I really like the destructible terrain myself, as the end product of a bunch of design thought. All of the Mario Maker Bowser fights are patterned off of SMB1’s single-strike duel, as a slip through walls to focus on movement rather than a “boss fight”, and the inelegantly restrained design in a lot of Mario Maker levels just outlines this harder. Meanwhile, SMB3 already had something much more satisfying for an out-and-out fight- where Bowser can move just as much as Mario, trying to leap on his head and spewing out fireballs, but with breaking bricks from above rather than below. SMBX has both of these in its ridiculous blob of Super Mario All-Stars + SMW contents, but incredibly enough I haven’t seen a single one of the SMB3 fights* that avoids tricking him into a pit while remembering the terrain he can specifically destroy. Like. Why is this so rare to handle any well. Mario moves around, a boss should move around to increase reasons to move around, Mario normallu destroys terrain, bosses can destroy terrain, 2D platforming doesn’t happen on flat expanses, bosses should have uneven terrain, natural level challenges are in combining multiple elements, bosses can more than just some single component.
The boos are part of ~randomized elements~ for the fight that themselves are part of the final level’s ~controlled randomized elements~ because what the fuck does SMBX have all this lua for if you can’t be any smartly creative with it. Two possible enemies on opposite ends each of a different stage, and the fixed (altered) boo circle serve as general area denial instead of spawns moving around the space. They’re… not in a great position in the webm, I’ll admit, as I was reminded by others watching the video, as the space is far too tight to manage them amongst the other moving parts. Thus, I expanded it enough that someone might actually weave in and out of obvious blindspots for another fire flower, alongside being just barely large enough to hit the middle and its own flowers. That webm only came after hours of testing practice, I feel obliged to note.
*
I’m accessing memory values to hijack fixed health systems for healthier results because this engine is dead and closed-source and it’s weird anybody has managed to make more for it
Gods, I could ramble on about self-contained level design systems for forever. There’s over five hundred words in the lead-in for my next beta.