My comment is clearly aimed at Ninetales, not you. It is unethical to change someone's levels in a major way and then release that level behind the person's back. This is a basic principle of common decency.
Zacmario, the only problem you seem to have is not with ethics. That's a problem with Ninetales. Yours is a matter of not knowing what to do with a collab hack. The pressure has been overwhelming and you took Ninetales' advice.
I saw the submission before it was rejected. It's gone now, so I can't link it, but the team wasn't credited at all and the only thing that even mentioned multiple authors was the tag "collaboration". I think you did link the thread in the submission, but a simple readme.txt of level credits would have been enough with the submission. I don't think that was on purpose though. It was, as others said, rushed.
I hope this has been a learning experience for you, Zacmario, and at least, I don't think badly of you.
Yes, I made some huge mistakes. But I don't think its Ninetales fault. They didn't want the hack to go stale. I didn't either. I have learned alot from this.
I had lost the credit list, and planned on adding it the next night. Which do, before I decided the hack should be removed.(which) it would have been anyway.
I'm unsure if I'll hang around here. I need to distance myself, it's effecting my personal life.
idol Administrator, PR Manager, and SMW Hack Manager
i wouldn't say its unethical to fix up / change peoples levels, especially if they submitted them & fucked off. that being said, you really need to know what you're doing in that case. gutting levels isnt fixing and completely misses the mark. you really need to have a good grasp on level design ethos and what authors are intending with their visions in order to fix their stuff up while still remaining true to what they created.
as i said in the hack thread, i'm not sure why you rushed this out so quick. you have credits, but didnt even include them in a .txt with the file. i dont think its shiny ninetales fault either for suggesting you take charge, but i think it's become clear that you don't really have the skill needed to properly take charge in this.
yeah, the levels that broke rules should've been dealt with right away. i'm not sure why the authors was removed in the submission so it was just you, as you said, but you definitely want to include more than, well, you. best thing is to probably go with "SMW Central", a la smwcp, because "DLC Team" is not an actual real team that exists. i mean, who would even consist of that team? i made two levels for this and i'm certainly not part of the team.
good luck with whoever takes this over to put out something playable.
I had no idea that smwcp was used for this purpose. I admit I have no business editing people's levels. But I felt frustrated and didn't know how to deal with it. It also didn't help my computer was broke for sometime.I was afraid if this sat to long it would be unfinished. I wanted to finish it for the people who wanted to play it and the people who made their levels within the rules or atleast read and fixed their levels.
Either way, I made a lot of mistakes, it certainly isn't ninetails fault,I don't want the responsibility of this hack anymore and have removed myself from it.
I don't necessarily agree with the idea that it's unethical to fix/remove bad levels without consulting the authors of those levels is because that there is no stated guidelines in the OP that warrants zacmario to contact those people who participated by submitting the levels. The minimal rules this collaboration project has is that the levels must share the same default level header settings in the original SMW game, but it doesn't regulate the quality of submissions people do with these default settings. It is an invitation to chaos which is how the collaboration turned out at this very point in time with people making whatever they want with very little restrictions and no restrictions for zacmario to just do whatever since he made the rules for what this collaboration is operating on. And for those reasons, it is a major blind spot in how the collaboration is handled if the intention is to be having a hack that looks to be SMW but with levels remixing ideas from the orignal, which Id like to assume is why the rule for having level settings to be unchanged existing in the first place.
Even if one is going to be compiling levels in the original state, the product is still going to be bad because the rules for ensuring quality assurance should have been explicitly stated from onset of this collaboration that is beyond levels having to share the same default header settings in SMW, which zacmario should have exercised his discretion on bad levels, on top of knowing what he doing when applying QA. The only way I see this collab remotely turning out good is doing a 1.5 version that is designed to address the flaws of this one. Leave the sequel be its own thing with completely new levels throughout.
There is an expectation for leaders of collaboration projects should go the extra mile to demand for quality standards for anyone involved in a project, being that they are normative standards people expect out of projects, so there really doesn't need to be explicitly stated rules for levels having to be good but clearly, you have people who don't and its why these rules need to be stated.
-------------------- On Pixel Art Requests: I generally do not accept work unless I either have the time, if I see your project worth my time to contribute towards, and that is usually me doing the approaching to you on that.
-I also do not accept speculative work as I do have various art I made on-hand with me.
-I am more receptive to equivalent exchange of resources in which case, you can DM me wherever I have an active presence on for the details.
-Other times I'm availible for your project is C3 request threads I may run.
I don't get why you guys are saying I was pressing zacmario to rush this, I never did (it seems that you, zacmario, didn't interpret my words as that, but if you did, my intention wasn't). I understand what it feels to a big scale collab (because even if DLC is a "simple collab", it's still a big scale collab) went down just for fucked up things that never should happen, leading become a mess, you lost inspiration, etc... Zacmario recognized he made mistakes and he apologizes and I have no reason to incriminate him or something because he's an human, the same for people that vomited their levels here and fucked up. But there was rules and a concept for this collab, and rules are made to follow them. As idol said, it isn't unethical to fix/change peoples levels as long the changes doesn't affect the gameplay of the level, or whatever the author wanted to do in their level (clearly the Daizo's level edit doesn't fit here becuase it was a "nerf" more than a "fix"). Different is the case of levels whose authors only threw them here and fucked up. For references, you may look at RussianMan's posts in this thread and C3's thread, he did a lot of effort testing the levels and several of them has technical issues that anybody can fix without affecting the level itself as: cutoff, glitched tiles, sprite memory issues, unbeatable levels, broken entrances, etc... (he did gamplay critic too, but in those cases I think it's better to follow Daizo's advice, keeping the level intact in their gameplay)
And zagesaw, my apologies, I thought you were the one who made the changes to Daizo's level, sorry for the missunderstanding. Also, I never convinced zacmario to just rush the hack or something. I've liked this project so much to make it be rushed.
So from what zacmario PM'ed me about, he says that the levels that were sent in PM are in the hack... so I literally have to hunt all the levels down to get started. He never told me which private message'd levels were inserted into the game, in fact I don't know if those levels were altered or not (probably are judging by how a lot of levels were gutted).
That, and he left after he sent the PM, so I can't even ask what levels are not altered. Thanks a lot. Guess I'll get started with the not PMed levels.
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omg guys, I messed up. It's no ones fault but my own. This hack can still be saved, everyone's original work is still here in the thread...Let's just move on and restart. striker hit the nail on head I should have made the rules much more specific.
If there is ever a next time, I will make clear that if people don't keep up on threads, or even so much as fix dragon coin I will terminate their level. After this there no way in hell I'll touch another's level. If the project goes stale so be it.
And daizo I will be around , even though I said I wouldn't be. Was just discouraged and blowing off steam. I'm almost certain the few levels pm'ed to me were unchanged. I can dig through and find them if there is any issues. 2 out of 4 were brown band members and the 3rd was Mathos who fixed his own level. And the 4th was yours.
The rest are in this thread.
Thankfully, I was denied that collab forum I asked for 6 months ago, so it's 34 pages or so :/
So after pretty much a full day of extracting levels out of BPS files (I swear, I made 18 temp roms just doing that annoying process) and feeling relieved to those who did submit mwl files, I have restored every level I was able to obtain in this thread. There are a few problems that I have come across:
1) Both Valley Ghost House and Valley of Bowser 2 are missing still. I gave Valley Ghost House to EvilGuy0613 to finish up, and I'm opening up Valley of Bowser 2 for anyone to pick up.
2) Valley of Bowser 4 was passed from the radar as a half-Kaizo level that requires Yoshi Lava Hoping to clear the second half of the level, which I have spoken to GlitchMr for him to make it doable.
3) I have heard that there are a lot of missing message boxes, which also seems to be a big issue. If one of the members can let me know which levels have missing messages and not just using the default messages, I will either try to contact the creators to see if they had a custom message, or if that doesn't work I will play the level and write a message that will fit.
There are also a few changes I will be making:
1) This version of the collab is going to be called SMW DLCR (Super Mario World Downloadable Content Restored [or SMW DLC Restored]) since I am restoring levels to their original state.
2) I have edited SMW's Credits to show all the levels and the creators of said levels (Yes, it actually fits surprisingly). I have been seeing from the past posts that we were going to use the Bottom Text OW Patch for the author names, and another post where zacmario was going to ask someone to code a custom credits sequence. I think what I got going is good enough for now.
3) I am thinking of hiding one secret level in the special world, which will be Level 139. If people are up for the idea, then I'll make it claimable to anybody.
4) If you guys agree to the Secret Level idea, I want people to discuss the name (it has to be a Surfer Term). I'm considering either HAIRY (as in "Whoa that was hairy, dude.") or SPECTACULAR to be the name.
What I will NOT be fixing:
-Graphical bugs (like wrong-sprite tile note blocks)
-Removal of bad levels
I will say that I'm not here to necessarily save the collaboration, I'm simply restoring what was originally there and fixing the things that are absolutely needed (like missing levels and selflocks within' levels). As I've said before, this hack is a being created as a reminder, not as a good hack. It's a canvas of good and bad ideas, and while I'm considering adding one more level as a nice treat, it's just another idea that may fly or crash and burn. However this collaboration turns out after I'm through with it, in the end this collab will finally be put to rest.
To zacmario: If you can, PM me all the MWL files of the PM'd levels. Also change this thread's title to "SMW DLCR: A Basic Collaboration >> New Leader + IMPORTANT NEWS"
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Thank you Dazio, I'm sorry you had to dig this out of a hole. But I'm real glad you are. I'll go through pm's and forward them to you.
Ok sent, I didn't check every single message. Just the more obvious ones. So if something seems strange let me the users name and I'll check more throughly.
Thank you for the submission. I'll test it later myself, though I noticed some of the JUMP members were able to beat it without much frustration so at least it's doable.
Originally posted by RZ1
So are we using my level 105 or the old one?
It was agreed on by me and the old author of 105 for mine to be used.
EDIT: nvm, just checked the spreadsheet. I can do a playtest when everything is together!
Yeah while I was browsing the levels I noticed your level wasn't replaced yet so I went ahead and did it along with Heraga's VoB1 stage. And it's great to hear you'll test it too, considering there are a few snags in there still.
Originally posted by zacmario
Thank you Dazio, I'm sorry you had to dig this out of a hole. But I'm real glad you are. I'll go through pm's and forward them to you.
Ok sent, I didn't check every single message. Just the more obvious ones. So if something seems strange let me the users name and I'll check more throughly.
I'll go ahead and check them out now. Thanks zac.
So it seems like no one is rejecting the idea of the secret level (HAIRY). Alright, well I did add it to the Spreadsheet, and I'll PM AbuseFreakHacker to add a secret exit to his stage. I've also made YOSHI'S HOUSE claimable for those who want to do something neato with it, and there still is no claims made for VALLEY OF BOWSER 2. I PMed Heraga about VoB2 to see if he still has it, but if he doesn't respond before anyone makes claims to the level, he loses it.
Also for now on, once you claim a level, you only have two weeks to finish it. If you provide a screenshot within' the weeks, I could extend your deadline, but I want to see actual progress. Failure to follow this rule will lock you out of the level and be claimable to everyone else unless you finish it before someone claims your level.
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Don't add a secret level. It's not necessary, and it would be better to keep the exit count the same, since the hack's point is just to replace all existing levels.
Yeahhh the point kinda gets ruined if we add a secret level. Maybe if there's a remake or something we could do it (much like TSRPR) but right now we shouldn't go too far off track. I'm not exactly against it though, you could do it.
Seems like 2 people say no, 3 say yes so I'll go ahead and run it. If it isn't completed/claimed in time for major testing, we won't worry about it. What time would that be? As soon as the missing levels have been completed (which is both Valley of Bowser 2 and Valley Ghost House).
So for HAIRY (or whatever name we decide to go with), you are allowed to make it any SMW theme you wish. However, I recommend (but not requiring) using a theme that hasn't been used or used rarely (for example: Castles, Switch Palace, Haunted Grassland, Ghost House, "Right to Left Level", etc.) After all, the special world is all about using unique ideas that can't be found anywhere else in the game. You will be given Level 139 with Sublevels 25 and 26, with the time set to 400.Don't make the level long, but go for what kind of level you think you'd find if SMW had a 9th Level in the special world. You are not required to use Sublevels 25 and 26 if you feel it's not needed. But the most importantly: focus on making the level fun. Don't make it overstay it's welcome, but don't make it as easy as Yoshi's Island 2 either (after all, this is the final level). No Map16, custom palettes, custom ASM, custom music, or custom graphics are allowed, and neither is using the Super GFX Bypass. You want to make the level worth getting through SMW DLC's Special World, after all.
In other news, it turns out there was a mistake with Heraga claiming Valley of Bowser 2, which he never made or claimed such level. So it is 100% claimable to anybody. Claim it while supplies last!
Note to mods: Replace the title to "SMW DLCR: A Basic Collaboration >> Secret Level & Valley of Bowser 2 NOW CLAIMABLE!"
-------------------- Want progress on 100 Rooms of Enemies: The Nightmare Edition? Go here to see.
Are you a sample porter and wanna help with 100 Rooms of Enemies: The Nightmare Edition? Private Message me or Mellonpizza for details. Expect trading "resources" in exchange. 4 more left.
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