[Open Assets] Velvet Valley

[Starlight]

"To live a life of power, you must have faith that you believe is right, even if others tell you you're wrong. The first thing you must do to live a life of power is to find courage. You must be ready to reach beyond the boundaries of Time itself. And to do that, all you need is the will to take that first step..."

Suggestions:
Keep running. Enemies will spot you from miles away, so don't just sit there and waste your precious time, do it now. Do it while you can.

This Level uses this lua: https://mb.srb2.org/showthread.php?t=45712

Story:
Velvet Valley is the direct birthplace in Christmas Island where Sonic was born, so Robotnik wanted to make his ultimate base there, (a fusion of the death egg, and metropolis) just to get Sonic mad. So the Animals fled, and the Badniks drained the water, slowly turning it to a desert wasteland. When Sonic heard the news, he rushed to get there so fast, that it took him 5 seconds. That's how angry he was.

Alright, now that's out of the way, I present to you my first level, Velvet Valley. Its entirely based off of Sonic Utopia and Sonic Islands. It acts a little fishy by telling me there's something wrong with the level but there isn't, but I think I have things all checked out, so you can tell me if something doesn't work.

 

[Zipper]

A little tip: Using more than 3 enemy types tends to oversaturate a level, and make it feel disjointed.

That being said, cute little level. Welcome to Releases!

 

[Snowy]

Not bad, and fairly enjoyable for what it's trying to do. Feels like a very 'exploratory' map in the vain of Sonic Utopia's level logic, where the goal is very easy to reach but the level is filled with optional goodies and exploration, so you just wanna explore it all.

I will note some of my own issues I discovered, though. Two actually. First one's bigger, but the second one is more curiosity and confusion than anything.

1: You forgot to give each checkpoint it's own identity- each checkpoint is activated when the first one is, so it ends up making the others redundant and pointless as they won't work, and the player will always end up at the first checkpoint.
2: That Golden pity shield monitor that you can't reach without a whirlwind shield or a electric shield at the start of the level... Wwwwhy? I assume you forgot to check if the player could naturally get up there as anyone other than knuckles, which if it IS supposed to be Knuckles only, fine, sure... but even then there's a elemental shield alongside the bunch of goodies at the top of that little area, so again, why?

 

[Zanda_Sama]

Eh... I think that the amount of enemies is probably fine as long as it's not more than 5. In that case then I believe SRB2's vanilla levels are undersaturated. I mean I know GFZ is just a glorified tutorial level, but it has like one enemy. Crawlas. no, red crawlas dont count, no the fish dont count either because they don't attack the player, they just... hop up and down and do nothing.
3 or 4 Different enemies sounds good.
Also Techno Hill has the same issue, as it just has spring crawlas and hornets, I mean I think most sonic games have more than 2 enemies... could be wrong.
But I mean if SRB2 had at least 3 different enemies in every stage, it'd be much better. Also if GFZ's only enemy wasn't crawla. Some agree with me.
Point is the level is probably not oversaturated, as long as the enemy placements make sense and aren't placed randomly or halfhazardly its good to have VARIETY.

 

[sluggard]

Looks fun, I will give this a shot.

 

[Mr Beagle]

While I do like varied levels, the trick is to create enough of an overarching concept without making the layout, textures, and enemies feel random.

As of version 1 for instance, I see the crawlas, the buzzes, the spring shells, crushtaceon, minus, the turret, ect... and I see a sharp transition to a sandy area and a small area with bricks. This is all in what is currently a somewhat small layout.

Zone Builder meanwhile would allow you to make massive expansions to the layout and make an open and exploration-rich level (if something like Sonic Utopia was the aim). You can create a main theme, and then have distinct regions either along the main path or in spots you need to explore to get to. You can create somewhat slower transitions between themes to create the feeling of exploring a world with biomes. To note, Sonic Utopia itself is 99 percent Green Hill with small areas of different theming, areas I think are too small really.

One should also not forget that variety in enemies can be done in more ways than adding everything that comes with the game, you can look at pattern placement, ambushes, changes in the ambient difficulty, ect...

One last thing, as you get more experienced, you could look at expressing the idea in the actual layout (CEZ2 for instance lays out like a literal castle). I say that is more advanced because it could require major revision and a lot of planning ahead to fully realize.

 

[PencilVoid]

Very interesting level! I love your texture use, it looks great. I also liked how non-linear the level is. I do have to agree with Zipper though, it felt like i was crashing a badnik get-together. And some rings aren't floating, and a couple are floating too high. You should give all rings a height of 0 and the "Float" flag. I'm not sure how to feel about the chaos emeralds scattered around the map either; if I were you I would just go with the standard emerald tokens. Great level for a beginner though, it was really fun to play.

 

[steven3004]

Thanks, this level makes me hate bees even more now.
Otherwise, this is quite a great level with lots of things to do, and see, like collecting the Chaos Emeralds as well as getting jumpscared by some Badniks. Seriously, they gave me a lot of heart attacks.