[Gideon Zhi]

Okay so I'm on-and-off hacking a platformer game (blaster master.) A lot of the fun here is exploring, and while conceptually I've got the level design in my hack down really awesome, I'm having trouble building rooms that aren't really really bland. So I thought I'd start this thread here, especially since there was that whole discussion surrounding the Zelda Parallel Worlds hack.

What makes a good platformer? Not necessarily in terms of difficulty - I've got a good idea of where I want my difficulty to lie, and I know all about fair jumps and enemy placement and all that. What I'm more interested in is the actual level design. What makes a platformer more interesting than another? How does one keep from making lots of Really Boring Straightaways? Discuss! Someone throw me a bone here.
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Aeon Genesis ~ Ambassador Thorman great man! I do anything he say!

[Gideon Zhi]

This is an interesting read, for a number of reasons. First off, I have not played the aforesaid hack, although I do know the author. (He's granted me use of any of his ASM-level hacks, provided I can pull them from the hack itself.) Secondly, I wish to make this very open-ended. I don't want each area to be so maze-like that the player gets completely lost in them, admittedly, and the whole hub-sector thing ties itself in well with Blaster Master in general and the ideas I've had for some of my levels so far.

The general concept is that the final Area will require all of the powerups from the earlier Areas to complete, but that all of the other Areas (and their respective Underbosses) will be accessible right from the outset. There will be a couple of different ways to reach each boss, generally a "short" way and a "long" way, with the former being accessible if you have a particular upgrade but with nothing ever actually being completely locked out from the player. The "long" routes will usually have a particular challenge that the player would need to be overcome - a lengthy out-of-tank sequence, a wall that you need to climb using Wall 1 with those flying enemies zooming across the screen, or the like.

I'm also considering putting upgrades in the stages that can't be accessed unless you have a particular item. Example: There's a platform above the player's head in Area 1. Without the hover power, it's inaccessible. If you come back with the Hover power, you get an item that halves the amount of damage received (for instance.)

Here are some more snaps. I made the first room smaller, but the idea of the straightaway has given me a really nifty idea for a later Area.

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Aeon Genesis ~ Ambassador Thorman great man! I do anything he say!

[Gideon Zhi]

Here's the neat idea that the comment on straightaways spawned - area 4 will be an underground highway, really long and mostly straight, that connects to areas 1, 2, 3, and 5 (and area 8, but only if you have the right stuff.)

My other ideas for stages so far are a weapons production facility, a flood control dam, a genetics research lab, and a bio-organic sort of area, like the last area of the original game but with less (really annoying) spikes. To address the possible issue of difficulty progression, I have the entire world mapped in a rather "tiered" fashion; areas 1 and 2 sit on top, with 3-5 below them, 6 and 7 below them and 8 at the bottom. The further down the player goes, the more plentiful (or at least nastier looking) the enemies will be, and the more uninviting the environments should seem.

The great thing about Blaster Master is that the "forced" upgrades don't generally make you any stronger, they just make you a little more maneuverable. With the exception of the Dive module, this tends to have little bearing on actual combat - Hover mode is too slow to be worth fighting in, Key is almost entirely useless, Hyper and Crusher don't make you any stronger (they let you defeat a guardian monster and blow away weak bricks, respectively.) The only things that might be useful at all are Wall 1 and Wall 2, which let you cling to the walls and ceilings respectively; this makes it a bit harder to control, sometimes, and I'm actually hoping to replace Wall 2 with an unlimited hover upgrade. Other things, like weapon and armor modules which are not part of the original game you'd have to go out of your way to acquire. The player who simply wishes to beat the game may do so, while the adventurous sort who goes out of his way to explore may find himself making the game a little easier. I suppose the trick is then to gauge the difficulty so that it doesn't feel overstrenuous without the extra powerups, so the player doesn't feel obligated to go out of his way to collect them (in a similar fashion to heart tanks in Megaman X) but is nicely rewarded for doing so anyway.
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Aeon Genesis ~ Ambassador Thorman great man! I do anything he say!