will be streaming in a couple of minutes at www.twitch.tv/naar82
Won't be streaming for long today though. See you guys online!
Won't be streaming for long today though. See you guys online!
i wasn't planning on doing any link business, but I've thought of something that warrants picking up the master sword, based on a true test of courage...
I dug the second half a lot, it's pretty much where my mind immediately went after seeing the iced coins addition.
Conceptually very cool. I enjoyed this one a lot. I think I liked the first section more than the second but both were great.
Nice course! At the fire flower part I was too afraid of melting the platform below me at first haha.
Thanks for the feedback guys!Once of the nicest things about seeing people come back to the game is that I'm catching up on profiles that I originally missed in their entirety, for whatever reason, and yours was one of them. (It might have been because half your levels were from the period when I was buried up to my neck in Fire Emblem instead.) Your latest was very good and enticed me to play through your entire set from start to finish. You're one of several makers here who has really figured out how to make an easy level with generous head room and safety nets still feel like a densely packed experience that is interesting from moment to moment, and not always in the same way: sometimes with the aesthetic, sometimes with the overall flow, sometimes with the core interaction even if most of these are pretty traditional.
There is one specific thing that strikes me as well tested about these levels, particularly those with a vertical section, and it's that the decoration always makes it clear when it's safe to go down, even when I can't see a platform. (I complain about that endlessly with novice makers who don't pay attention to the camera.) Likewise, the 1-up placements and power-up progression are all very intuitive, and there's a satisfying reliability to popping invisible blocks or question blocks and having the level respond as I predicted every time.
As for the latest level, I hinted at this already in a comment card, but for me what works about it is that it's actually a variant of a moving-platform concept where there is a clear "head" ahead of you and a "tail" behind you that forms a safe zone, only here the head and tail move in independent (but highly visible) patterns. So this rewards the player for reading the situation and planning ahead like they would with a snake-block level, and you provide just enough of a lead time to read everything while keeping a bit of tension going on in the back. I liked the Fire Flower section, too, as you have to hit the button judiciously and not just spam fireballs to the point of destroying your own route.
Walk The Dog
9HJ-14W-LFF
Here's a level using the fact that spike balls follow you around at night in the ground theme. Guide your trusty dog Spike through each section so he can deal with the muncher and clear the way. Don't worry, he doesn't die, he goes to live on a farm! I feel like I might have over complicated some sections just for the sake of doing something with the mechanic, so please let me know if anything is too fiddly.
Walk The Dog
9HJ-14W-LFF
Here's a level using the fact that spike balls follow you around at night in the ground theme. Guide your trusty dog Spike through each section so he can deal with the muncher and clear the way. Don't worry, he doesn't die, he goes to live on a farm! I feel like I might have over complicated some sections just for the sake of doing something with the mechanic, so please let me know if anything is too fiddly.
Just finished up my first 2.0 level. It's a Zelda dungeon with spike balls, seesaws, and darkness to deal with. I had to delete the level and clear check it again because of a misplaced semisolid and then as soon as I uploaded it I noticed another one... Luckily it's in the dark part of the level so hopefully no one will notice it.
The Dark Dungeon of Damocles
M0S-2N0-C2H
Delve into the Dingy Depths and Defeat the Dangerous Demons within!
Interesting having two totally separate levels in one. I was surprised how much I liked the note block and spiny section, it was the kind of thing that looked like it should be hot garbage but it played surprisingly well, which I think shows how a good maker can make even a hellish set of obstacles fun to tackle.
Had to make a Link level while it's the cool thing to do.
Ended up having a bit of everything; I wanted to experiment a bit with all the different stuff Link can do. Hopefully not too hard. The checkpoints should make it easy to accumulate the red coins. Even if you do the safety coin first, I don't think keydeath is possible, except on the super basic platforming at the very end. If you die there. then I am truly sorry.
I played it but didn't beat it. I think the structure you were going for was a little too complex/wasn't clear enough to the player. After beating the bowser jr fight and entering the subworld I went right on through the next pipe, not activating the checkpoint, only to find that I had been sent back to the first checkpoint and the only way to go back was by doing the entire bowser jr section again. That really sucked. I did it because I was interested in making it to the bowser fight since it looks somewhat similar to what I had in my last level. I made it there by breaking the blocks under the checkpoint, which felt unintended. I think the first section was more hectic than it needed to be with the bullet bills, fire bars, and spikes; not too hard but just distractedly busy and the second phase felt like I did it in an unintended way by just slashing Bowser a couple times with my sword and then taking my time to make the muncher and bill launchers fall.A Link into Lordran
Course ID: PCW-75S-LSF
Three monsters. One above. One below. One hidden where no one knows.
This is my first Link level and is intended to feel like a complete experience. I took inspiration for the level design from Dark Souls, so there's a lot of exploration and you should expect to find yourself folding back in on familiar places. There are four pink coins, three you earn from bosses and a safety coin. Admittedly, the course is on the longer side, but there is a recyclable checkpoint meant to help with the length and difficulty.
There is an intended route for finding the bosses, but they can be beaten in any order. One of them is even a multi-phase boss fight. The idea was to create a course that felt like a complete experience for the player.
As of now, the completion percentage is around 15%.
Walk The Dog
9HJ-14W-LFF
Here's a level using the fact that spike balls follow you around at night in the ground theme. Guide your trusty dog Spike through each section so he can deal with the muncher and clear the way. Don't worry, he doesn't die, he goes to live on a farm! I feel like I might have over complicated some sections just for the sake of doing something with the mechanic, so please let me know if anything is too fiddly.
My only complaint here is that there was a little too much waiting in the room with the platforms on tracks for my taste.
Dyle if you stand on the block in front of the spring and wait for the ball to almost reach you before jumping up, it should bounce up. Probably for the best you for stuck there though, it only gets worse haha.
Unfortunately I think this level is just not very good, I made a post about it on reddit that got over 1000 upvotes but it's still my worst performing level by some margin. When it hit the chart it got 70 plays and 5 likes, and sunk like a stone.
One of the best levels I've played, although I haven't played the game that much. CongratsThe update got me to jump back on the horse again. Conceptualized this one before the update came out but it took a lot of finnicking and tweaking to make it work.
Pipeline Meltdown
W69-22M-FXF
Follow the path the Lava Bubbles carve through the frozen coins!
(I of course just now noticed that I miss typed 'path' as 'pat' in my official description when I uploaded it, doh)
Basically the whole concept is that one lava bubble carves a path for you while another is in hot pursuit behind you, erasing it. And then there's a fun mad dash at the end. I thought it might make for a wacky multiplayer level so I tagged it as such, I dunno.
I think I'm going to do something with decidedly fewer tracks next time.
Yeah, I think I'd take out the whole floating ball/claw section if I did it again, I've watched a couple of streamers play it and that bit is always much harder than I intended it to be. At this point I think I'll just leave it and move onto something else though.I'm surprised it dropped that hard, but that's often the fate of harder levels and I had pretty much the same thing happen to my Link's Desert Descent level but I kind of expected that to happen. Personally I thought your level was pretty good. If you want to make it more accessible to the popular tab crowd I'd probably shorten it up a bit so there's less to repeat between checkpoints. I didn't have the same issue Dyle did but I did find the swinging claw bit to be a little awkward, so those might be the areas to look at losing or refining. I don't know if the the gimmick is going to be clear enough with just what you have at the first screen so if you could figure out a short tutorial where all elements are on one screen that could help. Also I'm not sure what's going on with the hammer bro setups off screen (I assume on/off resetting). but I think it'd be frustrating if I got beaned with a random hammer so maybe look for a different way to accomplish whatever's going on up there.
This is my favourite link stage I've played yet, one part because in general the descending autoscroller is just incredibly well done, but also for how it ties using Link's abilities in with an element of pressure and also having more of a looming spectre of death since by design it feels more acceptable to not be throwing too many powerup master swords in.
Link's Desert Descent
Course ID: 3N2-NJR-6LG
Difficulty: Expert
I don't think I've ever seen anyone combine downward autoscroll with the night desert theme's wind effect. There's probably a reason for that, but I wanted to do something with Link that wasn't just the same thing everyone else is making. It was kind of an interesting experience.
Walk The Dog
9HJ-14W-LFF
Here's a level using the fact that spike balls follow you around at night in the ground theme. Guide your trusty dog Spike through each section so he can deal with the muncher and clear the way. Don't worry, he doesn't die, he goes to live on a farm! I feel like I might have over complicated some sections just for the sake of doing something with the mechanic, so please let me know if anything is too fiddly.
17 minutes well spent, the dark souls of mario maker.A Link into Lordran
Course ID: PCW-75S-LSF
Three monsters. One above. One below. One hidden where no one knows.
This is my first Link level and is intended to feel like a complete experience. I took inspiration for the level design from Dark Souls, so there's a lot of exploration and you should expect to find yourself folding back in on familiar places. There are four pink coins, three you earn from bosses and a safety coin. Admittedly, the course is on the longer side, but there is a recyclable checkpoint meant to help with the length and difficulty.
There is an intended route for finding the bosses, but they can be beaten in any order. One of them is even a multi-phase boss fight. The idea was to create a course that felt like a complete experience for the player.
As of now, the completion percentage is around 15%.
Dyle if you stand on the block in front of the spring and wait for the ball to almost reach you before jumping up, it should bounce up. Probably for the best you for stuck there though, it only gets worse haha.
Unfortunately I think this level is just not very good, I made a post about it on reddit that got over 1000 upvotes but it's still my worst performing level by some margin. When it hit the chart it got 70 plays and 5 likes, and sunk like a stone.
Thanks. I think the issue is it's just very 'general player' unfriendly, if you don't already know how the level works in advance it's just not that obvious.It is a good level but it was destined to have lower likes and completion due to the more demanding nature. I wouldn't let the performance discourage you in terms of the levels quality. I don't think it's very hard, took me 2 attempts.
Very cool, loved the pay off of falling all the way down the tower and seeing everything you just completed pass by.Well this one took too long to make.
Spike's Timber Tower
WGM-5SD-V0H
"Climb to the top to bring it all down."
Highly inspired by a couple of Matilder's levels. Wanted to make use of Spikes and Spike Balls, so this is my end result.
I made an exploratory Link level, maybe somewhat metroidvania-ish, nothing too fancy:
Neat idea, I had not seen anyone else taking advantage of that interaction between spikes and banzai bills yet. Your level is hectic, in part because of the banzai bills making such a mess when they die and covering so much of the screen and in part because of the erratic placement of some of the donuts and firebars. I think that was actually a good decision though, as it makes a nice counterpoint to so many common autoscrollers that are so slow and predictable. A very fun first levelI made my first course, Spikes Vs Banzai Bills :
Hg6-7yg-3wf
It's an auto scroll level based around spikes clearing a path through the level for Mario.
Tbh I got a bit over ambitious wanting multiple paths and a win condition so it's a bit messy.
Walk The Dog
9HJ-14W-LFF
Here's a level using the fact that spike balls follow you around at night in the ground theme. Guide your trusty dog Spike through each section so he can deal with the muncher and clear the way. Don't worry, he doesn't die, he goes to live on a farm! I feel like I might have over complicated some sections just for the sake of doing something with the mechanic, so please let me know if anything is too fiddly.
Brilliant work. Greatly enjoyed the way up and down.Well this one took too long to make.
Spike's Timber Tower
WGM-5SD-V0H
"Climb to the top to bring it all down."
Highly inspired by a couple of Matilder's levels. Wanted to make use of Spikes and Spike Balls, so this is my end result.
Awesome course as well. Cool touch having the fire flower at the end and with that the power to destroy those ice blocks yourself.The update got me to jump back on the horse again. Conceptualized this one before the update came out but it took a lot of finnicking and tweaking to make it work.
Pipeline Meltdown
W69-22M-FXF
Follow the path the Lava Bubbles carve through the frozen coins!
(I of course just now noticed that I miss typed 'path' as 'pat' in my official description when I uploaded it, doh)
Basically the whole concept is that one lava bubble carves a path for you while another is in hot pursuit behind you, erasing it. And then there's a fun mad dash at the end. I thought it might make for a wacky multiplayer level so I tagged it as such, I dunno.
I think I'm going to do something with decidedly fewer tracks next time.
Walk The Dog
9HJ-14W-LFF
Here's a level using the fact that spike balls follow you around at night in the ground theme. Guide your trusty dog Spike through each section so he can deal with the muncher and clear the way. Don't worry, he doesn't die, he goes to live on a farm! I feel like I might have over complicated some sections just for the sake of doing something with the mechanic, so please let me know if anything is too fiddly.
Finished a new level using dash panels and some of their uniquely challenging physics. It's shorter than most of my levels and I couldn't do much about the aesthetics since it's 3D World, but I tried my best. The big trick here, which unfortunately I couldn't find a good way to teach to the player, is that you can cancel your forward momentum after jumping on a dash panel by turning around, which becomes essential in the second half of the level.
A Spree of Spry Sprint Spinning!
KWV-GT3-X4G
Spring from the Speedy Steps over the Sharp Spikes and Soar to the Summit!
A Link into Lordran
Course ID: PCW-75S-LSF
Three monsters. One above. One below. One hidden where no one knows.
This is my first Link level and is intended to feel like a complete experience. I took inspiration for the level design from Dark Souls, so there's a lot of exploration and you should expect to find yourself folding back in on familiar places. There are four pink coins, three you earn from bosses and a safety coin. Admittedly, the course is on the longer side, but there is a recyclable checkpoint meant to help with the length and difficulty.
There is an intended route for finding the bosses, but they can be beaten in any order. One of them is even a multi-phase boss fight. The idea was to create a course that felt like a complete experience for the player.
As of now, the completion percentage is around 15%.
I made my first course, Spikes Vs Banzai Bills :
Hg6-7yg-3wf
It's an auto scroll level based around spikes clearing a path through the level for Mario.
Tbh I got a bit over ambitious wanting multiple paths and a win condition so it's a bit messy.
Well this one took too long to make.
Spike's Timber Tower
WGM-5SD-V0H
"Climb to the top to bring it all down."
Highly inspired by a couple of Matilder's levels. Wanted to make use of Spikes and Spike Balls, so this is my end result.
Trying to get back to the game (kinda). So I made a course containing spike balls and bill blasters shooting them. No other enemy or obstacle. Pretty happy with the result. There are also several bonus coins worth different amount of coins (depending of the difficulty reaching them). Can you find all 9 of them?
The last section after the second checkpoint has some nasty high velocity spike balls, who could surprise you. Be aware! Power-ups are sparse and they are not for free. Nor are there any ?-blocks containing them. The clear rate will probably be somewhere between 5 - 10 %, which makes this one of my hardest courses (no problem for Mario veterans tho).
A Link into Lordran
Course ID: PCW-75S-LSF
Three monsters. One above. One below. One hidden where no one knows.
This is my first Link level and is intended to feel like a complete experience. I took inspiration for the level design from Dark Souls, so there's a lot of exploration and you should expect to find yourself folding back in on familiar places. There are four pink coins, three you earn from bosses and a safety coin. Admittedly, the course is on the longer side, but there is a recyclable checkpoint meant to help with the length and difficulty.
There is an intended route for finding the bosses, but they can be beaten in any order. One of them is even a multi-phase boss fight. The idea was to create a course that felt like a complete experience for the player.
As of now, the completion percentage is around 15%.
Really cool, your levels always have a very unique feel to them and this one is no exception. I'm surprised there haven't been more levels using the meltable ice blocks yet. I like how you switch it up in the second half and suddenly you're the one melting the blocks.The update got me to jump back on the horse again. Conceptualized this one before the update came out but it took a lot of finnicking and tweaking to make it work.
Pipeline Meltdown
W69-22M-FXF
Follow the path the Lava Bubbles carve through the frozen coins!
(I of course just now noticed that I miss typed 'path' as 'pat' in my official description when I uploaded it, doh)
Basically the whole concept is that one lava bubble carves a path for you while another is in hot pursuit behind you, erasing it. And then there's a fun mad dash at the end. I thought it might make for a wacky multiplayer level so I tagged it as such, I dunno.
I think I'm going to do something with decidedly fewer tracks next time.
This is seriously impressive, the scale of it and how it all fits together. I don't know how you managed to make so open ended and yet have everything work in terms of routes opening up and events triggering. The generous difficulty level is a very good idea too, I was able to finish it on my first go, which is always a welcome thing with large levels.A Link into Lordran
Course ID: PCW-75S-LSF
Three monsters. One above. One below. One hidden where no one knows.
This is my first Link level and is intended to feel like a complete experience. I took inspiration for the level design from Dark Souls, so there's a lot of exploration and you should expect to find yourself folding back in on familiar places. There are four pink coins, three you earn from bosses and a safety coin. Admittedly, the course is on the longer side, but there is a recyclable checkpoint meant to help with the length and difficulty.
There is an intended route for finding the bosses, but they can be beaten in any order. One of them is even a multi-phase boss fight. The idea was to create a course that felt like a complete experience for the player.
As of now, the completion percentage is around 15%.
Trying to get back to the game (kinda). So I made a course containing spike balls and bill blasters shooting them. No other enemy or obstacle. Pretty happy with the result. There are also several bonus coins worth different amount of coins (depending of the difficulty reaching them). Can you find all 9 of them?
The last section after the second checkpoint has some nasty high velocity spike balls, who could surprise you. Be aware! Power-ups are sparse and they are not for free. Nor are there any ?-blocks containing them. The clear rate will probably be somewhere between 5 - 10 %, which makes this one of my hardest courses (no problem for Mario veterans tho).
I think I build my levels backwards compared to most people. I always develop the aesthetic look early on and than build the obstacles around that aesthetic. That's totally the wrong way to do it, but for some reason that's what feels best for me. In the main world I only provided a floor for the first jump because of how short it is, it took up so much space with all the dash pads that the first half only made for 8 jumps, so I figured it would be ok to ramp things up given how short it was. In the subworld I built the level first with the semi-solids on the sides and started to flesh out the jumps and whatnot from there, which meant that arrows weren't an option.Played this, I like the idea but apart from a way to teach the mechanic I think that the level needs some better indicators for upcoming jumps. I also think some of the jumps just need to be streamlined and a bit easier to make. The portion after the first checkpoint gets brutal. I'm not sure what difficulty you are going for but it is a lil too much for me personally.
You get past a bunch of hard sections then mess up in the middle and fall all the way to the bottom and have to redo the whole thing again. Some of this is fixable with a simple semi solid placed at strategic points so players don't have to redo so much after ever mistake. I also think that you made the beginning too punishing by having insta death for missed jumps. I don't think it hurt the level at all to put a floor in those opening jumps and let the player retry them.
Again I'm not sure what difficulty you're going for here so maybe this is how you intended it but after trying multiple times over 2 plays today I found it too frustrating to keep at. It's a level that I think skilled players can beat eventually but I don't think average players will have tolerance for this as is. I would submit it to streamers and see what they have to say. Also, it was very nicely decorated so good job there.
As a side note, I definitely used your crane design from a level you published way back for the nest level I'm working on. It was so good and fit the theme of what I wanted so well. You have a really good eye for visual design.
I'm glad you found a way to use that crane in a much better level than that dumpster fire I made. A very pleasant level to play through.Been a minute but I'm back with another original level. This one took me ages to complete. SMB3 day time forest theme. I took some inspiration from a lot of different levels crafting this one and I'm really happy with the visuals here. In addition I made it very speedrun friendly and even had some Sonic inspiration for route optimization. I went with the theme of an oil rig city. It's pretty traditional and it's not too difficult though I've been a poor judge of lately. Hope yall will play it and give feedback. I present:
Course Name: Pipeworks Oil Rig
Course ID: B7X-TVN-KGF
Trying to get back to the game (kinda). So I made a course containing spike balls and bill blasters shooting them. No other enemy or obstacle. Pretty happy with the result. There are also several bonus coins worth different amount of coins (depending of the difficulty reaching them). Can you find all 9 of them?
The last section after the second checkpoint has some nasty high velocity spike balls, who could surprise you. Be aware! Power-ups are sparse and they are not for free. Nor are there any ?-blocks containing them. The clear rate will probably be somewhere between 5 - 10 %, which makes this one of my hardest courses (no problem for Mario veterans tho).
I think I build my levels backwards compared to most people. I always develop the aesthetic look early on and than build the obstacles around that aesthetic. That's totally the wrong way to do it, but for some reason that's what feels best for me.
Looking at the clear rate, I definitely should have added coin trails, since arrows don't work on semisolids (please fix that Nintendo) though I wasn't even thinking about it while I was building it, since I thought it was pretty reasonable in terms of difficulty. I guess I will always greatly underestimate my levels' difficulty; I know that I do it but I still consistently underestimate them every time.
I'm glad you found a way to use that crane in a much better level than that dumpster fire I made. A very pleasant level to play through.
Nice to have you back. I saw this come up on my feed just as I checked in on the game today, and while your levels are generally popular enough that I don't ever expect a speed record to hold up for long, at least I don't have to compete with you directly. I tanked your clear rate a bit as I spent many attempts trying to clear this level in a single segment without checkpoints. As you no doubt noticed during your clear checks, due to some of the destruction on the first pass, the level is subtly different depending on whether you're starting from the beginning or from a checkpoint. I'm sure this happens in some of your other levels too, given your usual structure, but it's more noticeable in this level because it affects where certain spike balls stop rolling, or which scroll stop barriers stay up. In some places, when I ran the level all the way from the start, I was surprised to be sniped by a blaster in a spot I believed to be safe.
In the end I wasn't able to do a single-segment run, as I had too much trouble finding a consistent method for the red blaster segment after the last checkpoint. The best I could manage was one death (though I didn't work on this for very long). It's hard to visualize the safety zones there, and there isn't much time to react to anything—though of course you wanted this last part to be a difficulty bump, and it succeeded. It looked like the arrows and coins were trying to signify the intended solution for getting through this safely, but they seemed to have a particular timing in mind and I just never managed to find it. Even small changes in positioning affect how the spike balls interact when they're firing in both directions over the player's head, so the effect is a bit chaotic, and it must have been a pain to test properly. (On one run, it took me a while to break the wall open before the flag, as one particular blaster hadn't been lowered yet as you intended, and the spike balls kept colliding.)
Obviously, I had enough fun to try to speed my way through the whole thing; some of the repetitions and spawn-blocks are quite inventive, and I like how you flag the power-up placements (though I got myself stuck in a spot that I knew was meant to be a power-up for the second pass through the level, just to see what would happen). I haven't done a thorough coin hunt here yet, so I'll even have a reason to come back to this one later. I can probably do better than the time I ended up posting, but at the very least I hope I set the bar high enough to cause other players ample misery if they want to surpass it.
Is there supposed to be a new costume unlock with speedventure of link? 30.849 is my fastest time I seem to be able to do currently. I'm struggling to pull of a couple bits fast enough I guess.
Naw its the same hat.
I got 28.47. Still lots of room to improve
Naw its the same hat.
I got 28.47. Still lots of room to improve
What is your best time? My time is actually 28.435 and that's 584 in the world and I can shave at least 1.5s off that since I play parts very sloppy
32.459 or something like that. I'm not sure where you're shaving off four seconds.
The part with the big hammer bro and the pirahna plants that you need to bomb. You need to bomb the upper path.
I'd have to see your run. I know I can break 27 with grinding so its probably just some small things you're missing.Yeah, I got that. I feel like I've got literally every second shaved off that I possibly could. I'm not sure what I'm missing.
I'd have to see your run. I know I can break 27 with grinding so its probably just some small things you're missing.