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Princess Plushima

Princess of Dreams
Judge
WTF you guys added slopes???


It's been a long time, but I think this is my first time making a real level. It's short and experimental, but I enjoyed the process of making it.


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Of course, it wouldn't be a Draykon addon without unnecessarily complicated SOCs.



Features:
- Custom enemy: The WIPSJar (That's Weird Interdimensional Plasma Storage Jar)
- Custom Stage Gimmick: Some kind of weird butterfly spring thing?
- - Weird Butterfly Spring Thing probably acts glitchy in multiplayer.
- Touhou Music
- Character specific emblems, including for the secret ones.
- Way too short
- Built from the ground up to use slopes. Wheee~
- Holy crap are slopes on FoFs hard to wrap my head around. Like I understand what's happening mathematically but it's super not intuitive.


By the way, the stage has 6 emblems, but the ingame hint system will only display 5. So here's the hints for all 6:
-Take the high road over stone arches. Butterflies carry Sonic even higher.
-A leap of faith in a hidden path. Glide a second time on butterfly wings.
-Atop a waterfall in a secluded cave. Rest your tails with the butterflies.
-Sniper's secret stash. Find the right rock to drill.
-A bustable block where Knuckles can't go. A butterfly-spring-trick.
-Wooden arches by a dark lakebed filled with spirits. Machines aren't afraid.
 

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Welcome to Releases! Great to see you back!
 
Heeey, welcome back! And this is pretty good, I would have loved to see more of the wooden interior sections explored, those Eggman windows and tatami room floorboards only being used once as custom textures is a shame after all. But I'll take what I can get.

I like the butterfly springs because they're very simple but their interactions with each character changed pretty drastically simply because they rely on the character's ability to work, and you had some good ideas on how to use them as I found out when hunting down all the emblems.

Otherwise, the bottom of the lake is a bit too dark. Initially, I thought you had just forgotten to tag the floor as a death pit, and I drowned without finding the spring out because I couldn't see a thing in there.
 
This was a pretty fun stage, I loved the Butterfly Springs and the stage's design + Touhou music.
 
It's short, but I like how it not only has a custom badnik, but a custom mechanic as well. The emblems also provide a fair amount of replay value, which is nice since the level is short and largely has a single main route.

The atmosphere and the overall form of the level is nice and moody, and the first area has a lot of detail scattered about, but it could use some more lights here and there.
 
Code:
[B]WARNING:[/B] Line 449: Unknown action NONH
1 warning in the SOC lump

That was a nice way to start off.

I quite enjoyed the level, though. Nice ambience, nice music, it's short but it lends itself well to exploring. My only issues are the same ones mentioned by Whackjood - there only being one interior section and the lake near the end being way too dark for its own good. I hope this level gets extended or gets another act that has more of those weird butterfly spring things, they have potential.
 
Holy shit.
With some polishing up and a few mechanics moved over I could totally see this as a Haunted Heights Act 2
 
Woah, this is really good! The only thing I can really suggest is adding more enemies and stuff in the large empty areas. Besides that, it looked nice and was a lot of fun to run through, even if it was pretty short
 
This was honestly super neat and charming to play through! Despite this stage being a tad on the short side, it still really managed to convey a really nice and unique sense of both scale and atmosphere with little screen time, especially with the custom gimmicks, enemies n' such! Great music choice too!
 
When I initially began looking for emblems, I was irritated at how they were character specific, as that is something I felt we had moved past as a community. But after getting all of them, I realize that having them be character specific was actually rather fitting, as each one demonstrates an interesting usage each characters abilities, with the butterfly spheres/springs. Well, except for Fang and Metal Sonic, of which, Metal Sonic is the least interesting emblem.

Perhaps for Metal, having some sort of butterfly avoidance section in dash mode would be more interesting, but this would be a bit large of an area necessary to actually pull off. For Fang, I'd suggest having a butterfly to stop horizontal movement, to center on a breakable floor.

Either way, this map is excellent, and I loved the aesthetic.
 
I like the short length of the act and see it as a strength rather than a weakness, because it leaves the player wanting more and leaves room for possible expansion in an act 2. There are a lot of Final Demo era design remnants in this map like the underwater spring placement and character emblems, and I kind of treasure that as you don't see much design like this these days.
 
Heeey, welcome back! And this is pretty good, I would have loved to see more of the wooden interior sections explored, those Eggman windows and tatami room floorboards only being used once as custom textures is a shame after all. But I'll take what I can get.

I like the butterfly springs because they're very simple but their interactions with each character changed pretty drastically simply because they rely on the character's ability to work, and you had some good ideas on how to use them as I found out when hunting down all the emblems.

Otherwise, the bottom of the lake is a bit too dark. Initially, I thought you had just forgotten to tag the floor as a death pit, and I drowned without finding the spring out because I couldn't see a thing in there.
I'll be 100% honest: The reason why there aren't more building sections is because the east asian-style roof FoF was a huge pain to line up. I'd definitely like to do more if I ever do an extension or an act 2 though.



When I initially began looking for emblems, I was irritated at how they were character specific, as that is something I felt we had moved past as a community. But after getting all of them, I realize that having them be character specific was actually rather fitting, as each one demonstrates an interesting usage each characters abilities, with the butterfly spheres/springs. Well, except for Fang and Metal Sonic, of which, Metal Sonic is the least interesting emblem.

Perhaps for Metal, having some sort of butterfly avoidance section in dash mode would be more interesting, but this would be a bit large of an area necessary to actually pull off. For Fang, I'd suggest having a butterfly to stop horizontal movement, to center on a breakable floor.

Either way, this map is excellent, and I loved the aesthetic.
Yeah, I was legitimately stumped for Metal and Fang uses of the butterflies. Anything they could do for Fang, so could good platforming. That Metal Sonic one is good though.


I like the short length of the act and see it as a strength rather than a weakness, because it leaves the player wanting more and leaves room for possible expansion in an act 2. There are a lot of Final Demo era design remnants in this map like the underwater spring placement and character emblems, and I kind of treasure that as you don't see much design like this these days.


That's probably because Final Demo is the version of the game I've played the most. I get the feeling there's a lot of community discussions of level design I've missed.




Thanks everyone in the thread for the feedback! I've definitely gained a lot of respect for the official level design after trying a go at it myself.
 
This level is really pretty but it is VERY very dark and the butterfly mechanic is super cool in concept but incredibly frustrating. Maybe it's better on keyboard, but I'm using an Xbox controller with Fickle's camera mod and actually hitting each butterfly in these chains is just misery. The hitbox to actually attach to them is insanely small and I constantly fly off right past it at the wrong angle and then fall down and have to spend ten seconds getting back only to miss one in a chain again five times in a row.



Also the lakes are just giant pits of Nothing that make trudging back to the really fun bits (platforming on the sloped rocks) torture.



I ended up just ragequitting as Sonic, I'm gonna use knuckles or tails and hope I find it more fun that way, because I really really do love the aesthetics, music, and half the level design.
 
Awesome, Draykon! Good to see you're still bursting with creativity even today. I like the short-yet-expansive level design, focusing on replay-ability over dragging things out.

Try turning this into a full zone if you ever get the freetime. I'm sure you can do a lot more with this, like combining this with minecarts or incorporating it into a boss fight.
 
This level is SICK!

The atmosphere and visuals are really unique. I've never seen this combo of theme and colors before. It's very dark and broody, but the splashes of vibrant color make it all very beautiful and magical. And the little wooden arches add a nice element of pathiness, for lack of a better word. Pathiness is good! It makes it seem like you're going on a hero's journey through the mountaintops. I also liked how you used the rings to carve pathways through the level that were fun to follow. Another good element of pathiness.

The gameplay was quite fun. The gimmick is very well done and the slopes, while not perfect, are used to amplify the gameplay and atmosphere. Not only does it FEEL like you're using your speed and jumping skills to escape a treacherous cave, it's also a blast. The custom enemies and their projectiles are also a good example of the interleaving of gameplay and atmosphere. The projectiles were at once beautiful and threatening, but not so dangerous that they were annoying. They kept the player moving, which is what a good enemy should do.

My only complaint, aside from the standard ones where some areas were too dark, was that you missed an opportunity for an awesome secret area. I saw a room behind some waterfalls at the top of a descent into a cave, and I replayed the level 3 times just trying to get there. Well, when I finally managed to get there, I was disappointed to find nothing but a harsh current ushering me the hell back out. I expected a reward for my efforts, not punishment! Maybe I didn't try hard enough to stay in there? I don't know; I didn't try again.

Oh, and about the length: I thought it was nearly perfect. You did a wise thing, gradually opening up the level, because it signals to the player that they're nearing the end. I think one more grandiose area with another fun building inside it would've topped things off wonderfully. Oh well. The length was still really good. It took me about 3 minutes to complete each time, and I think that's right on par. I like short and sweet levels chocked with plenty of secrets because they invite you to play over and over again.

I really hope you make more levels. Amazing job!
 

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