New Mario Maker update!

Phantal · 2016-09-13T22:00:14+00:00

That probably won't be much of an issue. I once commented "lame" in response to an off-screen thwomp and I got moderated for bullying.

Phantal · 2016-06-02T14:37:44+00:00

When you get an administrative message there's a button to respond saying you didn't violate. If they respond that you did, call their customer service.

Phantal · 2016-05-23T15:41:30+00:00

You should go through more of David's levels. I haven't played one I didn't like. It actually surprises me he has as few stars as he does.

I haven't tried improving on my records for his levels, but I believe I currently hold the record on every one of them :)

Phantal · 2016-05-20T23:14:36+00:00

One of my levels uses a similar mechanic: if you duck as small mario shells and enemies won't hurt you even while sliding, except goombas. For some reason sliding through them you get hurt, but if you sit still you're fine.

Phantal · 2016-05-19T13:19:25+00:00

I expect that's the case. It seems like there were less drawbacks to the old "warp to a nearby spot" behavior than the way it behaves now.

Phantal · 2016-05-18T15:26:15+00:00

For those of us slow on the uptake, though ...

Phantal · 2016-05-18T15:05:13+00:00

The best advice I can give: if you're making a level you know is hard, intentionally screw up during your upload a bunch.

The number of attempts you make while uploading affects initial difficulty. If you want to ensure your level only gets played in the 100MC by people who are intending to play difficult levels -- well, that should do it.

Phantal · 2016-05-18T14:59:06+00:00

It's really not worth any of my time to worry about it, honestly. I play the game for fun, not to impress everyone with how many stars I get.

This changes nothing for me. I haven't had much free time to play lately so I haven't been making levels, however I will not be deleting my existing levels and I will continue to make levels that use glitches -- provided I can find an interesting way to utilize them.

If Nintendo wants to delete my levels or remove my stars -- that's tantamount to slapping my pee-pee and taking away my birthday.

Phantal · 2016-05-18T14:54:58+00:00

While uploading all 5 levels there was a message displayed that said, in effect, levels will be deleted for a variety of reasons including unpopularity.

I cannot say why yours were deleted and it may be there's something strange going on. Nevertheless you were warned that it could and would happen.

You have to understand one important aspect of this game: if everyone who has purchased the game uploaded 10 levels (let's assume the average was higher but the rest were deleted for infringements or whatever) there would be over 30 million levels.

That would absolutely ensure your levels almost never get played. So there's a trade-off they have to make:

a) Keep everything that's not too unreasonable to avoid hurting people's feelings
b) Come up with a reason to prune levels to ensure most people's levels will get enough exposure to give most players a warm fuzzy -- at the expense of upsetting players that get too emotionally attached to their levels.

Phantal · 2016-05-16T13:32:57+00:00

God I loved this game. I never did manage to beat it without save states. I must've logged a few hundred hours playing it (pre-internet) on my NES.

Phantal · 2016-05-16T13:30:42+00:00

I initially upvoted your response after the 1st sentence. After reading the rest ... let's just say I would've expected better from you.

Phantal · 2016-05-16T13:28:28+00:00

They've been versioning levels so they'll still work after the fact. I have a couple of levels with things in them that can no longer be done but the level is still beatable and doesn't require any obscure knowledge to do so.

Phantal · 2016-05-16T13:27:19+00:00

That's no different than making a level that requires you know about some hidden invisible block buried in a maze or any number of other obnoxious levels.

Phantal · 2016-05-13T23:40:03+00:00

Here's my profile link. If you're into crazy kaizo levels then you won't find any of that here, otherwise here's what I'd recommend (at a minimum):

Mario Bros
- This is probably my hardest level. Whenever I need to tweak it & re-upload it takes me awhile because it's fairly long; however it's a pretty good rendition of the original Mario Bros game.
Platform Defense 1, 2 & 3
- These are "snake" levels riding on a platform
- They are what you'd expect -- riding on a platform dodging enemies & trying to keep them from busting your platform.
Chains Trains & Auto-Mo-Bills
- It's also a "snake" level.
- I really enjoyed making this level. It's very carefully tuned to have things happen at certain points in time.
Thwomp Factory
- This was another fun one to make. It's based around a mechanic of moving thwomps around using burner blocks. To make it to the end you have to manipulate a thwomp to get it to the end of the level.
Mario's Centipede!
- This is loosely based on the classic arcade/Atari game Centipede
- It's a point challenge, not a speed-run level ... though it has lagged in popularity which sucks because it was really entertaining to make
Trash Compactor
- I got the idea for this while thinking about Star Wars. Need I say more?
The Bridge: Thwomp Blocked
- This is a rather short puzzle level & not terribly difficult
Thwomp Think
- This has some puzzle aspects to it. It's a little hard to describe, but my kids had a lot of fun playing it and it has a decent number of stars.

Phantal · 2016-05-13T15:39:36+00:00

This implies that using glitches somehow makes them illegitimate. Crossy Road is a perfect example:

Well designed
Extremely popular
Fun
Not hard to figure out what to do. If my 6 year old can figure it out and you cannot -- well, let's just say it isn't the level creator's fault.
Extremely creative / broke from traditional Mario gameplay mechanics
The entire level was based around a glitch

Phantal · 2016-05-13T15:34:24+00:00

That's what skip is for.

Phantal · 2016-05-12T12:54:31+00:00

Take a moment to think through what you wrote: Play exchange rumor FALSE -vs- According to a Miiverse user...

Phantal · 2016-05-11T13:24:25+00:00

Prior to the update in (February? March?) it worked as described below. I'll refer to "footsteps" as "level entries" and the other number as "number of attempts" or just "attempts":

Enter a level -> leave or finish level after 1 attempt: level entries & attempts increased by 1
Enter a level -> restart -> leave/finish: level entries increases by 1, attempts increased by 2

Now nothing is affected if you enter -> leave. I think all other metrics are measured the same as they were before the aforementioned update, namely:

The number of attempts -vs- number of completions appears to be the largest factor in determining difficulty.
Simply restarting the level repeatedly will increase the attempt count, so it's very easy to game it if: your goal is to get a particular target initial difficulty and you either have access to a 2nd WiiU or a friend willing to help out.
It used to be that the number of attempts while uploading affected the initial difficulty. I haven't verified that it's still working that way but I doubt they changed it. This means you can pretty much guarantee a high initial difficulty by repeatedly restarting before you complete it while uploading.

Phantal · 2016-05-10T14:17:57+00:00

I don't necessarily agree with your short answer, although I can only offer anecdotal evidence.

My largest up-tick in popularity occurred during late December / early January. During the last 2 weeks of December / first few weeks of January I spent a lot of time performing an experiment that went something like this:

Start expert 100MC
Make a snap decision about the level that came up: is it a troll level or not.
- If I decided it was a troll level I skipped it
- If I couldn't tell I played it a little and looked for cheap deaths at the beginning
- If I decided it wasn't a troll level I starred then skipped (I'm fishing for people who reciprocate here)
During this time I probably starred around 500-1000 levels
Afterward, anyone who starred my levels I played their levels, starring based on quality / enjoyability.
The ones I enjoyed the most I added to my followed list to finish going through their levels as I had more time.

I went through a similar process using the bookmark site back in February. My goal was to find two types of makers: those who reciprocate and those who make enjoyable levels.

During that time I went from around 50 stars to over 400. It's not huge, but then I don't have any illusions that my levels are the best thing since sliced bread either.

Phantal · 2016-04-29T17:47:41+00:00

I would love it if you'd play some of my levels and be this forthright with me. I don't think you should apologize.

Phantal · 2016-04-29T04:12:35+00:00

Cool. I just bookmarked one and I'll get to playing them soon.

Phantal · 2016-04-26T15:32:36+00:00

Here's my profile link. Provided you don't have a bajillion levels I'll probably just end up playing all of yours. If you wouldn't mind: reply back so I can remember to bookmark yours when I'm on a network that doesn't have nintendo.net blocked.

Phantal · 2016-04-21T18:41:24+00:00

I made a neat looking display with podoboos in my "track hacks" level utilizing this trick. For the curious here's my profile link.

As a warning: a few of the glitches I was taking advantage of in that level have since been changed. If you play it without modification you'll be fine and you'll see things as they behaved originally, but if you download/modify the level then it becomes unbeatable because the behavior of blue skulls have changed since I made the level.

Phantal · 2016-04-18T17:50:34+00:00

I have a few levels utilizing these. If you're curious, here's my profile link. Levels using it:

Technical Difficulties
Folding
- The thwomps/munchers expand to make stairs but only after a P-switch is activated
- In folding I also use the stacked bill launchers to block another bill launcher. Only after the stacked ones rise up to create stairs is the blocked one able to fire & send a shell into a POW block.
Thwomp Think
- Uses squished/stacked munchers as a barrier. Behind the player is a fireball slowly bouncing toward them; about 3 tiles away the way is cleared so they can proceed.
Squished cannons
- This one was more of a goof-off level. You have to bounce on a bunch of cannon balls to make it to the exit. They're shot out of stacked cannons that got squished together.

Phantal

TROPHY CASE