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| Details for Ultimate Mario World [Demo] |
| Hack Name: | Ultimate Mario World [Demo]  - 171.6 KB - 1271 downloads.
Added: 2008-11-21 04:35:42 AM |
| Rating: | 0.0 (0) |
| Reviews: | 1 (jump to reviews) |
| Length: | 4 levels |
| Author: | Master_Owens - Submitted by: Master_Owens |
| Description: | I am unsure if I am going to finish this hack, so I submitted the 4 levels I have completed.
The only way I will continue this hack is if people encourage me to. If it gets good ratings and reviews, I'll finish and improve it. If not, then I'm scrapping it to make room for a different SMW project that I was working on.
A few things to note:
*The overworld is the same and has a slight palette mistake.
*Yellow switch palace has a sort of eye searing color. The reason for this is that I was color coding the palaces, making everything in them match the color of the switch.
*Fire Mario has a strange palette, but it isn't that bad. His hands have a red outline, which I personally think looks kind of cool anyways.
*The breakable bricks a briefly turn into turn blocks when hit by small Mario.
Please rate and review. Without criticism from an outside source I have no idea what I'll do with this hack. |
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| Review by Counterfeit | Ultimate Mario World is a rather fun hack, and certainly a good investment of 15 minutes of a day. The main focus of this game is level design and pretty good palette work, as some other parts have not yet been changed from Super Mario World.
Levels so far start somewhere around the middle of Super Mario World in terms of difficulty - not hyper-easy, but any gamer could pick this up and jump right in and expect to not either lose right away or get bored for a lack of challenge. The levels are more or less about as long as Super Mario World's later levels, taking roughly two to four minutes to complete. The longest level so far, "Yellow Dungeon", is the only one with a midway point, so that is something that may be considered for the next demo.
Each of the levels present are very different from each other in concept and theme. These are all action-oriented stages, and puzzles are few. You have one grassland level with a cave passage, one log level, one dungeon level, and one muncher forest level. I found all four of these to be enjoyable. Frequently, the wall triangle is used in these levels, but in spite of heavy use, they do not make the levels redundant.
The grassland level, "Cliffside Clamber", isn't simple and plain as one would expect from a generic Mario hack - there is quite a bit of elaborate decoration and some off-paths with powerups at the ends of them, making it seem more like the highlands than some open field. Lots of slopes here for terrain variety, and good use of Map16 to carve out the land - there were no errors where you could trap yourself and force yourself to wait the timer out. Enemy placement here for the most part was good, however, the overuse of the sliding blue Koopa in high spots is somewhat of a concern. Reaction time to avoid the Koopas is slim, so you may want to reduce the numbers of sliding Koopas in the future release.
The "Yellow Dungeon" level puts a new spin on switch palaces - rather than being rewarded with many coins and 1ups or having a huge chain puzzle to solve, you are thrown into a menacing enclosure and have to proceed with caution to reach your goal. Spike and enemy distribution here is perfect - although many parts require close attention, there is a decent margin of error and there are never any forced hits. Placement of the Dry Bones on spikes, and the parts where you had to spin-jump across Thwomps to transverse a pit of spikes were the more memorable parts of this level. Neither were overused. This was probably my favorite level in the demo, but I would suggest toning down the brightness and intensity of the yellow. It was rather strong in motion. Perhaps use a yellow-orange color - not heavily orange, just a tiny bit orange, and make it dimmer than what it is now, and it should be perfect.
The muncher forest level, "Switched On", was mostly a P-switch run - there was little time to waste, although you could afford to make a few mistakes and still have time to reach either safe ground or the next switch. Placement of enemies in this level was rather good - I recall one part where if you ran fast enough, you'd be able to cross the cement block part before the Spinies would wander off their ledge and potentially get in your way, so speed pays off. However, you could never be too hasty, since some parts of the level where you have to jump down a ledge have enemies walking down them, and such haste would likely cause you to get hurt.
The log level, "Log In, Log Out", is a vertical level guarded by quite a lot of Shy Guys and jumping flames. This level had several paths further on up, and seemed almost maze-like, but the dead ends weren't so far into a path that you would get frustrated backtracking. In fact, dead ends would usually be in sight, but they would have things like a Dragon Coin or powerup in so going to them usually isn't completely a waste of time. You never have to worry about an enemy falling on you as you run up a wall either.
At the end of the demo, there is an unfinished level that looks like a ruin in an aquatic area - there are no enemies placed yet, and there is no way out other than losing a life... but I let that pass anyways since the four levels in the demo are clearly the replacements for the Yellow Switch Palace and Yoshi's Island 1-3. So far, the layout of that level is interesting, and the palettes are excellent for a nighttime level. There is one part of concern in the level layout, though - if you had a cape at any point later on, it would be possible to jump over the grass wall and get stuck inside of it. Even if it wouldn't be permanent, assuming you have enough running space to fly again, it's still a bit weird to get caught there, so be sure to prevent the player from flying over that, or make the top solid so that the player can not fall through it, if it is not already solid.
Graphics used are the Redrawn set by Icegoom - what's there is used very well and everything is mostly consistent. The Shy Guys are the only things that seem to clash, but they don't clash a whole lot.
The music used in this hack is the SMW soundtrack. I grew up with this, so I don't mind hearing it so often. It is used appropriately - "Here We Go!" is in the grassland levels, "Piano" is in the athletic outdoor levels, the cave song is in the cave - nothing is out of place.
Once again, Bowser kidnapped Peach, and that's the story here. If that will still be the story in the final version, I suspect you are going to use the end credits too - in which case, you probably should restore Yoshi's House to level 104, and disable vertical and horizontal scrolling in it, to avoid having the ending look weird.
The overworld is not edited from the original SMW. However, I would reimport the original TPL that SMW Redrawn had so that you can restore the overworld colors to what they were before, and from there, fix the hills on the land, since the hilltops over the water have a green box behind them in the water, and the water in the large plant on the ladder also has a strange green ring that I don't exactly think could be passed off as algae.
There were a few other notable errors as well, namely the large bushes seen in the title screen and the intro. SMW Redrawn changes the Map16 of the bushes so that rather than using the medium green on the left side of palette 5, the bush would use the light green in palette 5. Be sure to make these edits - nothing else would be affected by editing the Map16 data of the bushes. In the cave portion of "Cliffside Clamber", the orange pipe was cutoff at the very top - not exactly easy to see unless you looked really closely behind the status bar, so it's a minor cutoffness error. Lastly, though not an error, just a minor annoyance - I did not like the flashing wall triangle. If you want to keep it with palette 6, I suggest recoloring it with YY-CHR to use a different shade of yellow over the flashing gold.
Pros:
+Great action-oriented level design
+Good variety in theme and concept
+Mostly consistent aesthetics and great palette work
Cons:
-Unedited story and overworld
-Map16 errors in large bushes in the title screen and intro
-The end of demo level has no proper exit
Rating: 7.3/10, rounded to a 7.
Overall, it's a pretty good start. Each level actually feels like something different. Lots of TLC was clearly put into them, however, a few things were overlooked that, when fixed up, will make this hack more professional. It really was a fun thing to play this morning. Thanks. | | Posted by: Counterfeit - 2008-11-21 05:36:20 AM |
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