GeekNights Tuesday - Level Editors

MrPeriod

Tonight on GeekNights, in light of Nintendo finally doing something awesome within a decade of it being a good idea (with the Mario level editor, we talk about level editors. Even games like Radical Psycho Machine Racing have historically included them. There is a big difference between the tools given to internal level designers, given to players, and MADE by players. In the not-so-exciting E3 news trickle, we talk a bit about Bowser Mode in Mario Party and the beautiful interactive amusement / rhythm game that is Entwined. It echoes Vib Ribbon crossed with Journey.

Join us at ConnectiCon July 10th-14th, where we'll be running the Panels Department and also performing a few ourselves! Also take note of our separated "main bits" from the show with our review of Hansa Teutonica

• WADED - Doom Level Editor
• Bugnatrice 80/220 - Convoluter 80/220

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Daikun

So, Lunar Magic FINALLY comes to the Wii U.

Good to know. (Took you long enough, Nintendo!)

Matt

Mario Maker absolutely has a Mario Paint vibe. Shit, twice during the demo video there are mosquitoes from the bug swatting game flying around the screen. At one point, the player stops level editing, takes out the swatter, and kills the bug. WTF was that?? If I had to take a random-ass guess, I'd say that clicking the bugs gets you progress towards unlockable pieces. There do seem to be new items, like the mushroom umbrella that turned Mario tall and skinny, so maybe those could be put behind a wall.

I 100% agree that community sharing has to be nailed for a level editor to work. More importantly, I want the community to rate levels so that I can hop in and play the best ones w/o much effort. Super Meat Boy was my jam and I A+'ed the whole game, so I had some good times hopping into the top-rated user-created levels.

One overlooked game is WarioWare D.I.Y. for the DS, which is a "create your own WarioWare minigames" experience. It was a good tool, but I would have been more into it if all my friends had it and we could send challenges back and forth. The one awesome thing Nintendo did was hire a bunch of big names from the indie game scene to go in and create their own 10-level sequences, and then make those available for download. Some pretty cool shit came out of that.

pence

Might and Magic III also supported the SNES mouse.

The most amusing part of the mouse was the hard, plastic mousepad.

Coldguy

Daikun said:

So, Lunar Magic FINALLY comes to the Wii U.

Good to know. (Took you long enough, Nintendo!)

pence

On the Nintendo DS, Bangai-O Spirits has a level editor with an import/export function that effectively sidesteps Nintendo's 'no internet, no sharing' ethos by using ancient technology: you export your level as audio. Record your DS speaker using a decent microphone, drop the file somewhere, and now anyone can download it and blast it into their DS microphone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangai-O_Spirits

Apreche

pence said:

On the Nintendo DS, Bangai-O Spirits has a level editor with an import/export function that effectively sidesteps Nintendo's 'no internet, no sharing' ethos by using ancient technology: you export your level as audio. Record your DS speaker using a decent microphone, drop the file somewhere, and now anyone can download it and blast it into their DS microphone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangai-O_Spirits

I played that for a bit. It's fundamentally pretty great, but it lacks polish. Often the screen just becomes a mess, and the controls need a little bit more precision. A great game to re-make and steal from the forgotten masters.

Matt

Hotline Miami 2 will have a level editor.

Apsup

Apreche said:

pence said:

On the Nintendo DS, Bangai-O Spirits has a level editor with an import/export function that effectively sidesteps Nintendo's 'no internet, no sharing' ethos by using ancient technology: you export your level as audio. Record your DS speaker using a decent microphone, drop the file somewhere, and now anyone can download it and blast it into their DS microphone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangai-O_Spirits

I played that for a bit. It's fundamentally pretty great, but it lacks polish. Often the screen just becomes a mess, and the controls need a little bit more precision. A great game to re-make and steal from the forgotten masters.

I played the version of that on xbox live arcade a lot and that worked a lot better. You were able to see what was going on and controls weren't shit.

Apreche

Apsup said:

Apreche said:

pence said:

On the Nintendo DS, Bangai-O Spirits has a level editor with an import/export function that effectively sidesteps Nintendo's 'no internet, no sharing' ethos by using ancient technology: you export your level as audio. Record your DS speaker using a decent microphone, drop the file somewhere, and now anyone can download it and blast it into their DS microphone.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangai-O_Spirits

I played that for a bit. It's fundamentally pretty great, but it lacks polish. Often the screen just becomes a mess, and the controls need a little bit more precision. A great game to re-make and steal from the forgotten masters.

I played the version of that on xbox live arcade a lot and that worked a lot better. You were able to see what was going on and controls weren't shit.

That game you played was Bangai-O. It was for Dreamcast, N64, and XBLA. The DS one is Bangai-O Spirits. It's only on the DS.

Apsup

Bangai-O is Bangai-O, sure details were different, but both are about flying in a robot and blowing things up a lot.

Apreche

Apsup said:

Bangai-O is Bangai-O, sure details were different, but both are about flying in a robot and blowing things getting blown up a lot.

FTFY

pence

Getting nearly blown up a lot! Gotta graze them missiles.

I never played the 360 remake, but the most noteworthy aspect of the Dreamcast original is the batshit crazy localization. It's also more of an action game compared to the DS's puzzles.

MATATAT

My original desire to go to E3 was because it seemed like a PAX experience before PAX existed. Then PAX came along and took the parts of E3 that I thought I wanted and added stuff that I actually wanted.

Rochelle

MrPeriod said:

the beautiful interactive amusement / rhythm game that is Entwined. It echoes Vib Ribbon crossed with Journey.

I bought this game on the PS4 because it reminded me of Journey. I enjoy games like that and figured it will be short, but challenging enough for me to enjoy.

Plus, it was made by game design students and one of them is a cool Chinese girl that bases the game to be like Chinese folklore. (I tried to see if it is actually based on a story, but couldn't find it. I went here: http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~mcgrew/remusleftovers/ipad/chinesemythology.pdf .)



After watching the video again after playing Flower, Entwined has similar elements as well. I have yet to play the game, but then again I haven't finished Flower. However, I'm totally ok supporting this sort of thing. Yes, this seems like the same thing, but with different skin, but I don't mind games like that with that sort of element.

(Catching up on episodes.)