Marble Blast SuperStar [IN PROGRESS]

Matan does have a point. No one wants to play a mod with TONS of long levels like TOTTS. Perhaps rather than making 10 realms, most of then being long expert levels, you should consider perhaps 5 realms, 1 being optional (training). I also think that most of the levels in the pro and expert levels shouldn't be based on technique perfecting especially in the expert realm. I really don't think traplaunching is necessary since it is the hardest technique in marble blast, even I had a hard time struggling with the technique especially when you have to squeeze between the MP and another wall (ex. Natural Selection). I'm not saying that the idea is bad just that the levels shouldn't be made of long expert levels and technique perfecting. Take Matan's advice if you don't want complaints of long TOTTS equivalent levels that most people can't beat.

Based on feedback from various videos, screenshots, and the first round of Closed MBF Beta, I can give you a few tips on building new levels and fixing your old ones.

Long levels are great if they can continuously captivate the player. A continuous path suspended in the middle of space that has holes in the interior and fans on every other bend is repetitive and extremely annoying (for me, anyway.) I designed most of the levels in MBF to never require the player to use the same set of skills for more than thirty seconds at a time. By continuously changing what the player has to perform in order to accomplish the level, you captivate your player, and force them to pay attention - this is how levels become re-playable.

Hard Levels aren't necessarily Good Levels : Unless you're building a mod specifically for the elite marble blasters (all ten of them), building an entire chunk of the mod based on the biggest baddest levels is probably not a good idea. Most of your players will not want to spend the next week and a half figuring out how to nail the edge-hit exactly to get launched into a tornado to the top platform. Keep the challenges in all levels - especially the hardest ones - to a realistic sense. Yes, we all love the SKIIILLLSHHHOOOTTT Videos that Matan has created in the past, but not everyone will want to spend thousands of attempts on one level that's built on skill-shots.

The most important advice I can give you is: figure out who your players are, and what they want. If you hire users to 'test' your mod, listen to their complaints and try to adjust to their liking. Make sure you hire a variety of level testers as well. My team is composed of users with varying skills. I like to bring MBF to the office once in a while and toss it on a co-worker's desk, asking him to play some of the Tutorial and Beginner levels. If they can pick up the game and be able to beat some easy levels within thirty minutes of figuring out what the hell your game is, you're doing great. Same concept goes for professional levels. The best players should be able to complete these levels in a couple attempts. If Matan can defeat your new level in two minutes, then you can safely assume your beginner players will be able to complete the level in ten or fifteen minutes.

Bottom Line - You want your players - of all skill levels - to enjoy the mod you're building.

Do not let my post, or any other posts for that matter, discourage you from continuing your mod the way you have it mapped out right now. If your idea of 'challenging and difficult' levels turns out to be stupid easy for the rest of us, then there's no issues from the community.

Build your levels, hire some testers, figure out if the mod is heading in a positive direction. You can always go back and tone down your levels after alpha testing. You need to figure out how this mod will shape up, and how the community is going to react to the mod. Give it time.

~Aayrl

Ok ok... Thank you all for your advice and criticism. I will take some of the suggestions into consideration.

However, about the long and hard levels deal... What would you normally expect from the very last levels of the game? Perhaps I elaborated a bit too much when I said similar things about some of the other realms, but the bottom line is that I know that the community doesn't like long and hard levels and I'm not going to make like half of the game those kind of levels. You must keep in mind, however, that the last levels of the game are going to be long and difficult; it's the same pattern for just about every mod (and game for that matter).

And about technique-perfecting levels... I'll see what can be done that doesn't require you to do the traplaunching and stuff to win the level.

My main issue with this is the quality of the levels. How long are you planning to spend on the 160-200 levels? Are your skills about the same now as they were with your most recent custom level?

Heck no Pablo... I take it you haven't seen any of my latest stuff. I've improved tons. I'm now capable of creating smooth curves and slopes, aligning things correctly, proper texturing, and just a lot more... Trust me, I'm a lot better than I was.

Sept 6, 2011, 8:38pm, techwarrior wrote:Heck no Pablo... I take it you haven't seen any of my latest stuff. I've improved tons. I'm now capable of creating smooth curves and slopes, aligning things correctly, proper texturing, and just a lot more... Trust me, I'm a lot better than I was.

And that's how you judge the quality of a level?

...Pablo simply asked a question and I answered him.

That wasn't the right answer

Quality means: originality, creativity, fun factor, replayability etc.
Smooth slopes/curves means it looks good, but based on my own experience the huge majority (95%) of levels utilising those are bad to play. People think the smooth slopes/curves, being a tough thing to learn, means ++++ to the level but it's really not. Likewise, doing things like platform/item alignment, texture alignment etc. is all aesthetics and doesn't contribute a lot to the gameplay.

Do levels need to look good? Yes, but I've seen plenty who don't which are very well remembered in the community.

So what is PF trying to say is this: if you judge quality by the aesthetics and level creation techniques (smooth slopes, texture alignment), then you're really really off-track.

I think 160-200 high-quality levels would require a total time commitment of between 800 and 2000 hours, after one's skills are already developed to a high degree. That's months of unpaid, full-time work. Why not try something more manageable and make some more custom levels with your great smooth curve skills?

*BUMP*

Because Pablo, I want to focus all my level-building and skills to Superstar. Though it is a good idea to release custom levels every so often, don't expect me to do it very frequently.

We have... an adequately good amount of staff. We don't have a lot... at all, but we have just enough to cover the basics of the game. We're still going to need more staff ofcourse.

Also, I've made a new level after reading through ya'll's posts. Tilted Algorithm, Realm 7 Level 1. Utilizes the art of balance and strength, two skills you'll need to pass. I found it a lot easier than I would have expected from such a level though... I made sure not to make it too long; 1 minute average for completion I'm estimating, based off my times on it... I found it somewhat replayable due to there being a number of hidden TMs throughout the level. The beginning portion probably offers the most in path-finding, though it also can be a quite annoying part.

The level begins with a tilted maze-type platform, though it isn't exactly a maze. Look at it like a platform with barriers on it... and gems... and TMs. Tilted at about 22.5 degrees (half of 45). After that, it's a tower-climb. Not the most original idea, but the climb is fairly odd. Begins with a few challenges involving tilted platforms (don't forget about TMs!), moves into a tightrope wall-hit challenge, and then... Tilted tower??!! Indeed. Haven't seen other levels utilizing this idea, so I'd say it's pretty original. I mean c'mon. A tilted tower! TILTED! Being careful not to overdue dificulty, the tilted tower does increase the difficulty a bit. Though, if done correctly, it's really not as hard as it might seem.

Well, I'll end my rant there.

Ehh... Sounds OK I guess. The tilted tower part makes me think that I'll go insane during that part

Do you mean that in a good or bad way?

The tilted tower sounds really cool to me. The annoying pathfinding part at the beginning worries me though. Just make sure you have plenty of checkpoints.

Wait.. 1 minute average gameplay, is that like with or without the TTs. What makes me say that is this:
1) You mention a ton of TTs
2) Average playtime is 1 minte
3 TTs are also hidden

So (and I'll try to say it right because I'm bad) what I understand is this:
Your way of thinking is that average gameplay is start to finish while collecting most or all of the hidden TTs?
If so, this is wrong. A normal gameplay doesn't know about any hidden TTs and when they do, it might be a few at best (closest to path).

Another thing I dislike about levels is having *too many* TTs. It's okay having a couple, but then I play levels where it feels like they're really all about getting as many TTs as possible and they aren't giving me anything new to the level. Worse comes when the TTs are like 15, 20, 60 seconds etc. I just facepalm.

You need a plan as to which levels will include which challenges, even if it requires adding a

tiny bit of filler. Otherwise, you will run out of original ideas by level ~20, which is not enough to make a mod. Remember that a lot of levels are themed, usually with a central objective in mind. Some levels are pathfinding-oriented, some are designed for aerial tricks, et cetera. This should take effect in a lot of your levels, but not all of them.
Never include a challenge that you cannot beat, or you find it annoying rather than challenging. Tightropes take a lot of heat regarding this idea, but many other things are often overlooked. Repetitive or filler-only sections become tedious and drive people away from playing. Also, no one likes invisible OOB trigger challenges, or anything else that is beaten by luck and guesswork, rather than raw skill.
The mod needs some sort of organization. Member lists, specific jobs assigned to each member, specific plans regarding levels, and any backup assuming something goes wrong are essential. Additionally, you need to give people multiple jobs, as roles such as graphic designer have almost no importance at this stage in the mod. Deadlines are another good idea if you want the mod to progress at a reasonable rate, as is some form of direct communication (read: MSN).
Once all of your staff are hired, the public does not need to know about the mod except for the occasional mass update. Every time a new level is conceived, it does not warrant a new post, and if you think it does, you probably need more testers (I would be willing to help test, just PM me a level). If something truly awesome has been done, or a bunch of levels created, it's okay to update us, but anything else is obnoxious.

I would be happy to join this mod sometime.

That's good to know!

But wait...

*looks at last post*

Dude, this mod's dead.

Incomplete release?

Sorry to say I agree with MBGAddict, Tech. The mod would likely get at least some positive attention if you released a finalized but incomplete version. By finalized here I mean sorting out the last small things then getting rid of the illegal core files, uploading, etc.

You know what I mean.

I know what you mean. I initially considered doing that but I didn't think that Superstar was even ready for that. It's just... bad. I don't feel like it would get too much positive attention, really.

Quote:The Council would also like to take this opportunity to advise any mods that are shutting down to release whatever materials they have, such as levels and textures. That will minimize the destructive powers of failed mods on the community.

Aug 13, 2012, 7:00pm, mbgaddict wrote:
Quote:The Council would also like to take this opportunity to advise any mods that are shutting down to release whatever materials they have, such as levels and textures. That will minimize the destructive powers of failed mods on the community.

You've taken this out of context with no source. Excellent.

At the time that post was written, we were referring to any additional codes that were used in failed mods be released to the Marble Blast Development Kit for other users to play with in their mods / games.

Respectively, GUI elements could be posted in the Graphics forum, and Levels could be released as Custom Levels for MBG, MBP, etc.

This is up to the discretion of the mod's development team, and they ultimately choose whether or not they wish to submit files to the community.

~Aayrl

Ask for help to Buzz! He's a King of Constructor (stronger than me) and a DJ too!
Good luck, hope it'll be better than MB9!

Unfortunately this mod is dead. So that means it will not have extra work done on it. Even if the mod wasn't dead, I really don't have time to work on this mod right now. But thanks for the compliment. - Buzzmusic100

I realize I may have rushed too quick to the decision...

@Ralph - From where the mod is at, it could never be better than MB9. It just... couldn't.

As a note to Aayrl and others, I decided not to release anything because the mod was at a point to where it was under heavy development, meaning that there were a lot of temporary (if you will) things lying around, and many things were still in progress/not done. I figured it would be too much work to clean up something I didn't want to work on.

But for your sake, here's what I'll do: Finish what I can; fix what I can; release, and that's the end of it. School's about to start, so I'm not going to guarantee anything, but I'll do what I can/want to do.

Notable changes that will be made:

Level fixing/finishing (again, too many unfinished)
Music (done, but I'm redoing all of it since it was made a long time ago; Marathon comes first though)
GUI stuff - There are little to no GUI changes to the game, but I'll consider removing new GUI that doesn't fit and just leaving the MBG stuff.

This will be lower on my list of priorities (for the current time being, anyway), but I'll try to get it all done as planned (as far as an incomplete release goes, anyway).

^And that's that.