The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

Here is a link (topic at GMC). (http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=408707) Please, please tell me what's wrong with the game, besides not being like UQM! ;)

My vote is #3. It's not awesome, but it's not bad and I think it's a good start.

EDIT: I have canceled development of Bowser: The Betrayal. Click on the new link for details.

I will play your game and give you constructive feedback only on the condition that you get rid of that hideous signature. That and the avatar text. They both need to go.

I'll try and have a look at it later.

I'll gladly do that, but next time please be a little nicer about it. (send me a PM saying, hey, those texts are pretty annoying. Could you get rid of them?)

To be completely honest Jay, I found it a bit dull. # 4 I guess. Yoyo has a gazillion Mario spin offs that quite frankly are superior to your game at this time. That is not to say yours will not be top notch in the future. Also, it's not really fair for me to critique your game too much because I don't really care for the whole mario world anyway. I played it quite a bit back in the NES and SNES days but have tried sooooooo many spinoffs to date it's left kind of a bad taste in my mouth.

I wanted to look at your GMK file because I was certain there was somthing glitchy with it. I cannot find anything wrong with it and it looks like you have a good start.

I will keep my word and give a fair critique of the game. Considering you've just started high school (I think?) and you've never programmed before, it's a good first effort. There are two mistakes you're making from my point of view. The first mistake is that the fight at the end of the level goes on too long. You need to either shorten it or throw in more difficult waves of enemies to keep it interesting. That's minor. The second mistake is that you're dramatizing a Mario game. It's silly. I press 'F1' to learn the controls and run into a big wall of Mario fan fiction. Consider dropping the edgy 'vengeance' angle and just run with a Bowser platformer.

Already fixed. I made the boss much shorter and I also added a better defeat of the goomba: You don't just get a message saying, "Yay, you win!". You get a message saying "Your troops have taken out the paragoomba's wings. Finish it off with the Slam attack!" (More close to: Greenhawk: "My king! We have taken out the paragoomba's wings! Look out! It's coming right for you!"; Troop: "Use your Slam attack! That should finish it off!") After the message, the paragoomba charges toward Bowser at tremendous speed (you can't outrun it). You have to use the Slam ("Bowser Bomb") attack on it. Any other hit kills Bowser instantly.

There's actually a reason I put in that fanfic story. Since usually Mario is totally outnumbered by Bowser's troops, I needed to use Bowser's troops, and the fact is it is essential to explain why Bowser's own troops are attacking him. Also I don't get what you mean by "vengeance angle". Bowser does claim that Mario will pay for what he did, but his main goal is to liberate his castle. If you simply meant that you didn't like scrolling through the story, the SVN explains the story entirely via cutscenes that can be skipped, so this will no longer be present in the next version.

Anyways, thanks for your honesty.

I know my game isn't awesome, I myself rated #4. Actually, if you read the last post in the link, you will see that I announced how crappy version 0.1.0 is compared to the SVN. I think my goal is for the game to be actually fun to play by version 0.5.0 (although I would like to do that in the next release, 0.2.0).

I downloaded and tried it yesterday and this wasn't in it. Still, it's good that you changed it because it took far too long. Some general observances:

- The slam move seems a bit useless. Maybe it'll be more useful when there are more enemies in the game, but right now it feels like overkill to smack goombas with it. Also, since using it freezes you for quite a bit of time it's not very useful if there is more than one enemy on screen. And since both the slam move and jumping injures me a tiny little bit, I'm loath to use them anyway. It could be especially troublesome in longer levels.

- The hammers are pretty good, and work well enough.

- Bowser doesn't move very well. This causes two problmes. The first is that fighting enemies gets reduced to walking towards them and using the fireblast. That makes any enemy you add pretty much the same, and the game boring. The second is that it turns the levels very linear and boring, since you really can't do anything but walk and make small jumps over lava. To make it a more interesting platformer you'd need to be able to jump between different height platforms a bit more IMO.


I think your major story problem is that you are using too much story for the game you have. The entire game is basically "Walk left, shoot, jump, endboss", which doesn't really carry a large dramatic story about treachery in the mushroom kingdom. Also story wise, since Mario has taken the castle you could add some Toads and other mushroom kingdom denizens as enemies.


To make it fun, it needs a bit more level and actionwise. Just adding another level where you walk, use fireballs and jump a few small potholes won't do much.

I will play your game and give you constructive feedback only on the condition that you change the gender in your profile to female. That and the avatar. The avatar must change to a picture of a fairy. (This coming from someone with flowers in his avatar. :-\)

This would be a great ice burn on both him and myself if you had skipped the parenthetical bit at the end.

The changes I have made will not be playable until 0.2.0. You are playing 0.1.0.

The Slam move is not designed to be a weapon, but to allow me to make more dynamic levels.

I think I will add Toads, but they will be towards the end. Also, a major aspect of the game will be commanding your troops, You have to give proper orders to your army of koopa troopas (starting at level 2) to be successful in the game.

Those kind of things might be worth stating outright when you ask people to review your game. As it is, you have two people needlessly commenting on something that you've already taken into account. If there are any further changes made visavi the playable version, you might wan't to update the first post and let people know exactly what parts you want feedback on.


The only thing it seems to allow is to jump higher and move sideways ever so slightly. Unless by dynamic you mean "Break through brick walls"? In that case it's kind of like an inverted Mario jump, and you need to either figure out what else it can be used for than breaking, or come up with a level structure where breaking bricks won't bee too monotonous. Also, I'm not quite clear on how the part you quoted pertaining to Bowsers poor movement range/options has anything to do with your answer.


Aren't there other "good" denizens of the mushroom kingdom? Maybe you could try making good versions of Marios enemies, just for variety.


This sounds interesting. Sort of a blend between Mario and Lemmings?

The reason for Bowser's lack of mobility is because that's Bowser's one weakness. I want it to feel like you are Bowser, so you have a lot of power, but it's hard to move.

The point was that the Slam move is meant, not as an attack, but to allow Bowser to jump higher than normal. This is to solve the second problem you stated. I also intend to have lifts that can take Bowser from place to place.

For the first problem, different enemies have different reactions to Bowser and his weapons. Most notably, the only way to kill a Buzzy Beetle is to either run into it or stomp it (stomping makes it go at a higher speed); fireballs and hammers are completely ineffective against it. Buzzy Beetles will be used a lot in the game.

First; there's just Toad and Yoshi in the Mushroom Kingdom world. If I include Yoshi, he will be a boss, or part of the Mario boss.

Second, that sounds like a nice idea, but I don't think I want to do that. After all:
1. Goombas are rotten mushrooms. Mario eats good mushrooms, he doesn't lead them.
2. Koopa troopas are on Bowser's side in this game
3. Buzzy beetles... I dunno. They wouldn't look good if they were pink, and I can't think of any other way to make them "good".
4. Bullet bills are... bullets. With a little attitude. What, should I put a smile on their face? ;)
5. Podoboos are... well, fireballs. Fire is fire.
6. Dry bones are dead koopa troopas. What should I do, bring them back to life? ;)
7. Piranha Plants are just man-eating plants. Should they be friendly plants? ;)

So you get the idea.

While that might be proper canon it makes for a poor platformer, unless you can really spice up the levels.



As long as you add power-ups here and there to combat the fact that the player doesn't actually want to run into or stomp anything since it hurts him.


Googling "wikipedia mushroom kingdom characters" led me to this (http://www.mariowiki.com/Allies) list. And this list (http://=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mario_series_characterslist) of special characters as well. I know next to nothing about Mario but surely some of those creatures could be used? Or make different kind of Toads, Fire Toads, Flying Toads, whatever.


Apparently, not all Goombas are evil (http://www.mariowiki.com/Goomba).




You're the fan fiction guy. I'm sure you can come up with little backstories and redesigned sprites for some of those. I'm just providing suggestions and ideas, not trying to design ready-to-use characters for you. I've learned more about the Mario world than I ever wanted to in the last 5 minutes and really don't feel like doing enough research to come up with good enenmy concepts for you. If you just want to use a few different ready sprites then that's fine too, I'm sure the game will turn out well anyhow. I'm merely making suggestions.

That makes the record for Luke's longest post!

There will be ways to avoid the beetles, not defeat them. They will be like what Spinys are to Mario.

First, your second link is broken. You added a "=http://" after "http://" in the address. Also, it's not a real page in Wikipedia.

That first list was interesting to look at, but long. It also has a lot of characters that are just random single characters (Like the "Baby" characters) or made little cameo appearances. Heck, I don't even have the slightest idea where Einstein comes in, but it's on the list.

However, I like your suggestion to make different types of toads. I probably won't do flying toads, but that's a good idea.

I don't think peaceful goombas would ally themselves with Mario to invade an enemy's castle. Also I don't like the term "evil", it's just the side they're on unless by "evil" you mean the some that are bandits/thieves.

And thanks for the suggestions! You've already made me think that maybe I should revise the entrance script (like a play script, not code) for the game. (Instead of the goomba not responding when Bowser gives an order, make him respond with something like "You are not my leader anymore!".) So keep commenting, even if it's a bad comment! :)

Uh, no. Not even close. I can be very verbose. ;)


Yeah, but Mario can jump. Bowser moves so sluggishly that having to rely on jumping a lot will be really bothersome.


Whoops, I seem to have screwed up. And I can't find the original link either. It was basically another similar list, so no loss. The point of the list was just to show that there are more creatures.


Well, if they remained loyal to the mushroom kingdom they aren't peaceful per se, just not allied with Bowser.


Like I said, I'm throwing out ideas. Use what you like and discard the rest. I look forward to the enxt playable version.

Behold, the next version!
http://www.yoyogames.com/games/show/62046 (http://www.yoyogames.com/games/show/62046)

I've reset the votes.


Actually, the article you linked me to said quite specifically that they live in peace.


That's why you have to be clever and... Hey, you're killing me here! ;)


Actually, I'm going to hurry and get this game done, then I'm going to start on making another game, similar to this one, but with different characters:

1. Instead of Bowser, a green dragon that can fly, albeit for a limited time (much like the flying for the bee thing in Megaman ZX Advent). This will prevent the lack of mobility problem that exists with this game.
2. Instead of Mario, a wizard. Because Mario throws fire, so a wizard or witch is the only suitable replacement! ;)

Therefore, I'm only going to tell the story simply and put more emphasis on gameplay.

I'll have a look later.


The article and quote states that they wanted to remain at peace with the Mushroom Kingdom, not that they wanted to live in peace in general. You can be at peace with someone whilst still fighting someone else.


Wouldn't it be better to focus on one project, instead of rushing through it?


Good luck.

I want to start a different project because I don't like using Nintendo's characters. I am mostly doing the same thing, but it's not going to be based on Nintendo's TM characters. This accomplishes three things:
1. It's actually legal in the technical sense
2. I can sell it if I want
3. I can make up my own original story

Also, by adding flight, the new character will be much more mobile than Bowser, which is a good thing.

The giant goomba stage was a little overkill. Also, it took away all of my health when I bumped into it, then I had to start all over?  Part of the fun  from Mario was collecting items and improving your health. The health bar takes this fun away.

A couple good things you have are the smooth character movement and the space bar fire.

Thank you, SSM. I am no longer working on the game, though. I have canceled development (as you would be able to see if I linked the topic) and started working on a new game, Amber the Dragon: Reclamation of the Throne. I'll add a link in the first post to the Bowser topic so you can see exactly what's going on.