Dev Commentary Time! In True Adhd Fashion, Vinegar Void Is One Of The First Levels That I Finished For

dev commentary time! in true adhd fashion, Vinegar Void is one of the first levels that i finished for Retrush. originally titled Venison Void, it was a major casualty of weird version regressions, where updating to later versions of Mari0 required huge structural reworks.

the level features lots of purple gel, which flips Mario's gravity until he touches the ground. early versions took this to the extreme, with walls and pipes covered in purple gel from top to bottom – turning simple structures into logistics and navigational puzzles!

unfortunately, later versions of Mari0 made purple gel on walls almost entirely un-viable, so i had to pivot to ceiling gel / upside-down only. surprisingly there wasn't *too* much wall gel, but i did have to substantially rework several sections of the level over this.

the only remaining wall gel is in this tiny little U-turn, which is a small enough section that it doesn't fall apart and minimizes the chance of players running into issues.

before i show the other major section reworked for wall gel, let me mention another factor of the regression: old versions of Mari0 also let *enemies* climb all over wall gel, whereas enemies in new versions don't interact with any type of gel.

that's fine, because i didn't have any *normal* enemies climbing on purple gel...

one of Vinegar Void's many unique mechanics are these upside-down enemies with reversed gravity. this is a native feature of the enemies that has nothing to do with purple gel.

these "gravigoombas" (etc) were made by setting the gravity of the enemy to a negative number, tricking the game into reversing its gravity.

now, take a moment before scrolling, and guess what happens if you put THAT on purple gel.

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You Get This.

so returning to the purple gel on walls, this middle section had pipes slathered in the stuff. and the only enemy in the whole section, was a single gravigoomba... bouncing all over the insides of the passages.

absolutely absurd nonsense. i hate it so much. i love it so much.

the section that replaces it is frankly less interesting, but taps a little of that original "navigation puzzle" intent with the gravity gel to get the player to think on their feet. not half bad for only being limited to two directions!

honestly, though, the level as a whole is probably better off after the conversion; limiting my options made me seriously consider how much purple gel i was using across the board, and limit it to the best interactions i could muster rather than just slathering it everywhere.

the last major change to the level is the vanishing tiles; the old versions used to blink in and out, which was hard to look at after a while. the new versions palette fade, which was an inspired choice, and fits the space theme quite nicely~

outside of this list, the vast majority of the level is the same as it was originally, which is super impressive for being one of the first levels completed. i feel like i balanced it really well, all things considered! a great penultimate challenge leading into the grand finale.

Vinegar Void (4-3) | Retrush

A true test of talent, this orbital station features gel that flips your gravity, giant laser cannons, and line after line of vanishing blocks. Altogether, it's an *incredibly* satisfying and impressive-looking run!

new pre-stream archive! in which we discuss Retrush, ADHD meds, and getting out from the holding pattern that such a big project put me in…

dev commentary time! as we start going through the remixes it's important to keep in mind how much of a technical marvel these have always been, both in old and new versions of the engine... in ways that frequently made it a headache to work with them.

current versions of the red coins are a fully custom object – collecting one does all of the work behind the scenes to adjust the timer, spawn the flashing time indicator, and count both how many and which ones have been collected. they can be collected in all the ways a regular coin can – such as being bumped from below – and they can also be "precollected" when restarting from a checkpoint. there's even dynamic red coins set up to fly around or fall in from the top of the screen!

new "single-object" red coin on the left, old hacky nonsense on the right.

suffice to say, all of that was practically impossible in old versions of Mari0. the old red coins were a much different beast; they were in fact regular coin tiles with a custom graphic and a region trigger attached to several stage entities that would adjust the timer and track collection. there was no way to make the coins move from their spot, and no way to "precollect" them from checkpoints – meaning no checkpoints in remixes AT ALL.

worse still, those old red coins were very challenging just to add to the level in the first place. let's say i placed one already and i wanted to move it later; there's no way to just "move" the coin and the entities attached, so i'd have to delete it completely and replace each component in the new location.

on top of that, the size of the coin's hitbox is less than one tile, and the region trigger couldn't be made that small in the editor... so when i was ready to "lock in" the red coins, i would open the level in a text editor and manually adjust the size of the region triggers. yes, really. (pictured on the right is how i got "bumping" the coins below the bricks to work – the region trigger extends below the brick!)

the little orange squares over the top of the red coin show the size of the region trigger. it's tiny.

anyway, you get the point by now. the old red coins were inflexible – hard to place, hard to replace, and hard to find good places for. but i was ambitious enough that i did all that work anyway... i finished HALF of the remixes in the old version! and Applesauce Autumn is probably the best of those early attempts, because it has the least changes of them all.

most of what i did to patch up this level (besides smooth out the enemies a bit) was add things that i wanted to do in the original but couldn't, like… pre-placed Koopa shells. can you believe something that simple was impossible in older versions of Mari0???

also pictured is a star that was removed due to being too hard to reach.

adding red coin bits was also a pretty major change – those weren't possible in old versions either. the old red coin location was just floating over these bricks, just out of reach for anything but a running jump. really mean for being the first remix!

there also wasn't a koopa shell here originally. i like how the shell bounces around after it's kicked, meaning the floor here is never truly safe~

finally there's the two coins between the pipes, which had their times adjusted. in the new version, both give 20 time. in the old version, the first gives 30... and the second gives 10, which was purposefully not enough time to reach the next coin.

no old version needed, the difference is just numbers.

why did i do this? i wanted the player to puzzle out why the first one was giving way too much time and the second wasn't giving enough, with the eventual solution being to grab the one on the right first and double back for the one on the left. i wanted the player to discover this early on in the remixes... because i intended to pull a similar stunt in several remixes!!

suffice to say this did NOT survive into the final release. it's purposefully obtuse, it adds nothing to the level, and it's impossible to tell this is happening on your first time through because the coins aren't marked.

a recurring theme throughout these remixes is going to be how much more mean they used to be, because when i first made the remixes, i did not intend for anyone but the most hardcore challengers to tackle them. these weren't supposed to be for casual players; that's what the main levels were for. besides, it's not like i could add checkpoints or anything...

well, thank god i eventually could, because that got me to rethink practically all of the remixes.

Applesauce Autumn (A-1) | Retrush

Welcome back to familiar plains of bricks and pipes... with a seasonal shift! This first Red Coin Remix is crawling with Spinies, all lined up for a good old shell combo. Just watch where you kick those things!

new stream archive! in which we play my very favorite part of Minish Cap: returning books to the library. it's more exciting than it sounds~

Kolache Keep (3-4) | Retrush #Mari0

This classic castle features bridges that sink behind the lava on a timer, meaning less room to slip past the fire bars and other enemies. The cycles all line up for an impressive run, but the execution is extra tight!

dev commentary time! Kolache Keep was originally going to be called Ravioli Rampart – and stop me if you've heard this before, but this level was a LOT meaner under its original name. it needed lots of love to work into something that was fair to play!

the most obvious difference is that the animated tiles worked in completely unique ways – the original lava bridges would get hot over time and kill while they were flashing. compare the original opening section to the final, which are both teachable moments like Cinnamon Cavern!

(unrelated, you can also see in the gifs that the level featured spinies – the enemy choices were much meaner across the board, but they all got scaled back for the final.)

another major difference is that the old animated tiles were ONE cycle, whereas the new version uses two alternating cycles. in this middle section, for example, you were pretty much always forced to wait for the cycle at least once, even while speedrunning! much less forgiving…

changing the animated tiles to use an alternating cycle wasn't too hard – it uses the same timer as the single cycle, which means all the speedrun strats line up perfectly with the cycles from the old version. straightfoward to update and plays way better now!

one thing that was inadvertently made worse by the new animated tiles is this section with the locked door near the end. all of the old tiles were solid, meaning there was only one way through the room, to the switch, and back over to the door.

in the new version, the drop-through bridges add a new shortcut! …which people often think is the correct route on their first time through. oops! so i see a lot of people get confused about where to go here, even after i opened the room up and added coins to clarify the route.

either way, for the most part, the new animated tiles are a HUGE upgrade over the old ones for more than just the obvious – the old tiles were very touchy and killed the player over any little misstep. by comparison, the new tiles still kill the player… but only by falling in~

animated tiles aren't the only big change to the level – there were also some layout changes. like these, uh. what do i call those random floating tiles up there? i have no idea why i added them in the first place. so i gave them some context and added a bit of challenge to them!

there's also this setpiece, which was a stressful balancing act across a bunch of fire blasters. besides the way they were arranged to fire at the player on the lower steps, these were removed because i don't like making the player platform on one-tile-wide platforms over pits!

this was changed to tie into the level's gimmick more closely and rely more on good jump timing; the bridge alternates sides while a blaster fires over your head. still tense, but much safer, and way easier to speedrun!

honestly, the only remnants of how mean this level used to be are the fire blasters themselves, which fire quite fast and without proper warning! but even though i forgot to tone them back, there are so few of them left in the level that they don't ruin the experience.

so hopefully by now you have a good idea of how i go about polishing these levels! a lot of simple tweaks that feel big and make a big difference when the player actually gets to them… while preserving the flow of the original as much as possible~

Kolache Keep (3-4) | Retrush #Mari0

This classic castle features bridges that sink behind the lava on a timer, meaning less room to slip past the fire bars and other enemies. The cycles all line up for an impressive run, but the execution is extra tight!