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Nightmare Redux

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Nightmare ReduxBridget_
A true challenge for expert players only. Many incredible hazards await you. Enter the cave, then find and defeat the three Guardians in order to reach the exit and claim victory. Many secrets can be found. How high can you score? Players: 1 Difficulty: Absurd
all
FINALLY, after who knows how long, this blasted level is finished.

This is another FULL level from me, instead of just a boss or something, much like my previous Temple of Trials.

This is, quite definitely, the single most difficult thing I've ever put together.

I hadnt intended on it being quite that looney, but.... well, then I remembered, there were those that had told me that the Temple level wasnt hard enough.... that even Rave wasnt hard enough. This level, then, is my response to them.

First off, this level is NOT for novice players. This is designed for experts, pros, whatever term you want to use. While the stage does, like the Temple, use Infinite type checkpoints, it's a simple fact that most players will never, ever reach the end.

There are all sorts of horribly devious traps to be found here. I wont spoil them for you, but..... some of these are a good deal more creative than anything I'd previously made.

There are also 3 bosses in this stage. All three, of course, follow my usual pattern of "lotsa bullets". Anyone that's played anything I've made previously knows just what that means.

But these bosses are a little different. Well, no, ONE of the three is normal, well, what passes as "normal" for my creations. Your usual danmaku patterns. The other two are a little different though.

I will provide a video of the third and final boss, as a bit of a teaser:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PytNw-jefa4

As should be obvious to those that have seen my previous bosses, this one uses..... rather different types of shots in it's devious patterns of horrible doom.


One other thing I should possibly point out.... this level is really, really, really long. That I managed to stuff all of this into one level without it exploding is incredible in and of itself. I've gotten alot better at that one since making Rave.

And yet, this level also for the most part looks a good deal nicer than my previous ones. Each seperate area has it's own visual "theme" or style to it. For the most part, with each new style comes a new type of challenge that will keep up within that section.

There are also alot of secrets to be found here. There's alot of special 5000-point bubbles to be found throughout the level, most of which are hidden. There's a hidden point room, and an entire hidden section containing something that I dont normally put in my levels.

It's possible to score quite high, with all the bubbles that can be found. Of course, being that the penalty for dying is that you lose points, well.... can you make it to the end WITH those points?


Im hoping that some people here might give this level a whirl, and tell me what you think of it. My levels and bosses have gotten pretty good feedback from players in this forum before, and I hope that with this one, I've kept up with what was liked about my previous levels.


Also, I need to thank s3xNstilettos quite alot. Without her, this would have taken about a billion years longer to finish and would be in fact quite buggy. Quite buggy indeed. She performed test after test after test on this stage for me, and helped out dramatically. So a big big thanks goes to her for that. It's appreciated.


Anyways, here's a few quick screens:

http://i976.photobucket.com/albums/ae250/s3xNstilettos/APhoto_37.jpg

http://i976.photobucket.com/albums/ae250/s3xNstilettos/APhoto_39.jpg

http://i976.photobucket.com/albums/ae250/s3xNstilettos/Redux3.jpg

http://i976.photobucket.com/albums/ae250/s3xNstilettos/Redux5.jpg

http://i976.photobucket.com/albums/ae250/s3xNstilettos/Redux6.jpg

http://i976.photobucket.com/albums/ae250/s3xNstilettos/APhoto_28.jpg


So there you have it!

If you feel you can handle a major challenge like this, give it a whirl!

If you do try it, please feel free to comment here, and tell me what you think of it! Be honest about it..... feedback is much appreciated, and helps me find out where I went wrong, and what came out really well. It'll allow my future creations to be that much better.		2009-10-04 10:42:00

Author:
Bridget
Posts: 334

Lol, there I am in 3 of the photos. ^_^

I'm glad it's finally out. I'll go leave a notice in the Expert Platformists group in case you haven't done so already.		2009-10-04 10:48:00

Author:
Unknown User

Holy snap! Guess i'll have to make time to play this... should only take a few days at the most

EDIT: Gave this a good old run, got through 2 bosses, and the green spikey section. After that i couldn't figure out where to go, so i sent messages to you and S3xnstillettos. after a while i decided to just wander and found where i was supposed to go. A magic mouth or arrows or something would help a lot. Also, i found a level breaking bug... literally. I went up the platform there, and there were 2 enemies. There were 2 problems with the enemies:
1) They were glued to the floor so killing one wouldn't kill it
2) They were glued to teh floor, so killing both killed the floor.

Since i couldn't proceed any more, i had to cut my run short... and that made me a sad panda. D:		2009-10-04 11:18:00

Author:
Burnvictim42
Posts: 3322

Holy snap! Guess i'll have to make time to play this... should only take a few days at the most

EDIT: Gave this a good old run, got through 2 bosses, and the green spikey section. After that i couldn't figure out where to go, so i sent messages to you and S3xnstillettos. after a while i decided to just wander and found where i was supposed to go. A magic mouth or arrows or something would help a lot. Also, i found a level breaking bug... literally. I went up the platform there, and there were 2 enemies. There were 2 problems with the enemies:
1) They were glued to the floor so killing one wouldn't kill it
2) They were glued to teh floor, so killing both killed the floor.

Since i couldn't proceed any more, i had to cut my run short... and that made me a sad panda. D:

How in the world did they get glued to the floor? They weren't glued through the testplaying. Is there actually a bug that causes enemies to glue themselves to levels?

This has to be the weirdest thing I've ever heard. Just when I thought I've heard it all.

O_o		2009-10-04 13:03:00

Author:
Unknown User

I've gone and fixed it.

I know WHY it happened, but that doesnt make it any less annoying.

Another fun game bug, one Im familiar with, one that's been around for FOREVER that the devs never fixed....

But it's fixed now. The 2 enemies will pop normally now and NOT take the whole dang level with them.		2009-10-04 13:21:00

Author:
Bridget
Posts: 334

cant wait to try it2009-10-05 00:53:00

Author:
willtang1134
Posts: 13

I'm upset that Nightmare Redux is easier than it use to be.

But oh well. It's still an extreme level, and a good one.

Even though you know all this from our talks, I'll still post this for the public . . .

Pros:
-Visually nice level with visual changes at certain points in level.
-I like how the level breaks off into different directions at certain points.
-Nice assortment of obstacles and hidden bubbles.

Cons:
-Not as hard as it use to be before some changes were made. I don't con difficulty unless I know the creator intended to target an exact adience.

Even though it's not as hard as it could be, I still enjoy it. I give it . . .
:star::star::star::star::star: and a heart		2009-10-05 04:55:00

Author:
Unknown User

*gasp* *gasp* *gasp*...

okay, i think i've got my breath back now.

The short: very tough and awesome platformer.

The long: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAA Not another death!

Very innovative obstacles and challenges. I like how you curved the third bosses bullets, made an interesting dodging challenge. Those super bubbles were also amazing... saved my score more than once lol.

My least favorite obstacle combo: That plane changing plasma part coupled with the spike chute. (Plane changing is my worst enemy lol)

Not really much i can suggest to improve it, your timings and spacings are very precise, all i can say is "please don't make me go through that nightmare again D:"

5 and a heart.		2009-10-05 05:48:00

Author:
Burnvictim42
Posts: 3322

I had a shot at it yesterday.
I reached the section of the third pic.
The only really difficult part was the glass circles bridge.
Unfortunately I had to leave the PS3 so I'll give a shot at it later.
As I said to S3x I have not much time to play in general, so it's hard that I decide to play extreme levels since they're time consuming, so I usually prefer to try other kind of levels...not the story ones...I hate them, go here, take key, got back...not my cake.
Anyway I find the extreme platforming levels quite bland.
I know that they're more contraptions based than visually oriented, but you guys could have more success and get into more people if your levels were just a little prettier...otherwise you could try the minimalist look, with 2 or 3 materials, black and white colour correction.
As they are now they look neither good nor bad.

Good choice in enabling infinity checkpoints since sackboy is not a great jumper and players can't have a perfect control.

Anyway I rated the level 4 stars for now.		2009-10-05 12:30:00

Author:
OmegaSlayer
Posts: 5112

I had a shot at it yesterday.
I reached the section of the third pic.
The only really difficult part was the glass circles bridge.
Unfortunately I had to leave the PS3 so I'll give a shot at it later.
As I said to S3x I have not much time to play in general, so it's hard that I decide to play extreme levels since they're time consuming, so I usually prefer to try other kind of levels...not the story ones...I hate them, go here, take key, got back...not my cake.
Anyway I find the extreme platforming levels quite bland.
I know that they're more contraptions based than visually oriented, but you guys could have more success and get into more people if your levels were just a little prettier...otherwise you could try the minimalist look, with 2 or 3 materials, black and white colour correction.
As they are now they look neither good nor bad.

Good choice in enabling infinity checkpoints since sackboy is not a great jumper and players can't have a perfect control.

Anyway I rated the level 4 stars for now.

It's all easy until you get a little ways into the cave, and then the real stuff begins.

As for your opinion on the visuals, that is one thing I was going to bring up in an article from the Expert Platformists group on a topic related to many ways and suggestions for creators of these to garner more respect, but I haven't started any articles yet since we don't have our logo yet, lol.

Visually, NR is nice compared to most, and it gets better with the visual changes in parts of the cave. It's weird because when you're someone that plays these kinds of levels, you have no care or thought of the visuals, except you'll notice them if one happens to be visually great. Otherwise we are too focused on the gameplay to care. But as a point in the article, that was one of multiple things I was going to mention to better the public future of extreme platforming in LBP for ratings.

I'm impressed though, you seem to know what you're talking about when it comes to expert platformers because you realize the focus is more on the gameplay and obstacles so we purposely pay less attention to visuals to focus on what's more important.

And about sackboy not being a good jumper and saying players can't have perfect control, well yes you can have perfect control. We have to to do some of the crazy things we pull off. Expert players have a mastery over a term called 'play control'. The play control for every game is different though based on that game's mechanics. In LBP this not only refers to control sensitivities, but also to how those controls respond in contact with the many materials and angles. Once you learn these things, then you realize that you can execute flawless jumps of various kinds, including light jumps, half jumps, high jumps, long jumps, and super jumps.

Without this mastery it wouldn't be possible for me to ace everything in Nightmare Redux up to the cave, and even some places in the cave.

2009-10-05 12:55:00

Author:
Unknown User

Well, about the controls, you can somehow master the angle jumps, but you can't master the effect of invisible pistons, something that sometimes can make hard even easy levels.
Anyway, good points, extreme platform creator should do something to their levels to make them not appearing rushed.

If the level looks awesome, the medium/average player (not the kiddies) plays it, since he understands that there's a lot of effort even in tweaking the contraptions, so, even if they die 1000 times, they understand that death is due to their skills, not a creator's fault.

If average player sees something that is not visually well crafted, he thinks that a jerk kid made it, that the creator didn't put the effort to tweak the contraptions and that level is impossible, so he goes back to the pod and rate 1.

I played Bridget and deboerdave levels because I know who they are, and that they have an hard level, but I can reach the scoreboard.		2009-10-05 13:52:00

Author:
OmegaSlayer
Posts: 5112

Well, as for my own levels, they're not spectacularly good looking sure, but.... it's not because of any lack of desire to make them that way.

It's just that Im really terrible at art, lol.

There's good reason why every boss I make is some sort of metallic, geometric something-or-other out to destroy you.

This level, and also Rave, are about as pretty as it gets, as far as stuff from me goes. I just dont know how to make it look any better.

Not to mention another aspect of this.

Making levels look REALLY good also REALLY gobbles up the thermo. Nice looking levels generally mean lots and lots of vertices, which the thermo dislikes.

I was able to make a very, very long level.... AND use a ton of different materials.... AND 3 bosses, each having multiple rapid-fire emitters.... mostly because alot of the shapes in each area are quite simple. The game engine likes this, lol.

Though, there are areas where that's not so true.... the glass zone, for instance, but those are few and far between.

For the most part, it's all simple shapes. This lets ME determine the length of the level..... not the thermo. As it is, I think I could have DOUBLED the length if the bosses werent there gobbling up some meter with the emitters.



So, yeah, that's why it looks like it does, lol.

Besides,

I figured..... a level like this is gonna get mostly ignored anyway.... it dont need to look hugely great, lol. Not many are gonna see it as it is.		2009-10-06 04:52:00

Author:
Bridget
Posts: 334


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