Greenflower Zone Expansion 2.0.0!

[WasifBoomz]

Hello, welcome to my first ever mod! I made sure to test every act with every character!

2.0.0:
Remade levels!
Emblems and unlockables!
New title screen!

Video: https://youtu.be/D453TMGlIew
Full Mod Gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHtpVHmLOwY

Act 4: This act is a short, easy, and a quick one, there are many shortcuts you can do to beat this level in 30 seconds!
(MAPAZ)
Music: Lime Forest Zone

Act 5: This act is darker and definitely rainy. Navigate your way through dark tunnels and reach the end!
(MAPAY)
Music: Dream Hill Zone

Act 6: A fight with Dr. Eggman in the dark, keep an eye out for danger!
(MAPAX)

Act 7: A trek across the mountain regions of Greenflower Zone, be very careful navigating your way through.
(MAPAW)
Music: Alpine Paradise Zone Act 1

Act 8: The final act that leads to Techno Hill Zone, this level has many secrets that you need to look out for!
(MAPAV)
Music: Alpine Paradise Zone Act 2

Act 9: A difficult boss fight taking place between Greenflower Zone and Techno Hill Zone. Watch out for the slime!
(MAPAU)

I hope human beings enjoy it to an extent!

 

[Zipper]

This is a tough one to rate. The GFZ we have in 2.2 is the culmination of 15+ years of experience to create the ultimate tutorial level. These maps seem like a first attempt, which while perfectly fine, do feel lackluster to the vanilla campaign.

One tip to start off would be to completely ditch the concept of "flat ground that curves around". That only works for Modern railroaded levels. SRB2 allows you to jump anywhere, anytime, so the empty roads you have just end up being skippable filler.

Generally, just try to give a more natural, and less cramped layout to your levels. Make them feel organic, like a location you're actually running through, instead of a few flat hallways.

That being said, I do admire the flavour of trying to tie GFZ and THZ together! In-between cutscenes were always something I wish the devs did end up adding, even if they're just fluff. This scratches that itch really well!

 

[Eis-Kold]

For a first ever mod, I must say this is amazing. It was rather fun to experience an expansion of GFZ and have it blend nicely into THZ. Like Zipper said, things felt easily skippable and at points crowded, and sometimes shield and life placement felt painfully obvious. There were also some gaps in walls in multiple places that at first felt like shortcuts or alternate paths, but then turned out to be... either loops or inescapable death. Not sure if either of these were intentional.

Another thing I had to mention was the overall lighting of the zones. I understand Zones 5 and 6, but Zone 4 is a stark contrast in lighting when it comes to the previous Act.

 

[Icarus]

I like the idea of a transitional level between Greenflower and Techno Hill.

 

[GreenKnight9000]

As good as this is, I've noticed a common issue that they're very cramped or confusing. Greenflower Act 8 sent me in circles for like 5 minutes with no real clear direction on where to go, the underwater section also REALLY needs airbubbles

 

[Rumia1]

I'd reccomend trying to make new maps with the following things in mind:
1- Ring/coin trails should not literally be ring PATHS. Keep your ring trails short (5 is pushing the limit depending on how difficult the thing is that you're trying to guide the player to do) and in meaningful locations. Their intent is to help guide the player through a difficult section, show them how they're meant to jump, or show them how to maneuver a platform, not to hold their hand through a section.
2- Make your maps bigger, start with a huge square of open space and fill it with things of various sizes ranging from 64x64 to 128x128.
3- Kind of related to the last one but make sure the play area for running around is at least 512 units wide so your player has plenty of room to go fast. For reference this is equivalent to 8 of the multicolored squares in the GFZFLR01 texture. This is also relative to how long your track is and how fast you're going through it.
4- Make Us and Cs with your curved slopes, You want to end about the same relative place you started with on the other side of your slope before you make a new piece of terrain, this way you don't get those funky bits that don't cooperate and cause unevenness and snapping.
5- Keep your enemy numbers sparse and in formations. Using too many will not overwelm the player, but instead make them tired of seeing the same thing over and over again when you can literally just spin and kill them all. Keep your enemy selection to 2-3 per stage and look at their behavior and place them according to that. Place them in circles, lines, stagger them, place one on every other stair as you jump up a platforming section. Look at how they move and see how it affects your decision making. Egg guards have been revamped in 2.2 so that they walk in a straight line from edge to edge so you'll notice that in the vanilla campaign they're usually placed near ledges or other hazards so that if you're careless you get pushed into those hazards.

I know I'm posting a Mario Maker playlist here but despite how it looks this applies to not just Mario and SRB2, but also to game design in general. Here's how to get started.

 

[Konii]

Nice Wad, but Act 8 legitmately was unbeatable for me due to the lack of air bubbles. Had to use god mode in order to beat Act 8.

 

[Mr Beagle]

The idea of expanding the existing zones with new acts have been tossed around before, but if you want the levels to truly stand out...

Spoiler

1. Widen the corridors and add some more open areas
2. Long conga-lines of dozens of Crawlas do not add difficulty, but just doesn't look great for players.
3. Likewise, there is no need to cram spikes together the way you did near the end of Act 4, spacing them out will still harm the player.
4. Act 8's long water section just goes in a circle and requires the elemental shield (which you can lose to cheap enemy placement). Surely you can extend the zone and have it be a rewarding route for players who want a challenge (as it seems to just be there as padding as of now).
5. Bosses with projectiles don't work that great with slime, you don't have much control and you're pretty much dead if you drop your rings.
6. Completely black areas with enemies can feel cheap, especially if a maze-like environment is added on top. There is quite often no need and no desire to have the brightness value near 0, especially since software interprets darkness differently from OpenGL. Contrast is fine, but taking it as far as it can go is often ill-advised.
7. The massive ring count makes it quite trivial to earn a ton of lives, I counted over 200 rings in just one of the open areas (nearly as many as in entire levels in vanilla 2.2). Spread the rings out a little and group them into smaller formations, as you don't need that many.
8. Paper-thin walls can be fine if done right, but please don't use a texture that suggests geometry with volume (like Greenflower's wall textures).
9. It is way too easy to get turned around as many paths will turn and cross over/under itself like a knot. Many paths also take you back to an earlier part of the level, alternate paths should eventually take you somewhere that is closer to the end sign than before.
10. A side effect of knot-shaped paths is that the next checkpoint is often not at all closer to the end than the last one, causing confusion.

I understand this is your first set of zones and maybe your first go at level design in general, I hope you don't see me as too harsh.

 

[WasifBoomz]

Thanks for all the tips, I was working on a new roller coaster themed zone and I might just remake these levels.

 

[Mr Beagle]

Thanks for all the tips, I was working on a new roller coaster themed zone and I might just remake these levels.

Going back to the levels would be good, because there is evidence you might be moving too fast here.

For instance, you completed 6 levels before learning some of the basic, but very useful techniques involved in map building. The levels don't have any evidence of thok barriers for instance (which can make levels feel a lot more open by potentially pulling the sky to floor level without lowering ceilings), and they also predate the ability to fit slopes without gaps or pieces of wall showing. In addition, the first two levels indicate you did them both before figuring out how FoF's work, and act 7 was done before learning how to fit midtextures to FoF pieces.

What you could do now is take act 4 and polish it to a crazy amount, then release and wait for community feedback before overhauling act 5. Repeat until you are done with Act 9. The whole idea of releasing now and gathering feedback is the road I am taking for instance.

 

[WasifBoomz]

Going back to the levels would be good, because there is evidence you might be moving too fast here.

For instance, you completed 6 levels before learning some of the basic, but very useful techniques involved in map building. The levels don't have any evidence of thok barriers for instance (which can make levels feel a lot more open by potentially pulling the sky to floor level without lowering ceilings), and they also predate the ability to fit slopes without gaps or pieces of wall showing. In addition, the first two levels indicate you did them both before figuring out how FoF's work, and act 7 was done before learning how to fit midtextures to FoF pieces.

What you could do now is take act 4 and polish it to a crazy amount, then release and wait for community feedback before overhauling act 5. Repeat until you are done with Act 9. The whole idea of releasing now and gathering feedback is the road I am taking for instance.

Thanks, I'll release Act 4 on its own, I'm proud with the current results.

 

[WasifBoomz]

Beta 2.0.0 is out, scroll to the top for more information!

 

[Konii]

Your Map has considerably improved, but however, there are a few flaws here and there:

Spoiler

There's a HoM right in the start of the stage:

Spoiler

Nitpick, but the placement of the signpost leans too left.

Spoiler

Maybe not a nitpick, but signpost camera faces backwards. You change that by changing the direction of the Signpost Thing on a map editor of your choice.

 

[WasifBoomz]

Thanks, I'll work on that!

 

[WasifBoomz]

Update 2.0.0 is out, download it now! Or don't, that's also fine.

 

[azumadeline]

You didn't put the update as an attachment so we can't download it :|

 

[WasifBoomz]

I swear I did!

---------- Post added at 04:54 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:51 PM ----------

Alright, I actually added the ZIP this time.

 

[Macholor]

Love How He Uses Other Songs To Fit!

I Say This Is Solid!

 

[Trolo Bobo]

This feels like such a 1.09.4 era level pack, I love it!! It makes me nostalgic, I kinda missed running around in big open spaces, especially now that we have slopes and better physics.

 

[Moose the Fat Cat]

Fantastic work.