Insane Difficulty: Hello - Insane Difficulty

My name is Franky, and I am new here. I'm a SMW 1 and 2 rom hacker who loves influencing insane difficulty into his work. I'm not sure how active this forum is, but figured I'd make a thread anyway. I look forward to posting some video of my work so that you can be the judge of how insane it is.

The forum is active enough, but most of the discussion is on the more well-known hacks around here (FFT 1.3, BNW). We're interested in seeing more stuff though, so post away.

There's not really much interest for SMW/YI here. That's probably partially because the SMW hacking scene is so saturated with half-assed "impossible" hacks that are designed to be played with savestates or just TAS'd. What's your design philosophy on that, by the way?

I don't usually release my stuff because it's too hard to play without savestates or even slow down. Regular hacks though, shouldn't need savestates in my eyes. It depends if it's intentional kaizo difficulty or not.

Do note that there's a third category in there, somewhere between "Regular Hacks" and "Kaizo Hacks". Regular hacks are likely to be romps and Kaizo hacks are pretty much intended for TASes. But a good, solid Difficulty hack like the ones this site is generally oriented towards manages to require skill and learning about the game to beat, without simply being irritating to restart over and over. That's not to say the other types of hacks suck or anything, but there are more than two distinct audiences here.

I've played quite a few SMW hacks (in fact, probably as many as I've played of FF6). But I like the SMBX engine more, from what I've played of it.

Nice to see demo lol As for solid difficulty, I guess I see what you mean. For example the A2MT final level I created, that was pretty well in between I'd say. But for the most part I enjoy insane difficulty.

FrankyC253, on 10 March 2015 - 04:01 PM, said:

Haha, I remember the final level of that game but I didn't recognize that you were the creator. It was definitely one of the few levels (perhaps 15%) in A2MT that was actually pretty good. To be fair, I never actually played any of the zombie ROM, but our bovine friend generally has a fairly similar skill level/playstyle to me, so I feel I can trust my instincts about the level just from watching it.

Yeah, I feel like that level nailed the final level difficulty pretty well, which is especially cool since you were using and balancing level design concepts from levels that were just about everywhere on the difficulty spectrum. When I saw the disco I was expecting the same cheap garbage that the original level had, but instead those jumps looked pretty fair (even though I usually hate the disco). It's too bad that the Vanilla Level segment had its powerups broken because it would have otherwise been pretty good. Ironically, it ended up being easier than some of the earlygame levels that were pretty much postgame difficulty just because they were horribly balanced.

I'd say that it's better than King Charles' Castle too. Putting a long, slow scrolling area like the Lullaby portion just before that semi-luck-reliant first boss fight (with bad collision detection to boot) was a horrible design choice. It made a bunch of things that could have worked okay separately into a repetitive gauntlet.

I tend not to enjoy hacks that try to force save states upon people. While I enjoy watching TASes, I have no desire to create one, and I prefer to play hacks just like regular games. I generally use them to sidestep having to get extra lives though, because that really adds nothing to the game. And I use them to practice areas as well sometimes before doing them legitimately (so that I feel comfortable experimenting). If save states make a hack more fun, then I generally don't like it much to begin with. So I'm not sure that I'd necessarily enjoy playing your Kaizo type hacks as much as that one.

Hey there Franky. It's always good to see new modders around these parts.