July/August 2014 Voting

So, let's start with all the things I liked, this new topdown styled camera angle was a nice idea. At first, I wasn't sure why this had it's own title screen or savefile, but later I started to like it and see why the savefile was needed, liked the intro which showed the player the basic controls and enemy names, very nice detail you did there.
The controls for sonic were good, but I had some trouble telling where I was on the foreground.
The enemies were a great addon, based on the turtle enemies of sonic 2 but with their own change, it was sometimes annoying to get hit by the flames of the green flying ones but that's how it works.
I liked the details a lot, how that ship opens up to release badniks or that robot in disguise, first I thought that was me thinking something, but then I saw the symbol and the emblem(I noticed the other emblems later), very nice detail you did there, but what is he doing on eggman's ships ? I guess he is a robot in disguise.
I didn't notice that I had the homing attack on my first run of this, I guess it's a nice addon which makes this 3d mode a bit easier to play.

I had some trouble with some of the platforms in the level, but that was because I didn't know where on the Z(It's z in other games but y in srb2 ?) axis sonic was.

The music was very nice for the level, a bit strange when I first heard the parts with the voice in it but it's a great track.

The boss was fun, but it had some problems. The music for it was ok, but not too fitting for a boss track. Why is he using a fire attack and bouncing/playing a strange sound after doing that down charge ? It's confusing and might make you think that you hit him. Sometimes eggman stops a bit after hitting him and sometimes he doesn't, which makes this a bit confusing.
I think the fire would've worked better for a lava level where you had a platform like the tornado and this would've looked a bit better if it was shock based ?



Now for the bad thing:
The Tornado can be glitchy, when I first played this level, I reached the checkpoint(and yes the tornado was following me) and the tornado then touched the platform(where the checkpoint is on) and randomly exploded, the same thing happened to the first ship in one run.
Why does the Tornado use the same sprite as in sonic 3 & Knuckles ? The problem with that is that it looks too small and the sprite is a side view, while sonic's sprites have a top down camera like angle. Didn't someone make a custom tornado sprite for this ? I think that would've worked better.
Why is sonic standing on top of the seat of the tornado ? I don't know how much is possible, but what if that part was moved down so sonic was inside the tornado ? Or even better, make a tails bot(doesn't need to do anything, maybe only look at sonic) which is inside the plane and let sonic stay on the tornado like in sonic 2, you are forced to play this level as sonic and don't have a character select, so that shouldn't create any trouble.

This level got surprisingly low votes, I know that it might be "too difficult" for some(then again, think about your first ERZ2 run) but it isn't that bad that it's last place. I would've voted it a bit higher if I didn't have to replay the stage over and over from the beginning.

A good level with a nice gimmick, it does have some "you played as sonic and failed, now do the complete part over" parts, but srb2 used to have that(or still has it at some points), so that isn't too much of a issue.

If I had to rate a level on what it did with lua, then this would be on #1.

The idea to create a megaman game in srb2 is nice and it was well done(the lua part), there are some graphical glitches, like megaman's feet moving when you shoot, the walking+blaster animation playing when you stay still or fall and some transparent pixels that aren't transparent, but nothing that couldn't be fixed in the next release. Megaman also uses the teal color for some reason instead of the cyan, which would look way better(and would allow you to change the complete color of megaman), but that's a bit nitpicky and has nothing to do with how I voted this.

Let's start with the level, quickman ? I don't know if it was a good idea to make someone who never played megaman fight a quickman remastered as first boss(I played the classic megaman games before, so it's no big deal for me, but players who know nothing about it are probably a bit confused). The stage is a good idea, but it lacks checkpoints, I had to replay the beginning of the stage a lot, now that I think about it, I'm not sure if it needs more checkpoints, but maybe less instakill traps ?
It was hard to see the instakill spikes on the roof and they looked more like a crystal tile. Some of the enemy placement was bad(mets near spikes) which made the level hard to play because it has the "spike glitch" from megaman 1, where you die to spikes even if you have invinciblity frames.
It's strange to see a crystal stage for quickman, but that's because it's based on a megaman hack. The level design was ok for the most point, but quickman's level should have more lasers and less spikes, at first I didn't think that srb2 would limit the lasers to vertical lasers, the use of it was ok but I was hoping more for a laser hallway where you have to run as fast as you can to not get hit or more laser parts like at the end. One amazing thing about the level is that it's built vertically, I don't know too much about creating levels in srb2, but from what I remember, it's a pain to set up a vertical levels with a lot of fofs.

Enemies were ok, but I think they should be more like in the classic megaman, where the crazy cannons have 2 set ranges and fire a bit slower and mets/metools which are destroyed by fast firing and don't shoot homing projectiles, why are the mets grey ?

Megaman was good to play, he does have a little bit of acceleration but that wasn't a big problem for me, charge shot takes a bit to start charging and I didn't know about it on my first few runs. The slide feels missing and it would be great if that was added. Some sounds were glitchy, like boss charging up energy, or the hit sound, the charge sound also didnt' loop but I guess that was changed for a reason.

The boss was ok, took me 3 tries to defeat it, again the hack's quickman design makes him different from the original and probably a bit more confusing for people who don't know about the hack and thought about the original one. I don't know why he teleports but his pattern was ok and his damage was reasonable, exept for his hit damage which is 1/3 of your health.

It's a nice idea and I want to see this continued with more abilties/levels and maybe in 16 bit and with more lives or easier levels because I had to use the setlife cheat so I had enough lives for the level.

Nice idea(and spiral knights music, don't remember the level name), but it doesn't work too well, got hit multiple times from enemies which were unavoidable(remember the part where you move up at the beginning of a stage ? A spiny activated for some reason so I got hit by it while going up, or for example the robo tentacle/worm robots. The stage is a bit too dark, which makes it very difficult to know where you are going, that falling platform part is a good example of it, I know that there is a light room at the end of it but it isn't visible while platforming.

Cloud Convoy by toaster 9.5/10
I loved this level. The only thing blocking this from a perfect 10 is that the controls are a little awkward. We could use a level like this in vanilla

Koopa Garrison by Fawfulfan 9/10
Brilliant. Challenging. Stunning. I have no bad things to say about this, Cloud Convoy just has a more unique feel to it. Hopefully this gets added to Mario Koopa Blast.

Gavity Garden by EvilEnternity3000 8/10
It is truly unique. A good level through and through.

Quickman by Zipper 7.5/10
A really good idea, and executed well. But the level feels a little bland, Give it a different background, pitch black is boring. Loved the Marisa secret though.

Phantom Gadget by CoatRack 5/10
I know you were rushed to finish this, but we have to rate based on what it is now, Unfinished. The beginning is really good. but then the quality starts to drop off.

Shadow Castle by Yacker and MudkipYeah 3/10
It feels... generic. The level design shows promise, but could use some practice. It was a fun map

Autumn Valley by Root 2.5/10
It's bland, and hurts the eyes. I think you should hone your mapping skills a little more, try making a more lively skybox, and use more varied textures as well.

Koopa Garrison Zone by Fawfulfan
I already provided feedback before, and I'm glad to see some of my concerns addressed, but there are still a few major problems. I still don't like the use of skyboxes for death pits, and some of the platforms still have really weird shapes. I also still think you're overusing cannons. There's a reason why we only use them in a single room in CEZ2. It's a perfectly fine room gimmick, but not a good gimmick for an entire stage. They also produce constant sound, which can be annoying after a while. Otherwise I still really like the stage. The lava areas are exceptional, and while it could probably stand to have more, there are tons of secrets and reason to explore the stage, which I always appreciate.

Gravity Garden Zone by EvilEnternity3000
I've seen you talking about this stage before, but actually playing it was a pleasant surprise. The gravity gimmick is very well implemented, and the visuals are quite nice, although you seem to have gone overboard with the thing flowers. The main thing that knocks this down below KGZ for me is the irritating enemy usage in a lot of places. The areas where you provided your own enemies were great, but the use of snailers and Jetty-syns just sucked. Even though you improved the visuals, I still really don't like the gameplay of the swinging chains. I also really dislike the music a lot, personally. On the positive side, your gravity ring gimmick is great and I'd love to see it expanded upon in a second act, and the room where you're jumping upside-down in a normal gravity lake was absolutely awesome. I'd love to see more of that kind of design in a second act if you ever get around to such a thing.

Cloud Convoy Zone by toaster
Man, this has problems, but overall it's really cool. Let's get the worst part out of the way first: the precision platforming near the end has to go. Because of the perspective making those jumps is incredibly frustrating, and if you fail too much you have to sit there and wait for the game to kill you. The flying turtle enemies are rage-inducing at times, and there were several deaths for me on the first blocking ship because I kept trying to jump down to the plane and ride it through the gate instead of jumping over the gate. Having the FIRST gate not allow Sonic to pass with the plane is just incredibly rude. The whole stage seems like it could use a much longer "tutorial" section where you just have simple ships with enemies before you go nuts with switches, gates, and platforming. On the other hand, the boss is wonderful, and the overall design is just really neat in general. The whole stage could just use a nice coat of polish to make it more intuitive what you need to do.

Phantom Gadget Zone by CoatRack
I'm probably going to diverge a lot from the rest of the pack here and say I legitimately liked the dark areas, where I was hunting for platforms and methods to go forwards. The slime area was also similarly neat, and the nice slow pacing of the stage was a nice break from the common "gotta go fast" mentality SRB2 has a lot of the time. The problem I have with this stage is that it has a seriously damning conflict in the design. Most of the stage wants you to take things slowly and carefully, observing everything you can before making your move. The problem comes with the things you have that force you to move or react quickly, like the claw enemies and the turrets. When you spend so much of the stage encouraging me to be careful, twitch reaction things that require me to quickly move are a really bad thing, and it just feels incredibly cheap to be nailed by a laser when I'm trying to carefully look around.

Shadow Castle Zone by Yacker and MudkipYeah!
While a lot of people have been comparing this stage for 1.X levels, I actually quite enjoyed myself going through standard platforming. The problems arised when the stage broke expectations. In particular, your use of the rotary chain launchers sucks because you hit the sky ceiling when using them, and you have invisible walls in the torch area that forces you to follow the route instead of jumping over, killing you if you attempt the jump. You also don't use the gravity reversal pads very well in some areas, requiring double reversals in one spot and being needlessly confusing in others. The whole thing could just use a lot of streamlining of the route, more alternate routes in the areas that don't have any, and less useless territory where you just have to run forward with nothing to do or look at.

Quickman by Zipper
Well, the script is really cool and the bosses are ace. The stage itself? Pure and utter rubbish. If it weren't for Prime I probably wouldn't have even bothered to try for killing the bosses at all because the stage was so unfun. While your implementation of Mega Man isn't perfect, there are several areas where your level design specifically points out all the imperfections. The worst of these is the spots where the player is likely to get knocked back onto the spikes (which isn't lethal in real Mega Man) and the area where you climb above the lasers and have to jump from a non-flat surface. You also require a few jumps that are just barely possible, which considering the quirks in your acceleration code, are a bad idea. The enemies are also downright evil. Why not include a few basic enemies that aren't projectile-firing assholes =P

Autumn Valley Zone by Root
Well, there's really not much to say about this. While the custom art isn't very good, it at least gives it a different look. The stage itself, though, has basically nothing of any interest. Your hidden alternate route is absolutely terrible, too. If you haven't mastered the basics of SRB2 design, I really suggest against getting too clever. Try making a normal, 3D stage with a basic gimmick instead of something weird like a 2D map, which many experienced designers can't get to play well.

Koopa Garrison Zone
This is a really nice map. Most of the stage consists of challenging platforming sections, but that's not a problem...it's Mario after all. The visuals are great and makes the stage looks like an actual Mario level (I love the pirate ships). The only thing that I didn't like is the skybox, it's not very pleasant to see your endless lava sea everywhere outside of the castle but since I have no idea about how to make it look nicer I'm just going to go ahead and let it go. Anyway, with Gravity Garden this is the only stage that I've really enjoyed playing, hope to see it as the second act of Pipe Towers one day.

Gravity Garden Zone
Another nice map. I've really enjoyed playing through this one. The map is visually pleasing with a nice texture choice and a good use of the stage's theme as a scenery element. However some of the sections are really overloaded of flowers, try putting something else to makes those sections looks less empty. Now about the gameplay... your map have a neat gimmick in the gravity hoops, however i'm sure you can use it even further maybe in a second act. Sometimes your map can also be a bit confusing, try cleaning up some sections to make the stage more intuitively played even on the first playthrought.