Pogchamp_ex3 2nd place

For the sake of myself, I'll be using English (>< my Japanese sucks). I'll try to be as simple as possible. ♡

Overall performance

I participated in the competition in the name of "Genos" and got an overall 2nd place (1st place in terms of individual entries). Thanks for the appreciation from all of you.

Genos from One Punch Man (in case you are uncultured)

Level making

It is a SMW cape speedrun level built under a modified version of my style. Some tricks and concepts are derived from "Ultimate 'Cape' Speedrun ~翅冽~" by me, while some gimmicks are discovered while making the level. I'll be explaining the details from start to finish.

At the start, after getting the cape, Mario immediately cape attacks the shell which then hits the note block above it, and the spring that launches Mario which then launches the shell to the right.

Mario cape attacks the shell again to kick it upwards while hitting a note block(red circle) to spawn a POW block.

Mario bounces of the shell after cape attacking it twice and throws the POW spawned for the transition to the next gimmick.

Mario cape attacks the green shell once to hit the on-off block and then twice to hit the turn block which activates the POW block. Then, Mario regrabs the green shell after landing on a launcher shellmet and does a shell surf, reusing the green shell 3 times.

(cont.)

Mario cape attacks the hidden blocks to stop going to the left then landing on the shellmet again to go right, creating a stop-and-go motion. 

The same thing as above. Originally, I want to repeat this for 4 times quickly to create a continuous set of stop-and-go motions in a symmetric zigzag pattern but it was too difficult to bring the ideal to reality.

This is derived from "Ultimate 'Cape' Speedrun ~翅冽~" by me. Mario spins to trigger 2 hidden blocks around him. The right hidden block then spawns a drybone shell. 

Original gimmick from "Ultimate 'Cape' Speedrun ~翅冽~" by me

Mario lands on the shellmet one last time (with a total of 4 times) to increase the rightward momentum and grabs the drybone shell.

The rightward hyper speed allows Mario to enter the drybone shell in midair. Then, Mario jumps out of the drybone shell.

Mario turns around to land on the POW block spawned from the red launcher, creating another stop-and-go motion. It would be better if the POW spawned a bit sooner but I couldn't line it up.

Mario spins while kicking 2 shells at once.

Mario bounces off the lower shell while flicking the upper shell. The extra leftward momentum from the POW block helps Mario to catch up the shells.

Mario then bounces off the upper shell after the shell hits a on-off block.

This is also derived from "Ultimate 'Cape' Speedrun ~翅冽~" by me. Mario throws a tower of p-switches rapidly to push the thwomp upwards which detonates a bomb with key to enter the key door.

Original gimmick from "Ultimate 'Cape' Speedrun ~翅冽~" by me

The level focuses on being simple yet sophisticated. Levels with simple aesthetics and low gimmick density allows people to understand what the level is doing at first glance. This is vital as first impression is important. While super dense levels with many things around and hyper speed spams can wow people, but they fail to make people generate a deeper level of appreciation as they are hard to comprehend. And, if a level is spammed with items, hyper speed or dense chained gimmicks to the point where it's hard for people to understand what you're doing, the setups carry no meaning at all as you can't convey the awesomeness of the setups to others.

To maintain necessary complexity, elaborated and unique tricks and gimmicks are needed but the space between tricks must be adequate, just like paragraphing a piece of writing.

About Pogchamp competition

The reasons why I used "Genos" as an alias to join the competition are i) I didn't want the judges to know I made this level but after the event, I just knew that apparently the judges wouldn't know who made the levels lmao; ii) I didn't follow my original style to make this level but a rather objective style which fits the general public's taste, so it can't really show who I am as a maker.

Now to the question "Why cape level". 4 out of the 5 judges have at least 4 years of NSMBU speedrun experience and one of them have more than 6 years of kaizo experience. The standard for NSMBU speedruns and generic kaizos is too high so it's hard to impress them with anything. Cape speedrun genre hasn't been dug too deep yet so there're still so many things to be discovered. So far, only I have started making cape speedruns, and I'm getting familiar with the cape. Top 3 with one being link speedrun and one being cape speedrun yet no NSMBU levels just simply tell everything. (Ofc, the winning SMW kaizo level resembling a theatre drama on a stage is just fxxking poetic. There's no way mine can beat that.) I swear if I made a NSMBU speedrun instead, I couldn't even get to top 30%.

At the end of the day, I got 2nd in the whole event which is definitely surprising to me. So, till next time. Peace out.

しぐれShigure, Shiyuzi, Genos, X: @Shigure_smm2