25th July 2018, 3:02 PM
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.
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.