Btw Whenever I Run These Polls I Always Add Up The Vote Results Across All Three Platforms I Use That

btw whenever i run these polls i always add up the vote results across all three platforms i use that support polls (twitter / tumblr / mastodon). so if you ever decide that you wanna stuff the vote... :P

new pre-stream archive! in which i talk about my stream schedule for the month, as well as the life-changing tacos my partner and i decided to go on a taco date for~

Double Up November: Two streams a week, all month long!

work is being incredibly kind with its holiday and off-friday schedule – in fact, i get every Friday off through the end of the month (including December 1st!)

so i figure now's a FANTASTIC opportunity to sneak in some extra streams and smash through that backlog! for the entire month i will be aiming to stream at least twice a week, possibly more if i can spare the time and energy.

most (but not all) of these extra streams will be on Friday evenings at 7pm CST, in addition to the usual Sunday 3pm CST slot – this is subject to change in case of family or holiday plans, but i'll keep y'all as informed as i can!

what can you expect to see this month? well:

the finale of Phantom Hourglass is very soon... possibly even this sunday! and i'm not sure what Main Stream Game to play next... might run a poll soon~

more of the extra modes in Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe, as we explore the betrayal, death, and redemption of Judas Iscariot! like, from the bible. don't ask

a big Mario Kart multiplayer night with the release of the Wave 6 DLC next week!

a chaotic randomizer for one of my very favorite games that randomizes the cutscenes themselves!!

and that's just the first half of november 👀

as you can see i am VERY excited to have the opportunity to stream more, and i can't wait to see you all on my Twitch channel!

dev commentary time! the ultimate final challenge of Retrush is itself a remix of remixes, where every single mashed-up tile from Marshmallow Mash-Up was updated to use the remixed palettes from their respective levels. it was a massive undertaking! and it could only have started once i had finished every single other remix and locked down their respective designs. no ADHD pinballing here – for once in my life, the grand finale was the very last level created for the mappack!

of course, that didn't stop me from daydreaming about it over several years… but i didn't really have that strong of a vision for the level. the only thing i knew is that i would make the player traverse the whole thing, with no teleportation skips. but i also knew that would make it take longer than 50 in-game seconds to clear each section… maybe these red coins would give you more than the maximum amount of time? and maybe there would be some kind of boss involved…

in the original level, touching the pink flag on the left skips this entire section in a quick transition to the next mash-up. in the remix, the red coins are located within the transitions, and you have to go through each one on foot.

it wasn't until i returned to working on Marshmallow Mash-Up that i finally locked down the major idea of its remix: the corruption wall at the end of the main level should instead chase the player through the whole remix. that meant that it would need to be a straight shot, with as few stops and u-turns as possible – so i designed the base level around this, hoping that the remix would be able to take the idea and run with it (so to speak).

originally, the corruption would chase you from the very beginning. there was a whole opening event to force Mario to run for the first second. it was needlessly complicated.

the original idea was that the corruption wall would chase the player the whole time. grabbing a red coin would push it back a bit, but otherwise it would always be there at the edge of the screen, chasing you down. this turned out to be really hard to implement, due to some strange limitations with Mari0's custom enemy system… long story short, i couldn't wrangle it to slow down properly when it was chasing you in screen-space, and i couldn't find a good balance for how fast it was chasing you in world-space across the entire level. multiply that by the fact that the timer felt superfluous, since something was already chasing you the whole time – and i just couldn't get the level to feel cohesive!

early test of the corruption wall. notice how the corruption suddenly speeds up the moment Mario trips over a block momentarily. this is an odd side effect of one of the game's custom enemy movement options, and it's what we in the biz call Not Cool.

luckily, this is where that Pizza Tower inspiration from before came in extra handy.

footage courtesy of this absolutely incredible run by Derpyfailz.

during the escape sequence in each of Pizza Tower's levels, there's a timer pushing the player to the end as fast as possible. unlike in Retrush, the timer doesn't kill you when it runs out; instead, it spawns a boss that chases you around at top speed. it has a VERY high probability of killing casual players, but clever speedrunners can outrun it to squeeze in an extra bit of time during score attacks.

ready or not, once the timer hits 0, the corruption wall spawns.

Wasabi Wrap-Up apes this system to spawn the corruption wall when the timer reaches 0, and push it back once the player gets another red coin. remember that each of these sections is too long to take all 50 in-game seconds… and that means the corruption wall always spawns towards the end of each section! it makes for a fantastic push-and-pull: first you outrun the timer to spawn the corruption as late as possible, then you outrun the corruption itself – which is always possible, no matter how early it spawns – and finally, you get the relief of watching it push back with each red coin.

this also made it a lot more fun to balance the speed of the corruption wall itself! i decided to spawn it in game-space, moving just a bit slower than Mario's top running speed… then slowly ramp up over the next few seconds until it matches Mario's running speed exactly. in other words, early on you can afford to make mistakes and still outrun the wall, but if you take too long then there's no way to gain ground – every mistake counts.

as the corruption gets faster, each mistake leaves less and less room to recover.

and that just covers the main mechanic of Wasabi Wrap-Up… as a remix of Marshmallow Mash-Up, this level contains all of the corrupted elements and fake-outs that the original level does – and as a remix of remixes, it contains all of the custom enemies and mechanics added to the other remixes! it was INCREDIBLY tough to balance all this against the push-and-pull of being chased, and honestly, it turned out to be much harder than i was hoping.

…possibly too hard. i wanted to push the player's limits! and i may have ended up pushing their patience instead.

for one thing, all of the remixed levels only have one checkpoint… except this one! it has three checkpoints, one for every two major sections. it's more generous than the other remixes, but dying right before a checkpoint still bites – and the corruption wall is timed to show up at the end of each section, right before the checkpoint. oops!

additionally, not all of the level is as straightforward as i'd have liked it to be, considering it's a long chase sequence; there were always shortcuts for speedrunners that make it possible to never let go of right on the d-pad, but not every player can pull those off. the most egregious sections have pre-placed portals to take the edge off, but in one case, that simply wasn't enough.

the train car below went through several iterations in playtesting – originally, jumping on the right side platform would launch the player via faithplates and blue gel across to the next train car. but my playtesters got stuck on the roof one too many times, so i had to use portals instead! the problem is that these portals are placed way too far apart… if the corruption wall is chasing you, the portal might just drop you straight into the corruption, killing your run instantly.

on the left is the beta version, on the right is the final release. on top is what it looks like to succeed… below that is what it looks like to fail.

really, most of the deaths in this level can be narrowed down to a handful of places like this one. either a specific group of enemies are too targeted and the player isn't able to react in time, or the final chase from the corruption wall right in front of the red coin is too tough. difficulty via death by a thousand cuts!

all of my playtesters spent at least half an hour on this level alone, and even after making tons of tweaks to smooth things out before release, @notquiteapex still took half an hour on this level in his launch stream of the mappack. there's no denying it: this level is too hard.

but it brought to the world this incredible moment that i completely forgot about until now. thank you apex

honestly, with more time spent playtesting, i think this would've come out perfect…! but i didn't have that luxury, since this was the very last level added to the mappack by necessity. i spent nine years replaying all of the previous levels on my own time, but i only had about a month with this one before release, and most of that time was spent refining the timing of the corruption wall.

frankly, i don't even think this level is particularly egregious – it isn't a complete attrition drain like a certain other level, it just takes a long time to conquer. if anything, i aimed for a specific mark in pushing the player's limits, and i don't think i quite nailed it… but hey, in all my years of designing levels, i've never tried to design a difficulty curve quite like this! the fact that i came close to my mark counts for something, and i get to take what i've learned and apply it towards future levels like this. long story short, i feel much more confident in designing challenging levels now that i have this experience! ✨

the last thing i want to share is that there's a secret message at the end of the level! by clearing either Marshmallow Mash-Up or Wasabi Wrap-Up without checkpoints, the level will acknowledge your achievement with a special message. but Wasabi Wrap-Up has another special message – by clearing the level so fast that the timer never runs out. i've never done it myself, all i know is it has to be done with portals… it might even need to be tool assisted. anyone up for a challenge?

Wasabi Wrap-Up (D-4) | Retrush

The longest and most challenging speedrun of the whole pack! The coins in this level spawn a wave of corruption to chase you when the timer runs out. Keep moving and let your confidence carry you to the finish line!

i have so many posts i want to write and i just haven't been in a writing mood... probably has something to do with writing 20+ retrush developer commentary posts in two months

but i have so much more to write, like,

the remaining 8 dev commentary posts

a half-finished series about the making of my logo and graphic design style

a shorter series on bluesky vs mastodon

a few life and philosophy posts like from the old days of my blog

a couple of really funny one-off ideas

a whole big series in response to one ask

some game reviews maybe???

like i have no shortage of ideas but i just don't have the drive to write atm and i'm a little sad about it

...i haven't forgotten about @nowuknowgaming, promise! like a lot of things, it's had to take a back seat while i sort through some life circumstances. thank you all for understanding and being so patient 🙇‍♀️

in truth i'm actually sitting on a good 50 70 (!!) or so new posts, with a handful of submissions from friends, more or less all ready to go! all that remains is taking the time to find relevant pictures for them and schedule them on tumblr, where they get auto-crossposted to other sites.

i don't get all of the pictures at once – i usually batch two weeks of posts at a time. but even in batches, it takes a surprising amount of time to sort through them, find good images (and edit sometimes!), organize which ones to do in which order, and schedule them for posting!

this would be fine if i only had to do it once, but because of the batches, i need to find time for that every couple of weeks – which has been a tall order when i'm constantly putting out fires irl...

i think i see the light at the end of the tunnel though, so i'm hoping i'll have time very soon!