Room of the Week 2010 - Archives

[squishy_ichigo]

You got until the end of today FoF, so hurry it up or your not in this week.

After today we will be back on the original schedule as well, which means voting until Friday.

[personitis]

OMG Squeego's back!! ^_^ Look's good this week. o.o

[Quietus]

Person701 gets my vote this week.  It's hard to make a room look naturally formed with the limitied tiles, but this room seemed to pull it off.

[personitis]

Grime. Looks so sadistic and eerie. The red Maridia tiles are also hot.

[Phazar]

FullOfFail gets my vote.  That is an amazing room!

[Silver Skree]

tl;dt

Red Maridia and bricks in wall are sexage. Grime gets my vote.

[snarfblam]

Grime wins my vote. Some entries don't seem too inspired. FoF, your submissions seem to have a recurring theme. I don't know if these are from a hack in progress, and they do look good, but I'm a little less impressed by the same thing each week.

Crys, I like the graphics, the room's just a bit plain.

[Hiroshi Mishima]

Hmm.. already seeing people who I'm wanting to agree with, but no matter, I will make my critique on these entries as I whirl back into the forums like a very slow crawling thing... and that's a very poor phrase, I apologize.

Person701 - I'm actually quite pleased with the way this looks, as someone else stated it can be very difficult to render a natural-looking carved out cavern in the limited tiles, and that indeed looks very well done. I admit it is a bit plain compared to some of the other entries, but I genuinely like it and I can't think of anything to say about changing it. Maybe use a little Layer 2, perhaps, as it seems kinda naked without a background.

Crys - I'm trying very hard to ignore the BTS (which is really distracting) because the room and tiles look nice. If I'm not mistaken it looks like a series of gears embedded in the ground, which is an interesting design, and I'd honestly like to see this on a larger scale. Unfortunately, the small size and lack of a background are keeping me from finding this as appealing as I think it has the potential to be. Are you trying a new style, perhaps? It just feels kind of lacking compared to other stuff I've seen of yours.

Daltone - I can't lie to you, the lines of bubbles (which I'm assuming marks a path) are rather distracting from the rest of the room. Maybe if they felt more randomly placed instead of deliberately placed, it'd feel more natural. Possibly use a bubble every other tile in the path instead of every tiles, and it might look less artificial. Beyond that the rest of the room as a nice atmosphere, although it looks like the statues are too clustered in the lower right-hand corner.

Grime - I'm probably going to go with this one as my pick of the week. It has a lot going on, and the tiles look great and feel natural. Are any of those custom or just creative use of vanilla with new colouring? It gives the room an eerie feeling of malevolence or just teeming with evil baddies (even if just minions or near a boss room). While I suppose the use of "eyes" could be a little over the top, it fits with the overall atmosphere of the room, at least for me it does.

FullofFail - I almost picked this one, because at first glance it was really nicely done. I always like to see how people pull off a mechcanical/industrial area in Super Metroid without having to rely on the cliche Tourian look. However, there were a few things that stood out as not fitting in, and that is what cost my vote this time. The one that draws the most attention was the example I'm putting below. It felt fake compared to the rest of the room, like you couldn't figure out how else to do it so just went with a repeating set of tiles.

[squishy_ichigo]

To answer your question for Grime: those are all vanilla tiles. Very nice looking indeed, which is why I love Grime's style! :D

(also to keep it sort he happens to be my choice this week)

edit: and I can't keep it as short as I wanted... :/

Grime: It would look better imho if those foreground tiles you use faded alittle.... for example.... in those locations:



otherwise, great work as always. ;D

[attachment deleted by admin]

[FullOfFail]

I'll try to keep this brief:

Person: I like this room. I know rebuild is sticking to the regular SM formula, but this is also Redesign influenced. I like the bridge at the bottom, it gives you a feel that the cave keeps going although it doesnt. I think you met your target.

Crys: I like the purple tileset, that looks good. But the windmills are kinda fugly, to be honest with you. I like the concept of old machinery (or that's what it looks like to me anyway), but you need to take those bad in the tile editor and polish them.

Daltone: I like the the bubbles at the bottom left, but not at the top. As  Hiroshi mentioned, they look unnatural. Other than that it looks fine. You always make rooms that look fun to play though.

Grime: This room is amazing. Good layout, good aesthetics, double thumbs up. The brick cliffs look really good too. I second Squishy suggestion to have them fade in certain areas. I have 0 complaints about this and it gets my vote.

FullOfFail: (Responses to Snarf & Hiroshi)
[spoiler]

FoF, your submissions seem to have a recurring theme. I don't know if these are from a hack in progress, and they do look good, but I'm a little less impressed by the same thing each week.

- I agree. To be honest I'm running out of ideas, unfortunately. This room in particular was a bit rushed because I was trying to meet the deadline. And to make matters worse my computer kept overheating and restarting. To be fair to myself though I'm mainly using the original tilesets (except color change obviously). I would do something like grime is doing and mix tilesets but I've already made too many rooms for that, it's too late.

Hiroshi: That was actually intentional for it to have that look. It's supposed to look like a separate pipeline than the water up top. Ingame you dont even see the two together. The bottom and top are different areas. I completely understand your point, but when I design I go for how it looks ingame.
[/spoiler]

[FullOfFail]

*Bump*

(I'll enter one later)

ugh, I've never got around to making a new room today like I planned so I'll just enter this one even though I hate it. It's ugly. I'm going to Nuke it eventually.

[spoiler][/spoiler]

[Charmander106]

A simple room but what the hell...

[spoiler][/spoiler]

[JamieWebb16]

A jumping on mushrooms while avoiding the acid down below room.
[spoiler][/spoiler]

[begrimed]

[spoiler][/spoiler]

[Silver Skree]

Oh damn, Grime...

[FullOfFail]

FullOfFail: Well, I absolutely hate this room. I forgot to put the brighter black blocks in. The only reason I entered it is because I didnt have enough time to make another one. Well, I did have time, but I was being lazy. However, it did give me some ideas, so some good came out of it.

Webber: The mini-mushroom thingies seems to be too cluttered at the top. IMO, if you removed some, it'd look alot better. I really like how you overlapped the blocks and cliff at the bottom with the nest. It gives it a certain perspective. That's kinda like what I was attempting with my entry, but I failed horribly.

Jamie: The fungus looks kinda odd when placed like that. If it was connected to some type of formation it'd look alot better. If you added a layer 2 and connected it to those gray and black columns it'd look alot better IMO. It'd give it more of a vine look. The room layout is fine though, curvy just as it should be.

Grime: I enjoy this room alot. My favorite part is how you used the vine parts to make a ramp. Green Brinstar is way to linear as is, I love creative solutions like that. I also like the formation with the teeth in the center, reminds me of those one green creatures with the eyes on the top of their head (forget their name). I'm a fan of contrast, but the pink brinstar tiles feels out of place. The bushes in the BG are nice too, makes it seem like you're peering outside. This room gives me the feeling of a overgrown coliseum. You got my vote.

[Hiroshi Mishima]

Damn forgot about coming back last time, sorry guys. In regards to the reply of the one room, that's cool. I'm glad you saw what I was going on about, and I'm glad you cleared it up. If in-game it looks proper/correct than that's more important than what I was saying and I'm totally understanding on that.

Anyways, onto this week's.. gonna be a touch call, you guys all had some nice entries this time.

FullOfFail: I don't know exactly WHAT it is about this room, but I quite like it. It has a feeling of multiple layers, although I admit it's a bit hard to discern which layer is which sometimes. It's a fairly simple room, but the overall look of it is great, and I really liked that. Taking into account what you said about it already, I can imagine that it woulda looked even better if you'd polished it up a bit. Might've even been the one I chose this week if you had. And that it gives you ideas for more stuff is great.

Webber1900: I really kinda like this, despite it's small size. I understand that having a small room like this can sometimes be a challenge to make look just right. As FoF said, it does look a bit clustered, but I liked that you were going with a layering effect as well. However, the problem I have with the layering is that the colours blend in so well that it can be hard to tell if it's layered or not. Perhaps have the top of the next (or even the top corners of the lower hills) be in front of the room itself and Samus just goes behind them. Hmm.. could be complicated and look badly... but I think you get what I'm saying.

JamieWebb16: I actually quite like this room. It's not exactly original as the concept's been done before, but it's presented in an appealing way. Being unable to see what it is you're not supposed to fall into takes a little away from the overall presentation, but that can't be helped. I can still imagine the acid/lava below the mushroom heads and platforms. It's simple, but I like it. It's hard to choose between this and Grime's... the one problem I have with this room (and I don't really know how you'd fix it) is that the mushroom vines lack variety. It's mostly a bunch of diagonal lines with some straight stalks for the mushrooms themselves. About the only thing I can think of off the top of my head to improve that would be to make a few custom tiles.. maybe a couple curves/straight tiles to fit in with the diagonal ones.

Grime: Dear gods is it hard to say much about this one. I love the colouring and tiles you used. In fact, I daresay it's the tiles you used that keep this from being an otherwise bland design. I still find the eyes to be a bit odd, but they fit strangely enough. Like I said about that last room, it gives it the effect that the room itself is watching you, which'd be an awesome effect if we ever figured out how to do that. The background isn't boring yet doesn't distract from the foreground, and while the more overgrown bits are a bit eyegrabbing they're not overdone. It gives the effect of the greenery slowly creeping towards the right side of the room.

Very hard to choose this week, I'm going to go with Grime's, but just any of you could have gotten my vote if they'd been just a little bit more better.

[Silver Skree]

[spoiler][/spoiler]

[begrimed]

[spoiler][/spoiler]

[Lunaria]

[spoiler][/spoiler]

Edit: Ha! Both my and grimes room is longer then yours silver! >:D

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Crashtour99]

Oh look, a boss room...     Yes, I think I'll get great usage from this new tileset...  

[spoiler][/spoiler]

Keep in mind that there is a green glow in that room.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Lunaria]

fffffffffffffffffffffucking awesome.

I already know what to vote for and that I'm going to lose this week. :<

[Hiroshi Mishima]

Holy shit do we have some serious contenders this week. I mean.. shit! Sorry for swearing, but this is gonna be one of the hardest ones I've had to decide on.

SilverSkree: Having seen this room in action I know it better than the other rooms. I'm trying hard not to let this influence me too much, but it really is a damn good room. Superb use of both Layer 1 and 2 to give an overall effect in places that is just beautiful. This is exactly what I mean when I advise some people to take advantage of Layer 2/backgrounds on the rooms I've seen that had little or no background. If the Layer 2 was missing from this room, it'd look a lot less appealing (though still good) but it'd lack the depth and natural feel that this room has.

Grime: I like this room, I can't deny that. It combines the original Kraid Corridor with the more mechanical look of the Wrecked Ship, yet has an overgrown feel of Brinstar. Honestly this room makes me think of Fusion's overgrown reactor area, and that's impressive. You show that once again you can really make good use of the Vanilla tiles, and the way you wove the panels on the top and bottom looks great. However, I don't feel it quite stands up against some of the other rooms.

Crys: Very interesting design, it brings to mind some of Zero Mission's areas (which I won't hold against you ;p). The use of Layer 2 gives an appealing effect that enhances the presentation of the room. I like the tiles you used/made, as well, since it's always nice to see some good custom work. If I was to say anything bad about this room, it's that it feels sort of.. naked somehow, I can't find the right words. The background has a sort of "wallpaper" feel to it, however I know that's not the case. It's a tough call, really.

Crashtour99: There is something inherently disturbing about this room, and as morbid as it sounds that appeals to me in this case. The custom tilework is good, as well. I like the remoddled Chozo Statues and the Skeleton looks great. However, there is one thing that stands out as seeming out of place. The green florescent colouring feels like it clashes with the very blocks that it's a part of. If you could make it stand out a little more, or perhaps shift the colour of the blocks away from the same spectrum a little (gods these words don't sound right) it might look better.


Gods I really don't know who I should vote for. I was kinda just gonna vote for Silver cause I seen the room in action before coming to this and it left a big impression on me. However I can't deny that the other rooms in here are worthy of considerable contemplation as well. Crys and Crash's rooms both look like they could use just a tad bit more work to them (for different reasons), where as I can't really find anything wrong with Silver or Grime's room. Unfortunately, Silver's room also happens to blow Grime's out of the water this week, so I guess I'll just go ahead and vote for Silver anyways. But I would definitely like to see more of both Crash and Crys' stuff as they are really intriguing.. I'd love to play a hack that explored those some more.

..now that I think of it, there's something sorta.. Castlevania-esque about Crash's room. Hmmm..

[Lunaria]

it's that it feels sort of.. naked somehow, I can't find the right words. The background has a sort of "wallpaper" feel to it, however I know that's not the case. It's a tough call, really.

Well that could be due to the FX layer not being showed here. Hint: it's water with a bit darker tune slightly below door level...

It's just this I hate with RotW, no matter how good something may look ingame, they will look like crap in the editor itself. :/

[Quietus]

Perhaps squishy would allow people to post small videos of their rooms if they contain anything animated?  Colours, tiles, layers, et cetera.  No action or movement in the videos (disable sprite layer and stuff) - just a few seconds to show the room.  It's easy enough to make one, so nobody would have an advantage over anybody else, and screenshots would still need to be posted.  I guess my thinking is that it's room of the week, not screenshot of the week, so it kinda fits... :O_o: