Dev Commentary Time! Tilapia Trench Is Practically The Poster Child Of Remixes, To The Point That I Revealed

dev commentary time! Tilapia Trench is practically the poster child of remixes, to the point that i revealed this remix first and crammed it in all the trailers that i could find room for. like, a desert level that turns into an ocean? hot DAMN that's sick!! i wish i remembered what inspired the idea initially... it might as well have come to me in a vision!

have i posted this gif enough yet? no? here it is again.

unlike the 12 levels in the original plan, this one was made with remixes in mind from the get-go. that means a lot of the base layout of the level was already designed to be "punched up" in the remix, like this vertical pit that forms the centerpiece of the level. in the original the challenge is to avoid falling back into the plant at the bottom; in the remix, the eel is designed to harass you no matter how far up you are.

also love how this section has a shortcut designed to test your knowledge of standing vs running jumps...

speaking of the eels, these are a fully custom sprite! i think this might be my first character animation ever, so i'm pretty proud of what i was able to accomplish here. especially considering i chose the whole "recolored SMB1 tiles" aesthetic to avoid making my own sprites in the first place...

CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP

i also found some really old iterations on the eels buried deep in my screenshots folder; this first attempt was designed to be one tile wide, just like the plants (16 pixels). these don't look scary at all, they're just adorable!

nibble nibble nibble

the final eel sprites are one and a half tiles wide (24 pixels) to make them bigger and more imposing, as well as give myself more room to add detail. for the most part, though, they carry the same style as the smaller version... i knew i was on to something, i just couldn't make it fit in 16 pixels!

but getting back to the level... designing the base layout around making it remix-able means that i pretty much knew what i wanted to do the moment i started working on the remix. i wanted to focus on enemy bounces and flying gracefully over the whole level, just like you're swimming – even though you can't swim in this one.

and since i made this back in older versions of Mari0, that means i was using the old red coins... which can't move. so to build the level around enemy bounces, a lot of red coins were just floating in the middle of the screen, out of reach of a regular jump. you needed to get a running jump to reach them, or even bounce off an enemy at the right time! and if you missed, you had just a few stressful seconds to come up with a backup plan, or double back and jump again.

the first and second coins, respectively. they're too far up to grab from the ground.

this was... fine, when i wasn't designing the remixes for casual players to complete. but when i switched gears, i wanted to make it more fair for players seeing the level for the first time, while preserving the speedrun flow that i had already built the layout around.

that's when it hit me – i'm using a new red coin object, and i can do whatever i want. so i made them slowly drop into the ocean from the top of the screen!

left is the first coin, right is the second; top is the fast way, bottom is taking it slow.

it took a little work to line up the gravity so that speedruns collect them in the same places, but the result plays AMAZINGLY well and i'm really happy with how it satisfies both types of players. skilled players can grab them in style; casual players can wait for them to drop to the sea floor. it's way more forgiving and way more dynamic!

not discussed: these old cannons used to fire bullet bills underwater. they were changed to fire more cheep cheeps in the final... to feed the eels, of course.

in the old version, some red coins were already on the sea floor to begin with, caught in little corners that were admittedly a pain to get into. the new dynamic red coins allowed me to rethink those as well, giving skilled players a chance to nab them with a jump before they land in the corners. that makes running the level even more fun!

pretty slick jump, if i do say so myself.

all in all, between the main level and the remix, i think Dijon Dunes and Tilapia Trench are among the most polished levels in all of Retrush. i really pushed my limits here – inspired themes, custom sprites, a fantastic dual-purpose layout, and then elevating the remix with dynamic red coins... definitely one of my biggest level design accomplishments 💖

Tilapia Trench (A-3) | Retrush

The fish might be swimming in this sandy reef... but you still have normal gravity! Some well-timed enemy bounces will help you catch Red Coins dropping in from the top of the level, making for a fun, dynamic 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! Blueberry Blizzard is the last of the four levels that i added after the original 12-level plan, and much like the other three, it has the least changes to show. i do have an early video though!

this video is from about halfway through making this level, and the layout was pretty much locked down already – outside of some minor tweaks like smoothing out the hill near the top. i hadn't yet nailed down the art, but it was still clearly inspired by Ice Climbers and Celeste.

anyway i'm going to use this as an excuse to be lazy about getting screenshots today, because there's not a lot to show – and the rest of this week will be PACKED with material. but i'll leave you with a fun technical tidbit!

you might remember that sometimes Mari0 has had weird version regressions between older and newer versions... well, vertical levels worked better in older versions of Mari0 as well. the new version's camera doesn't move until Mario is near the top of the screen!

upgrading this level to the new version created some major discrepancies for which enemies spawn when, as well as the portals that go into caves – the transition would scroll super slow and made it hard to react in time.

how did i solve this? well, i asked our community's resident technical expert WilliamFrog, who then proceeded to make a custom vertical camera implementation for me that matches the old version exactly...

AS A CUSTOM ENEMY.

if you remember the keys and doors example from Fillet Fjords, custom enemies have pre-set behaviors to hook into. they aren't code, and you can't just write a custom camera in Lua or whatever. besides, why would enemies ever need to control the camera? that's nonsense!

so how the frick did WilliamFrog do this? by using some dark magic called "cloning," which allowed him to copy some camera manipulation entities that usually can't move, and attach them to a custom enemy that follows Mario. the entities "nudge" the camera along as Mario moves!

cloning is not natively supported by the game, and frankly most of WilliamFrog's work with Mari0 is similarly dark magic or worse – the custom enemy system is completely broken in a way that allows all kinds of ridiculous nonsense, but still somehow doesn't have arbitrary code execution. i am in awe.

anyway i'd like to give a HUGE shoutout to WilliamFrog for getting this working for me! that made porting the level a straightforward process, so it plays just as well as it did back in older versions – if not better, because i could tweak the camera speeds to my liking 💖

Blueberry Blizzard (4-1) | Retrush

An icy mountain ascent with slim platforms and enemies flying overhead. Just one slip could cost dozens of precious seconds! The shortcuts here are very technically impressive... and very punishing if you miss.

Marshmallow Mash-Up (4-4) | Retrush

FLAGRANT SYSTEM ERROR. sprint to the finish line as the game itself corrupts around you in real time, smashing together data from every previous level into the ultimate test of confidence and finesse!

Pierogi Pier (A-4) | Retrush

BOMBS AWAY! This battered boardwalk is under assault from constant cannon fire. Stay on your toes, because the explosions will open up shortcuts – and sometimes even *destroy* them!

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~