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Posts by anonymousJustified

anonymousJustified's Profile → Posts

You seem fairly new at SMW hacking and Game Design in general. SMW hacking is a concept I've worked with for a number of years, and game design in general I've worked with for about 6 years. 13 if you count exploring game design and reference building. Even more time of mine has been spent analyzing art.

It's passing that knowledge ahead that's not so easy. And many people have a lot of difficulty grasping that knowledge. But I want to get one thing clear; SMW hacking is something that takes a lot of time, effort, concentration, and motivation.

The absolute most important thing you need is an objective sense of the difference between what makes a good hack, and what makes a terrible hack. To get that information, I would look between a couple resources.

Here, you want to play as many of the worst hacks imaginable. The ones that will make you rip your hair out in a screaming rage and wonder how someone could fail so hard at game design. Not all of the hacks there are terrible; you need to dig deeper; find the worst of the worst.

Take notes then, on what it is about these hacks that make them bad; write a list, perhaps.

Here, you'll want to find the exact opposite. The highest quality hacks imaginable, the ones that will make you excited, the ones that make you legitimately happy.

Take notes on what makes these hacks good.


Armed with that information at your fingertips, you will have the knowledge necessary to make something spectacular.
...How would HTML help? Why is that even something to bring up here?
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Originally posted by moltensnow
While I love Homestuck, it didn't have anything to do with the composition of the music. The songs you hear in-game were composed completely separately from this hack. I found them in the Music section and thought they'd fit nicely. Sburban Jungle is one of my favorite songs, by the way. :)

Hmm... The stage 3 music does sound a lot like Sburban Jungle to me, but I guess it's just a coinkidink.

Originally posted by moltensnow
That's the thing about difficulty: it's subjective. While you think it's hard, I think it's quite reasonable. I wouldn't say it's the hardest game in the world, but if you really want my advice, I'd suggest timing your jumps and motions well. Don't be too anxious; take your time.

It's not timing I'm having much of a problem with actually, it's more of tight jumps.
Simply put, I want to mark part of my song as an intro, this way it doesn't re-play from the start after the end of the song, but instead starts from just after this mark.

So, how would I go about doing that?
Originally posted by ggamer77
Use the / command, anything before it will only play once.
Like this:
#0
c1^1/d1^1
#1
r1^1/g+1^1
#2
a1^2b2/r1^1
Note: make sure all the channels finish the intro at the same point.

Unusual, it's channel specific... I'd expect a command like that to be a global command.

Nonetheless, thank you. I think I've got my song almost done now.

Although, one last quick question, can someone explain to me how echoing works? That one's got me stumped.
Hey, if you guys are still looking for a phase 2 final boss theme, I got something that may work, but it's my first time actually putting something together for SMW besides a terrible port of Undersea Palace.

This is a really early composition, and as such it carries over many elements from songs of other games.

So, imma just leave the SPC file that is so in this link here and let you guys tell me what you think.
Originally posted by Maxx
Pretty good start.

Keep in mind 80%ish of your players will outright ignore dragon coins, so don't expect the flow of your level to always progress as how you've played it.

Oh, I certainly don't. Actually, that was in part among the reasons why I got all the dragon coins; the level's gameplay flows very different to most players.
Originally posted by Maxx
Pretty good start.
Solid level. I don't like the music choice, and while nonlinear, the platforming feels a bit- boring.


Going forward from that, I have to ask how you could not like Duck Tales' moon theme. Just kidding. I noticed myself that this version of the song is just jam-packed with high notes.
Originally posted by Maxx
Try to add some thought to your sprite placement. As it stands, it looks like you just peppered the level with them- that's not effective design. Likewise, the landscape has some jumps in it but it's not thoughtful platforming. The enemies aren't hard to avoid, placed in pretty ignorable positions, and mashing the jump button will get you through most of the platforming.

Yeah. The general idea of this level was more focused on generating an atmosphere in the graphics and in general giving the player that feeling of "I'm on a new adventure!"

Though, I honestly had been considering giving this level a redesign. While the aimed difficulty for this level was around DONUT PLAINS 3, I can understand why I should aim a bit higher than that.
Originally posted by Maxx
If you haven't read APPALLED, I suggest you do so- although this is a good start for a hack for sure.

Could you gimme a link?
Well, something that I always find to be a treat in title screens is a short piece of gameplay that occurs in the actual game, to later become a story piece.

It'd have to be a fairly short piece, and forebode something to happen later.


As for the logo, ExGFX can do wonders, man.
Originally posted by Egadd
Also:
Originally posted by anonymousJustified in the Mario vs. the Economy thread, to me
I suggest reading this guide.

Here's your link. #smw{>_>}

Oh, whoops! I didn't pay any attention to the name of it before.
#smw{^_^;}
All I can say is derp to that.

As for the issue with evening tones, I was trying to make it feel less of evening and more of morning. That said, what do you think I could do with the palette to give it less a "sunset" and more a "sunrise" feeling?
Originally posted by Q-bee
One little hint: if it's really your first hack, avoid abusing of external resources like patches or graphics. Yes, you can, but be careful. Sometimes you can get errors and if you don't have any way to restore your work, you'll be screwed.

While I will agree that using too many patches/custom sprites can cause a problem, I never heard about graphics(or even music) being too much of an issue, so long as you add them as early on as you can and back up your ROM every week or two.
Originally posted by Ultradragonyoshi
actually I worked very hard on this hack.
and most of the reviews I've gotten on it said it was pretty good.
but I'll work on the levels and add some custom sprites like the zinger and barrel cannon sprites to make it more like DCK2.
thanks for the review!

I see no reason for you to spend time putting in custom sprites; simply put, the level design was boring. That's the main thing you need to work on.

Perhaps it'd be worth a shot to read this for a bit of a crash-course on SMW level design.
http://www.eonline.com/news/360863/president-barack-obama-wins-2012-election

Not really much to say. I mean, I guess it's a far better outcome than Romney winning in my opinion, but it's still not that great of news. And besides, like anyone else would've won anyway without putting as much effort as Romney or Obama into advertizing.

So, this wasn't the best outcome in my opinion, but I'm glad Obama took the cake. If Romney did, I could consider myself out of an education.
Originally posted by ZMann
I disagree, we're all fucked.

Obama seems to want to make everyone dependent on the government, meaning socialism, which doesn't work; in fact, it's completely against what the U.S. was founded upon. So government spending will keep on, and eventually we'll go bankrupt...

Yeah, we're all fucked. Just telling it like it is.

Weren't we all fucked either way?
Originally posted by MarioSprite
Okay, So now I have a possible submap for world 1 to start ideas up. It took me a good while and I hope you like it. Please comment on thoughts, tell me if you think you like it and you want me to keep it or if you want me to try to make something different. I personally like it, but please give your opinion. Here it is:

It has 7 levels and a bonus level. It has 9 exits in total. Of course, I haven't actually made the levels yet. That is right after this is done. (which it might be)

Okay, it's alright, but it needs work.

Red - Perspective errors
Pink - Areas that just look plain strange
Blue - Could really do with a vertical line
Originally posted by yogui
Favs:
Lest favs:
Grassland when it's used as the first world. I find it boring that every Mario games and lot of romhacks have a grassland theme for the first world. If it's for a later world then I don't mind. But alway having the same world theme at the start...

Yeah. I think a good mountain/factory mix world would set up a great first world, but that's just me.

Something I'd like to see more that could either rock the house or fail hard are urban levels. That's something I'd like to see, but I know it has little place in a Mario game.
Originally posted by Ultimaximus
It's a shame most people aren't skilled enough to make such unique and complete tilesets, eh? Game developing teams always have some dedicated artist, since it's so hard to do everything at once we just use each other's resources.. That's why those one-man games like Touhou and those in indie land are quite impressive.

What do you mean? People seem plenty skilled enough, they're just not prompted to look into it. UNTIL TODAY.
I just finished the first world, and Trio really makes me think of Silver The Hedgehog. The big issue that a lot of people have with characters like this is how out of place they are. I really don't see how Trio fits into the Mushroom Kingdom. Sure, he looks Luigi-esque, but really that's not too big a reason to have him there.

In all honesty, he feels more like comic relief than some serious, badass. Honestly, I had to pause to laugh my ass off when he went super saiyan.

Since I'm certain that the character's already heavily integrated into the story, I know that you can't just sorta get rid of him. But I think you could at least do some damage control; change your DBZ moves to something similar yet different. Perhaps rather than an alien monkey thing, you could make him a psychic? That would probably fit better.

But, I think the character's already in the water too deep to be saved. You can still do some damage control, but overall I think inserting him in the first place was a poor choice.


But, this is all just me.


On a side note, the rest of what I've played thus far seems pretty good, albeit flat. Your levels could use more curvature and overall variation. That beach level where Trio was introduced was great, IMO.