The 1.2 version update of the second quarter pack has finally arrived ! Everything in there should be much more tolerable to play.
Like the previous time, here's Uugr's unfinished level notes about this specific pack, along with my individual comments for each :
A Dubious Maze by Lollipop - 15ish minutes, 3/5 trinkets. It's certianly interesting, and WAY better than Lollipop's others. I kinda wish there were more levels like it."
Tweaked it a little still.
Dimension Microscope by BCGAMING2017 - 7ish minutes. Played before. Putting this ahead of schedule so I can do the secret afterward. This one is VERY vanilla, but it's still a nice, easy difficulty. Overall enjoyable. Requiring trinkets is weird.
Same thing !
Dimension Microscope Secret - Got 30 points, then checked the map in Ved and gave up. The whole "secret lab" thing is kinda cool, but it's weird that they spent so much more effort on this stupid and absurd DTTHW than the actual level.
This is yet again one of
these, for which I have a bad experience with. I'll keep it, without forgetting about nerfing it a lot. Now should be much fairer to play than before
D.S.S. Souleye by Lenare - 10ish minutes. Wow. Neat concept, but in practice it's way too frustrating and precise (I needed the editor for the final challenge). I'd hate to see what hard mode looks like.
Hard mode is : same level without checkpoints, synonym of absolute dumbness. I tend to add the hardest version of a level, but only when it is reasonnable enough. Didn't change a lot of stuff otherwise
Dimension Dimension by Dav999 - 10ish minutes. Excellent IS as is expected of Dav's levels. Map is very fillery, but level is relaxing and what challenge there is is fun.
The word that means modifying something ever so slightly, that have been extensively used all over this thread and will continue to happend, was unsurprisingly applied to this level.
Dimension Doom by christian - 10ish minutes. Well... this is certainly a level that exists.
Yep, some questionnable design choices. Very little "t" word.
Dimension Elvor by CrashMix - 15ish minutes. The fact that Balneor called this level glitchy on multiple occasions and basically admitted in the level that he had to make it playable at all, yet STILL featured it, baffles me. Vermilion can't be reached without the editor, but really, it doesn't matter. Just delete this level please.
I was originally going to keep it with a second wave of fixes, but in the end it will be removed because of too many issues, questionnable things. You can easily tell it wasn't even playtested.
Dimension Funland by Flushex - 20ish minutes. It's Variation Venture for the modern age... except MUCH harder. Seriously, this level is no joke. That said, it has some of the cleverest designs of any level I've seen, and the style is fantastic. I wish Terry were still around to feature this.
I honestly wish most of these trinkets weren't as bad and easy to get.
Dimension Gensokyo by nicholashin - Ran out of patience for this level after 10 minutes. I did one area and looked at the rest in the editor, and I gotta say, if Balneor didn't feature this one by accident I'm quitting. Nicholashin has quickly rocketed past Lollipop and even pattoo as my least favorite level designer - three red levels in a row. Blech, I have a bad taste in my mouth just thinking about this work of absolute condensed shit.
Absolutely don't agree, the level is very fun to play : there are only a couple of unconsistent sections that are now nerfed.
Dimension IJK538 by Andrej2001 - 50ish minutes. This level is decent, aside from the absurd and utterly unnecessary empty overworld which took me 20 minutes to go through. Look, this may constitute defiling the level, but please, Balneor, do something about that FUCKING overworld.
Wish granted, it is now fully skippable.
Dimension of Secrets by Dav999 - 10ish minutes. Not as good as Dav's other one, that's for sure. Still an acceptable level, but there's nothing terribly interesting about it.
Okay level.
Dimension Open by So Many Fellas - About 1hr30mins. Played before. God DAMN. What even is there to say about this level, I'm sure everyone reading has played it at this point. A crucial part of VVVVVV history, but, unlike Back to VVVVVV, this one is actually good!
Removed most delay commands (Especially those from key terminals) for faster play of course. Also made one of the trinket realistically obtainable.
Dimension Piplup by Robert - 45ish minutes. Writing is atrocious, gameplay alternates between uninteresting and frustratingly bad. Do not recommend.
My initial impressions of this was generally alright (Even when replaying it now). Still modified it again, should be lot more supportable to play.
Dimension Pixel by Pixelator - About 1 hour. Needs an ending crewmate. Level's absurd difficulty spikes wore me down to the point where I ended up using invincibility at the end. Christ this level is annoying.
Playing it again (modified one on top of that) surely wasn't as fun as I last remembered. Went through a second modification process, removing even more questionnable things.
Dimension Resort by BCGAMING2017 - 10ish minutes. Played before. Unabashed knockoff of Tower of Power, plays mostly fine but some sections are too reflex-focused. Not sure what the point of this level's existence is.
I'd like to massively break the level's concept by putting checkpoints in each floors, as it is overall much easier to die there, than in Tower of Power (due to your reasons), but I'll go with just a little nerfing instead.
Dimension Riki 3 by riki2321 - 5ish minutes. Writing makes it sound like a joke level but actual gameplay is unironically pretty good. What happened to Riki 1/2?
They were pretty good also, albeit very short. So much in fact, that it was the reason I hadn't added them, but now this will change.
Dimension RRRRRR (1) by Lollipop - 40ish minutes. Another work of glorious art by my favorite level designer. This is like a microcosm of everything I hate about Lollipop's levels, filled with obnoxious bullshit and fake difficulty galore, and not a single original idea in sight. Thumbs down.
Tweaked a few things, but kept the level intact for the most part.
Dimension Spikes by TheChineseGuy - 3ish minutes. I could have made this level in an hour. Utterly dull. Why was this featured?
Yea, gonna remove this. Doing the same thing ten times in a row can be boring. Would've been so much better if the difficulty progress was like 5x faster overall.
Dimension TTTTTT by Yoshi13 - Played 20 minutes and got 8/10 trinkets. Look, Balneor, I appreciate you warning me against playing the final level, and a quick look in the editor (plus the copious 2-block-wide openings on the last room I did) proves the end to be bullshit, but you REALLY didn't need to keep that shit in here. This level is already bad enough to be orange, and the terrible final level puts it in the red for good. Get rid of it.
Overall it really isn't that good, though I really love the brutality of that bonus area. Alright removed, not much I can argue back here. The original level already was impossible to begin with.
Dimension RRRRRR (2) by pixelator - 2ish hours. Partially done before. Pixelator pulls a mean trick by investing me in a full hour of good level before lobbing the bullshit difficulty my way, and pulls an even meaner trick by making the bullshit section half the length of the level. I want to recommend this 'cause it's huge and VERY detailed, but the polar dimension is just too precise and finicky.
Tweaked a few more things.
Dimension Vector by Veec7 - 15ish minutes. Gee, Veec7 sure has a comfort zone, huh? I'm not complaining, this level is a relaxing break. That said, it's kind of stupid how this level so blatantly rips off so many other player levels. Maybe this was an old Veec7?
Removed some spikes in the overworld among other smaller things.
Dimension Vezic by Veec7 - 20ish minutes. ...But damn, is he prolific. I'm marking this level orange, not because it's bad, but because these two Veec7s in a row REALLY get tiresome - change the name, maybe? Or, y'know, just cut it out.
Removed most of the very annoying room-transition spikes that you can't react to.
Dimension Vicky by Verisnin - 10ish minutes. Uh... no.
It surely isn't the best thing in the universe, but it plays fine for me. Tweaked a few things as usual.
you don't get the orange/red to see which ones need to be deleted but i think it's pretty obvious which ones would be red
Because of this and due to a thorough quality check, I thus have decided to remove the following levels from that pack :
Dimension WWWWWW (ToasterApocalypse), Distress in Nishigura (Jamodawg97), DiVVVVVVersion - Yellow Warp (Robloxfan1999), Double Death Dungeon (Zane), G.M.C Science Test Program (Evster_13), Infinity (FlamingBanana), Lost in Intermission (Damn It AL to Hell), Lost Laboratory (Damn It AL to Hell), Maze Demo (Yolotroll101).
This aside you should not expect any of the kept levels to be in their original form : they were all tweaked, although to various degrees.
Please tell me if you encounter any problems with them.
For my next update, I'm also considering modifying the way my compilation is set up. More specifically, concerning large files.
As of right now, when a custom requires additional files, these are found into folders (their names include the level's for clarification). Each type of add-on have its own folder. A custom and all its related extensions are inside the same pack. But this is not the case concerning large files. You find these in another location inside the dropbox link and are able to download them individually.
But in the future (Probably around the same time I'll be updating the third quarter), I will probably change the way to download levels requiring large add-ons. Instead of downloading these files one by one, and having to waste time tidying stuff afterward, you will instead be able to download the custom and everything related to it, in one click. These downloads will be found exactly at the same place you originally got the music files. These levels will thus be separated from the compilation entirely. It's not like they represent the majority, there currently are only 5 of them (+1 when I'll release my 5th pack) out of 300 (exact number btw).
I might do the same thing, regarding custom levels requiring any kind of add-ons in general. You'd get everything related to one level inside one folder. Only this time, if its extensions are at a small enough size, that folder will be part of the compilation instead of the outside. All this seems much simpler than the state it is in now.
Anyways, will now get at work improving the third quarter.