Super Mario Maker Course Sharing & Feedback Thread

I finally uploaded a new level called "Platforms ahoy!", but it's in a state of work in progress as it needs your feedback on how should I fine tune the level should you find any issue within the stage. It's a rather easy level when you simply do the main path, but taking on the alternate paths can make the level a bit more challenging. It can be completed pretty quickly no matter which route you take, but it's entirely possible to beat this stage in around 30 seconds or less if you're skilled enough.


Platforms ahoy! [WIP]


E601-0000-00B0-A15E

May 22nd 2016 EDIT: I deleted this level, because it hardly receives star anymore due of being rather low-quality by my standards. The same could be said for Wall-Jumping Exercise and Wild Wiggler's Ride.
 
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Share your Super Mario Maker courses here!

Here's some of mine:
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Trust me, they are really fun. I wouldn't upload boring courses!:p
 
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NSMBU style is never fun I'm sorry

He hasn't unlocked Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World style yet by the time he uploaded his levels. All 4 styles has the same physics in Super Mario Maker despite the difference in Mario's abilities, which seems to be more refined. I've felt his SMM physics are more agile than those in NSMBU and in SMB.

@KingKyle: From what I've seen from the pictures of your levels, I already see some problematic level designs going on, even though I haven't played your levels yet.

I immediately understood that you were very obsessed on "mindlessly" spamming many stuff in a level. I know it's fun placing as many thing as you could possibly fill, but any level where the sole main point of interest is nothing more than stuffing up things without much purpose screams the lack of creativity and are a waste to your level upload limit. "CRAZINESS!!!!!!!!!!!!", "COINS EVERYWHERE!" and "Bounce on enemies!" to some extent are example of this form of boring level design, although the much longer latter level would make players feel it drags on and on without much interest aside of bouncing enemies.

"Super Bounce!" doesn't seem to be very hard, although having to press the jump button at the right moment to gain extra height is the most annoying part of any stage that involves excessive use of trampolines. In Super Mario Maker, the timeframe for registering a successful timing press is pretty slim, compared to all of the other Mario games ever released. Have to give this one a closer look later on.

The starting point of "Extreme" has enemies way too close to Mario's start point, according to the preview image for that stage. That means if the players don't react within less than 1/2 second by the time they start playing this one, they'll lose a life. People unknowing stumbling in this stage will very likely get hit as small Mario, which may be one of the reasons why your stage has a low clear rate. It's a cheap way to artificially increase the difficulty, since players are relying more on memorization to avoid this trap right the beginning of the stage rather than pure skills. You could have avoided that level design flaw by placing enemies far enough for any player playing this stage for the first time a chance to prepare themselves and react accordingly. I'll have to give this one a proper look to form a better view in this one, since the rest of stage seems intriguing.


I'll examine some of your levels tomorrow and come up with observations. I'll admit I might be a bit too intimidating for anyone creating levels for the first time, but that's because I'd like you to become a better level designer. Just don't sweat yourself too much and you'll have an even more fun time!
 
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He hasn't unlocked Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World style yet by the time he uploaded his levels. All 4 styles has the same physics in Super Mario Maker despite the difference in Mario's abilities, which seems to be more refined. I've felt his SMM physics are more agile than those in NSMBU and in SMB.

NSMBU in SMM is still a constant state of me fighting with the controls to be able to do anything notable

none of the other SMM styles have this issue

its flat-out garbage and needs to be completely overhauled or dropped in the future
 
He hasn't unlocked Super Mario Bros. 3 and Super Mario World style yet by the time he uploaded his levels. All 4 styles has the same physics in Super Mario Maker despite the difference in Mario's abilities

That is not true, Super Mario World is far more slippery than other styles. I know this for sure because i made an auto mario level and it wouldn't work anymore if i switched to a different style than Super Mario World.
 
That is not true, Super Mario World is far more slippery than other styles. I know this for sure because i made an auto mario level and it wouldn't work anymore if i switched to a different style than Super Mario World.

Oh wow, I thought the Super Mario World physics in Super Mario Maker felt a bit more like New Super Mario Bros. U to me. I remembered that the physics of the actual SMW on the SNES was more slippery than those of the SMW style in SMM.


I further examined KingKyle's stages by downloading his stages to Coursebot as opposed to hit "Play", and my initial doubts are indeed real. I think it's easy to guess why "Super Bounce!" is a disappointingly boring stage that you'd regularly find in an Easy 100 Mario Challenge. Nothing much else to say here.

Beyond a Goomba being extremely close to Mario's starting point, it turns out that "Extreme" gets a lot of things wrong in the process too. A huge part of the stage's difficulty relies on cheap shots, and the rewards are disproportionately distributed based on how much effort it took the player to obtain them in first place, discouraging pure skills in favor of luck. I'll point out a few examples of where I found some of the bad level design in this stage.

1- Enemy hidden by the camera
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In the high-jumping section with brick blocks and a few trampolines. Sounds safe, right? There's actually a green Koopa Troopa that'll eventually fall down while navigating this area. Since the camera don't let the player see this guy, he/she will most likely get hit because they couldn't see that from happening. That's not a challenge. That requires memorizing where the guy was, and therefore is one of those cheap shots.

2- Blind jump
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Right after the hidden Koopa section, there is another bad level design thrown in because the creator thought it constitutes a challenge, yet relies on memorization instead. Again, the camera don't let player see what's below from this point and there's zero indication on where the player should be while doing a leap of faith. There are trampolines down below, but there's also a possibility of failing this one because the player would have enough time to react to land on one of them and falls down to bottomless pit instead.

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3- Unrewarding reward placement

So, "Extreme" doesn't reward skills from the players. But what further exemplifies that issue are how illogically the rewards are placed. There's a secret that can be seen right at the start of level that players could effortlessly reach by jumping on the trampoline. Sounds neat, right? Well, that's one thing. But how they were rewarded is another thing.

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For one, you were given a ridiculous amount of coins because of that very accessible secret? How about getting 25 coins by simply jumping in another easy to reach secret area, as shown above?

Also, if you managed to clear the hidden Koopa section and reach the right ledge far out of the camera, it'll lead you to a virtually non-existent challenge section, complete with a Fire Flower and a Star that won't be much use. Here's why:

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If the player takes the upper path from there, which is easy to reach and impossible to die afterward, the player completes the stage.

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The lower path is a a dead end without an appropriate redeeming reward whatsoever. Talk about disappointing, but hey, you can backtrack. But, getting back where they were is a bit trickier than it should be. Knowing on how bad is the timeframe for timing press on a trampoline, it's possible for the player to be forced to restart the whole level by accidentally destroying the brick blocks underneath the trampolines if the player isn't small Mario, never heard of an obscure trick that safely drop any item down and struggles on stacking trampolines.

When a player overcomes one of the most difficult sections of said level or find a difficult-to-reach secret, you should give them a proper reward to commemorate their efforts. The stuff they get should actually aid them to clear this stage easier or in a more interesting way than if they weren't rewarded.


Overall, "Extreme" seemed to be promising despite the cheap shot at the very beginning of the stage, but it ultimately fails to deliver the fun you were touting thanks to a number of questionable level design choices. Cheap damage/death sections due of unforeseen obstacles and unrewarding reward placement are what makes many players not bothering to give you a star. Also, if you were wondering why you couldn't place certain elements in a course, it's most likely because you filled the stage with tonnes of enemies, most of which didn't even needed to be there to begin with, which I noticed right away when I started analyzing this stage.
 
@TheBigJC7777777 You seem to be the one who pulls the weight around here.. so uh.. any chance you can look at my levels and tell me what you think? I posted a couple of my levels a while ago here.
 
I'm bad at course making.

As if we couldn't tell. I mean, i am not trying to offend you in any way but, your levels are the levels i just call garbage. Because they show up at the easy challenge because they contain 100 stars and 3 Bowsers which are easily gone because of the stars. Or because they show up at the hard challenge because there are so many troll deaths and cheap enemy placements. I still have to encounter my first hard challenge level with a legit challenge. Not that the levels are easy, but they are literally all troll levels. I mean come on! I died a lot in the real New Super Mario Bros. games but i was motivated to go on because it had a fair difficulty. This is just nonsense.
 
@TheBigJC7777777 You seem to be the one who pulls the weight around here.. so uh.. any chance you can look at my levels and tell me what you think? I posted a couple of my levels a while ago here.

These levels look fun to play to be honest! I'll be sure to give some of them a shot at least before Monday. I blame unexpected events occurring to me and the Tri-Force Heroes hype train.

I'm bad at course making.

Judging by when your first ten uploads were made, it seems like that they're your first foray on level designing. Making a course that you enjoy by yourself is of course easy-peasy, as it can possibly take a very little effort. But making ones that will be enjoyable to everyone including yourself is much trickier than it sounds, and that's where most of us in the community are interested for, at least in this topic.

Just so you could get an idea of how enjoyable a course should be, I invite you to try one of my best levels for example and analyze about what makes this particular level potentially enjoyable after playing. The elements you appreciated might serve you as an inspiration to better design your levels compared to your previous efforts, and may very likely lead you to more stars. It can be about the visuals, the audios, the level design, how well elements are incorporated in a level, the difficulty curve, difficulty vs. reward, the overall experience, etc.

Eggman's Airship of Doom
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Number 1: AD12-0000-00BB-8F1
Number 2 E193-0000-0051-5B24
Enjoy
 
I finally played some of adrino's levels, and I must say that most of those I tried are pretty fun to play, especially "Another" Castle and Boss Chomp's Castle.


A Big Finish is probably my least favorite out of the bunch due to one problematic area in level design. Before the goal pole, I met with a large wall that seems to be impassable at first. After I lead a Bob-Omb next to a blocked pipe and went through that one, I thought that room was just a decorated optional secret room. That is not the case.

The thing is, the secret room was also actually hinting that there are invisible blocks to hit, but I interpreted it otherwise and left me stuck until I downloaded the level to Coursebot to check if there was anything I missed and indeed, one of the invisible blocks had the giant mushroom, which is mandatory to beat the level since it lets Mario break brick and course blocks by walking through them. Had that hinted environment easier to memorize, I would've quickly figured that out.

This level suffers from relying an finite item resource in order to clear it. Between the P-Swtich and blocked pipe area, it's possible for the player to end up being permanently stuck by accidentally amassing too many coins or losing the one and only powerup. Keep in mind, these don't respawn even when taking a door/pipe. Aside of the aforementioned issues, the level isn't very difficult at all if you exactly know what you're doing and shouldn't take too long to come back where you were. I guess the level itself is passable at best.


The best advice to beat Pipe Dream is to spend a few seconds to check if there's anything popping out of pipes to avoid some nasty surprises. This also applies to any level where you'd want watch out for the pipes. Super Mario Maker engine has an odd habit of taking around 2 extra seconds to load whatever thing inside a pipe that appears on-screen before it assumes the supposed behavior. This can make possible for players to get through certain sets of pipes without ever seeing anything come out of it, unless they were slowed down. All of the other Super Mario Bros. games never had that quirk before, as the enemy would spawn as soon as the pipe is shown on-screen. So basically, anyone with a decent amount of patience is rewarded here. I don't have much else to say about the level, but I can say it's a fine level for a first-timer.


Jellyfish Lake, a difficult and hectic autoscrolling level has you slalom through Jelectros, Green Cheep Cheeps and Bloopers. What makes this level so good, is that it doesn't even feel it drags on and on. And that is one heck of an achievement, considering it's a mostly underwater level.


Koopa Keep is a short but sweet type of the level. It has you do one of the two trials twice before leading up to the boss fight, leading to different playthroughs, which adds to the replayability and variety. The difficulty in this level is reasonable enough to not feel being stuck and unable to complete the level.


"Another" Castle is my personal favorite out all of the levels I tried today. For one, it managed the difficulty to be consistently engaging without being unfair as a result of a rather ambitious challenge. This level expects you to have a good amount of Mario bestiary knowledge to efficiently beat the level, something that many players might not have. Using some of the New Super Mario Bros. U's advanced techniques helped me a lot to overcome many of its obstacles. FYI, I beat this one in a single try. I love on how I had to spin jump on Spiky Parabeetles before the Skull platform drowns in the lava, so I could safely land on the next Parabeetle without spike without much effort. And the forced boss fight works so well that it rounds out the package quite nicely.


Boss Chomp's Castle is another great level with a consistent high difficulty throughout the stage without feeling cheap and frustrating. This one exploits the mechanics of Chain Chomp quite nicely to provide challenge that I believe they're barely used in the Super Mario Bros. games and on most Super Mario Maker levels. I haven't tried the much more fiendish original version of it, but I can definitely say that I enjoyed this updated version quite well. I also beat this one in one try. I think I've played too many platforming games in my life.


I've got another level coming next week that has Bullet Bills and Rocky Wrenches. It has you to jump on the former to reach chasms and platforms. It's a challenging stage for sure, but it ain't going to end up as hard like "Those Twisted Plants EVERYWHERE!" accidentally did. I'm currently trying to improve this level to make this one more fun and aesthetically pleasing to eyes.

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I'm also looking to remake one of my past levels, as I feel like that some of them are barely receiving any star for quite some time. Since I'm too lazy to repost level codes here, you can check my list of stages I created from Nintendo Life's Super Mario Maker level directory as well and grab the codes from there.
 
Here's a another course I made:
View attachment 153949

You literally used one of the title screen samples to create a level? I know it is kind of ment for that but it is pretty lame nontheless...

- - - Post Merge - - -

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I'm also looking to remake one of my past levels, as I feel like that some of them are barely receiving any star for quite some time. Since I'm too lazy to repost level codes here, you can check my list of stages I created from Nintendo Life's Super Mario Maker level directory as well and grab the codes from there.

Jeez that DOES look like a design mistake even though it's fine, the camera can be horrible in Super Mario Maker sometimes. Still have to play your levels, i always forget about Super Mario Maker. So busy with Splatoon... Lol i will try to play them when i finish dinner!
 
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[...]

Jeez that DOES look like a design mistake even though it's fine, the camera can be horrible in Super Mario Maker sometimes. Still have to play your levels, i always forget about Super Mario Maker. So busy with Splatoon... Lol i will try to play them when i finish dinner!

Since the camera does move up and & down during airship areas, that section could be problematic if I put any enemy or course hazard away from the visible area. The way that the game scrolls vertically is solely based on how high the ground or enemy you're standing/jumping on is. For that section of the level, I didn't put any trap there and added an arrow there. I also brought the second Bill Blaster a bit closer so players could see it before they jump, rather than having to jump off from the first Bullet Bill to get closer to the otherwise hidden cannon for the second Bullet Bill to pop up and then bop from it.

Speaking of which, the level is finally uploaded. I had no idea on how to name that level, so I just went to naming this one in a quirkier fashion, kinda like on how the staff at Super Mario World would actually name the levels.


Coconut Airship

WVW69ig1t_ouuU-Fjm


A9B5-0000-00C2-6954
 
A Big Finish is probably my least favorite out of the bunch due to one problematic area in level design. Before the goal pole, I met with a large wall that seems to be impassable at first. After I lead a Bob-Omb next to a blocked pipe and went through that one, I thought that room was just a decorated optional secret room. That is not the case.

The thing is, the secret room was also actually hinting that there are invisible blocks to hit, but I interpreted it otherwise and left me stuck until I downloaded the level to Coursebot to check if there was anything I missed and indeed, one of the invisible blocks had the giant mushroom, which is mandatory to beat the level since it lets Mario break brick and course blocks by walking through them. Had that hinted environment easier to memorize, I would've quickly figured that out.

This level suffers from relying an finite item resource in order to clear it. Between the P-Swtich and blocked pipe area, it's possible for the player to end up being permanently stuck by accidentally amassing too many coins or losing the one and only powerup. Keep in mind, these don't respawn even when taking a door/pipe. Aside of the aforementioned issues, the level isn't very difficult at all if you exactly know what you're doing and shouldn't take too long to come back where you were. I guess the level itself is passable at best.

First off, I really appreciate you taking the time to play through my levels and am glad to hear you enjoyed them. And Secondly, regarding what you mentioned above, yeah. When creating and testing that level, I had a tough time figuring out how to lead players to enter that pipe without destroying the bridge of coins. I thought my counter solution to having a broken bridge was adding a Stiletto Goomba to the room with the hint but that just watered down the challenge. I also didn't want to remove the Muncher/Bob-Omb section that being the tricky part of the stage but then I faced the trouble of having only 1 Star provided leaving little room for error. So yeah, I've been aware of this fault and have considered going back and stretching it out a little more to make the hint room mandatory but also not a trial and error ordeal.


I've uploaded a new level today that I created after learning a new technique that I can't believe I had not known about since I've had the game on release. Dunno if I'm just the last person to know about it but in case it's not common knowledge, here's the level.

Step On Down
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Course ID: C647-0000-00C3-8C8D
The level is designed to be beatable for the most part without this newfound knowledge I learned today. But at one point in the level, you have to use this technique to progress.
 
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