User:Game Trooper
Contents
About me
Greetings one and all, I'm Game Trooper!! Entrant of MAGMML2's Volcanic Furnace, and long time Mega Man fan. I'm seasoned in editing various wikis (which will be listed below) as early as high school, so I feel that I can be a big help to one I feel very passionate about. I have also helped build one of them up from its infancy, and have even been an admin for one of them. I absolutely enjoy helping out wikis like this one grow, and educate newcomers on what the wiki's all about. If you need any help, please don't hesitate to post it on my talk page!! I'll get back to you as soon as possible.
In case you wanted to know what I'd look like...
One of my Wiki portraits I created.
Other Wikis
I can be found on many other wikis.
They include:
- Mega Man Wiki
- Ratchet and Clank Wiki
- Scaler Wiki
and
- Overlord Wiki
Dev Commentaries
HELLO! These are my unofficial commentaries of how I created my level. I'll try to keep them brief, but I imagine that some people will be curious as to what I was thinking of when designing them (I assume that a particular Durgon will 'eventually' get to this, so hi!).
(It will go without saying that if anyone else edits this, this will NOT be reliable until I personally fix it.)
Volcanic Furnace
The Concept
As any fan would understand why I entered, I have always wanted to create my own game, and after 'insert-Gaben-9-years-dev-joke-here', I finally got to throw my hat into the ring. The idea for a fire level was actually one of the things I stayed with from the get-go. I had FEVERISHLY watched AceSpark's level design video series and reviewed MAGMML1's winner, Glass Man, for direction. I concluded that for reference, keep the stage about 28 frames long, introduce each gimmick one section at a time then combine them near the end, and place checkpoints around areas of difficulty. The idea of a fire stage stemmed from an early Robot Master of mine named Scorch Man (kinda silly seeing Bootleg Zook and Sunrise showed up, and originally so did Eternal's). Ultimately, despite being a programmer by trade, he was cut due to time restraints and lack of game maker experience. The stage was mostly winged, and I plopped down what I thought might make for a fun or challenging setup. One of the ideas I KNEW I wanted to have in some form was some sort of mine cart segment (akin to the final moments of Indiana Jones: Temple of Doom (YOU KNOW WHAT PART IT IS)). However, due to poor spriting skills and again, lack of game maker experience, I used Guts Lifts as a substitute. Some things I know people might wonder is the Foot Holder showing up and why not a Guts Lift. The short answer was that I thought it'd be kinda fun and challenging; simple as that. I had understood that I had to combo the two elements that I implemented near the tail end of the stage. The idea of guts lifts over some of these traps not only fit classic Mega Man level design, but actually looked fun and challenging. In retrospect, it may have been a little too tough still, despite putting safe platforms in as a breather. Another part people might be wondering about is the skippable mini boss. I had not realized this until I decided to try it. When I found it out, I felt it a funny little way to speed run, so I left it in. A similar quirk can be found if you grab the 'hidden' E-Tank, where if you die before reaching the actual route you needed to take, it would spawn you at the next checkpoint. Again, this was left in as to compensate for some difficult level design portions. In terms of the Killer Bullet segment, I was thinking that a simple Guts Lift segment would have been too easy without any enemies. In hindsight, 'explosive sinewave enemies on tiny moving platforms while jumping over to other tiny platforms' was a bit excessive, and Tackle Fires or more Guts Lifts could have solved such a problematic area. As for the interesting choice of tile sets, I wanted to explore my artistic prowess in level design. This looked okay at the time, but in hindsight I can safely say that it is pretty bad (I can assure you that I am actually a better artist than that). Lastly, because I am certain people will wonder this, while multiple test playthroughs of the level were done, they were all done by me. I had no other means at the time to be able to get others to playtest. Had I known how and who I could playtest the level, I am sure many of the issues would have been able to be solved.
The Reception
Of course, when an announcement for a MAGMML2 contest placement went public, I had to be watching where possible. And I was thrilled to find out that (In terms of tier placement) I had done rather well; it was actually where I expected to place in the competition. All criticism was taken into deep consideration, from both the judges and the streamer (FlashMan85, who is now also a judge in MAGMML3, so I made a good call). In addition, I had went to look at other youtubers who played the game for more feedback; some were harsh, others more encouraging. One thing that I did as soon as I could collect my thoughts, was to go back and update the level to be more polished. I chose more consistent enemies that fit the stage, used more appropriate graphics (as well as fewer tile sets), and apply every judge suggestion. I also had made a few other changes, but are not worth mention at this time. I can safely say that the level has been improved over its submitted version, and I have learned that with a little more effort and polish, I do have what it takes to for a competent level designer.
Running Down a Drain
The Concept
When the MAGMML 48 Hour contest was announced, I was curious about participating in a competition with a time frame of only two days. With the previous one under my belt, I had thought it would be a fun challenge. To clear this right out of the gate, the title of the level was indeed a mishearing of the lyrics. For the longest time I truly thought the line was “Running Down a Drain”, instead of the intended lyrics “Running Down a Dream” (this is to confirm what I shared with JupiHornet in the private, now closed MAGMML 48Hour discord channel). One of the big contributing factors for naming the level was what I had rolled for the contest- Wave Man pipes. What I saw that I just thought, “I could make a sewer level, I guess. Wait! You know what? Why not?! I'll just name it after that one song I misheard the lyrics to. It'll be great!” I had learned my lesson from the last contest and decided to stick with one or two tile sets that meshed well. Part of the reason the stage looked as it does, was to bear a sort of relationship to Tom Petty’s music video for the song. The hard part about making the level at that time was, of course, only having two days to complete it, having three exceptionally weak enemy types, debugging, and, of course, real life. At the time specifically, I was working a regular job, so I only had the weekends to work on it. Further, if I didn't like it and wanted to try again, I would have to wait until the next weekend to roll another set of gimmicks and enemies to try again. The weak enemies were a major reason why I had the three mini boss fights. Putting it simply there's only so much you can do with these three enemies. The Jamacys had some potential for some good setups, as well as the Jet Bombs (which can be seen with the respawners), but the Space Mets gave me little to work with. I wanted this to be as far away from an enemy spam level as I could, which was my big concern at the time. Additionally, I didn't know what to do with wave pipes either, since they were used very minimally in the level, they initially showed up in. Hindsight 2020, there are some really nice puzzles I could do with this, if I had more time to actually flesh these ideas out. Because of the small timeframe though, everything felt very rushed and so the bare minimum when it came to implementation of gimmicks and enemy placements were not as good as they could have been. If that wasn't enough, some of the things in the dev kit didn't work right either. During my testing, one of the big stumbling points was using the wave pipes. I had to really work around how buggy these things were. One moment Mega Man would ignore the end collision tiles for the wave pipe and get launched off the side of the screen into the great beyond. In another instance, I wanted to use them for the boss room only to find the boss also wanted to use the pipes and caused the entire thing to crash. Because of the small time frame as well, it also meant that testing wasn't always devoted to the entire level. Hence why I never found the spike in the bottom right corner of the second snail fight, or the two times where you could just get shunted through a wall into a previous screen unintentionally. At the very least, choosing music was possibly the easiest part. I found the track early on from the remixer CRIZ SONNY, and immediately knew this was a winner. Everything just slowly fell into place (or at least as slowly as a 48-hour contest would permit). As for the ‘secret room’, I just thought it would be a fun thing to have. I didn't have enough time to reskin the Volt Man sprites and the thought of mimicking the Disney short, Geri’s Game, was an amusing touch. Also no, 25 doesn't mean anything in particular.
The Reception
From what I noticed, I am at least VERY happy that a lot of people enjoyed the music I picked out. It even got featured in another part of the main game of MAG48MML. From what I have seen, most people had enjoyed the level as well, and once again I felt like I had done well. My goal with these contests are to generally make levels that are fun for the players to run through. This gave me high hopes for when MAGMML3 got announced. With MAGMML3's devkit to release in the future, and a chance to show off what I learned, I felt that my best works were yet to come.
Glass Factory
Prelude
Before I get the whole commentary on the level up, I want to paste the comment I made on the MAGMML Discord here:
"In case I do not do this later, I want to formally apologize for my level (Glass Factory). I never intended for it to end up the way it did, and especially never intended to feel like I was calling people out or to be as distasteful as it ended up being. The boss has dialogue that I am not proud of. It can easily be seen as distasteful, where I meant it to be more of a playful jab at the fact that there are lots of takes on a Glass Man. I do not know where else I could post this, but nevertheless I hope there are no hard feelings....Honestly, I was more defeated by my own self ridicule than what the judges had to say. Truly, I wish there were so many things that did different, and the dialogue at least could have had a look over before I submitted it."
The Concept
When it came time for MAGMML3, I found myself wondering what to do once again. Once again, I looked to the first batch of Robot Masters I created when I was a child. I figured I'd go figuratively and literally (in a sense) the polar opposite direction of my first entry with a robot master I called Glass Man. There were a few things I wanted to do in comparison to my first entry to these competitions:
- I wanted to make sure I had a Robot Master waiting at the end.
- I wanted to also make sure that my tile work was much cleaner than my first entry.
- I wanted to show exactly how much I had learned over the last two contests.
As one would expect I would go for gimmicks and enemies that looked as if they were dealing with glass in some respect. That is why I ended up choosing Crystal Joe's, Curlingers, Squidons, crystal droppers, Chill Man blocks, and ice physics. I thought I had chosen these well, and in due time I also found the background elements I wanted. Now I had found that Ring Man's boss room and hallway graphics were hardly used at all, and I thought ‘What if I expanded on them by using them in an entire level?’ Overall, I found myself satisfied in that respect. Spriting for Glass Man wasn’t required as I had already done the heavy lifting all the way back in high school during my free hours. I had a few ideas for how I wanted to handle Glass man, and I ultimately came with two variations. These were denoted by the robot master base that I was going to be using. Glass Man C was heavily based off Crash Man's AI, while Glass Man G utilized Gemini Man's AI. In no time, most of the work was done for the level. However, I wanted to go further. I decided I wanted to include a revamp of Volcanic Furnace with all the critiques given to me via the last contest. I even went as far as to includes Scorch Man proper into the level, using Dangan man as a base with a few small modifications. Additionally, I also thought of making the quiz to make it feel more optional. At the same token I wanted to encourage people to try this path for fun. After asking around on the discord channels for advice, I had ultimately chosen to put an energy element at the end. This was one of the things that I in hindsight should not have done.
I was also toying around with dialogue options for my bosses, which ultimately led to the poor choice of words I gave Glass Man in the end. Originally this was meant to poke fun at there are so many Glass Men and it could have meant literally any which one of them. However, I had not realized this was going to point a lot at the original winner of the first contest; had I ran this by other individuals with play testing, I probably would have caught this before finalizing the level. Sometime afterward I had a fellow creator, Jupihornet, judge it for fun. He had pointed out most of the issues mentioned by would be mentioned by the judges later, and I wish I had shared it with him during the creation process, as it would have given me time to change so much of it. Before this, I really did feel like I had hit my stride and I was making the best possible level I could offer. But now, I was ashamed for seeing what I had done. Sometime afterward, the creator the original Glass Man level, Redblupi, had disappeared from most if not all social platforms. I knew at one point that he had gone to college and was taking time to focus on it. However once realizing what I had done with my level, I honestly had thought I pushed him away from the Internet. Foolishness I know, but feelings have a funny way of altering our perception. If this appears to be like an apology video, it is. Truly I am sorry for what I've created, and several times I thought to ask for my level to be removed from this contest. However, at the same token, I wouldn't trade these opportunities for almost anything else.
The Reception
It should come as no surprise, but I from the few videos that I have seen, many of the people did not have positive things to say. This is expected at this point. My only hope at this point is that people who played MAGMML3, or are watching related videos may be able to come here for some sort of clarity and understanding.
