Musical Mario
The First Noel as performed by TobyMac and Owl City
Hi all. Another month goes by. I went to a DevOps conference (fancy term for a collection of Information Technology industry practices) with some coworkers and took a course for certification in testing. It was mostly about stuff I was already doing, although I learned some technical terms for it.
The ASCRS has once again had little progress due to a side project. This time the distraction was an rpgmaker.net event called Mario's Musical Marathon. The concept was to create stages in Super Mario Bros. X which use music other than what comes with the engine. The exact wording in the event description is "your favourite song", but that's hardly something enforcable and people are fudging it a little. As one poster said, "Well, I'm actually not using one of my "Favorite songs" in a purely musical taste sense, but my "favorite songs that give me great ideas for a level". Very different." Personally I chose Feel Invincible by Skillet. I would've liked to do something where you literally ARE invincible, at least for the short bursts provided by super stars, and you have to exploit that to navigate a course that would otherwise be lethal, but SMBX actually doesn't include super stars, and if it did they would probably interrupt the music with that jingle they do.
Anyway, when there's an event about making a stage with special music, the obvious idea which comes to mind is to synchronize that stage with the music, right? ;) You may recall I did something along those lines with my first SMBX stage, "Hipster Hop" -- the player is swept along through the stage at a controlled rate by a pair of walls, and they pretty much just have to jump with the right timing (in one place hop off the Yoshi they're provided with if they haven't lost it and climb up and down a vine). With "Feel Invincible" I took a different approach: the stage consists of a single screen arena, and hazards are introduced for the player to deal with in time with the music. This allowed much more freedom in design and room for error on the player's part, although I fear a lot of players will still think it's too hard. X) It also came with a lot of technical problems for me as the creator. I ran afoul of the limit on the number of events you're allowed to put in a stage, which I didn't know existed until I had gotten to the last interlude and chorus of the song. I had to find a few events that I could eliminate by stuffing their functionality into other events, and even there I had to make the last part a couple of boss fights with little synchronization to the music.
I submitted "Feel Invincible" with almost a week left in the event, so I decided to try churning out one more stage for the event. This time, though, it would just be a standard SMBX stage, with no synchronization or fancy eventing. I chose Electric Daisy Violin by Lindsey Stirling for the music and named the stage "Electric Daisy", the theme being simply that you're recommended to play it as Daisy (essentially a palette-swap of Peach, with sprites I obtained from Sarasaland Adventure 2). Since Peach's floating ability makes it tricky to stomp enemies, I made a conscious decision to make this a purely Super Mario Bros. 2-style stage in terms of gameplay, using only enemies that are picked up and thrown rather than stomped. It took me a single day to create that one, and I think it turned out pretty well.
What progress I did make for the ASCRS was mainly about the chat system. I'm setting it up so that different types of messages can be filtered from view -- for example, some players (especially scene-runners trying to help new players) may want to see every detail of every action even as it's being constructed, whereas others may only want the results.
On the Zelda RPG, Esava and Tommy made it out of the dungeon without incident, but that still left them in the middle of an unfriendly town. Tommy grabbed a long cloak and used it to disguise himself and Esava as one anonymous person -- fortunately the people of this town were naturally taller than most humans. c.c They sneaked into the armory and grabbed a few weapons, including reclaiming the knife Tommy had "earned" from Fallon, and then tricked a local into leading them to the stables. Once there, they saddled up a chosen steed, lined up the rest of the horses outside the stables, and set off a bomb at the back of the building. The horses panicked and fled, providing a diversion as Esava and Tommy escaped into the desert.
Link and a few others, including Fallon, found an unusual route back to Hyrule with the dubious help of Termina!Koume and Kotake. They took a potion that put them in a state between life and death, and allowed them to board a carriage to the next world...which needed to make a stop in Hyrule before heading to its final destination. As the witches said, the travelers just needed to have the willpower to get off during the stop in Hyrule and stay there...but they've never known anyone to survive the journey. ;9 I participated slightly in this scenario by posing a "meanwhile" that showed Aubrey and Naomi praying for the safe return of the questers, especially Fallon of course. I like to think that gave them a narrative reason to succeed beyond just "My char is awesome enough to stay focused even though nobody else ever has." ;) Anyway, they made it back and returned to Gerudo Fortress, where Fallon was happily reunited with her family. n.n Now they're all absorbing the news that Zelda has been captured by Ganondorf and trying to figure out what to do about it. c.c; Remember that the Master Sword is currently missing, as Link earlier came back to Hyrule from another journey with partial memory loss and an empty scabbard...
Armello:
I got this as part of a Humble Tabletop Games Bundle. As a long-time Redwall fan, the theme looked fairly appealing -- anthropomorphic animals in a medieval setting, yay! But it turns out the story is considerably darker than the typical Redwall fare, especially in terms of what the protagonists -- in other words, the players' avatars -- are expected to do. The land of Armello is ruled over by a lion, who was once a great and benevolent king, having accomplished the difficult feat of uniting the various animal clans. But he has been driven mad by a malevolent force of nature known as the Rot, and it is generally agreed amongst the clans that for the good of the land, THE KING MUST DIE! But everybody wants to be the new king or queen, so they're jockeying amongst each other to take the throne. :P Not the sort of protagonists I can slip comfortably into the skin of.
Anyway, the gameplay of Armello is quite complex. It involves moving around a hex board to claim control over villages to give you a money stream, and visiting dungeons to get random rewards (or accidentally awaken Rot monsters), and going to specific spots to fulfill randomly-assigned quests, casting spells using cards and a mana resource that's replenished every two turns, and the list goes on. Combat, which can happen between players, monsters, the king's guards, and the king himself, involves tossing a bunch of dice, interpreting them as attacks, defenses, or whiffs based on things like current equipment and whether it's currently day or night. There are four ways to win. You can get strong enough to break through the castle's defenses, confront the king, and slay him without dieing yourself (which can always happen because both sides' deal damage simultaneously); you can wait for the king to die of Rot poisoning (or be killed by another player who fails to survive the battle) and have the highest influence score when that happens; you can gather four Spirit Stones and take them to the castle to banish the king; or you could BECOME EVEN MORE CORRUPTED BY ROT THAN THE KING and then go kill him -- which is really just a different approach of the first kind of win, but the developers recognize it as a distinct victory type. e.ea I've played only two full games, and both times I somehow managed to win, although I constantly felt like I was struggling to get anywhere while the computer opponents (who of course know what they're doing) blithely ran about the board.
Here's the real sticker, though: there is NO CAPABILITY for local multiplayer. #.# You can play against computer opponents, or you can play online against other people. I think the reasons for this have mainly to do with information guarding (heroes become invisible to each other when in a forest hex at night, cards are secret, etc.) and the fact that certain plays can be made during other players' turns (casting spells, etc.). Rather than arrange the rules such that hotseat play is possible, they apparently chose to emphasize the capabilities that computers allow in giving fine-grained control to each player. I understand that design philosophy...but c'mon, board games are all ABOUT multiplayer! With FRIENDS, not random faceless people you've never met! (Well, not to say there's no fun to be had with random matchups, but actual friends is almost always better.)
Bottom line? Can't say I really recommend it, although if you're more into complex, rules-heavy board games than I am, you might enjoy it, especially if you can convince a few friends to buy it too and have online game nights.
Click to viewHi all. Another month goes by. I went to a DevOps conference (fancy term for a collection of Information Technology industry practices) with some coworkers and took a course for certification in testing. It was mostly about stuff I was already doing, although I learned some technical terms for it.
The ASCRS has once again had little progress due to a side project. This time the distraction was an rpgmaker.net event called Mario's Musical Marathon. The concept was to create stages in Super Mario Bros. X which use music other than what comes with the engine. The exact wording in the event description is "your favourite song", but that's hardly something enforcable and people are fudging it a little. As one poster said, "Well, I'm actually not using one of my "Favorite songs" in a purely musical taste sense, but my "favorite songs that give me great ideas for a level". Very different." Personally I chose Feel Invincible by Skillet. I would've liked to do something where you literally ARE invincible, at least for the short bursts provided by super stars, and you have to exploit that to navigate a course that would otherwise be lethal, but SMBX actually doesn't include super stars, and if it did they would probably interrupt the music with that jingle they do.
Anyway, when there's an event about making a stage with special music, the obvious idea which comes to mind is to synchronize that stage with the music, right? ;) You may recall I did something along those lines with my first SMBX stage, "Hipster Hop" -- the player is swept along through the stage at a controlled rate by a pair of walls, and they pretty much just have to jump with the right timing (in one place hop off the Yoshi they're provided with if they haven't lost it and climb up and down a vine). With "Feel Invincible" I took a different approach: the stage consists of a single screen arena, and hazards are introduced for the player to deal with in time with the music. This allowed much more freedom in design and room for error on the player's part, although I fear a lot of players will still think it's too hard. X) It also came with a lot of technical problems for me as the creator. I ran afoul of the limit on the number of events you're allowed to put in a stage, which I didn't know existed until I had gotten to the last interlude and chorus of the song. I had to find a few events that I could eliminate by stuffing their functionality into other events, and even there I had to make the last part a couple of boss fights with little synchronization to the music.
I submitted "Feel Invincible" with almost a week left in the event, so I decided to try churning out one more stage for the event. This time, though, it would just be a standard SMBX stage, with no synchronization or fancy eventing. I chose Electric Daisy Violin by Lindsey Stirling for the music and named the stage "Electric Daisy", the theme being simply that you're recommended to play it as Daisy (essentially a palette-swap of Peach, with sprites I obtained from Sarasaland Adventure 2). Since Peach's floating ability makes it tricky to stomp enemies, I made a conscious decision to make this a purely Super Mario Bros. 2-style stage in terms of gameplay, using only enemies that are picked up and thrown rather than stomped. It took me a single day to create that one, and I think it turned out pretty well.
What progress I did make for the ASCRS was mainly about the chat system. I'm setting it up so that different types of messages can be filtered from view -- for example, some players (especially scene-runners trying to help new players) may want to see every detail of every action even as it's being constructed, whereas others may only want the results.
On the Zelda RPG, Esava and Tommy made it out of the dungeon without incident, but that still left them in the middle of an unfriendly town. Tommy grabbed a long cloak and used it to disguise himself and Esava as one anonymous person -- fortunately the people of this town were naturally taller than most humans. c.c They sneaked into the armory and grabbed a few weapons, including reclaiming the knife Tommy had "earned" from Fallon, and then tricked a local into leading them to the stables. Once there, they saddled up a chosen steed, lined up the rest of the horses outside the stables, and set off a bomb at the back of the building. The horses panicked and fled, providing a diversion as Esava and Tommy escaped into the desert.
Link and a few others, including Fallon, found an unusual route back to Hyrule with the dubious help of Termina!Koume and Kotake. They took a potion that put them in a state between life and death, and allowed them to board a carriage to the next world...which needed to make a stop in Hyrule before heading to its final destination. As the witches said, the travelers just needed to have the willpower to get off during the stop in Hyrule and stay there...but they've never known anyone to survive the journey. ;9 I participated slightly in this scenario by posing a "meanwhile" that showed Aubrey and Naomi praying for the safe return of the questers, especially Fallon of course. I like to think that gave them a narrative reason to succeed beyond just "My char is awesome enough to stay focused even though nobody else ever has." ;) Anyway, they made it back and returned to Gerudo Fortress, where Fallon was happily reunited with her family. n.n Now they're all absorbing the news that Zelda has been captured by Ganondorf and trying to figure out what to do about it. c.c; Remember that the Master Sword is currently missing, as Link earlier came back to Hyrule from another journey with partial memory loss and an empty scabbard...
Armello:
I got this as part of a Humble Tabletop Games Bundle. As a long-time Redwall fan, the theme looked fairly appealing -- anthropomorphic animals in a medieval setting, yay! But it turns out the story is considerably darker than the typical Redwall fare, especially in terms of what the protagonists -- in other words, the players' avatars -- are expected to do. The land of Armello is ruled over by a lion, who was once a great and benevolent king, having accomplished the difficult feat of uniting the various animal clans. But he has been driven mad by a malevolent force of nature known as the Rot, and it is generally agreed amongst the clans that for the good of the land, THE KING MUST DIE! But everybody wants to be the new king or queen, so they're jockeying amongst each other to take the throne. :P Not the sort of protagonists I can slip comfortably into the skin of.
Anyway, the gameplay of Armello is quite complex. It involves moving around a hex board to claim control over villages to give you a money stream, and visiting dungeons to get random rewards (or accidentally awaken Rot monsters), and going to specific spots to fulfill randomly-assigned quests, casting spells using cards and a mana resource that's replenished every two turns, and the list goes on. Combat, which can happen between players, monsters, the king's guards, and the king himself, involves tossing a bunch of dice, interpreting them as attacks, defenses, or whiffs based on things like current equipment and whether it's currently day or night. There are four ways to win. You can get strong enough to break through the castle's defenses, confront the king, and slay him without dieing yourself (which can always happen because both sides' deal damage simultaneously); you can wait for the king to die of Rot poisoning (or be killed by another player who fails to survive the battle) and have the highest influence score when that happens; you can gather four Spirit Stones and take them to the castle to banish the king; or you could BECOME EVEN MORE CORRUPTED BY ROT THAN THE KING and then go kill him -- which is really just a different approach of the first kind of win, but the developers recognize it as a distinct victory type. e.ea I've played only two full games, and both times I somehow managed to win, although I constantly felt like I was struggling to get anywhere while the computer opponents (who of course know what they're doing) blithely ran about the board.
Here's the real sticker, though: there is NO CAPABILITY for local multiplayer. #.# You can play against computer opponents, or you can play online against other people. I think the reasons for this have mainly to do with information guarding (heroes become invisible to each other when in a forest hex at night, cards are secret, etc.) and the fact that certain plays can be made during other players' turns (casting spells, etc.). Rather than arrange the rules such that hotseat play is possible, they apparently chose to emphasize the capabilities that computers allow in giving fine-grained control to each player. I understand that design philosophy...but c'mon, board games are all ABOUT multiplayer! With FRIENDS, not random faceless people you've never met! (Well, not to say there's no fun to be had with random matchups, but actual friends is almost always better.)
Bottom line? Can't say I really recommend it, although if you're more into complex, rules-heavy board games than I am, you might enjoy it, especially if you can convince a few friends to buy it too and have online game nights.