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Improved Powerup Distribution (Patch 1)
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@Coolcord Coolcord released this 22 Apr 10:27
· 209 commits to master since this release
v0.3.6-1
dcb89b2

Github releases (by release)

Fixed in v0.3.6-1

  • Fixed an app crash that would occasionally occur when the enemy spawner attempted to use page changes

Powerup Distributor

In previous versions of Level-Headed, levels were generated in two passes. The first pass (called the object pass) creates the level by pulling from a pool of patterns. These patterns are effectively recipes that are used to build the level in pieces. The second pass (called the enemy pass) scans the level to find ground to place enemies upon and distributes enemies throughout the level. In this old approach, powerups were placed at random and only if the used patterns potentially included them. In turn, this meant that powerups could be very common or very scarce. Other items such as starmen and 1-Ups were extremely rare to find and often didn't show up in games at all.

As of v0.3.6-1, Level-Headed now generates levels with three passes: objects, powerups, and enemies. This new powerup pass scans the level for hittable blocks that are safe for powerups and distributes items randomly amoungst them. This means that powerups and items should now be found more consistently in games. Expect to see (on average) 2 powerups in question blocks in earlier levels and 1 powerup in question blocks in later levels. 1-Ups and Starmen should now also be more common. As of now, the powerup distribution is the same across all difficulties (including the random difficulty), but this could change in the future. These numbers can be modified to an extent by creating a custom difficulty.

It's worth noting that this update doesn't completely solve the powerup issue. As of now, if the level does not generate any hittable blocks in the object pass, the powerup distributor will have no place to put its powerups. This means that there can still be levels without powerups. This issue will be addressed at some point in the future.

Additional Minor Changes

  • Fire Bros. can now be seen in Normal difficulty games
  • Fire Bros. throw rate has been nerfed
  • Bowser's fireball throw rate has been nerfed
  • Underwater levels are no longer used for the first level when possible (this can be disabled by creating a custom difficulty)
  • Reworked Purist Difficulties: Three different variants each with their own Easy, Normal, and Hard options for a total of nine Purist difficulties.
  • Flying cheep-cheeps should now jump at their original jump height on purist difficulties
  • Random All is now the default Mario sprite option for Random
  • Random All is now the default for secondary mushrooms for Random
  • Remove Vertical Object Limit Patch is now only applied when needed
  • 1-Up coin limit for hidden blocks has been removed. This effictively only applies to level scripts as no patterns in the generator use hidden blocks.
  • Added Graphics (Fuji Mario Bros. by JY Co.)
  • Added Graphics by Josiah Winslow
  • Numerous bug fixes
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