Lemonectric

I got a sizeable influx of players on Ice Blue Raspberry Galaxy, too. I'm guessing people like to look through popular makers' recently starred courses. Anything you touch turns to gold, Peach. The new update is available now! Checkpoints, size-sensitive powerups, and event courses. I unlocked a Tri Force Heroes costume from one of the event courses, so I guess that's a thing that happens. I also reuploaded my first course with a checkpoint in it. For everyone's reference, you can delete a level without losing those stars from your total. You'll lose the nice comments and play data and stuff, though.

I just blazed through several Fortress challenges with some great teammates. The multiplayer is SO GOOD when your team is smart and friendly. One of them picked me up and spun around with a cascade of thumbs-up emotes when they had to leave the lobby. Talking to a friend in the PAL region (with whom I haven't been able to play [thanks Nintendo]), our feelings about the bosses have varied wildly because of having different teams. I got a game over on a boss her team found easy. Just playing a level twice with different teams is a completely different experience. I like it.

The game's out! Share your thoughts! Communication is really interesting. Sometimes your team is totally in sync and everyone understands what needs to be done very quickly. Other times, some people need some coaching, and you have to get creative with it. Some examples of things that have happened to me: - Balloon-popping challenge. One bomb user and two bow users. The last balloon was just a bit too high for any of us to reach. We were all stumped for a while. The solution involved throwing the bomb user to a particular perch so they could throw a bomb with delayed timing and blow it up in midair. The two bow users realized this and tried to communicate it with buttons like "item!" and "throw!" but the bomb user wasn't delaying the throw at all. After an eternity and some attempted spin attack throws, I ended up calling "throw" "item" "over here" in sequence, and when the bomb was thrown to me, I demonstrated the delayed throw. They understood right away and were able to get the balloon. I was so happy it had worked. - Red was convinced they had the solution to a puzzle, constantly tapping "over here!" and then "noooo!" when we didn't do what they wanted. Blue was struggling to understand what Red wanted and occasionally used the shrugging emoticon. I didn't know what the solution was, but we weren't getting anywhere, so I went for a little swim and started working out a possible plan. I called Blue over for some help, and while we were solving it together, Red kept screaming "noooo!" across the room until it was all done. The moral of the story is don't be totally stubborn. Fortunately, we didn't need Red's help for that particular one. - It was my first time using the gripshot. I expected it to pull the gripped player toward the user, so I stood on one side of a gap shouting "item!" and waiting for the person on the other side to pull me over. They were also shouting "item," which seemed odd to me, because clearly they were the ones who needed to use their item. Then they used the gripshot on me to demonstrate how it actually worked. Turns out I should've been pulling myself to them. Sometimes, spending a little time to prove someone wrong is more helpful than using the emoticons. Also, don't immediately discount other people's ideas. Even if you don't think they'll work, try them out. You'll either succeed or prove them wrong.

A little update to talk about album artwork! We're interested in having an Indiana Jones grail diary style of artwork for the project--essentially, little sketches of puzzles, traps, maps, and ancient carvings from various games with notes jotted around them. Like this. There could be some mixed media applications if you want to cook up a real thing and take a picture of it on a desk, or you could just do it digitally. We're open to ideas. At this point, the artwork isn't a high priority yet, but that's the kind of stuff we'll be looking for! Of course, we're still looking for music. I'll jump in once I get a better sense of which games aren't getting claimed!

I got capped at 15 easy and 36 normal. I didn't even use any amiibo or anything. Baaah. Like you said, it's not hard to finish Expert mode, but it takes at least twice as long as Normal mode because of all the skipping. New set of Zelda courses, starting with: Cavern of Courage 7577-0000-00AB-C250 You can go to my profile from there and play the rest in order. They're labeled Z-1 through Z-4. I also tried my hand at a music course...or more accurately, a course with original music in it. I wanted to make a space level with the SMB3 underground style, but with something other than the underground or bonus area music. It's hard! You're very limited in the amount of enemies you can use to trigger note blocks (I ran out), and you have limited room for harmonies if you're trying to keep most of it off-screen. Every note takes up several blocks of vertical space. Makes me wish the game came with its own music sequencer so you could just add tracks to your levels. Ice Blue Raspberry Galaxy B2ED-0000-00A8-9687

They're out there, and they tend to be pretty popular. Peach from OCR made one, actually: 5435-0000-003A-55B1 Levels get sorted by their completion rates. If a level's first jump is cut short by an invisible block that makes laughing sounds, you can bet it's going to be skipped a lot and end up in expert mode. I've been through expert mode 14 times, and sometimes I'll skip a level before even moving because I can already tell it's going to be one of those. Then I go look at my recently played courses, and surprise--it has 100 plays and 0 stars. As for blind jumps, I have a level with a bit of a dead end with a 1-up in a box. I expected people to understand that they needed to go back because there was nothing beyond that platform, but there are several red X's where people have jumped blindly to their deaths. The tendency for other levels to have blind jumps has conditioned people to commit suicide in my level. Great.

If you all are having trouble finding fun levels, try looking at the profiles of people who've starred your levels or levels you've starred. You might find some good stuff if you have similar tastes. Of course, that doesn't help with the 100-Mario Challenge. If it's "infuriating levels of Nintendo Hard" for the creator, it's often "literally impossible; skipped" for the player who didn't create it. The problem I had in your level was that it was hard to keep track of which type of enemy was coming out of which pipe. There's a lot going on, and you have to be ready to deal with a whole bunch of different possible attack patterns at any moment. The slow autoscroll gives you time to see what's coming up, but in the meantime you've still got enemies dropping above and behind you, which ends up constantly dividing your attention. It's easy to slip up and be in the wrong place at the wrong time while you're focused on dodging something else. A simple mushroom would help mitigate that a lot...or maybe fewer types of enemies, so players have a better idea how to approach things coming out of pipes they haven't already memorized. Or fewer empty pipes, which would make "safe" zones clearer. I'd vote for reduced enemy variation, because that also helps give a level a stronger identity, and the level can stay difficult without being too unpredictable.

I want to play your levels, OCR people! Let's share level IDs here so we can find each other's maker profiles. (Some kind of search functionality would be a nice update for the game...) This is my first one, made with mostly day-one materials: Goomba Falls D60C-0000-0019-D75A

Lurking is what I do best. Lately I've been putting together an original album, which is getting close to being finished. Pretty excited about that. Also working on starting up an archaeology remix album with Mr. Bottle Rocket. On the outside, I work at a public library. It's possible I'll be able to put together some basic music/audio software classes in our new creative space; other than that, I mostly help people find information and use computers. It's been fun.

We now know that you can skip levels in the 10 and 100 Mario challenges. If you come across an obnoxiously designed level (say, a stage that's unbeatable unless you know exactly where the winged invisible vine block is), you can skip it and do a different level in its place. Very happy about that. Also, looks like reviewers have been able to bypass the unlock schedule by changing the date on the Wii U. You just need to play for 5 minutes on each "day." That should satisfy people who want everything faster. I might skip a couple days just to get those handy decorative jump-through platforms...exclusively because they'd add some nice aesthetic variety to the background of my first level.

I'm loving rainmaker. Finally a ranked mode where I can use the carbon roller well. Echolocator would be a great special, but the inkzooka is really useful too. It's also a lot more fun to carry the rainmaker than it is to ride the tower in tower control; you have choices about how to approach the goal, and teammate support goes a lot further. It makes a huge difference when you have a teammate inking a path so you don't have to stop and charge.

We recently found out that course elements get gradually unlocked on a day-by-day basis; you just need to play for five minutes to unlock the next set of blocks/enemies/whatever, but you won't get it until the next day. The more I think about it, the more I like this idea. It's like "hey, you can get crazy later if you want, but try making something cool with a small selection of elements first." It'll get people familiar with the process of designing a creative level out of a limited set of tools, so they can't rely on jumbled nonsense levels right away. I'm already working on sketching out a level idea using the elements available on day 1. Pretty fun. I definitely have ideas that involve more complicated elements, but I can save those ideas for later. If anything, the unlock process will help me sort out which ideas to work on first. I've heard the physics feel reasonably accurate to each game style, but I'm not sure there have been any scientific comparisons. At the very least, we know that game-specific mechanics like spin jumping and butt stomping don't cross into older styles.

Hmm, I get you. We'll see how it goes. More than two weeks seems a little long to me, but extension could be a possibility down the line if necessary.

Hey, Chern. The decision to handle deadlines that way comes from my own experience with a personal album I'm working on, as well as with the Oracle albums I directed. Getting Phonetic Hero to hold me accountable for weekly updates was the best thing I could've done for my own album, and thinking about how people reacted to deadlines in previous projects made me wonder if a similar approach could work there. When there's a distant deadline, people (and/or I) claim tracks and then don't work on them for a while. By the time the deadline rolls around, they've often forgotten about it (and in some cases are completely unreachable). Lots of time is wasted. Our "deadline" system is more of a check-in thing to make sure people are still on board; we'd love substantial WIP updates, but a little "I'm still here, just busy" or "I did a bit of work, but nothing worth an export yet" works too. Considering people often sign up to write full remixes in one week for various competitions, I don't think two-week check-ins are unreasonable. What it boils down to is that we're not looking for claims by people who can't set aside a few minutes of remixing time every couple of weeks. If someone's really that busy, they probably have too much on their plate already, and I'd rather not add to it! It's less about getting the album done quickly and more about keeping tracks out of limbo. Hope that answers your concerns.

I was on a winning team of 3 against 4 during the last splatfest. So satisfying. Usually you really start hurting when you're short a player, but we pulled through. I've also been on a team of 2 against 0. Many booyahs were had. Edit: I just had a tower control match that started as 2 against 3. My teammate and I managed to keep the other team from getting a knockout, at least. It was a pretty fun challenge. Thankfully we only lost one point at the end because of the disadvantage.

My current style is to use the carbon roller in turf wars and .52 gal in tower control. Carbon is definitely the most satisfying roller for me; the swing speed lets you destroy people immediately at point blank, and the burst bombs help give you more range (as well as being useful for climbing walls more quickly than other rollers). Plus you get to run reasonably quickly, which helps when you want to make a push through enemy territory. The .52 gal is powerful and comes with the splash wall and killer wail, both of which are great for tower control. Extra fun when you splat people with the wall because they don't get off the tower as it passes through, or the tower pushes them into it. I'm not a huge fan of splat zones, possibly because I haven't quite settled on a favorite weapon. I seem to come back to the splattershot pro a lot (with splat bombs and inkstrikes), but I cycle through other stuff too. Looking forward to the update! Apparently Urchin Underpass is being changed a bit as well.

When I play, it's about midnight in Japan, and the vast majority of the other players are Japanese (sometimes all but me). There should definitely be plenty of older people playing late at night. Was it taking forever to find people?

Cat King! I got 18 snails even though we lost overall. Looks like dogs won by popularity, and cats barely nabbed the upper hand with 51% wins. I actually had a much easier time during splatfest than I usually do in turf wars, which was interesting. Like you said, more one-sided victories than usual. I found myself right up against the opponents' base with my whole team on multiple occasions...though that 5% example was an extreme case. I'm still laughing about that. But yeah, there were some matches where the dogs were pushing really hard, too.

American and European splatfests are today! Go get yourself some super sea snails! I was up against a dog team that had all four of its players and still only managed 5% of the map. It was delicious.

My dad and my grandma fall asleep watching TV. I don't get it. It's hard enough for me to sleep without any sensory input. Brandon makes a good point; if you don't want to multi-task or take a walk while listening, at least make sure you're not in a sleep-inducing position. Grab a stool or other backless object that doesn't allow you to lean back and relax. Turn a light on. If you still fall asleep after all that...get more sleep? I dunno.

It does! I guess they added colored hair to open up the costume possibilities while still making each Link quickly recognizable by color.

The next Four Swords game has...three swords! Looks like the general attitude following Nintendo's E3 presentation has been "why did you think we wanted another Metroid Prime Hunters/Four Swords/Not-Really-Paper-Mario game?" to which I respond "Link crossdressing." We already know about the cool Zelda game coming down the line. In the meantime, I'm all for a goofy one (coming this fall, apparently). Highlights: - Link wearing Zelda's dress - Pom pom emotes - Music sounds great (possibly Ryo Nagamatsu again?) - Single player, local multiplayer, and online multiplayer (finally!) It's been a while since I've experienced multiplayer Zelda, so I'm into it. That space in the title makes me nauseous, though.

All you really need to know about the update is that Dream Land 64 has a .

The Wii U thread isn't necessarily dedicated to registering friends, but there's a NNID list at the beginning: http://ocremix.org/community/topic/26159-nintendo-wii-u/ Edit: ...This game is addicting. I thought to myself "ok, this needs to be my last match" several times over a few hours. Hunger finally got me to stop.

I wasn't interested when it was first shown off, but I'm thoroughly hyped now. Had a lot of fun with the test fire on Saturday.