https://my.mixtape.moe/kswzal.webm
Let’s trying indulging in a different excess…
SMBX is a haphazard mess of modular design. This doesn’t just apply to openly providing blocks and enemies from Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World without any given care for consistent aesthetics or looks, or even to the way nonsense like some Super Metroid and Zelda 2 assets are available by default. This nature seeps into its very bones, as the endeavors to make new versions apply lua scripts and memory address manipulation onto a closed-source engine like spindly towers built on-top of dead ruins.
Modular design is my forte, though. Crawl had over 500 enemies available, strong randomization controls readily based on chances and sets, and ceaseless settings and layouts as contexts.
A lot of SMBX levels try to emulate specific games, or draw by hand their own consistent aesthetic. A lot of Mario fangame and rom hack levels in general try to emulate a lowkey tradition (following SMB1 - SMW) or embark on wild gimmickry trails (incidentally echoing NSMB+), both focused on seeing if a few notes can be iterated upon enough for a whole level. There’s also the natural compliment and opposite to such focus, which sprawls over many Mario Maker levels- roster dumps and complete overhauls creating their own melanges. Mario Maker itself is very curious in being one of the ostensibly smoothest arrangements regarding interface and sharing, yet its contents being so substantially lacking leads to a lot of curiously clunky collages and blatant (if creative) hacks.
As one can tell from the other level pictures in this thread, my levels try to transgress such normalized limits of expression. They’re cobbled together, plucking out and recontextualizing available assets into consonance as can be found. I’ve rarely seen uses of quite a few enemies here in the broad yet controlled rosters these stages use, much less put together, which gives them somewhat unique identities still grounded by grandiose and hostile structures.
Did I just analogize my particular identity forged from my many marginalized, volatile statuses into Mario level design? Whatever serves as an expression of one’s self works, as has been seen in endless other works of media.
…
Minisode v0.52a is [EDIT: HERE]. There’s one complete level in it, one mostly-done level in it, one level left a bit past half done, and a third of a level playable by stitching its first section directly into its last. The levels are kind of a little excessively (but not unduly) difficult and scattered- I don’t believe in filler, nor in instant deaths. There are also some scattered engine peculiarities (spin-jumps only fail on a very slim and inconsistent selection, you can shoot fireballs upwards, abuse these both), and that fifth-level finale is much more technical than it first seems.
As before, one can play it by downloading the latest SMBX 2.0 betas, leaving the episode folder in /data/worlds/, and then selecting from the launcher the “Practice Minisode” episode. I can start on finishing things up once the next 2.0 beta comes out, but I think I need a lot of time and distance to address other things in my life than this, what was supposed to just be another outlet to practice and demonstrate level design skills. Jumping up to the cleanliness of this 22% took nearly a month’s worth of creative efforts and focus, ugh.
