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Rexeljet

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This is Woodland Way, a short zone in the vein of an opening level. Featuring some unique textures and original music, it contains ten emblems across two acts and a variety of paths to take.



Your jorney begins in Act 1 (no surprises there), during the middle of the day. Act 2 takes place during sunset (with its own custom palette to boot), and is generally a lot more open. Towards the end of the act the brown earth gives way to stone walls as you exit the forest. Throughout both acts you'll have to watch out for brambles and mud puddles, not to mention Robo-Hoods and Green Snappers.


Changelog
V1.0

  • Original Release
V1.1

  • Downplayed/removed certain textures, notably the Alpine Paradise grass flats and the CEZ coarse grass
  • To compensate, the zone now features cyan and purple variants of the custom flowery grass flat
  • some of the level geometry has been modified. Notably, the big downward slope into the third outdoor area is now followed by an upward ramp
  • Some rings and a checkpoint have been added where two paths rejoin to try and prevent players from going round in circles
  • The spike pits have been replaced with bramble pits to aid performance and thematic consistency
  • some of the emblem locations have been fleshed out
  • Fixed an oversight in the second outdoor area where the ceiling height was inconsistent
  • The custom grass textures now play the appropriate noise when Modern Sonic interacts with them
V2.0

  • Titlemap added
  • Act 2 added
  • Record Attack is now an unlockable, and can be obtained after collecting five emblems
  • The floating platforms near the start of Act 1 are now attached to vines suspended from the ceiling, akin to the ones in Act 2
  • A few more flats/textures have been axed/downplayed
  • WWZBARK.lmp is configured to play the appropriate SFX when Modern Sonic interacts with it
 

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Can I get a "SourPls" in chat for this absolutely boppin' soundtrack?

That being said, welcome to Releases! I'm absolutely in love with the presentation of this level, and will probably make a full review soon.
 
There's this tunnel near the end where I experience a weird sudden dip in framerate. I think it's because of that huge pit filled with spikes. You should make it into CEZ brambles instead.

Other than that, I quite enjoyed this level. It's quite a fun first-level type act, and the custom textures and music are just the cherry on top.
 
What a happy zone, it has a very nice aesthetic and overall very well made.

In addition, it's always nice to see custom zones with extras such as emblems to find.
 
Levels this tightly packed usually don't play well with SRB2's gameplay, but this was fairly enjoyable. Your enemy placement in particular was pretty impressive. The Green Snappers were always in large open areas, but not directly in immediate sight, so you had to react to their sound to avoid getting hit. The Robo-Hood's were also placed well; slightly elevated, but on small enough platforms that you didn't necessarily have to land a hit on them. Just move into their personal space and scare them off to remove the threat of being shot.

The custom textures are nice to look at, but overall the number of textures used make for some messy visuals that often clash with themselves. Alpine Paradise textures are pretty ugly in general, and they don't help make your level look any better, especially near your custom textures. You could easily do away with those and GFZWAVE from the map, and the visuals would improve significantly.

The emblems are a welcome addition to help with reputability, but at least 2 or 3 of them are simply tucked away into a hole in the corner of the map. They often felt shallow and not well thought out. A few additional rooms or some more planning to their overall placement would go a long way towards more enjoyable collection.
 
Oh wow! This level is gorgeous! I love the aesthetic you've got going on here and the palette is bright and cheery! The music fits perfectly well for a first level and the level itself is a decent length, too!

The custom textures look REALLY nice! They make the level really pop visually and stand out from a lot of the other levels I've played recently. The trees fit right in with everything and there's plentiful amounts of scenery scattered throughout the level. It's really visually pleasing.

The gameplay on the other hand needs some work. I played this through my first time and this same loop around the course 3 times and wondering "Where the heck do I go??" before realising that I missed the path to the left.
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The way I would fix this is make the area you exit this section from way larger and make the entrance to where you're supposed to go WAY more obvious from the direction I came from, and you don't have to use arrow textures or anything of the sort for this. Simply putting down lots of rings, making the area more visible and larger at a first glance, and placing more enemies up there is enough to attract a player on where to go. Putting a checkpoint down is a good alternative to enemies and it doesn't hurt to have a few more checkpoints in your levels.



Now this may just be a personal problem since I almost never play the game with the vanilla physics set, but it really peeves me when people put downwards slopes in their level and then immediately follows them up with a 90 degree turn or a wall. I know rolling and running down slopes in vanilla is practically useless and doesn't really feel the way it does in classic Sonic titles, but this happened to me every time I started rolling down a hill and filled me with such disappointment.
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Now I'm sorry that I'm about to let personal bias leak into my suggestions here but these might help with a better flow to your levels.
-Keep in mind that uphill slopes, sharper turns, and walls will slow your player down, this isn't a bad thing and can be used to make upcoming challenges easier to adjust to naturally.
-Uphill slopes and more gradual but more closed-in turns will slow the player down moderately and are good for when you need to give them time to react to an oncoming group of enemies or spikes just ahead. The steeper the slope or the sharper the turn, the more the player will slow down.
-Quarter pipes that the player can clear by having enough speed are good for stopping the player while giving them an outlet for the speed they've built up without the empty feeling of hitting a wall or turning so sharply that all their speed is gone. This is a good tool to use when you have tricky platforming coming up and you want to reset the player's momentum so they can platform without overshooting.
-Walls and 90 degree turns should be used almost exclusively as a last resort to block the player from going any further when they're going way too fast. They should be obviously textured and have a good reason to exist. These are for if you have a lot of tricky platforming that requires a lot of time and patience to get through or a boss if your level merges into one.
-Ring trails should be placed EVERYWHERE, these subtly telegraph to the player where they should go. Just like in a standard Mario game, these can show the player what kind of jump to make, how sharp a turn should be, and where they should be going, all while rewarding them without them even thinking about what they're doing.
-Downwards slopes give the player speed organically [meaning the amount they gain is dependant solely on what they do when encountering one] and are pretty much only good for doing that. Turns made after them should be given a wider berth depending on the difficulty of the stage so as not to make the player feel out of control when encountering them and give them a nice break from more focused platforming.
-Slopes in general act differently depending on how the player interacts with them. An inexperienced player will most likely just run up or down a hill without a second thought, but a veteran might try jumping off a slope. Uphill slopes will launch the player farther upwards if they have enough speed to start with, while downwards slopes will give the player more horizontal speed when jumped off of. There are many different things that can happen depending on how much speed you have and where you jump, but focusing on one or two outcomes is enough. Play around with this concept and see if you can come up with anything!

Some of this same logic can be applied to Kart as well and, really, Kart level design principles has a lot of overlap with Vanilla and the concept of flow. I've always viewed Sonic games as this rollercoaster you're able to play and influence, with a lot more freedom of movement as opposed to a set track.

Overall, this was a very nice map to look at but it could use some tweaks on the flow side of things. I really look forward to the second act!
 
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I'd like to chip in and add that this is a very enjoyable opening level! I had a good time exploring it and trying to find all of the emblems, even if the blue star emblem left me stumped for a particularly long time because the hint misdirected me into scouring the wrong room for secrets.

It was pretty cute, and while I do have some misgivings they are things otherwise brought up in the thread already. I do think narrowing down your texture use to focus on the core color palette of the stage instead of the somewhat eclectic mix of colors and textures that change per room would make the stage look more consistently pretty though. (A sticking point for me is the one corridor that uses an Egg Rock rock texture when you already have so many different rock textures in the level already that would fit just fine for example.)
 
The level has been given an update! No act 2 yet, but I have tried to adress as many criticisms as I could with version 1.1. See the changelog for details
 
Al principio hay un fallo de diseño (o eso quiero creer xd) que hace que me caiga al vacío, solo me he caído una vez pero quería decirlo (porque mi opinión es la más justa y las demás no valen jaja)
 
Al principio hay un fallo de diseño (o eso quiero creer xd) que hace que me caiga al vacío, solo me he caído una vez pero quería decirlo (porque mi opinión es la más justa y las demás no valen jaja)

Bottomless pits existing at all isn't a design flaw. You can avoid them fairly well if you can actually play the game somewhat decently.

Also, as said by others, please speak English. That is just standard forum etiquette.
 
This was really cool! You do have a lot of texture variation going on (which works better in some places than others), but the route variety was very impressive and I enjoyed tracking down the emblems. Please don't forget to include a record attack unlockable!
 
Are Emblems in the level planned?


There are already Emblems in the level! If by "are they planned", you mean "did I plan them out before making the level", the answer is Yes and No. Mid way through working on the level I added a Special Stage token, but after realising I'd have to re-add Floral Field into the MAINCFG I figured I'd be better off putting emblems in the act instead, and so some of the locations containing emblems were added to the map later on.


Anyway, Version 2.0 is now out! Act 2 is finally here.
 
Oh boy, act 2?! I'll be editing this with my review when I finish giving it a thorough search Rexel.
 
Act 2 was genuinely really fun, it's easy to tell that you're taking feedback on board! :)
There's one spot at the lake where if you jump over one of the hedges without picking up the whirlwind shield, the spring on the other side isn't strong enough to carry you back. Other than that (and possibly the emblem hints being too direct?) I don't have anything to really say, this was just a lot of fun! Thanks for including Record Attack as well~
 
This was really fun! I looooove the aesthetic, great job on the design.

Especially in Act Two I found myself getting lost and turned around a bit. I'll try to grab screenshots on another playthrough to be more specific where some more visual cues on where to go could help a bit! But mostly I thought this extraordinarily well done.

Great job!
 

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