Topic: Super Mario Maker - OT

Hey guys, here's part 3 of my "Who Took the Loot?" series. It's called "Who Took the Princess?" Hope you guys enjoy it. I'd love to know what you think!

PS: If you haven't already, go ahead and check out parts 1 and 2 - "Who Took the Loot?" and "Who Took the Plunder?"

@Maxoxpower: Super fun and very clever level. I didn't think about using the enemy combo as a transport and that's great.
I started playing your other levels. I just quit "a mole in the dark" because of one critical problem: on the car ride when you need to sneek between the circuler saw track, you can get attacked by the wrench mole on the other side, and it can completely ruin your timing and make you wait as much as three turns before you can get between the saws. If it is intentional, it's till obnoxious for no reason.

yes.. i saw that problem but it was not a big problem when i tested the level. Now, i see many X'S at this place all people die and rage-quit or leave in this part.
really,
i hate that upload thing where you need to remove and re-upload will change that in the future.
thanks for the feedback
but hopefully, the one who can past this part will see that this is the hardest part

The skinny mushroom is random by default - it has about a 1-in-30 chance of appearing, I believe. You can actually unlock it (so you could put it in deliberately) by beating the World Championship levels in 10-Mario Challenge - I don't know if that also causes the Super Mushroom to go to 100%, or if the skinny mushroom still comes up randomly.

I thought the skinny Mario was funny the first few times I hit it, but I agree that his extra jumping in that form changes how he moves, and it can really screw up levels that rely on his normal behavior.

@Freeon-Leon and @OorWullie: Watching my wife play through Family Retreat, I did see a couple spots that she struggled with - curious to know if you had the same issues:

First off, she'd forgotten that you could spin-jump on a Thwomp and survive, and that Yoshi could stand on it. That part of the level requires you to either ride the Thwomp up to make the jump, or to do a Yoshi Jump while the Thwomp is down, but it wasn't very obvious and took her several tries (and a hint from me) to figure out. I tried putting a trampoline to the right of the Thwomp, but I felt this would make it too obvious.

Also, she was a little confused at first about what to do with Yoshi after going down the pipe to the flying section. I had thought about making it possible to ride Yoshi across the long gap - since you can only float downward with Yoshi, I would have had to put a platform somewhere in the middle to allow you to cross the gap in two jumps. But I scrapped that idea because it felt too much like a "leap-of-faith". I don't want players to be confused here, so if you have a suggestion on how to make it easier to know you gotta ditch Yoshi there, that would be helpful.

I struggled a bit with the P-Switch puzzle in the third area - the main thing I wanted to do there was to have a Thwomp whacking you in the head as you climb back out of the pit on the left, but it can take you long enough to do that climb that the P-Switch is likely to wear off before you get to the gate on the right, hence why I put another P-Switch above a block at the gate. However, I can see how someone would then just do a high jump as soon as they see that block on the right, hit the switch and go straight through, bypassing the pit altogether. Any suggestions on that part?

Finally, what was your impression of the boss fight at the end? I tried to make it exciting and multi-strategy, and to give a sense that you had to first defeat a mini-boss before the final boss, with both the flames and a steady stream of enemies complicating matters. Obviously, you guys passed it - I can see one of you took a while on it, but does it seem like it played well?

@spizzamarozzi: Your DX version is very unforgiving, you could throw a mushroom once in a while. I liked the other version but I think it'd be better with a different order.

@sjmartin: Thanks for playing it... In advance.

I played some of your new levels and I liked the ideas they had. I usually like "traditional" levels more, but the ideas were really well implemented. The Konami Pipes were not that fun although the idea is good.

Yeah I hear you. Yes I tend to do stuff that is more on the hard side but it's far from being crazy. I personally don't like putting mushrooms in the "rooms" levels because they kinda ruin the tension and make the challenges worthless. You could easily go through all the traps I have set if you had a mushroom and know you're going to get one in the next room.

That said, the DX version (89DD-0000-00A4-A023) is a lot more based on knowing what to do than pure platforming. Surprisingly, there is a bit in one room that I thought was the hardest of the whole level, but nobody died there yet - people seem to do that very well. Most people seem to struggle at the next bit - the aforementioned donut blocks thing, which is easy peasy once you know what to do.

Thank you for trying them! I appreciate it! And thank you for the comment on miiverse!
Sooner or later, I'll get to designing a traditional level, but right now, my imagination has a lot of high concept ideas that I want to create first. I think those are also the ones I'm drawn to in this game by other creators as well.
Yeah, Konami Pipes is pretty straight forward if you know the code. It was an idea I came up with while driving that I wanted to see if I could make a reality. (A thing I found out: You can only create so many paths between main level and subworld before the game says no more. If I had been allowed more, each wrong pipe was going to put you into a room with either enemies or a platforming challenge.)

Thank you again!

does anybody know what DLC will be coming for SMM?

@Harvan: Actually those were some of the details I saw when I played it.

The first one could be solved by showing in some way that Yoshi can stand on some enemies without being hurt. However, I didn't see this as a big problem, maybe because I've played lots of Mario games.

The second one was a problem I had in the first time I played it. I thought I'd get to the other side if I kept riding Yoshi but it led me straight to the lava pit. I think you could place some enemies in your way down so you can jump on them and get to the other side with Yoshi. Or make some kind of little challenge where you have to let Yoshi behind. I also had a little problem with the red cannons because once you activate the P switch, you can't go back or else they'll respawn exactly where they were the first time and well... I got stuck there. Maybe a pipe could give the P switch.

The third is not a problem per se, but people most likely won't do what you wanted them to do. It's way easier to activate the P switch that's right behind the yellow blocks and keep going, maybe if you take that switch away and make the pit a little less deep then people would do that little puzzle without being super hard for them.

I thought some lives were too easy to find, I like it when the player has to go the extra mile so they get a reward after they took a risk. But, that's just my opinion.

The boss fight was enjoyable, maybe I' d separate Bowser Jr. and Bowser more so you can fight them in a more comfortable way but it's good as it is right now.

@sjmartin: Don't worry, it's amazing to find different kinds of levels. That's something that it's only possible in this game so we have to use it. As I said, your last 2 levels were really creative and enjoyable!

As for me... Well, I'm kinda creative, but in a different way. I'm an all-gameplay guy like Miyamoto (not that I'm as good as him xD)

@spizzamarozzi: I'll give it another go later, I had to stop playing so I couldn't play for much time.

@Freeon-Leon: I wonder if showing a coin trail bouncing off the Thwomp might reinforce that mechanic?

I'm thinking I might make the pit a required section by changing the layout so that you enter it from the bottom or midway up the wall, and you can't get to the gate without going through the pit. (And you can't get out of the pit without getting a shellmet first.) I could then keep the gate's P-Switch where it is and give the player multiple ways of grabbing it - either get up there in time to have it fall, or jump up and hit the block to release it. How does that sound?

I thought about an enemy jumping puzzle in the flying room too. The main reason I didn't do that was that I expected most people would think that was the main purpose of the room and totally ignore the flying mechanic. (My wife says the cape flying was her favorite thing in SMW, so she was happy I made a room for that.) There's no way I'm really aware of short of an extremely high jump (which I could still do at the Thwomp puzzle) to force someone to ditch Yoshi, so that's a challenge...

Glad you enjoyed the boss fight. I needed to keep it fairly tight both because you need to have ready access to the power-ups and the buzzy beetles while still being in range to hit Bowser, and because I ran out of object space.

Managed to pull myself away from animal crossing happy home designer to make a level. This is my first attempt at an animal crossing level. Here is the code FC12-0000-00A1-68B7. Hope people enjoy it.

@Freeon-Leon: And I think that's awesome! I'm so super impressed by people that can create a level that feels like it would fit with a Mario Platformer. That takes serious skill and a lot of creativity. Like your Paratroopa Trouble level, that was wonderful! My hat's off to your core gameplay creation abilities. You are one of the designers here that make traditional levels that I'm taking notes on how you do things with paths and flow for when I try my hand at a traditional level design.

Just finished my new level and it's unlike anything else I've made so far.It's a pure puzzle level with no enemies and nowhere really to die,well there is one place actually but if you die there it will be entirely your own fault haha,you'll see.It will definitely confuse and have you wondering where on earth you are but stick with it and you should be able to figure it out.I'm really curious to see what the completion rate will be for this.

Nothing's been announced yet, AFAIK, but the top requests I've been seeing are: SMW-style checkpoints for all games, and additional level styles (eg. the "Athletics" styles in SMB3 and SMW, the desert style in SMB3 and NSMBU, etc.).

I figure they could easily add a single new style to each of the game types that would cover everything:

SMB1 = Overworld nighttime
SMB3 = Athletics theme
SMW = Athletics theme
NSMBU = Desert theme

Starz: I'll try this out tonight if I have time. I recommend that you use the level sharing tool on this site - go to the main Nintendolife.com page and click the yellow Super Mario Maker Levels box. You can fill out a form to put your level in the database, including a link to the Miiverse post so the site can put your screenshot in the entry. Then just copy the URL for your level entry (on this site) and paste it into a forum post here, and we'll see the banner. Makes it much more convenient for us to see what the level's about and give you feedback.

Can you describe the "Athletics" theme? I've played both of those games to death, but I'm not sure what you mean by that theme.

One more theme I'd want is a Winter/Snow theme.

Got a few ideas for fixing this problem:

(1) I could put another cannon behind the P-switch spot, stacked on a muncher or something, so that when you hit the P-switch, your way back is now blocked. That would prevent you from resetting the cannons at the exit.

(2) I could use the same giant-Thwomp-breaks-bricks solution as in the start, and move them all over one unit so I can put a safety block on the other side. Once the Thwomp and the cannons sink into the lava, you could jump over the gap to get to the pipe.

(3) Your idea of giving the player a constant supply of P-switches is a good one too, but I wonder if that would be too easy or repetitive, given that I do similar things elsewhere in the level. (On the other hand, it could make for a solid sub-theme.)

Whatcha think?

I know not many players are good at hard puzzle levels but I thought I post this one here since most that play it really seem to like it