Sparkling Icecap (s_sparklingicecap.wad)

[Thompson]

Sorry for the delay for releasing this after the ending of the contest. My computer started to have issues which was preventing me to fix up the map. But luckily I found a way to solve the dilemma.

So, alright here. Let me try to redeem myself by releasing this version of Sparkling Icecap. This was my original intention on how it was suppose to be in the contest. As I overlooked a few things when I hurried to release it. That was my silly mistake.

I tried to aim in between everyone's review from the contest. From serious mistakes to silly/little mistakes. The lag was a serious problem I mistook as being not so serious and found out that it was mostly cause by much variety of the Sparkle objects. The graphical glitches was a little mistake I made when I forgot to substitue my fast nodebuilder to normal. ^^' Whoops. Now. This version of the map has been nerfed. A lot. The platform path was barely touch, but almost everything on the puzzle path has been revamped to being a little more simple. For example: In the huge room, there is no more need in necessarily triggering multiple icicles to travel up-path and the ice-block inside the cave is not out of the way anymore, so there is no need to search for it, and after triggering it it's only a straight forward path on where you need to go. Hopefully after resetting things up in that room you'll understand what is needed to do.

Just to sum up what has been fix so I don't have to specifically what has been fixed.

• Most lag vanished and compatible with OpenGL and whatever resolution you desire.
• Graphical errors vanished.
• More coherent for puzzle path. Icicle room specifically.
• All damage white water has been substitued to normal blue water.
• Sparkles have been removed from almost all areas, especially huge rooms, so it won't be tedious to transverse, but less in caverns I would really like to sparkle.
• All cutscenes are now player protective.
• All Ice blocks are only needed to be destoyed in a spin-state. Otherwise by a essential jump or spindash. No combination, mixture needed.
• All areas that included Lava and changed to SOLID lava and has been super nerfed down to where gamplay is a breeze and few geography structures has changed and have been added to make avoiding lava easier.
• For Spirit Crusher: All red crawlas are gone, and less blue crawlas.
• Fountain glitch fixed
• Areas revamped for logical sense, and intuitiveness.

I've played and changed this multiple times to where I think no one would hve serious problems with it this time. For those that played this on Co-op, I can't exaggerate enough with prefix in front of the name of the wad it's not.

Enjoy!

 

[MascaraSnake]

For Spirit Crusher: All red crawlas are gone, and less blue crawlas.

You sure love your crawlas, don't you? :P

Anyway, will test right now and most certainly put it into Releases.

EDIT: Okay, two things:

• I can still skip the room with the two gargoyles by standing inside the fountain and falling down below the ice.
• In the room with the rope pulley, you forgot to make some breakable ice pillars translucent. Here, have a screenshot.

You might want to fix these before I put it into Releases.

 

[Thompson]

Argh. I thought I ridded of that fountain bug. Okay, I will fix these up in a few minutes.
EDIT: Fixed

 

[MascaraSnake]

Seems like I missed a few things on my first run. Here's more (no images because SRB2 failed to do proper screenshots):

• Puzzle path, right after the beginning, when the spin-breakable blocks are introduced for the first time. There are some rings between the halves of the second platform, to signify that players should jump through it. That's all fine and dandy, but if you break the block and don't collect the rings, they lie directly on top of the platform, without any height offset (aka undeafed)
• The ledge behind the waterfall in the icicle room is annoyingly narrow. I practically need to hug the wall to not fall off. Annoying.
• Fast forward to the "button" of the icicle room. I still don't quite like how this is laid out. You made it clear which way is forward, but when I go to the cave with the speed shoes and continue forward, I can still spindash through the small hole and return to the main room without having pressed the button. Just put a solid wall between the speed shoes cave and the small hallway that leads back to the hole.
• When I spindash through said "button", the Force Shield monitor right next to it suddenly sinks into the ground. No idea what causes it, but maybe you want to take a look.
• The fountain that is activated by said button has an unnecessary upwards-leading arrow behind it. I think it's perfectly obvious what to do there even without that arrow.
• The button in the room with the two gargoyles shouldn't be there initially, but rather pop out of the ground once the second gargoyle and the switch appear. It makes no sense beforehand.
• The rope pulley room has an old spindash-breakable block that you forgot to replace and re-texture.
• In the snowflake room, you goofed up on the platform with the spin-breakable block. I don't need to break it anymore, the spring reaches all the way to the top.
• Said room also has an old spindash-breakable block that you forgot to replace and re-texture.
• I'm still not satisfied with the path layout in the snowflake room. I bet it's still confusing for the uninitiated.

 

[Thompson]

Okay, I just got home and most of these problems are an easy fix. I have one disagreement though. I'm not truly sure how the snowflake room is confusing. Where would the player become confused? There's 2 paths leading upwards that conjoin with an arrow leading left, telling you you should take the bridge, which is only one path. Then once you come activate the lava, and you see that a path is accessible in the up above cave, and there's no choice but to go upwards and there are floating platforms that pretty much take you the way you need to go. The lava pretty much eliminates most of the path layout, then you have the arrow pointing right this time. I think it makes logical sense. And I'll edit this post to let you know I've finished.

 

[MascaraSnake]

For some reason, I always thought the path with the breakable ice block is the "normal" path and the other one with the tunnel is the "escape" path for when the lava comes. No idea why I thought that. Anyway, I'd just remove the tunnel path, because it's useless either way and it confuses people who never noticed it before (which, by the way, is not so unrealistic because it blends in with its surroundings.

EDIT: Oh, and other thing: In the icicle room, the blue springs that lead back into the main room from the outside area aren't strong enough.

 

[Thompson]

Okay, all problems are fixed. You may move this to releases Spirit. And I'll add you to the Supporters since you've pretty much specified each problem and how they could become fixed.

 

[MascaraSnake]

The button in the room with the two gargoyles shouldn't be there initially, but rather pop out of the ground once the second gargoyle and the switch appear. It makes no sense beforehand.

Obviously I meant to say "arrow" here, not button. But you seem to have understood me just fine, at least you fixed the problem in a totally different manner. Also, when I asked you to close off the room with the Super Sneakers near the button of the icicle room, I actually thought you'd close off the other end. But this works just as well :)

Spoiler: And then, what is this?

Please put the old ice textures back there. It doesn't fit at all.

And I'll add you to the Supporters since you've pretty much specified each problem and how they could become fixed.

Thanks for that. And done.

 

[Fawfulfan]

Two complaints about the icicle room. First, the water outside is a Death Pit. With Camera Modifications. That's a serious break from consistency there. If you must keep it, make a translucent water block above a Death Pit. And remove the Camera Modifications; it's too shallow for that.

Second, the dripping water. Have you ever seen a cavern where the water all drips in perfect synchronization? I know I haven't. Whenever I use dripping water, I try to give each Thing a random angle to make it look as natural as possible.

 

[Shiron]

During the contest I gave it, hmm... A 5/10?
Now, I give it a 10/10. Good job!

The ending was truly epic, the gimmicks were original and fun, and it was challenging, but not too challenging!

Thank you for fixing it!

 

[Scizor300]

Well, I wouldn't exactly say that all the graphical errors are gone.

 

[akb778]

That spring shouldn't be up there at all... Happens after you activate the waterfall in the area next to this part.

 

[Thompson]

akb778: I really haven't tested this in other EXEs but have multiple times in regular SRB2. Sparkling Icecap really isn't fully compatible with other versions of SRB2. I'll try to work on that soon probably.

Scizor300: Never really found that one. I'll get on that as well.

FawfulFan: No biggie, though, I'll keep it in mind.

SpiritCrusher: I'm glad you found the wall closing to your pleasure. Ack! I forgot to change those back to their original texture for the last release. :S

 

[SonicX8000]

Hi GFZROCK.

While Sonic & Tails can't get stuck here as they can break the block by jumping into it, if someone where to glide and let go, Knuckles shall get stuck and have to ether noclip, or reset the level. (And maybe other characters.) *This is a APNG, by the way.*

 

[PHCC]

Another thing is, I don't actually need to freeze the river to get past that area :

I can get past here and continue normally. This screenshot was taken from my speedrun video, that's because I'm there at 0:50 and because the image is in a small resolution, I was too lazy to open the game and take a screenshot of this. Also, if you see my speedrun at 2:06, I'm sure that I shouldn't be there after that cutscene, I don't know what happened anyway. The link to my youtube channel is in my sig.

 

[MascaraSnake]

Is it necessary to have the Whirlwind Shield for that? Because if it is, that sounds like a legitimately good speedrun shortcut that should be kept.

Also, this level must be hell to speedrun.

 

[PHCC]

No, with or without the whirlwind shield you can pass that area with no need of freezing the river at all, but I don't think that anyone would want to get through this level without seeing the awesome river-freezing gimmick (unless if you're speedrunning), so I don't know if this should be fixed or not. =P
Also, yes, this level is hell to speedrun, but it wasn't that much because most of those shortcuts were discovered by my friend, and they make the speedrun far easier. Seriously, if it wasn't my friend, my time would be at least 2x longer than it is now.

 

[MascaraSnake]

Yeah, after seeing those shortcuts you used, I was wowed.

Anyway, this should be an easy fix if you wanna fix it.

 

[Thompson]

I could have sworn I made that cold waterfall super secure, and close to the wall as possible. Oh well. All a simple fix.

This was cool to watch though. Everything you used to your advantage like the whirlwind shield, I'm fine with. But, I'm still not entirely sure how you've gotten up there after activating that lava. I became clueless how you did.

 

[JEV3]

Well I just gave this a shot. It still chugged a bit on my machine, but for the most part it was much better. I tried the puzzle path for the first time and got lost a couple of times.

First time in the icicle room, when I'd finally made it to the top I saw a brown bustable block right in front of me and immediately assumed it was the path forward. I then had to backtrack all the way up there and didn't notice the ice block until the second time around.

The second time in the icicle room, I'd noticed those frozen water fountains earlier and figured they were important. Once I got up to the top I saw one in front of me leading to a hole in the wall.
Unfortunately, I messed up trying to thok to the fountain so I jumped out of the melted lake and tried again and again. Then I tried going from the bottom fountains and working my way up. At one point an unlucky framerate drop combined with bad reflexes sent me into a pit while trying to make my way back to the top.
After starting all over, I finally made it to the hole in the wall on the other side only to find out it was a dead end with nothing but a 1up for my trouble. Confused I jumped back down into the melted lake and then accidentally found the way forward.

Lastly, the infinite loop was interesting but I'd gone in and out of the same two dead ends over and over. In the end it turned out that a very solid looking blue wall wasn't quite so solid. It didn't quite make sense.

The first problem is a result of the brown bustable block being far more obvious than the ice block you're supposed to break. The second problem was because you can't see the way forward easily. The third, well I'm not sure I understood it well enough to know what happened.
Besides these things though... as a whole, I've come to the conclusion that I'm just not skilled enough at SRB2 to play this kind of map. Most of my other issues were nonsense stuff that I doubt would be a problem for anyone else.