so damn long, and there's so much opportunity to slip-up on something simple. Especially if you somehow botch keeping both shells from behind the bumpers and need to redo that whole Lava Drop gauntlet. The horizontal ones in particular are just brutal to time, especially in how unforgivingly their arcs cue up with the vertical ones' arcs. You couldn't have thrown us a bone there? : P
I ended up dying twice in the second trip through the auto-scroll area due to nerves at having got that far. That killed my spirits for the night, so I'll try it again tomorrow.
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| Last edited on 2011-08-15 03:05:25 AM by Serebel. |
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Extra 4's first mid-ring spawns you off-screen beneath the second somewhere and freezes the game. Other than that, fun level, although curiously easier than 4-2 or 4-8, for an Extra stage. Outside of Extra 1 and the final stretch in Extra 3, it seems you're saving your cruelty for the Secret stages. Secret 3 took the piss out of me.
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Wow. You really don't pull any stops on the Secret levels. I was stumped on Secret 4 for about a solid hour because I just could not find a fifth flower anywhere. I made it through the level twice coming up 90 each time, which is enough of an annoyance because the level is so long and tricky to begin with. So I racked up some lives in preparation of scouring each section with a fine-toothed comb, but before I could bother, it finally clicked to me what that godforsaken red switch was for. Every time I repeated that section I always thought it was peculiar to have an elaborate red switch just to activate blocks over an easy pit. I didn't even make a connection to the empty nook in the tunnels immediately following. I figured it was just a dead-end to trap the player in. After figuring the solution out, I felt like the world's biggest idiot because the visual cues are obvious if you bother putting two and two together, but you're not concentrating on subtleties because of the hectic situation you're already in. To craft a puzzle so in the open and yet so easy to overlook, that's real skill in design. I'm continuously impressed by this hack.
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| Last edited on 2011-08-16 11:39:36 PM by Serebel. |
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Finally found an infinite lives spot hiding itself in 1-6 for those who're facing a dearth of them by the later levels. I don't know if that's something you intend to remove, Yoshis Fan, or if you put that in intentionally.
EDIT: The final mid-ring in 5-4 spawns rather hilariously in the wall. You can force Yoshi out by jumping around, so it's not a level breaker, but it looks pretty off.
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| Last edited on 2011-08-20 02:22:37 AM by Serebel. |
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So I'm completely stumped on the final flower in 5-7. I've explored every possibility I can think of to the point where I'm almost suspecting item vanishing. But I don't want to spoil the secret for myself if it's just a case of me missing the obvious. So, I've found the flower over the spikes just next to the pipe leading to the second of those twin rooms, the flower hidden amongst the breakable red blocks in the room leading from the bottom-most entrance of the door in the pipe room, the flower you lead a Boo Blah to collect immediately after entering the locked door, and the flower hidden in that isolated part of the pipe room, accessed by using the arrow lift to get to that pipe guarded by a Boo Blah/Piro Dangle combo. The reason I'm being so thorough in this is I've thrown myself against every open space looking for hidden ? clouds, killed every enemy in every single-screen room and gone through what at least seems to be every path, including going backwards through already-exited paths just in case you went with that trick. I just cannot find a fifth flower. So I guess what I'm looking to know is, is the flower I've excluded describing above in an obvious or at least semi-obvious place and I've simply despawned it somehow, or, without getting specific about it, have I just missed something? If it's the latter, I'll go back to scouring, but damn have you hidden the flower well.
I did find your hidden message, though. I was wondering whether you kept that in the game or not.
EDIT: Basic logic? What the hell's that?
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| Last edited on 2011-08-23 11:45:32 PM by Serebel. |
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I don't suppose I'm overlooking a release of the hack that fixes the freeze in 6-7, am I? I've loved it overall so far and would enjoy playing the climax to top off a great experience.
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There's definitely nothing wrong with challenge if it's done intelligently, and yours is, but I think the issue's less with the quality of difficulty and more the curve. You might consider staggering yourself a bit. If we're running into this sort of thing by world 1 and you need to maintaining a rise over 5 more worlds, you're going to either run out of possibilities or enter unreasonable territory. But I mean, I'm being presumptuous about your intentions for your hack's pacing, so take this with a grain of salt.
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| Last edited on 2012-01-19 12:13:52 PM by Serebel. |
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I'm really excited to try out that 6-S and cry. It's been said repeatedly, but you've got a penchant for some of the most creative puzzles I've seen in a hack, and from a source game that really encourages puzzle-driven level design, that's a great boon toward making a solid YI experience, which you've delivered in spades.
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Replaying through this and I'm gonna echo the praise for that chomp rock segment in 3-3. I love how you can incorporate tricky exercises in logic relatively early in the game while still keeping the difficulty at an appropriate level, since you're not really in much danger of dying during that section. Just tearing your hair out trying to figure out what's going on! And once you do it's not super-precise to set up or anything.
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| Last edited on 2012-02-21 11:06:06 AM by Serebel. |
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I agree with Zeldara that the world 2 bonus stages were a bit underwhelming. This is entirely about their placement, really, as both are perfectly okay levels. It's just that they feel exactly like, well, regular levels. I don't know if some complete revamp is necessary though since it's not like there's any glaringly big issues with the design. If someone can suggest a small modification or gimmick to the existent material to make each one harder, then there you are. But if not I think you can just accept it as slightly easy bonus stages that don't eat into the game's quality too much since it is, after all, world 2. Yes, Extra 1's one of the hardest in the bunch (of Extra stages, mind, not your nightmarish Secret ones!), but that went for the original Yoshi's Island too.
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Extra 3 was over before I knew it started, but that final gauntlet with the Nep-Enut was hell. So I suppose it fits the fast and frantic nature of its counterpart. The puzzles in Secret 3 were really devious and satisfying to figure out. That's probably my favorite bonus stage yet.
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Couple comments about 4-8.
I don't know how important this is to you, but you might want to extend the wall to the left of the red platform at the beginning of the boss room. You can very easily use it to launch yourself over the wall (and might in fact do so thinking there's a hidden 1UP or some such, considering the large open room on the other side), and fall into that room. This will force you to restart the game unless you've beaten the level.
That extreme detour in the sewer section involving bringing the second crate to the lowest door seems a little much for just a life and half's worth of coins. I sweated the crate down to that door under the pretense of it hiding a flower or red coins. Given that it's two or so minutes of sidetracking, I figure you could stick a bit more in there. Maybe one or two of those cool 3UP bubbles you found in the game's coding back in the original thread? It's up to you, of course.
Also, I'm probably the last person who should be suggesting something like this considering I have no ideas to give you, but Soopa feels a little lackluster as just his barebones original self given the fairly brutal stage leading to him, especially given 3-8's boss. I'm not sure what might be added to mitigate this, though. Permanent hazards are few and far between in this game, and some (like spawning bats with 2-4's boss) have already been used. You can't go the ice-floor route since Zeldara's already covered that one, and increasing his health would only add tedium, unlike the bosses of 4-4 and 3-8 where increased health adds directly to the difficulty. I'd risk suggesting something like gusties or some Fire Drops? I'm not sure if those are present in future bosses I've yet to encounter, so sorry if they are, or if they might overextend the challenge level you intend for this boss.
This is kind of a tangential what-if, but have you ever tried putting fuzzies together with a boss and seeing what happens?
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| Last edited on 2012-02-24 02:36:05 PM by Serebel. |
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For those that managed 3-8's boss battle unscathed to get 100%, I'm curious. Did you tough it out with the water jets and bank on decent luck, or did you exploit the fish's prompts? I must've intentionally killed myself 15 times on that jerk before I finally got some lunatic combination of reactions and ideal timing between jets that led to a victory. Then I redid the level to test out a few curiosities for myself and found out there's a relatively painless method to the boss's madness I hadn't stumbled across my first time. That was a fun moment.
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During the skiing section in 5-3, one of the yellow coins despawns a red coin in the group of two directly before the final flower. For the life of me I can't identify which it is. It's positively a coin in the skiing section that triggers this, though, because retrying again and again from the midpoint before the ski door will sometimes end in the red coin being present, and sometimes not. I'd say I despawned it when testing about 50% of the time, so it's a decently significant problem, especially in a stage where such an occurrence might mislead people into believing they missed something behind a tree.
This is the first item memory issue I've run into throughout this entire hack, which is pretty impressive.
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| Last edited on 2012-02-25 08:26:39 AM by Serebel. |
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This is a small criticism, but it stands out in an otherwise well-paced (and kind of evil in spots... now I'm more apprehensive about 6-S than ever) level. In 5-S, it strikes me as a bit overly tedious to require the player to backtrack for the snowball 3 times to collect everything. It's not like there's any added danger or puzzle based on this. You simply retread through an area where every enemy's already been killed a few times before moving on. Theoretically it could even take you four if you chose the one split path with only two yellow coins. I'm not sure how you'd work this into the geometry, but maybe to preserve the puzzle you have going there (making sure you're careful which side the snowball goes to), you could change it so that a player can collect all the red coins and then exit with a single snowball as long as they don't screw up? It's just a matter of opinion, obviously.
Also, spoilers for a 5-S flower: do you think the flower in that area might be too obscure? There's definitely no way you'll see the ? cloud hovering where it does even if you force the camera up, and it's in a haphazard spot so there's no real reason to be shooting eggs up there. Now, the reason I ended up finding it is because logic suggests there's a hidden ? cloud somewhere in an area with a chomp rock or snowball, and that outcropping was the only section left where I hadn't pushed it, so you put 2+2 together and realize there must be something in the area to get the snowball over there. But this is a bit of a stretch to imagine everyone coming to as a conclusion. I'm not sure what would be considered a decently subtle hint. Maybe a simple red arrow hovering over the pit that points toward the outcropping you need to push the chomp rock to. It suggests there's something peculiar there without spelling out what you need to do or where the ? cloud for the bridge is. Or it might be fine as it is in your opinion. It's not too mean in mine, either,b but I figured it was worth pondering.
EDIT: So it doesn't look like I'm just posting to complain, I've gotta say one of my favorite aspects to this hack overall are some of the creative ways you've formed puzzles for Yoshi's transformations. It's all varied and interesting, but probably my favorite is the way the train is used in one of the paths from 5-8.
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| Last edited on 2012-02-26 03:30:15 PM by Serebel. |
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You know, YoshisFan, I'm only now realizing concerning that flower that you actually place a cache of eggs directly under the tree below the bridge's ? cloud, which are entirely unnecessary at that point or any point in the area, so that's actually a huge hint that something's up in that spot. So that makes my 'argument' even dumber. I don't know why I didn't make the logical connection between those two things sooner. |
| Last edited on 2012-02-26 09:09:55 PM by Serebel. |
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I've noticed as the hack enters the endgame that the difference in challenge between just beating a level and getting 100% is getting greater and greater, which I really compliment. 6-2 is a decently tricky level just to beat (that purple fellow's spike section being the worst of it), but if you try to go for full marks, some of the puzzles/maneuvers you need to pull are downright mean. It shows really good design sense that you can create those two extremes in a single level and still have it flow well.
EDIT: Um, it's impossible to progress past 6-3 in your hack right now. The door after the second midring just freezes the game.
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| Last edited on 2012-02-28 02:15:48 PM by Serebel. |
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