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@NyanMC NyanMC commented Jan 19, 2026

Pull request #346 is a mistake and should be reverted. I made a long rant about this in the helper channel. Here's a summary of the rant:

  • The Carry prehint is a solution to a problem caused by the original PR, that being that you are forced to reach a secret exit to get past Donut Ghost House with unswapped exits, and most secret exits cannot be reached without Carry. This was done supposedly because being hard blocked by Carry and nothing else sounded like a good idea
  • Being able to reach Vanilla Dome from sphere 1 is intentional, level shuffle deliberately places levels that are beatable with nothing until you reach Vanilla Dome
  • You don't even full clear Donut Plains in sphere 1. As you cannot take most secret exits without Carry, you are forced to miss the levels on Donut Secret 1, Donut Secret 2, and Donut Ghost House, which make up almost half that world
  • You are likely to get blocked in Vanilla Dome anyway until you get more items. This is only a difference of three levels, and leads to a far less restricted start as you have more paths you can take and more options to unblock you than just Carry
  • Carry is already an extremely important item as it's required to take most secret exits, making it a hard requirement just to progress at all is unnecessary
  • Carry is already a hard blocker in Forest of Illusion, as you cannot leave that world without taking at least one secret exit

@NyanMC NyanMC changed the title Revert Donut Ghost House change and Carry prehint SMW: Revert Donut Ghost House change and Carry prehint Jan 19, 2026
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NyanMC commented Jan 19, 2026

This sentence from the original PR also has me concerned that the person that made the original PR does not understand the game at all:

For seeds with a vanilla level order, the Donut Ghost House is never flipped. Is this something that we want to change?

Swapping the Donut Ghost House exits without level shuffle is even worse. Donut Ghost House hard requires all Progressive Powerups as well as Run in order to reach its "normal exit" and proceed with the rest of the game. The only other option is to take the normal exit at Donut Secret House to take the path through Donut Secret 2, which hard requires 4 items: Green Switch Palace or Yoshi, Carry, Swim, and P-Switch. I am glad that suggestion was not taken, as being hard BK behind four specific items super early in the game sounds miserable.

@g0goTAS
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g0goTAS commented Jan 19, 2026

After reading this text, I'm not opposed to the reversal of my PR.

  • I never realised that, by design, the first 2 levels only had secret exits as a blocking point with a randomised level order. At best, I did notice that Valley of Bowser 2 always came early in the seed, but I never realised that all the other levels of the first 2 worlds were free to pass.
  • The premise behind this PR was to make it so that you could have more play sessions with SMW. Apart from Yoshi Eggs, this game has like 10 progression items, and forcing one play session to be removed by guaranteeing to not be locked by carry in world 2 felt like a cheap way to reduce the number of play sessions, with random level order.
  • I was fully aware that my PR had a very unconventional approach, and that it would have led to a big difference in the way that the game is played. I did ask for community feedback about it. I guess in a rush, it got merged with the rest of the PRs.
  • I agree that the proposition of having the vanilla exits for the donut ghost house on the vanilla order was a bad idea. When I put it in the brainstorm questions, I did not put much thought into it since I don't play with vanilla order seeds, but thanks for confirming that it's a bad idea.

At the end of this, I did throw it as an idea of an experimental change when I suggested it. People do not like that change, let's revert it.

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