CEZ2 Design Discussion

I'm bringing this up because a lot of people seem to have different opinions on what's wrong with this level and what isn't. I'll start first.

Castle Eggman Zone 2 has a lot of different ideas at play with multiple gimmicks that allow it to stand out from the rest of the herd. Themetically it's cool and it can be agreed that its aesthetics are passable, if not solid.

Where this level falls apart and becomes a tedious mess is the way its level is structured and how it deals with player failure. Most of the levels in this area are legitimately challenging, but whenever the player falls off of the path, they are either killed instantly or sent back to the beginning of the room. The player has to go through a lot of these rooms before making it to the end, so what could have been seen as a unique and creative level comes off instead as a tedious (sometimes frustrating) and never-ending obstacle course.

The concepts themselves are fine, but the entire level needs condensing into something that is multilinear and doesn't require over five minutes for the average player to complete. You could easily merge multiple rooms into one by turning whatever bottomless pit rooms you have into segues to "lower-path" rooms, akin to a lot of Sonic 2's level design. By doing this you reduce the difficulty and length of the level while still keeping the challenges and expansiveness of the castle intact.

<ZarroTsu> CEZ2 could start at the library then go to a clocktower and final approach or something
<ZarroTsu> CEZ1 could be shortened and the first bit of [the current] CEZ2 taped to it

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Still doesn't explain top of the castle -> gladiator arena, though.

Maybe I'm the only one, but I miss that awesome machine gun that you have to crush by making the pillars crumble.

I 100% agree with the level design issue of constantly being knocked into goddamn pits. It'd be much better if there was classic-path stacking, with the lower one being considerably more difficult. The idea is a lot better than pit spamming.

What I dislike most about Castle Eggman is, despite the fact that it has many gimmicks that it can use, it's been limited to spinning chains and spinning maces, and the rest of the act(s) being one room gimmicks that aren't executed well (from the god awful rising water room to the god awful cannon room, both which are giant squares and lack any sort of effective detail) or bare bones platforming that doesn't particularly flow well.

What happened to the swinging chains? Why aren't they used? What about those new spikes that pop up from the ground? Those would work really well with this theme. There's not even a single crusher in this Castle, and you would think something like that would be a lot more common here. Arid Canyon already does the bare bones platforming much better than CEZ, there's no reason for CEZ to try to do the same.

I think the swinging chains being cut is a good thing personally, the tendency they had to latch you back on as they went back got really annoying, beyond that I agree with the other things being said, like alternate paths vs. death pits and some lackluster platforming sections.

I said this in IRC, but I feel like CEZ2 is mostly fine. It just needs a lot of dead running sections trimmed down or replaced with interesting stuff. (First upper path, I'm looking at you...) A bit more incorporation of the maces would also be neat to see, since it's easily possible to get past the first dungeon bit and never see them again, but it doesn't detract from the level not to have them everywhere.

The problem is CEZ1. Right now it's pretty dull and uninteresting overall, and until the ending it isn't challenging at all. The earlier bits of the level need something more interesting happening than what's there. (I also got lost in the lake area for quite a while the first time I played it in 2.1, but I'm willing to chalk that up to being too used to the weird exit to that room 2.0 had.) Plus, it (and the older parts of CEZ2) could stand a bit of a visual touch-up; though honestly, everything between THZ2 and CEZ2 feels a bit neglected now that those two are so much nicer. (Honestly, I've always liked DSZ's aesthetic even when the abundance of levels with its textures in 1.x genericized it, but after THZ2 it's a tad underwhelming now.)

That being said, I've never focused too critically on the vanilla SP levels and so I tend to enjoy them despite their issues, so meh.

I have to disagree with the alleged "pit spamming" for one simple reason: The game has to start introducing difficulty at some point. Thanks to Sonic's health mechanic, it's easy to trivialize almost every non-lethal hazard by just abusing the temporary invincibility. Introducing "failsafe" paths, at worst, will make the level way too easy by allowing you skip all the difficult parts. And even when you take extra care to make the "failsafe" path difficult to avoid this issue, you've just deferred the problem to somewhere else, because how do you make this path difficult now? By introducing pits? In that case you end up with the same thing that you've tried to avoid. By forcing you to redo a section if you mess up? That's no different from a pit, except that you lose a life instead of having to backtrack. The frustration potential is just as high in this case, maybe even higher, depending on where the last star post was. You could introduce other types of instant-death hazards, like crushers, but that wouldn't solve the underlying issue.

There's no way around it: If you want the game to have any kind of difficulty, at some point you'll have to include hazards that have the potential to be frustrating. As long as these sections are fair and there are no large difficulty spikes, it's not a problem. It becomes a problem if death pits are all over the place, but that's not the case in CEZ2. The library section (which I assume most of the complaints with death pits center around) has one room with a death pit on each path, that's it. Throughout the level, the more difficult and slow-paced rooms are interspersed with easier, fast-paced sections. In fact, the path split itself is an example of a "failsafe" path, so it's not like SRB2 doesn't do this already - just not all of the time (which is unrealistic for purely logistical reasons).

As for the platforming in the library being "lackluster"´or "bare-boned", I felt this way originally, but I see it differently now. For one thing, the Egg Guards add their own twist to the proceedings, and for another: This is a platforming game. There's nothing wrong with the occasional "just platforming" section as long as it's well-executed. CEZ2 has a whole lot of more "gimmicky" segments already, like the swinging maces, the spinning chains, the flamethrowers, and the cannonballs. I agree that there are weak sections in the level (the last room of the dungeon and the rising water room), but I don't feel the balance is off. That said, the "secret" path with all the swinging maces could stand to have an entrance that's a little less obscure. There's no reason to hide such a substantial part of the level away where nobody will find it.

Well, I'm personally fine with death pits, and I agree that the Egg Guards make the platforming kinda unique, but a game like Srb2 is limited graphically, making the Egg Guard a pain to avoid on small platforms because you simply don't know which direction it is going visually. It ends up in being a patience game where you wait until he's on the far edge on one corner of the platform and then jump on the other end of that platform. Even that would be okay in a game like Super Mario, Jak and Daxter or similar games, but in a game that is supposed to be speed based, it just ruins the flow.

And by the way, I think that the water rising room, while it should be tweaked a bit, is an awesome setpiece.

I think the egg guard room is a great idea, but I don't like the fact that the section is claustrophobic and doesn't give the player a lot of options if they aren't strafing. I think it should be redesigned a bit so that there are parallel platforms Sonic can jump to to avoid oncoming guards on their current platform.

Punishment progression at the moment is kind of wonky and it spawns the issue regarding CEZ and death pits.

At the moment the punishment goes like this:

1) GFZ : No punishment. You fall into a puddle and can get out pretty easily. Levels are short anyway, so nothing is demanding. This is fine.

2) THZ: Punishment begins with the electric floors in act 2. This is fine and thematically fitting; it's very easy to recover unharmed, but it makes the player aware that they can be punished.

3) DSZ: Punishment is different, but is done with drowning. It's a part of the stage's gimmick, obviously, but it's still a punishment.

4) ERZ: BOTTOMLESS DEATH PITS UNDER SPIKE BALLS AND REFLECTIVE SHIELDS

5) ACZ: Quicksand oil, a more punishing evolution of the timing challenge drowning had.

6) RVZ: lava pits that cause your rings to be removed, requiring you to escape ASAP.

7) ERZ: Outer space, the ultimate timing hazard evolution.


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I think the best bet in correcting the issue would be to make CEZ's primary punishment hazard simply "spike pits" instead of bottomless pits. It's an evolution of THZ's hazard (Without becoming unfair like hurtwater is), and a prevolution of RVZ's. If grey spikes are too ugly, perhaps introduce new object things that look more like thorns and briar patches to keep it fitting in with the forest theme.

That's not to say death pits should be removed. They just shouldn't be common early on, but should become more common as the game goes on. At the moment the first death pits are introduced in DSZ, but they are ultimately out of the way and not a direct hazard. CEZ can introduce them as a direct hazard by them being very large and daunting (entryway to CEZ1 is very good!), but the level shouldn't trip the player and shove them face-first into them. That's just rude.

ZarroTsu said:

5) ACZ: Quicksand oil, a more punishing evolution of the timing challenge drowning had.

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Are you kidding? ACZ has tons of death pits. Hell, the entire end of the level is just one giant death pit.

Unknownlight said:

Are you kidding? ACZ has tons of death pits. Hell, the entire end of the level is just one giant death pit.

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Not anymore, fortunately. The alternate path is a godsend.

And that's what should be done in CEZ 2 too. Just like Blue Warrior suggested, make it like Sonic 2 where there's a quick upper route that's more difficult and a longer, but easier lower route.

And, I just noticed, but I absolutely second this:

Maybe I'm the only one, but I miss that awesome machine gun that you have to crush by making the pillars crumble.

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I miss the machine gun room, too.

Anyway, I just played CEZ again, and have some thoughts:

1. Brown bricks = ew.



2. Old-GFZ2-esque skyscraper wall syndrome, ESPECIALLY with the forest textures.



3. I think the death pits are fine. While the level obviously need polish, I don't think there's anything too glaring gameplay-wise that needs addressing. I'll have to second Spiritcrusher's thoughts on this topic.

The only glaring problem I noticed is in ERZ2. In the water rising room, it's not clear whether you have to go through the doorway or go back into the water to go under the cyllinder.

Naturally, I tried to go under the cyllinder, but it was closed off. This problem can be confusing to veteran players.

How is it confusing when there's a hallway leading to a spring to the rest of the level, directly after the last water level switch?

That's really more of a thing of "the levels have changed since 2.0 and people who played them back then have to adjust", which is just going to happen and can't really be accounted for. (Personally, I find it hilarious that small step-up platforms were added to let you skip the first bit of running and jumping in that room.)