Audio

I finally got round to adding sound to this game, after almost a whole year o’ silence. The music is all royalty-free songs offered to the public by Kevin MacLeod on Incompetech, which may be temporary, may not be. Since I have no musical skills, I can’t imagine how I’d make a decent soundtrack for this.

As for the sound effects, they’re made with various Flash programs online that randomly generate some wave patterns.

Honestly, it took mo’ time wandering MacLeod’s site & listening to hundreds o’ songs in search for the best song for each level — an exercise that brings me back to the Super Mario World romhacking days when I’d do that with user-submitted SPCs on Super Mario World Central, since in addition to having no musical skills, I couldn’t e’en figure out how to port already-composed video game songs into Super Mario World’s weird format.

Meanwhile, using SDL2’s music & sound libraries only required a couple hundred lines o’ code & a function call strewn in various places to tell the global Audio class to play some song or music. The most complicated thing was preventing sound effects from noisily o’erlapping each other, such as when collecting gems, without blocking sounds I do want, such as the sound for collecting a diamond, which I solved by dividing the sound effects into channels & stopping only that a sound’s channel when playing a sound. Thus, collecting multiple gems will interrupt other gem sounds, but not a diamond sound, since that’s on a separate channel.

But I can see there’s still some bugs with the way the sound works. As the video shows… well, 1, recording with sound causes slowdown, which ne’er happened before; but related to that, if slowdown does happen in-game, it’s separate from the music, leading to sync issues. The playthrough o’ “Warm Up” shows this: it’s timed so that the song ends right when the timer reaches 30 & the level ends; but ’cause o’ slowdown, the song ends early & loops awkwardly. That ne’er happened in any o’ my earlier test — only when finally recording & encountering slowdown.

& there’s probably hours o’ fiddling to be done. Different songs are all o’er the place in terms o’ volume. For instance, while the mines music ( officially, “Chillin Hard” ) is quiet, “Mart Cart Madness”’s ( officially, “Got Funk” ) is so loud, you can hardly hear the sound effects.

As the video also shows, I spruced up the level-select screen so that it’s not just plain black & white.

Lunacy

Beating the time challenge for this video probably took mo’ effort & time that designing this level. ’Cause jumping is so slow, any extraneous jump can fuck you o’er.

Part o’ me thinks this level may be too difficult, considering it’s s’posed to be a 1st-cycle level. On the other hand, the level’s deceptively easy: while the slowness makes beating the level quickly hard, just beating the level in general is easy, since you get plenty o’ time to land jumps. Thus, 1-block jumps you’d expect from late-game Super Mario Bros. levels are trivially easy. Similarly, e’en though the spike passages are tight, it’s not too hard getting through them without getting hit ( though I think you absolutely need to be holding the run button to get through some passages ).

My original plan for the graphics was to have crater moon graphics; but every time I tried drawing them they looked like crap. Then I came up with the idea o’ blocks shaped like Hershey chocolate bars, & went with that — which fits, since canonically in the Boskeopolis universe the moon’s surface is s’posedly made o’ white chocolate. I still think this level looks a bit too sparse; but I could spend eternity sprucing up the graphics in every level, so it’s best to let some levels look simple.

Next level will probably be a harbor level with “Rusty Bucket Bay” sludge water as a gimmick.

Source code

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Actually, in my defense, from what I’ve seen, Super Mario Odyssey looks so good it might e’en rival Super Mario 64, which is god-tier — something I’m writing a huge article ’bout, which you should expect sometime within the next 5 years maybe. So Nintendo has shown that they can not fuck things up when they actually make new things. I say “from what I’ve seen” ’cause o’ an ol’ policy I’ve followed my whole life, & shall continue to do — a policy I’ve tried to teach my young nephew when the bourgeosie’s crafty sugary candy o’ consumerism consumes him himself: ne’er buy a system less than a year after it comes out. Shit, I just recently tried out the original Wii last month for a mere $60 — & you suckers paid a couple hundred for it a mere decade ago.

But our subject isn’t that, but shitty remakes — to be specific, shitty remakes that I haven’t actually played, but are shitty in terms o’ aesthetics — & I’m reasonably sure they’re just the same games ’neath the new paint.

See, I love remakes that somehow manage to be aesthetically worse than their originals, since the 1 thing you’d expect new technology to add is better graphics & higher-quality sound. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it yet, but I oft laughed @ how pitiful those new Yoshi’s Island games — the DS 1 with its utterly forgettable music & cheap graphics or that 3DS 1 with the fucking kazoos. I marveled @ how these new-fangled games sucked so hard, they looked worse & sounded much worse than a game that came out in 1995 for a system that had a mere 3.58 megahertz & a mere 128 kilobytes. It made me wonder why they e’en bothered to make a new version o’ a game that, clearly, is perfectly good as it is. If Yoshi’s Island looks better & sounds better than games that pass the condiments today, ¿how could it be called “outdated” in any way?

The same applies to 2 recent Mario remakes: Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser’s Minions ( ’nother example o’ Nintendo’s newfound love for awkward game titles ) & Mario Party: the Top 100.

The former replaced the original Mario & Luigi’s expressive & beautiful cartoon graphics — a surprising rarity in Mario games, which are usually either pixelated or polygonal — that made the series stand out with cheap polygonal graphics that look like ripoffs from New Super Mario Bros. I can’t wait till they finally remake Paper Mario with its shabby, outdated flat graphics so that it’ll be mo’ consistent with modern Mario games — i.e. look just like all the others with no heart or personality o’ its own.

Lots o’ people, e’en up to reviewers like @ Destructoid ( when they can pull themselves ’way from talking ’bout wanting to fuck Shantae — ne’er live it down ), have noted that character expressions are mo’ generic: Toads’ eyes no longer pop out when they become frightened in the opening cutscene, Peach’s tears are mo’ generic…

Now, the thing is, they could’ve improved this game’s graphics by actually keeping to the heart o’ the game’s aesthetics. ¿Imagine how this game’s graphics would look if it had high-resolution handdrawn graphics? What we got is just a sad rehash o’ an ol’ argument I thought had died: “Duh, it’s polygons, so it’s better ’cause that’s mo’ ‘advanced”’.

But I do have to ask, ¿did we truly need a remake o’ Superstar Saga? ¿When did this game come out? ¿2003? ¿Do we truly need to remake a game every 15 years, ’specially when the technological increases that s’posedly warrant them are getting diminishing returns? ¿What was wrong with the orignal Superstar Saga? It’s just seemed like such a strange decision that came out o’ nowhere.

Mario Party: the Top 100’s different in that it’s not necessarily a remake so much as a greatest hits compilation o’ minigames, a celebration o’ Mario Party’s long history just a year before its 20-year anniversary o’ the 1st game’s December 1998 release ( maybe I should do a retrospective on that series next year ). They apparently e’en brought back Minigame Island, which was a mechanic they dropped since the 2nd game for reasons I can’t comprehend.

That said, Metacritic gives it middling scores ( granted, I question how selective their “critic” choices are, as many o’ them I’ve ne’er heard o’, & quite a few can’t write coherent English ) & I saw some obnoxious Game Grumps ripoffs say it’s not good, & it seems like they have good reasons. Also, the game costs $40, which is hilariously ridiculous in a world where I can get games with much mo’ depth off Steam for $10 – $20.

But I’m mostly aiming my ire @ the remixed music. Since this game remakes minigames from all the ol’ Mario Partys ( ’cept DS & Advanced, which is bullshit, as the latter was awesome & the former a’least had good minigames ), logically it remixes the songs that played in those minigames. Well, not truly “logically”, since they came from N64 & after systems, which had perfectly good sound quality. Nintendo were wise when they didn’t change Super Mario 64 or Ocarina of Time’s music in their remakes: they were perfect the way they were.

What amazes me ’bout the remixed music is that they usually sound technologically inferior, as if from a less powerful system than the N64. The music in the 1st 2 Mario Partys sounded like natural music — no beeps or bips. But the new music makes it sound mo’ technoish — that generic technoish sound that’s infected most modern cheap Mario games.

Let’s look @ the 1st abomination I saw: “Blue Skies Yonder” — the original & the modern version. The original sound like real instruments & evokes a slightly country feeling with its whistles. It’s the kind o’ song you play when you’re, say, riding up a mountain on train tracks. ¿You know what goes great with that mood? Fucking techno. & yet, that’s precisely what the modern version added. I want to emphasize ’gain: the original sounds like real instruments. The modern legit sounds like a MIDI version. ¿How the hell does a remake on a much mo’ powerful console make a song sound mo’ like a MIDI?

Other songs are mo’ mixed. In the modern version o’ “Going for Coins”, I like the bass, but the horns are so pathetically tepid.

Also, it’s probably pointless to bring this up, since the change happened games ago, but the parrot announcer from the original games is far better than the hokey new voice actor they have, who sounds like just some executive working @ the company.

Swanky New Title Screen

I finally got sick o’ looking @ that basic white screen with plain black option text. Since I noticed many o’ the Game Boy Color games I used as inspiration, such as Wario Land 3 & Super Mario Bros. Deluxe, used slow scrolling backgrounds, I used it, too. The only problem is I haven’t finished the skyscraper part, which currently only has 3 buildings that repeat way too much.

As for the menu items, after a while o’ thinking o’ weird borders & background shapes ’hind the text, — since the text obviously wouldn’t contrast ’nough from a mo’ complex background — I took inspiration from web design & just made some flat-design button links. They e’en have a slight fade-in & fade-out — ’cept it required tacky switch statements rather than a simple “transition: all .5s”.

’Nother effect I’ve been thinking o’ adding for a while was a way to make mo’ interesting transitions ’tween message screens & the o’erworld & level — the goal message & the victory & failure messages. The idea I had was to have it fall downward, & then swipe sideways when it’s done: however, this’ll require some tinkering. For 1, I’ll need to make it so that it changes all lower states to the new state while keeping itself ’live ’long ’nough to swipe ’way ( falling in will be easy: just push the message state onto the previous state ’stead o’ replacing it ). Mo’ importantly, the goal message state will need to run while the o’erworld state is still there, which means the level state won’t initialize yet. The problem is that the goal message state needs the goal in order to get its message, & the goal is initialized in the level state. ( As it is now, the level state technically starts before the message state appears — the message state is simply added on in the 1st frame, before the level state has a chance to draw itself ).

Pepperoncini Pyramid

This is a level idea I’ve been thinking ’bout for a while. Inspired by Wario Land 4, — or, mo’ directly, a story from Boskeopolis Stories¹ — you go halfway through the level to collect a moon, which starts making the pyramid collapse, giving you only 45 seconds to roll round back to the start, where the door is now open ( & glowing somehow — but it’s a video game: doors always glow in video games with no explanation ).

Mo’ & mo’ I’m getting a habit o’ spending probably too much time on presentation — & there’s still stuff I ne’er got round to adding, such as cracks in the wall or hieroglyphs in the currently plain background. O well: there’s no law that says I can’t go back & add things later.

Some o’ the frivolous extras I think look good, such as the way the the block enemy’s eyes follow you when you’re near it, the flashing timer that bounces down & fades into the HUD when you collect the moon & the shaking camera & falling pebbles ( secretly just 5 pebbles that keep randomly changing size & position when they pass the bottom o’ the screen ) when the pyramid is collapsing. Other, such as the spinning moon… I’m less sure ’bout.

Time works weirdly here: despite what happens to the clock when you get the moon, the game still counts how many seconds you spent in total in the level before beating it, & that’s the score you get — beating the time challenge requires you to go just as quickly before the moon as after ( note: in addition to the clock not moving during the moon-get cutscene, the time spent in that cutscene doesn’t count toward your best time, as the level state doesn’t run @ all during it ).

Funny ’nough, though, the gem challenge is actually much harder than the time challenge. As the video shows, I could do plenty o’ sloppy playing & still make the time challenge; but the gem challenge gives you very few excess gems, & many o’ the gems are a 1-time-only grab while falling.

Source code

A bit late ’cause it’s an odd year &, seriously, nobody cares ’bout odd years, ’specially not the hip kids, who probably care mo’ ’bout Mayor Pauline & her city o’ freakish uncanny valley realistic humans in that new-fangled Mario game than Seattle’s mayor being replaced ’cause he touched kiddies in their hoo-haws.

When I say “slightly less failures”, I mean the Democrats took o’er Virginia & Washington… state ( not to be confused with the Washington people actually care ’bout ), which they already mostly owned, anyway. Republicans still, ’course, control all 3 branches o’ the federal government.

Virginia is the main focus, ’cause nothing else important has happened. Virginians hated Republicans so much that they elected a transgender & filthy socialist just to piss on them. The former has, predictably, led some to question how Christianity, a religion that’s lasted multiple millenia, will survive the existence o’ exactly 1 lowly state legislator who’s trans, which is reminiscent o’ that time Christianity vanished after gay people & rock ’n roll spontaneously appeared in the 1960s or after they let in those filthy Gentiles with their unsnipped dicks.

’Course, this ( very miniscule ) turn-round should be expected: voters are notoriously fickle & generally turn gainst the party in power¹ ’cause it gives them the delusion that they’re radicals raging gainst the machine & not sad ordinary people who couldn’t o’erthrow a bossy cellphone.

Still, with victories by such Democrats as a Goldman Sachs financier ( WARNING: link contains obnoxious video that plays without warning ) ( gainst Chris Christie, that infamous New Jersey governor that nobody liked, ’cept as a target for mockery @ how unlikeable he is — so, Hairpiece before Hairpiece ), a Clinton fundraiser who will soon be Virginia’s new governor, & Democrat Jenny Durkan, Seattle’s 1st woman mayor & heavily funded by Comcast, CenturyLink, AT&T, & Amazon gainst ’nother woman who was actually mo’ left-wing, we can see the key to Democrats’ success: spend much mo’ money. That’s always been Democrats’ main strategy for getting America’s rich o’erlords to give them elections: just convince them Democrats will also give them everything they want without being as dangerously self-destructive as Republicans ( “Filthy Capitalism without the Dumbassery” could be their tagline ).

’Course, there will always be naysayers on ours necks telling us there are still problems with our beloved loser party, as well as all our secrets to our crush in a Stewie-like voice. For instance, we have this “autopsy”, which is just some pundit saying things we already know: Democrats care mo’ ’bout money than people & lowerclass people aren’t so fond o’ them anymo’. Meanwhile, Breitbart — & you owe me for stepping into that cesspool o’ popup ads & tacky clickbait web design — handles this election with straight-up denial: their home page had mo’ references to the 2016 election than to this 1, as if that wasn’t a whole year ago, & therefore ancient & irrelevant.

O yeah, & I guess Ohio & Maine will get public health care & Ohio passed a bill forcing pharmaceutical companies to lower the price on their much-needed pain medicine in this torture hole known as planet earth, cheating these companies out o’ the money they themselves earned on their own hard work lobbying the government for free funding grants. But that’s not as sexy as… um, ¿what else was accomplished ’gain? ¿Democrats finally got their “You’re pretty good, too” trophy?

Also, apparently the “Involuntarily Celibate” subreddit has been banned, which may be a victory for liberals, I guess, but is definitely a victory for good taste. For those blissfully unaware o’ it, ’twas a place for people to publicly whine ’bout not getting sex — the most vital thing to human existence if you’re a middle-class white male with a well-off family that gives you infinite economic support. “¡It’s fucking torture, being ‘forced’ to live in security & comfort & not being able to fuck any woman I want!” ’Cause just paying a prostitute or jerking off is pathetic, unlike whining in public ’bout not getting sex “only” ’cause they’re s’posedly fat & ugly while bashing s’posedly fat & ugly women & making up misogynist conspiracy theories while outright admitting that it’s based on emotional problems & not rational reasons, which is the epitome o’ dignity.

Tune in next year when we’ll hopefully see the Democrats stop being utter fucking failures & actually win back the house & senate so they can go back to backstabbing the lower classes & then lose goodwill for the dozenth time, leading to the election o’ that Milo Yapalopolis guy to presidency so he can touch all o’ America’s children in their hoo-haws ( edit for fairness: but only if they’re gay & still have sex organs². Milo does have standards, & I respect him for that ). After all, if America doesn’t have their vicious cycle o’ Coke vs. Pepsi elections, ¿what do they have anymo’?

A 2fer this time.

The Minus Touch

No, I still couldn’t get OpenShot to work with this footage; but Kdenlive decided it wanted to start working ’gain for some reason.

Part o’ me feels like I went a bit too far with this level, as my long sequence o’ deaths show in the video. I believe it took me close to an hour to finally get a winning run. Then ’gain, I’ve done much worse in still-perfectly-sensible games & have been noticing that this game has been tending toward easy. Needless to write, this level is in the last cycle.

1 o’ the complications o’ this level was that something that was s’posed to be a bonus in any other level is a huge problem in this level: the hitboxes on the gems are way wider than their graphic. This made the parts where you have to squeeze ’tween gem walls & dodging the falling gems in the long ladder climb just after much harder than they should’ve been, since you have the squeeze tightly ’tween the blocks, but can’t see their boundaries, so you nudge just into 1’s hitbox, e’en though your character’s graphic is clearly outside o’ the gem’s graphic, making it deceptive & cheap. So for this level I made ’nother gem block, but added some custom block conditions that limit its hitbox so that it’s only its graphic.

I also think that drop @ the start is probably a waste o’ time that only makes the level’s difficulty mo’ frustrating than it should be. The fall’s s’posed to make you think you have to weave ’tween gems, which is technically possible, but not something I’ve e’er done, I don’t think. But as the video shows, you can just go a block left to the center & you’ll pass all the gems. I’m not sure if this is a way to reward clever players or a bullshit gotcha on the player that punishes them for not reading a walkthrough watching this video or reading this post.

On the other hand, I like the shape o’ the level: how it’s a long plummet from the top to the bottom that goes quickly, followed by a long climb back up to the top that takes a lot longer. 1 technique I’ve devised to help me with designer’s block I’ve been having was creating simple shapes for levels, a pattern you’ll see in the next level.

The length was something I mired o’er quite a bit. I’ve mentioned quite a few times that I generally want to keep levels to 15 – 30 seconds average time, since these are s’posed to be short bursts without checkpoints. However, this is a special level & 1 that’s s’posed to be the hardest in the game, so having it be longer is a fair way to increase the challenge, so long as it’s not excessive. In this case, my time was ’bout 1:40, but if one’s rushing one could probably do it in ’bout a minute ( testing it with the “lose if you touch a gem” gimmick turned off, I found one could easily make it to the end within 50 seconds, e’en if mostly trying to avoid gems ).

The time challenge is 1:10, which is probably plenty if one’s going fast; but I’ve ne’er gotten it, since just beating this level is a problem for my meager skills. It’s probably mo’ lenient than any o’ the other levels, which is good: I want to have the harder levels have mo’ lenient challenges while giving the easier levels much stricter challenges to balance things. In contrast, the 1st level you have to do just ’bout perfectly to get the time score.

Part o’ the challenge o’ a micromanaging a level’s length is trying to ensure you don’t pad out the level by o’erusing ideas, but don’t neglect good ideas, complicated by the fact that ideas themselves can have multiple subideas within them; & then you have to make sure the length o’ each idea is right. In this case I had quite a few ideas, such as walking gem enemies, alternating falling gems ’bove a ladder, & gems rolling down a hill that I probably could’ve done mo’ with, but would’ve risked making the level too long & tedious. Better to leave players wanting mo’ than wanting less.

In particular, the walking gems could have been complicated in many mo’ ways beyond just having 2 guarding either end o’ a straight hallway. Then ’gain, part o’ me feels those sprites are a bit unfair: their movement is randomized & they move so quickly that it feels like luck whether you can get through them unscathed. They are unquestionably the worst part o’ this level.

Conveyor Slayer

This level used to be called “Steam Engeenius”, but then I realized it has nothing to do with steam @ all. Its current name still feels odd, though: it certainly focuses mostly on conveyor belts, but its a 1st-cycle level that’s quite easy, so the “slayer” part sounds hilariously inapt. It’s like calling “Yoshi’s Island 2” in Super Mario World “Chaos Corner”.

This is ’nother example o’ the “shape level” idea I mentioned before. While trying to design this level I kept envisioning twisty paths that go all o’er, & then back to the start, but I felt that ’twas, rather than being mo’ interesting or “complex”, just messy, & went in the other direction toward an elegantly simple & memorable shape. The original idea was that it’d be a circle, but I found that made actually moving through the level janky, so changed it to a rectangle. It actually looks better this way, since it’s a factory & should look boxy & artificial.

Getting this level to work right was mo’ burdensome in terms o’ programming, thanks to a bunch o’ li’l bugs that either got you stuck & made the level unwinnable or made it easy to cheese the level. The absolute worst, & yet something I found quite late, was my realization that collision detection had been wrong this entire time: the saved left o’erlap for something o’er something else ( a block o’er a sprite, for example ) actually uses the formula for o’erlapping from the right & vice-versa. This hasn’t hindered this game much since nothing has used the horizontal o’erlaps yet. However, there’s a glitch I think I mentioned earlier wherein you could jump under the corner o’ a block & jump through the wall, going straight up. In this case, that allows one to skip straight to the end, which is a problem.

The other problem was that if the conveyor shoved one into a wall, they’d get stuck fore’er, which forced me to check whether the player is right next to a wall & make the conveyor not work if so.

’Nother problem was the main gimmick: the goal is blocked off by a passage so short you have to be ducking with a conveyor going in the opposite direction. The only way to get through is to hit a switch & so the conveyor goes in the other direction. The problem is that Autumn can hop round while ducking, so she can skip right through, & I didn’t want to change that or make her move super slowly while duck jumping, since that’d mess up her movement in other levels; so I just added a patch that makes it so Autumn can’t jump while ducking on a conveyor belt.

Finally, there was the challenge o’ making block graphics change based on whether the switch is hit, which involved making ’nother subclass o’ the “SpriteGraphics” class & adding ’nother wasteful update virtual function specific for the block updates so the “EventSystem” can be passed to it without having to go through & edit all the update functions for every subclass o’ “SpriteGraphics” or something. The “SwitchGraphics” sublcass itself just holds 2 “SpriteGraphics” unique pointers, making its own data useless, which is also a waste. 1 thing I’ve learned in this project is to better separate interfaces with data: most polymorphism is just through “render” & “update” functions, nothing else. All the other “SpriteGraphics” subclasses used the vast majority o’ the same data, so it seemed right… but then “SwitchGraphics” comes round & proves you can’t be sure o’ anything fore’er.

As for the frivilous extra update function, I should probably just make “EventSystem” a static singleton, since there’s only e’er 1 & I hate passing objects round a bunch o’ functions. Most people seem to say that’s better than having globals, but I’m starting to disagree. If anything, all this passing round arguments only couples things mo’ & makes no sense since it should’ve be any concern o’ anything that calls any update functions what other things that update function uses. My experience with making the “Inventory” class a static singleton has only been good. I haven’t had any glitches appear due to this “evil” global, but have gotten cleaner, easier to understand code. The same might apply to the “BlockSystem” & “SpriteSystem” — something I should look into. The only downside is that these static classes would always be using memory throughout the whole program, e’en in the title screen & o’erworld, where they’re not used ( the inventory, on the other hand, is used everywhere ). Then ’gain, the vast majority o’ your time takes place in-level, & it’s not as if the title screen or o’erworld map are begging for mo’ memory — they’re some o’ the most lightweight parts o’ the program.

Anyway, there’s much worst inefficiencies in this game’s half-assed code that it’s silly to point to an extra virtual function as the culprit ( the general o’eruse o’ polymorphism, which requires using pointers for collections & prevents taking advantage o’ data locality is probably a worse problem ).

& then there’s the graphics, which usually takes the bulk o’ development time. That upper-left gem cache made me start to think that I was wrong to make blocks just have a simple 16×16 block rather than 4 8×8 blocks, since I had to make a bunch o’ blocks that just copied scraps o’ other blocks, & these had to have their own 16×16 graphic block, while if I just had them be 8×8 blocks I probably could’ve just had them reference a bunch o’ already-existing blocks. Then ’gain, blocks wherein all 4 corners are different would’ve been much mo’ tedious to make, so I guess it’s a tradeoff. Still not sure which would be mo’ efficient: smaller graphical files or fewer draw function calls. Either way, it probably would’ve been tedious, & we should speak o’ it no mo’.

I mired o’er the shadows under the blocks, which are just 4 few gray rectangle blocks with slight transparency. I go back & forth o’er whether using transparency & blending is “cheating”, since it technically creates extra colors that aren’t in the “paletttes”. Then ’gain, the palettes don’t follow any real retro game system & I feel bad ’bout how o’erused emulating retro graphics is, too. If it wouldn’t make palettes mo’ tedious to make & wouldn’t probably make the graphics o’erly complicated, I’d probably increase the # o’ colors per palette, anyway — just so long as the hue is generally monochrome. Then ’gain, I don’t think I kept to that, either — certainly not in the o’erworld palettes. After trying out having manually-drawn shadows & seeing both how ugly it looked & also the sheer # o’ extra blocks I’d need, — 4 * the 9 blocks o’ the BG — I decided that creating extra work for myself & my program just to emulate a limitation o’ ol’ hardware that only existed to make things easier for limited hardware was the very definition o’ insanity ( though that doesn’t stop me from keeping the palette system ).

& then there’s the falling fist sprite, which looks silly. I’m OK with drawing in general, but awful @ animation. This wasn’t helped by the fact that I couldn’t imagine how those craning things move up & down & couldn’t e’en research it since I don’t know that “those craning things” are actually called. So ’stead we get this 1 image that just stretches out & in based on the sprite’s distance from its original Y position. It looks mo’ like paper than those craning things, ¿but who cares? I can always fix it later. Shit, I still haven’t fixed the interior maps o’ “Sleet Streets” so that they don’t look awkward in the newly resized resolution:

I’m still not halfway done with all these levels, by the way. I’d joke ’bout how I originally had an idea o’ finishing this project by the end o’ the year, but e’en when I said that I knew ’bout the “90-90” rule o’ programming, so e’en then I knew that was bullshit. This project will take 3 years — which means it’ll truly take decades.

Here’s the shitty source code ’gain

The 1st real¹ program I e’er remember writing was in what I thought was C++, but was closer to C. The header includes were C-style & none o’ my programs used classes ( though there is a C-style struct ) or STL. The only thing “C++” ’bout this program was that it had a CPP extention & didn’t put “void” in empty parameter lists. Nonetheless, I was confused by these 2, since I called this folder “C++” & remember reading a ( quite terrible )² book on C++ @ the time.

There was no particular inspiration. When I was a teen I’d oft check out wildly different nonfiction books from my local library. ’Twas in a songwriting book that I learned that imperfect rhymes are better than perfect, since they’re generally fresher ( none o’ that moon-june shit ); ’twas in a podcast book I learned ’bout Audacity; ’twas @ the end o’ an ol’ For-Dummies book ’bout YouTube that I got to read the writer pontificate ’bout how to survive in an apocalypse ( I think the For-Dummies books let writers write whatever the hell they wanted in the last few chapters ); & ’twas in Game Programming All in One that I truly 1st learned how to program, round the spring & summer o’ 2009, I think.

I used to have this idea that a simple “enemy chases you & hurts you if it touches you” was the best simple game idea to do 1st. I think I got the idea from reading ’bout Atari founder, Nolan Bushnell’s, 1st program on some ancient computer, which I read ’bout in yet ’nother nonfiction book, The Ultimate History of Video Games, by Steven L. Kent, a hefty 600+ page book that I highly recommend. Thus, this was the gameplay o’ my 1st game, “Nihilly the Nihilist”… or “Nilly”. I was ne’er consistent on that part. Also, I always pronounced it “Nilly” till I finally learned the proper way to pronounce “nihilist”. You were chased by somewhat KKK-looking guys with white bandanas wrapped round their faces & deep black holes for eyes called “Fucksters”. You can see that this was an immensely edgy fox-&-chicken game worthy o’ Edmund McMillen.

That’s ’bout it for art design. I couldn’t comprehend such arcane concepts as programming backgrounds ( I think I was so paranoid ’bout resource use for some reason that I feared redrawing so many graphics every frame or something — I don’t know. I also thought objects were resource intensive & should only be used for “big” things, whatever those were, for some reason. You can probably see that I still thought o’ computers as some magic too powerful to use without discretion ); therefore gameplay was played o’er plain purple. Not sure what that purple was s’posed to represent — other than a way for hackers to figure out how to steal my passwords, ’course. The title screen was just whatever font Allegro decided, apparently, o’er blue background — presumably inspired by ol’ Final Fantasy games. Maneuvering menus was programmed through a bunch o’ lock integers acting as booleans ( & global, to boot, for some reason ) so that 1 button press wouldn’t cascade through all the options.

If you look @ the linked code, you’ll see that I had a strange method o’ indention. Interestingly, I still used the Allman for braces, though conditional statements & function calls would randomly fall out o’ this pattern. Mo’ importantly, you’ll notice that I didn’t quite understand functions very well. I seemed to view them as simply a means o’ dividing game states, & nothing mo’, while blissfully copypasting large chunks o’ code. Also, for some reason I made every function return an int, e’en though none o’ them are used for anything. Each frame o’ each sprite is just it’s own graphic file plopped right into the big “gameplay” function. @ the time, I certainly didn’t know what the “*” next to the “BITMAP” type was for, but I dutifully copied & pasted it there as the book told me to do.

As a larf, I downloaded Allegro 4 & compiled this program. Unsurprisingly, it’s utterly broken. Content stretches far past the end o’ the screen & everything runs ridiculously fast, like a 90s game that comes free with Cap’n Crunch cereal. I guess that’s to be expected when I was too naive to understand the whole complexity o’ framerate maintenance & I test my software on a 169MB-RAM laptop that was mo’ than a decade ol’ e’en back when I had it ( how I miss you, Grape Faithful ). Also, Valgrind told me it had 16 whole bytes o’ leaked memory, which is, oddly, less than an empty program programmed in D, apparently — a’least on my computer.

As part o’ my nostalgic research, I actually tracked down the book I learned from, which is apparently on GitHub. There I learned that the writer said he was writing his code as C++ projects with mostly plain C to keep his code from sucumbing to C++’s object infection, STDs, & colon cancer. I also learned that apparently the GameCube & Game Boy Advance SDKs, or whatever, used GCC. He also hilariously recommends readers to actually learn C before starting, which I didn’t do.

There were a few other programs I made round this time, too. In my language arts class @ the time I had to memorize the work, the chapter, & the speaker of certain quotes from works like Macbeth & The Waste Lands, so I made some quiz program that showed my amazing understanding o’ functions by having each question have its own function — there was no fucking way that version o’ me would understand the complexities o’ passing string pointers & concatenating them with the parts o’ the question that didn’t differ ’tween questions. I think I did figure out how to have tree tiles based on multidimensional arrays in 1 program. But none o’ it went anywhere, & I soon lost interest & didn’t come back to programming till 2014.

View e’en worse code than Boskeopolis Land.

Dark Moon is an anomaly o’ a sequel for me: most sequels fall into 3 categories:

1. Is very similar to its predecessor, but much better or worse.
2. Is very similar to its predecessor, but hardly different.
3. Is completely different from its predecessor & much better or much worse.

Dark Moon is odd in that it feels like a Luigi’s Mansion — it doesn’t depart too much — but doesn’t feel too derivative, nor does it feel like it’s much better or much worse. It just feels different, but while still keeping to the main formula.

Gameplay

I’m bewildered by the main point made by those who prefer the original, not ’cause I don’t share the sentiment — I do — but ’cause it’s hypocritical, as the issues they claim Dark Moon has are also in the original.

The main complaint is that Dark Moon worsens the nonlinear, exploratory feeling by making it mission-based. The problem with this is that the original didn’t do a great job o’ that either. People complain ’bout the missions ruining exploration in Dark Moon ’cause they interrupt your exploration to push you back to E. Gadd’s & make you start back @ the start ’gain. They also complain ’bout how Dark Moon has each mission o’ a mansion generally focus on a different part o’ the mansion, making it feel linear. ’Cept the original does the same thing: it splits the game into 4 “missions” that focus on 4 different parts o’ the mansion: the 2nd floor, the 1st floor, the 3rd floor, & the basement. After the boss o’ each “mission”, you’re forced to return to E. Gadd’s, & then you’re sent back to the start, which is mainly a hub to the other parts o’ the mansion. This isn’t an exaggeration, either, as the length o’ the entire 1st game is ’bout as long as each level in Dark Moon — so each part pretty much is like a mission.

Nor was the mansion in the original as nonlinear as some blinded with nostalgia claim: while there were a small few o’ portrait ghosts you could skip, & a few secret areas, you had to explore most o’ the areas & fight most o’ the portrait ghosts, & you usually always did them in the same order as you usually needed to beat a portrait ghost to get a key to get to the next, & so on.

Thus, I agree with the sentiment, but disagree with the conclusion, & am still mixed: while we could say that Dark Moon wasted potential by not improving on the original’s weakly-done exploration, those who prefer the original forget that it failed @ being all that exploratory itself.

There are a few ways in which Dark Moon was inferior to the original, but none o’ them are as big as the nonlinear problem, nor inherent in the mission system. The 1st is that you can only save ’tween missions, while the original let you save any time you caught a boo or encountered a Toad, a bewildering decision for a handheld game. I blame the recent unfortunate fad o’ creating “difficulty” by borrowing bad design decisions from ol’ games. People complained ’bout games during the N64 & GameCube era being too easy, & such games also generally saved all the time ( Mario 3D games would save after every star or shine, for example, making game o’er borderline pointless ), & then games started to turn toward becoming much harder, & 1 o’ the “techniques” was trying to make game o’er threatening ’gain by limiting saves, such as in New Super Mario Bros. ’Cept like most challenge techniques from the NES era, this is a lazy, cheap attempt @ difficulty that was only done back then ’cause it wasn’t as practical to have easy saving ( or saving @ all )¹.

The 2nd problem is the way the game constantly interrupts you so E. Gadd can tell you exactly what to do, insulting your intelligence. This is a bit mo’ linked to the exploration problem, as it constantly takes you out o’ the game & tries to micromanage what you’re doing. It is also, sadly, a fad that has been burgeoning in the last decade or so. However, it’s not intrinsically linked to the mission system.

Sometimes the portrait ghosts had mo’ creative puzzles for defeating them than the ghosts in Dark Moon, but Dark Moon had some interesting puzzles o’ its own, & we’ll save most o’ our discussion on the portrait ghosts for the “aesthetics” section.

Dark Moon improves on the original in other ways. It has collectible jewels that actually improves exploration o’er the original. 1 o’ the problems with the original is that there’s not much to do other than to fight ghosts & maybe get money — & most o’ the money is in annoyingly rare & sometimes random golden ghosts. A’least Dark Moon’s golden ghosts are consistent. Unfortunately, Dark Moon’s jewels fall into “Super Mario Sunshine Syndrome” & have some jewels only appear on certain missions, which forces you to explore most places many times just to make sure the game doesn’t jape you. I’d recommend trying to explore a while, & then once you get bored, just read a walkthrough; nobody will care whether or not you found them on your own, since nobody cares whether or not you can do well in a baby game like Luigi’s Mansion — this isn’t a competitive game like Super Smash Bros. Melee or Fire Emblem.

Dark Moon is also less harsh on punishing you for mistakes. In Dark Moon you can permanently fuck up a mission, but you can always retry it. In the original, you can easily permanently fuck up the entire game, forcing you to restart the entire game if you’re going for a good score. Granted, getting the best score in the original is mo’ a bonus, whereas the rankings in Dark Moon are right in your face.

I also thought Dark Moon handled Boos better. Finding them is actually a puzzle, whereas in the original they were just in some random thing in almost every room. Having only 1 Boo per mission is also less repetitive & boring than the original’s whopping 50 Boos, with 1 in almost every room.

Dark Moon also has that weird rainbow flashlight thing that reveals secret things, which is cool. It’s unfortunate that it doesn’t have the fire, water, & ice shots that are in the original, but Dark Moon does still make clever use o’ fire, water, & ice, & I think the rainbow flashlight’s better.

Dark Moon also had better bosses, though the original’s weren’t bad. Fake Bowser is a lame cock-tease compared to the fight gainst King Boo in Dark Moon, divided with races through a twisted hallway. Boolossus, though they got his name wrong in Dark Moon, was also better in Dark Moon, ’cause he had a train. The spider boss had clever scenery puzzles, the clock-based boss was a creative idea, & then you have the possessed armor. In general, the original’s bosses were mostly just dodging & attacking, while Dark Moon’s had mo’ a puzzle aspect to them. Luigi’s Mansion was always better @ puzzles & exploration, not action, so that’s definitely an improvement.

Dark Moon also has escort missions with Toads, which many people predictably criticize, but I didn’t think they were that bad. That Toads aren’t that hard to bring ’long, & unlike most escorts, they actually do give you abilities you don’t otherwise have, such as being able to shoot them places. Plus, I love the squeakiness o’ their shoes. I’ve ne’er been a huge fan o’ Toad, so I was surprised that I actually found them endearing in this game.

In general, I must say that Dark Moon probably had the best gameplay, which isn’t a rare belief. However, I agree with the sentiment that those few who defend the original’s gameplay & think that a 3rd Luigi’s Mansion could easily best both if it truly did the “1 big mansion, lots o’ freedom & exploration” thing. The original was simply too small & short & simply limited you too much to succeed @ that any better than Dark Moon.

Aesthetics

This is where most people agree… but not so much with me. E’en people who prefer the gameplay o’ Dark Moon lament its s’posedly inferior atmosphere & aesthetics.

The original was a bit mo’ horror, while Dark Moon is mo’ cartoony. The original is much darker & everything looks mo’ dusty & grayer, while Dark Moon is very colorful, with lots o’ neon colors. & while Dark Moon mostly has cute, cartoony ghosts, the original had freakier, mo’ human-shaped portrait ghosts.

I’m mo’ mixed than most people. I actually think Dark Moon looks gorgeous & like how colorful it is. It sort o’ reminds me o’ Scooby Doo: it’s not scary, but it’s stylish.

That said, I do prefer the portrait ghosts to the generic Pac-Man ghosts in Dark Moon — ’cept Ghost Dog: Ghost Dog is a great new pet & I write fan fiction ’bout it & Luigi’s further adventures all the time. I’m not sure how someone couldn’t, since, I mean, c’mon — they’re generic Pac-Man ghosts, while the portrait ghosts have a variety o’ strange designs.

This ties into the original being mo’ “horror” than Dark Moon. The original is somewhat creepy, not only in its general look, but also in the implications for how some o’ the portrait ghosts became ghosts — including babies & young children. The original dealt with the subject o’ death much mo’, including a clever point where a portrait ghost that had been on your side for most o’ the game finally just lets you suck her up in what must be 1 o’ the easiest portrait ghosts to beat ’cause she wants to rest in peace. Meanwhile, Dark Moon doesn’t deal with the subject o’ death much & nobody truly thinks ’bout where the Pac-Man ghosts came from ’cause they’re too cartoony. It also has a lot, lot mo’ slapstick, which isn’t truly all that funny, but not truly all that bad, either.

But the main focus is the area. In this case, I may have to prefer Dark Moon. The original doesn’t look bad, but there’s just not as much variety: that’s the advantage Dark Moon had by having multiple mansions, a chance to mix the o’erall haunted theme with jungles, sand, & snow.

Ironically, though, I feel like Dark Moon becomes mo’ horror near the end while the original becomes mo’ cartoony. King Boo becomes strikingly angry for revenge @ the end o’ Dark Moon, while the Fake Bowser fight in the original where you make it lose its head — including it sometimes putting it on backward & running round crazy — is just silly.

& this is going to sound silly, ’specially from me, but Dark Moon had better writing & a better story. Granted, neither are Kafka, & Dark Moon does lose points for constantly interrupting gameplay with E. Gadd’s gabbing; but Dark Moon’s plot made mo’ sense & actually had character development.

The original’s plot didn’t make much sense: Luigi wins a contest he didn’t enter & doesn’t suspect a trap, e’en though he knows he has enemies. Then, while he’s there, he learns that King Boo kidnapped Mario… ¿& then tricked Luigi into coming so he can save him? ¿Why not just trick Mario into coming & capturing him? ¿& why was it so easy to capture Mario, but not Luigi?

King Boo’s motive in Dark Moon made mo’ sense, albeit relied on the original a bit: he wanted revenge gainst the 2. In this case, it makes sense for him not to just capture Luigi as easily as Mario ’cause he wants to prove himself gainst Luigi. & Luigi isn’t just dicking round in a mansion ’cause he won it in a contest, but is trying to fix some moon thing to stop ghosts from wrecking terror on the world.

Luigi also has character development in Dark Moon: you can see him gradually become braver as the game goes on, & becomes mo’ comfortable with ghosts, ending with Luigi e’en adopting Ghost Dog as a pet @ the end. Meanwhile, Luigi doesn’t change @ all throughout the original: he’s stick scared shitless by what appears to be Bowser @ the end, which makes no sense, since he fought Bowser a million times. If anything, the sight o’ Bowser should’ve assured him since it ’splains everything mo’ than anything else why ghosts would be going after them.

Both games have great main themes, which are o’erused. I think I found Dark Moon’s a bit mo’ memorable, but prefer the original’s soundtrack as a whole. While Dark Moon has some good remixes — I recommend “Old Clockwork” & “Secret Mine” the most for both the main theme & “Old Clockwork” for the “Outlanding Interruption” theme — o’ its 2 good songs… I only remember those 2 good songs & the latter still sounds similar to the 1st, whereas the original has that wicked but sadly underused song that plays while tallying up ghosts after an act, that other great, underused song, the song that plays when the portrait ghosts 1st talk to you, the song for catching a boo, Bogmire’s theme, &, ‘course, the credits theme.

But that’s all minor. In general, I’d consider Dark Moon slightly better in terms o’ gameplay & the original slightly better in terms o’ aesthetics; & ’mong the 2, I’d consider Dark Moon slightly better, but not by much.

What’s mo’ interesting is that there’s still room for expanding on the goal that both were s’posed to serve — a huge mansion rife for free, nonlinear exploration — in a 3rd game.

Freaky Forest

Well, a’least OpenShot worked ’nough for me to be able to make this video… But then YouTube decided it didn’t want to understand how to process videos anymo’, & also decided that it should just completely erase the uploaded video, too ( wouldn’t e’en show up in “Video Manager” as a “…” video, like usual ).

Part o’ me wanted to do mo’ with this level, but then ’nother part o’ me reminded myself that these levels are s’posed to be 15 – 30 second romps without midway points. As the video shows, the speed challenge is 22 seconds, but if one goes after all the collectibles ( the gem challenge for this level requires you to get all o’ them ) & messes up the final part a million times like I embarassingly did the 1st recording, one can take as long as a minute & 40 seconds or so. I s’pose that’s a good balance.

Like usual, the main gimmicks are ripped off from ’nother game — in this case, both are from Wario Land 3: dodging & hopping off birds is from “Forest of Fear” & the ghostly fading in & out is basically just the fading in & out clouds in this game’s “Cotton Candy Clouds”, which came from Wario Land 3’s “Above the Clouds”¹, though I’d say “Ghostly Grove” ( which is a much better name than “Freaky Forest”, but I didn’t want to be too much o’ a thief ) from Donkey Kong Country 2 was mo’ an inspiration.

I do kind o’ like the pathway this level goes through. Looking through my other levels, I was shocked by how oft they are just straight horizontal lines going from left to right. Though, now that I recall, I think I used this same general pattern o’ going right a li’l & then going leftward the rest o’ the way in “Milky Mountains”. I think I originally planned to have a key up on that cliff to the left & then have you come back down & go farther right past the underground hole to use the key, perhaps to enter a mansion or something, but decided that’d o’ercomplicate the level. I also had the idea o’ having rapidly spawning zombies like in Ghosts ’n Goblins, but rejected that for the same reason. There are a lot o’ things I could do with a halloween theme, & I’m still thinking ’bout making it its own theme, if not for the fact that I already have too many themes.

Finalizing the art for what are s’posed to be crow enemies was odd. As mentioned, they’re clearly based on Wario Land 3’s bird enemies, but I didn’t want to ripoff their entire graphics, too, so I looked @ other sources, including real crows, & in doing so I noticed how bizarre it is to have birds just floating in air, without e’en flapping their wings ( 1 thing I did ripoff from Wario Land 3 is that the crows raise their wings to indicate that they’re going to charge forward ). So I added a li’l 2-frame propeller ’bove the crows’ backs, which I found somewhat amusing — winged, flying animals that also have redundant propellers.

The ghosts in the underground section, which are basically just larger Eeries from Super Mario World, are based on a creature from Boskeopolis Stories: a “kappa-obake”, which is a pun off kasa-obake. While the latter is a 1-eyed umbrella ghost with a large tongue & a human foot, “kappa-obake” is the same, but a raincoat ( 合羽, pronounced “kappa”, is an archaic word for “rain cape” or any similar clothing one wears in the rain ) ’stead o’ an umbrella ( ’cept I forgot the foot ).

I have mixed feelings ’bout the background. You can tell it’s handdrawn by how tacky it looks. I also think I resized them a bit, which probably didn’t help. Then ’gain, they have a kind o’ Commodore 64 look to them that I like. I also thought ’bout filling in with black the outlines & inside o’ the trees so that the flashing lightning doesn’t show through them or the farther-back trees don’t show through the nearer trees; but then, I also kind o’ like the look o’ the flashing background going all the way into the trees.

The flashing background involved a li’l code change that was surprisingly easier than I expected. Originally, the flashing backround was some hardcoded thing for any map that had a bg_color # o’ 7; now I changed it so that there’s some mathematic formula used on any bg_color 7 or larger, allowing for flashing ’tween any 2 colors o’ the palette. So bg_colors 7 – 12 have color 1 as the background, but flashes to colors 1 – 6, 13 – 18 has color 2 as the background & flashes to colors 1 – 6, & so on. Or something like that; ’twas actually a while since I changed it. I believe getting these 2 backgrounds colors from that 1 # uses the same 2 formula I usually use: “x = n % w” & “y = floor( n / w )”, ’cept “x” is the 2nd background color & “y” is the 1st, & “w” is the color limit ( 6 ). So 13 would flash from color 2 ( round down 13 / 6 to 12 / 6, 2 ) to color 1 ( since 12 / 6 evenly, 13 leaves 1 remainder ). That sounds ’bout right. Color 0 should be ignored, since it’s always just transparency.

An extra graphical detail ( you could call it a hack ): in the underground section, the bottom-most ladder block isn’t actually a ladder block, but uses a BG block with a ladder o’er the rocky background so that the grass block can go o’er it. That way the grass still goes o’er Autumn, but the ladder is still ’hind her. This works fine since it’s impossible for Autumn to grab a ladder without standing, so she has to be touching the block ’bove that, too, & thus will always be interacting with the ’bove block when touching the bottom block & able to climb.

Speaking o’ the rocky background, you’ll probably notice that that’s just a copy o’ the inside rock walls o’ the mine tileset, but with only 2 colors.

1 final interesting note: the tall tombstone @ the very end is actually a sprite, simply ’cause ’twas both easier for me to make & mo’ efficient. It’s easier since it meant I just needed to make 1 immensely simple sprite class, rather than 24 block types; mo’ efficient not only ’cause it doesn’t bog down any other woods levels with 24 extra block types only used for this 1 particular level, but also ’cause 1 sprite is mo’ efficient than 24 blocks.

Your blood will curdle @ how inefficient & buggy this horrifying code is

Flush Flood

I still don’t know when I’ll e’er be able to make “The Minus Touch”’s video, but a’least we have “Flush Flood”. Granted, I messed up a bit in editing it: @ the end it shows the gem score having been achieved, though the achievement o’ such is ne’er shown in-video. Would’ve been nice to show off, too, since it’s very hard to do. I have an inkling that I did it off-camera & didn’t want to have to try doing it ’gain.

I like the dynamic o’ this level’s difficulty: being outrun by the water doesn’t kill you itself, but if you let it get ’head too much, you’ll have no chance o’ catching up with the surface before drowning. It required a lot o’ fine-tuning to get right, & involved programming in a bit o’ rubber-banding on the water’s end. I don’t remember the exact #s, but it’s speed varies depending on its relative position to you, with a max & min so it can’t just race upward if you’re way ’head or doesn’t just stop if you’re too low.

’Cause you want to race ’head o’ the water, anyway, getting the time bonus isn’t too hard, as shown in the video. It’s getting all the gems that’s hard, since many o’ them are just slightly out o’ the way. Originally, they were all e’en mo’ out o’ the way, but I wanted to make as many o’ them as I could possible to get, while also keeping the level somewhat difficult e’en if not going for any gems, so I can’t allow the player to detour too much.

This level is where this code belongs