My entire life, it seems, i've been completely incapable of reliably saying Mariana (as in the Trench).

Anyhow, we've got another episode hot off the presses here!

https://youtu.be/AKrqapIW0u4

This go about we're taking a look at:

Temple of Contraptions - ACSF313
Ancient Temple - rafaelthegreat05
?????? - wan_nyan_322
Fortress of Whoo - Kirby_24
Too Late (Chapter 1) - mdkd99

An...eclectic set to be sure, but i had a good time with them, and hope you will as well!

Behind the curtain stuff:  Nothing much really. Episode 042 is all wrapped up, and uploaded. So that's pretty cool.

As always, thanks for all the support and feedback! Have a great day!

Thank you for featuring me here! I loved the hub and I appreciate your feedback! Good work!

Chapter 2 and 3 are in work. It's going to be a adventure map. I would be honoured if you play it when it is done.

Was glad to do it, i liked it an awful lot, and look forward to seeing the rest.

Fun fact: I wanted to continue creating, but after the scene with the gate the thermometer was at 90%. In chapter 2 the thermometer is at 70% and it's halfway done. Wish me luck!

i know the feeling with the thermo, sometimes, you just can't put anything more in there (at least, not without tempting things getting really weird). i do wish they'd gotten the dThermo to work as advertised. Best of luck to you with the levels!

Holy crap, it's already Tuesday (Takeaway)!

Temple of Contraptions - ACSF313

Not too much changed here, which includes that bug not re-occurring; i wonder what was up with that. It's nice to see some usage of the simple mechanical bits to get things done, though we've seen more elaborate and well-put-together examples elsewhere Marbleking's Complex Machinery comes to mind pretty quickly. i still think the visual presentation is what really gets it though. The gameplay is ok-enough that being in a better presented environment might leave the player with a more positive impression (on the other hand, they could really up the gameplay, but that'd be pretty hard to pull off without some major overhauling and redesign).

Ancient Temple - rafaelthegreat05

The main level itself is pretty standard-fare for this kind of thing. Almost like they had a checklist to go through as far as presentation. The speed boost mechanic was pretty neat, even though it can be a little inobvious that that's what's happening. There are definitely issues with cameras and not being able to tell just where you ought to be going, and lots of weirdness with forced layer changes, though that may be more on the game, than the creator. The big issue, though, remains the boss. Like we saw in the episode, it's too easy to get lost in the battlefield, and way too easy to get into a death-loop. Even just putting a pause between the floors becoming hazardous would probably help things out. i'm not sure. It's still pretty bad design for that area.

Dragon Extermination - wan_nyan322

There's actually a lot of nice environmental design going on here, you just have to really fiddle with the gamma to get to see it. The gameplay was surprisingly tough this go around, maybe because it's so early, but i had the devil's own time getting the timing of the rotating spike-platforms section down right. The boss here is a lot of fun, but does seem to be the flip-side to Ancient Temple's, in that it may be a touch too easy for a lot of players. Still don't know why the weapons were a bazooka and a machine gun, but *shrug* they were goofy enough to forgive it.

Fortress of Whoo! - Kirby_24

Whoo! Not really too much to say about this one. It remains short, sweet, and an awful lot of fun; and sometimes, that's all you really need out of a level.

Too Late - mdkd99

Mainly world-building and set-up here, but it left me wanting more, so it did its job well. The lip-syncing was really well done, and the voice didn't have that weird, hollow quality a lot of recorded dialogue usually does in LBP (though maybe it was the headphones, i'm not sure). Interesting thing happened this time. So, i left the level early, just to see if you can (you can leave as soon as you access the elevator, but it means skipping a pretty goodly chunk of story). So my first playthrough, where i tried reading everything, when Ben comes to the boxes on the upper floor, he comments that they're experimental gas. This time, when i hardly had read anything, he only makes the first comment that it's a lot of boxes. i thought that was a neat little detail. Not really a point against, but Ben's running animation is a hoot. Pelvis forward, elbows out, shoulders back; it's like the stereotypical big-kid-jog in old cartoons.

So that's the that this go around, a few levels that could have been better, but there was some fun to be had in all of them.

Behind the curtain stuff: Not too much to report, really. i got the levels recorded for episode 43, and am mostly through inputting dialogue in the hub; that'll just leave cameras and animations, but that's no biggie. Got the majority of the more long-term hub done as well. The fiddliest bit turned out well, and i think i've got it modular enough to change slightly each week to good effect.

Ah! One thing i wanted to ask, but is there a crow cawing sound object? i've got the birds one, natch, but that seems more tweet-tweet.

I enjoyed the levels here! Good work.