Level Diary

[Kwing]

As I almost never play PR2 anymore, I wanted to look through my old levels and give myself a pat on the back for the different ideas I created. This may seem overly egotistical or self-congratulatory, but seeing as there's a high likelihood that PR2 levels will be taken down at some point in the near future, I want to have some piece of evidence I can look back on to remember my creative achievements. I spent over a decade playing this game, which remained a constant no matter how many ups and downs I had in my personal life, so this is really just me trying to document some positive and lighthearted experiences I had during that time.

Most of my notoriety in the game likely comes from the level Smog having made it into the Legendary Campaign, which features an optical illusion drawn in AutoDot as well as an optional frustration at the end that far exceeds the difficulty found in any other campaign level.

People that were subscribed to Jiggmin's YouTube might also remember that I had a hand in creating Objective Mode - while I wasn't the first person to propose the idea, I did suggest a system for awarding partial experience, mainly as a way to credit players that only completed part of a trap level.

Members of Jiggmin's Village might also remember the Level Collab series, which were group efforts in which people submitted screenshots of small levels that I would stitch into one big level. LC1 was reminiscent of Zerostar in that all levels were next to each other, 2 and 3 introduced separation between each one, with each level granting partial completion, and 4 was linear and spanned the entire length of the level editor.

A couple famous levels also have a spark of my inspiration in them. Arcaninesy's Exp Grind III is a derivative of my levels of the same name, though his was much more accessible and better suited for a campaign level. Fran10's level Evacuation (published under the account Subteap) is also based on one of my levels called Airlock, based on an even older level I made called The Minotaur Aeon. To clarify, these weren't the first time the upside down net glitch was used, but I expanded upon this glitch to make puzzles more complex.

One common theme in my levels has been to make the minimap resemble something, usually text or an image. PLATFORM RACING II and DEPRESSION are my most famous text-based levels, though Halo of the Sun and Blood Sin are my favorites as far as aesthetic. Some other things I played around with were pun names. Did you ever beat Your Wife?

Adaptive difficulty was another common theme in my levels. I had a bunch that had short but difficult detours, as well as levels that would get easier if you played more sloppily. In one level called Neato you had to complete a section and bump as few push blocks as possible. The fewer you pushed, the higher you could later stand on them after hitting a rotate block, giving you access to harder challenges. Hats were another thing I liked experimenting with. Rigging a level to drop hats in certain places was a favorite of mine - you could force players to take penalties such as completing challenges or sacrificing stats to acquire them.


Onto some things most people wouldn't know about, one of my proudest achievement is the binary counter I invented in my Razing levels. This was back when most war levels required you to push three players into mines and trap them, leaving the fourth to collect the hats and finish the level. Razing introduced a system that used push blocks as bits; at the start, four bits were set to 1, but for each player that joined, a bit was set to 0 during the hat removal process. Once that player was defeated in battle, the bit was again set to 1. Three bits would then be used at the end to create a bridge, allowing the winning player to reach the finish block. Because of this, any number of players (1-4) could join the level, but only one would ever be allowed to finish. I later saw a similar system used by another user to create a calculator. I can't remember their name but I was extremely impressed by the complexity.

I had some other combat-based ideas I played around with. One involved a Deathmatch in which you could sword people into Finish Blocks for instant death. One involved using safe spaces to teleport around the map for ambushes. Tato Dome was based on the game in Pendragon series. Entrapment allowed players the respawn after being shot, but allowed players to disable the respawn point to trap their opponents.

Another personal favorite of mine was called Horse Demo. The concept was that players would take turns placing a mine in a certain space, then running through the area themselves. Eventually one player would either hit a mine that their opponent had previously managed to avoid, or hit a mine they had placed themselves, effectively biting off more than they could chew. I never finished setting up the level such that a player would be forced to take a turn, but had some ideas involving a player needing to complete a turn in order to earn time blocks, effectively forcing them to play.

5NAF was a Five Nights at Freddy's simulator made after the introduction of Art 0 and Art 00 layers. True to the original game, you had limited power (jetpack fuel) which could be used to shut doors, check the doorways, and explore areas where opponents could be observed (similar to checking cameras.) Animatronics started with 1 finish block and the defending player had 2, meaning the defender would win if and only if they kept animatronics out of their base until time ran out.

[Kwing]

(ctd. from previous post)

Another idea stemming from the Art 0 layer was a level I called dOddiW (meant to look vaguely like Mirror.) You saw a version of the level you were in, but it had been reflected somehow. Based on that, you had to complete the level blindly while also making an educated guess as to where you were.

I had some ideas for Capture the Flag levels as well. My first level was as simple as stealing a happy block from the other side, allowing a team to reach a finish block in their own base. I later used a system involving push blocks that returned the flag if you hit a net while on your way back, allowing the someone to "take back" your flag, but you could take back a flag by killing either player, even the one that hadn't taken it in the first place. My final solution (which I never implemented) involved splitting the map into two parts, with one player on each team being upside down. Their flags would be tracked separately so that you would have to kill the player that had stolen the flag to return it.

One of my most poorly executed ideas was trying to have an Alien Eggs level where players could try to control the flow of where the eggs congregated. The idea was either to control a few key pieces of territory to increase your score, or to make bridges that would cause eggs to come to you. Neither of these worked well, mainly because eggs fall from all directions. Guide the Egg followed a similar idea, only you had to use mines to keep one egg from getting stuck, guiding it to the end so you could bait it into using items that would clear the level for you. Man vs Egg had players trying to outrace an egg that would trap them if it made it to the finish first.

4-Ball was another idea that never worked too well. The idea was that each player (all with cowboy hats) had a base with a finish block in it, and their goal was to use a push block to glitch into other peoples' bases. So pushing a block next to someone's base was roughly the same as scoring a goal, and scoring a goal on all players would spell victory. The lack of synchronicity between push blocks made this level useless.

Another crappy idea was a Deathmatch where you were forced to lose health. The objective was to slow your progress along the level as much as possible so that you would die last. Reaction was a stupidly simple concept. Basically a Don't Move, except you have to use the spacebar to avoid getting trapped.

[Kwing]

Dang.

Speaking of creativity, I clearly remember seeing that someone had made a concept level that was made to be a drinking game. I think I saw it when I searched your levels but idk

Yes, Drinking Game was also my idea. I didn't include it in this list since it was more of a party game and less of an exploitation of the game physics. There are some other really minor ideas I didn't include, such as hat removers for cowboy and startup hats (to go into the specifics, the cowboy trap took advantage of the "can't move away from arrows while in water" property and exploited the fact that cowboy hats consider all aerial movement the same as swimming; the startup trap required the use of an item, but forced the player to pick up their hat, replacing that item with a speed burst before they could use it.)

[Addy]

its awesome that an idea of you yours was added to the game as a whole mode.. everytime i see/think of Objective Mode, i think of you...