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[REMOVED] A Very Super Mario World - by SchwerMuta

[download zip]

Review:
I've played mostly the whole hack, and the amount of content you've put into this hack is definitely impressive. It starts out nice and easy, but then quickly, it gets insanely hard. That would be just okay, but the length of the final levels (especially the "Star Road" ones) is simply waay too much for anyone's liking, in my opinion. To be extremely honest, I used the L+A debug "cheat" to finish the "Essential Super Mario World" level, and it took me more than 15 (!!!) minutes to fly through the level. I think any simple (or let's just say, not crazy hardcore) player would get bored after the first few minutes.

Let's talk about the level design and overall gameplay now. You used lots of different elements to build your levels, and they are usually really enjoyable. The structure, the enemy usage, the whole flow of the hack reminds me very much of the original SMW levels, making it feel like a "remix" of the game. You've got a nice talent to build great levels, I just think you went a bit over-the-top at the end of the hack...

True thing, that this reason wouldn't be simply enough to remove the hack. Let's see the actual problems now.
1. the custom music breaks the hack in accurate emulators. Unfortunately, this is a very strong removal reason now. If you read the Hack Submission Guidelines:
Quote
4. Your hack must be compatible with the newest version of all major emulators (ZSNES, Snes9x, bsnes).
Exceptions can be made if absolutely necessary so long as you warn players in the description, but easily avoidable incompatibilities (e.g. custom music) will not be accepted.


I recommend you to test your hack in bsnes before submitting it to the site. If it doesn't break in bsnes, it's not likely that it will anywhere else.
To make your hack SNES-compatible, use Addmusic 4.05, and re-download every song you used from the Music section. If you want to try a newer and more advanced addmusic tool, check out AddmusicK.

2. Glitchy graphics/sprites. Unfortunately, this happened a couple of times.
3. Bad palettes. No offense, but some of your levels weren't really eye-friendly.
4. Confusing/cryptic level design. It's absolutely fine if you put puzzle levels into your hack, but if the player simply cannot figure out, how to beat the level, because it's just a huge pipe maze or some other very hidden thing, it's simply not enjoyable anymore. I had to open the hack in Lunar Magic quite a few times to actually check how to beat the level. You know, it's one thing that you know, how to beat the level, but you have to think about the players, too.

Verdict:
It's unfortunate, that I have to remove this hack because of these reasons, because I actually enjoyed playing most of it. But don't worry, I think these things are actually easily fixable, and if you're done, you'll have a nice, big "traditional" hack! #ab{;)} And don't forget one thing: test, test, test! It's very important to have good beta testers, so they can point out every problem for you.

---
To the userbase, who also played the hack: what do you think? Were the endgame levels really that bad? Would you accept this hack if it wasn't for the custom music and other minor things? Feel free to post your opinion. Even if it's removed for now, the author might fix the errors and re-submit the hack, so your thoughts are valuable.

+1
The hack is surprisingly quite enjoyable despite its length. I really liked it but I also felt it was a little repetitive throughout the levels and it became a bit annoying towards the end. I love how something new is introduced in every level such as new enemies and sprite or custom blocks. The music is however broken which forced me to play the hack in ZSNES. Some of the more interesting levels include the underwater level with the keys and keyholes (I suspect that is taken from another thing) although the puzzles do become annoying and it does decrease the quality of the hack.

I also felt that some of the first world levels seemed to mirror the original levels so I would suggest changing some stuff to get rid of that vibe before suspicion arises from the player. Everything else was fine for the most part excluding some minor cutoff and a particularly bad palette in a certain level. Graphic consistency wasn't the best either.

Pretty good overall although it is plagued with issues I have mentioned above. Fix them and you should be good to go. If it wasn't removed already, I would have suggested removing the hack until the issues are fixed.

+1
WRAAAAAA. Why are all the hacks removed AFTER I'm playing them :<
I had the same problem with CidYoshi's hack. Right after I was done Mirann removed it before I could wirte something >.<
This time though, I'm gonna write this damn review, even if the hack is already removed.

I only played the first two worlds so far though...
Anyway:

These bushes can create a slight cutoff. Easy fix, just give this small postion of the ground also a higher prioraty.


Don't let people get under those pipes, they are glithy


If you want to have coins which aren't effected by the blue P-switch, I suggest making a custom global animation instead.


These blocks turn into question blocks after being hit once:


Vineblocks + Layer 2 is a deadly combination:


Hitbox seems weird. Also, this boss is seriously hard. I think you could at least give the player a powerup before fighting it:


I'd seriously rethink this secret exit. You need to get through this secret passage in order to even get the cape which is needed to get the key. So if you loose your powerup on the way (like I did) you have to do it again. Then of course finding the key was like the easiest thing ever (sarcastic).


The idea with the shell is nice, but it was somehow buggy for me, the keyhole only appeared after I went back a little:


Why is there an echo in this custom music?


Cutoff


The key is nice, given that it makes you go faster underwater, but I didn't know I actually needed to keep it in order to beat the level. What would have happed if I dropped it? Was there any way to still beat the level?


All in all, I think it's not that bad, that the hack got removed. There is still lots which can be improved.

+1
Anime statistic on MyAnimeList:
400 animes completed ✓
6000 episodes completed ✓
100 Days completed ✓
... what even am I doing with my life?
Originally posted by JackTheSpades
WRAAAAAA. Why are all the hacks removed AFTER I'm playing them :<

This hack was removed from the beginning. Also you can still give advice even after a hack is removed as it will be helpful to the creator.
I really like what you did with the title screen, I think it looks nice. The overworld actually isn't theat bad, but there's some cutoff with the path in the upper right hand corner.

I'm going to go ahead and say that the main problem with this hack is inconsistency. In one level, you have custom sprites, and in the next, you have the original sprites. In one level, you have turn blocks, and in the next level you have SMB3 bricks (which messed up by the way, one of them turned into a SMW question mark block when I hit it). Some of your levels work great and are fun to play, but some, like the layer two rise and fall level and the castle level have generally frustrating/glitchy gimmicks. Lots of weirdness happens in the layer 2 level, and the castle level is just strange.. If I get hit with a wall, why don't I get pushed down with it? Why can I survive that? These are things you should consider fixing. Some gimmicks I didn't really get, like the purple and blue coins and what not. Just make some new coin graphics or change the palette on the animation, it isn't hard. You can insert custom sprites and graphics, so you can do that too.

Minus some weirdness and cutoff, this wasn't a bad hack at all. Just change up some of that stuff and improve some of your earlier levels and I think this hack will be good to go.

Hadron-edit: +1
It's funny that the music breaking would come up considering that before I submitted this, the last thing I did was redownload every custom song and reinsert it using Addmusic 1.05. I tried AddmusicK but that only broke it further... more over, every song came off of this site and was moderated, so I don't think the songs are the problem. I've transferred everything to a new ROM, reinserted the songs a bunch of times, tweaked things and generally have been doing everything over and over again but I have never had any luck with Addmusic. I've spent the past couple years believing that music and sounds are the most fragile part of SMW that simply can't be worked around without just not dealing with it at all.

I've opted to wait for AddmusicK to come out of beta before attempting it again, since I read up on a lot of it's numerous bugs and encountered more problems with it then I did 1.05, but I cannot for the life of me get 1.05 to work.

I asked for beta testers before on these forums but no one offered, although I might not have been forward enough with it. I let my friends test it but obviously I can't trust them to pick my hack apart, so I thank anyone here for reporting issues.

I'm also utterly terrible at judging things visually. That's no surprise. I'll probably look for help on improving my hack's visuals. I've always known I was bad at making things look pretty but I've been pretty stubborn in being the only one to work on this.

All in all; thanks for the criticism, if not for any of this, I would never improve. My opinion alone doesn't make a good hack, but nothing's stopping me from learning from others. I'll get to work on what I see here.