July/August 2014 Voting

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Gravity Garden > Koopa Garrison > Cloud Convoy > Phantom Gadget > Shadow Castle > Autumn Valley > Quickman

Gravity Garden: 7.5/10. The visuals were excellent and the level design made pretty good use of reverse gravity, but there were a couple of overly confusing areas, particularly the long, dark vertical shaft with all of the gravity hoops. I also remember having to hunt for longer than I should have to find a spring or something back up to the main path after falling off of it. Polish those sections a little bit more, though, and it'll be hard to fault this stage for anything.

Koopa Garrison: 7/10. I'm happy to see that Bowser's Castle has been given the Pipe Towers treatment, and overall I think it turned out pretty well. The segments where you're being constantly shot at by cannonball launchers can get a little frustrating, though, and climbing up that giant spiral staircase near the end got really repetitive really fast. The skybox is probably the most visually interesting one I've ever seen in SRB2, though.

Cloud Convoy: 6.5/10. The level's great once you get a feel for how all of the mechanics work, but since it doesn't do a very good job of communicating anything to the player, expect at least one game over before you can have any fun with it. The main problem here is that the camera is positioned too far away from the player and doesn't follow them along the Y-axis at all, resulting in anything near the back of the level being extremely difficult to interact with unless you already know what it is.

Phantom Gadget: 6/10. This stage had high 'production values' and a lot of original ideas, without a doubt, but a few irritating design choices made it one of the cheapest in the contest gameplay-wise. Enemies that look nearly identical to their vanilla counterparts but have completely different and confusing-to-decipher attack patterns, as many as five laser turrets in a single room with awful sound effects accompanying their fire, conveyor belts and crushers that are nearly impossible to see coming, and way too much fumbling around in the dark.

Shadow Castle: 5/10. It's like Hang Castle, but with far more boring visuals and little to no creativity in the use of the gravity-flipping gimmick. I also got lost for about 45 seconds once, in an area around two-thirds of the way through the level. It's hard to orient yourself properly when the only visual contrast is between repetitively textured walls of gray and an infinite black void.

Autumn Valley: 4/10. Basic 2D platforming with basic visuals and not so much as a movement gimmick in sight. I doubt I'll ever play it again, but from what I've experienced of it, there isn't much to hate.

Quickman: 3.5/10. Making SRB2 feel like a Mega Man fangame was surely not an easy task. Unfortunately, that Mega Man fangame happens to be a particularly bad one with abysmal mid-air control, awkwardly placed spikes that ignore mercy invulnerability, charged shots that emerge from above Mega Man's buster, and a boss that's simply too fast for your sluggish movement and unintuitive firing mechanics to keep up with. Responsive control and plenty of interesting special weapons are what makes Mega Man so great to begin with, and this level is lacking in both of those departments. It's highly innovative from an SRB2 modding and programming perspective, don't get me wrong, but the experience of playing it is, well... not fun.
 
I'd better post my votes here before it's too late! Reviews coming soon if I'm not lazy.

Gravity Garden > Koopa Garrison > Phantom Gadget > Cloud Convoy > Quickman > Shadow Castle > Autumn Valley

(btw quickman race with friendlyfire is the best thing 10/10)
 
Single Player, ranked best to worst. Note that I base my voting ENTIRELY on how much I enjoyed playing the map, and pretty much no emphasis on anything else. This contest had some cool and original submissions that I rated low because I couldn't stand playing them, and I kind of feel bad about that.

1. Gravity Garden Zone
2. Koopa Garrison Zone
3. Quickman
4. Shadow Castle Zone
5. Phantom Gadget Zone
6. Autumn Valley Zone
7. Cloud Convoy Zone


Gravity Garden Zone: Neat gimmick, and solid level design all around. It's a bit overly decorated though; parts of the map caused the game to stutter for me. I feel like the gimmick has a lot more potential than the map used (I'm imagining something like Portal with using momentum and gravity physics to fling your character into secret paths and such), but that's not a knock against the level, just a wish for more.

Koopa Garrison Zone: Hooray! Another Mario map! I liked the visual design, though I'm not sure if the level-wide colormap was necessary. One thing I kind of didn't level about the level was how blocky and cramped it felt... which, admittedly, makes it feel a lot like a Mario level, but still not as fun as it could be. I also felt that it was a tad long, but that might just be personal preference.

Quickman: Really cool. I had a lot of fun with this. It definitely has its issues—the controls are awkward, the spikes can be hard to see, there's a leap of faith moment where you can accidentally downward-platform into spikes that were off-screen, the boss was too hard—but on the whole the novelty and enjoyment I got from playing Mega Man in SRB2 overshadowed everything else.

Shadow Castle Zone: Bland, incredibly linear, but still decent. It's like a poor man's version of Hang Castle from Sonic Heroes. I didn't dislike it, so it's at least better than the levels below this.

Phantom Gadget Zone: ...I know what you were going for with this level, and I think it would be good if it got a lot of polish, but as it stands it was an aggravating level full of dark rooms and being hit by enemies I can't see and not knowing where to go. I wish this could be higher, but I didn't find it fun.

Autumn Valley Zone: You know, after Clock Towers Zone in the last OLDC and Quickman in this one, it seemed like 2D levels might actually become a legitimate type of stage despite SRB2's engine being horrible for them. Unfortunately, that's not quite the case yet. I think these "awful" 2D levels would be fun in a Mario game, but SRB2's engine just sucks all the potential fun out of them.

Cloud Convey Zone: It pains me to put this in last place, but it's the only level I just could not finish. I'm sorry, but I can't stand the controls, and that turns the whole thing into an aggravating experience (mostly consisting of trying to aim Sonic by using the homing attack). You made a very cool and very original level, but I can't play it.
 
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Single Player:
Gravity Garden
> Cloud Convoy > Quickman > Koopa Garrison > Phantom Gadget > Shadow Castle > Autumn Valley

Match:
Fountain Hills > Collapsing Cavern > Volcanic Cliffs

CTF:
Canceled Flight > Snowy Fortress

Reviews
Single Player:
Gravity Garden:8/10 I got to say, it's really fun to play, I really enjoyed the gravity switches over there, but the thing that is the level is confusing and you get lost in it, but still a great level with a nice decoration.
Cloud Convoy:7.5/10
So much cool how Sonic is sitting on Tails' plane, I enjoyed it very well, the only thing that Sonic's homings on an enemy even if he's far away, but still a nice level in my opinion.
Quickman:7/10
A very cool level, I liked to play it alot of times, but the boss is a bit fast, and the 2nd one is OP, but still a very nice work on Megamans shooting system.
Koopa Garrison:6.7/10
Ah,I liked to see a Mario level here in SRB2 in the same Pipe Towers style, It's so fun to play, and that 3d skybox is really Awesome.
Phantom Gadget:6/10 Cool, I really like to see Phantom stuff, but the level is not too long, otherwise, nice work on the enemies, stuff...
Shadow Castle:5/10 Erm, I think that the level needs more work, to be honest, I think the level is kind of boring, and easy to beat.
Autumn Valley:4/10 Very basic, you can beat it in 30 secs, and it doesn't give any challenge, or nothing to stop you, but the thing I love there, is the great skybox.
 
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Yeah, and unless the contest is going to end in a couple of minutes (or hours or something), exactly why do people keep voting before reviewing? I wouldn't do that... well, if I had a controller so I could play properly and get to play the entries. I would make reviews along-side votes, not later.
 
Because reviews are optional? It's not a rush to actually review the levels, but it is for voting the levels themselves as there's only about a week left before voting ends now.
 
Yeah, that's exactly my point. There's a whole week left. And as a result people can't spend about an hour on reviewing stuff now rather than later? I don't understand people.

Rating levels to your liking is easy, writing reviews that don't sound like they've come out of an 8-year-old's mouth isn't. Nobody's going to go "well golly fucking gee if I'm rating these I better waste this portion of the day thinking about what was right or wrong before I post", they're just going to give their votes and worry about feedback later.
 
Yeah, that's exactly my point. There's a whole week left. And as a result people can't spend about an hour on reviewing stuff now rather than later? I don't understand people.

If I'm going to write a review, I want it to be of the quality of review SpritCrusher does. Writing a review that big and that long takes far more time than a single hour.
 
My order: Best to least:


Autumn Valley Zone
Cloud Convoy Zone
Koopa Garrison
Shadow Castle Zone
Gravity Garden Zone
Phantom Gadget Zone
Quickman (Although I can tell effort went in here)
 
cloud convoy > koopa garrison > quickman > phantom gadget > gravity garden

As for the other creators, I don't really consider them valid contestants. The best advice I can give to them is to continue making maps.

Regardless of whether you 'consider them valid contestants' or not, you'll have to vote for every entry in a division if you want your vote to count.
 
Did not mean to offend or anything. Just kinda felt it was a little pointless since they're like the same as far as ratings go.

You didn't offend me, I just wanted to make sure the admins didn't ignore your post because you didn't list all of the entries.
 
cloud convoy > koopa garrison > quickman > phantom gadget > gravity garden

As for the other creators, I don't really consider them valid contestants. The best advice I can give to them is to continue making maps.

The best advice I can give them you is to not continue making maps bad posts.
 
Hey guys. The proper response to a bad post is to report it and ignore it. Don't give shitty posts more attention than they deserve.
 
Well... better get started. Only votes this time.

***(Single Player)***
Gravity Garden Zone: EvilEnternity3000
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Cloud Convoy Zone: toaster
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Koopa Garrison Zone: Fawfulfan
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Phantom Gadget Zone: CoatRack
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Quickman: Zipper
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Shadow Castle Zone: Yacker and MudkipYeah!
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Autumn Valley Zone: Root
 
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Guess I should get my votes in before I forget...

Gravity Garden>Phantom Gadget>Koopa Garrison>Shadow Castle>Cloud Convoy>Autumn Valley>Quickman
 
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