Underwater levels with Clones are hard. Mainly because of the altered physics.

The thing is, if you bump into the Clone at all it will be knocked away as in Mario vs. Luigi, this is problematic for underwater levels because they'll keep falling until they fall into a pit or land somewhere, in which case they keep sliding for about 5 seconds which makes them highly vulnerable to enemies and sliding into pits.

I have given it a shot though. 6-2 is an underwater Clone level, and will probably be the only one in the game. I'm still deciding whether or not to remove the Clone from that level.

That is deliberate.

My philosophy about that is that if someone dies with the Clone, to give them a chance without the Clone. If they can't complete the level with the Clone and there is no checkpoint, they won't be able to finish the level, so I keep the checkpoints.

Clone Tag Team 2 will have more emphasis on things requiring the Clone's assistance after the mid-way flag, in fact there are a few levels where the Clone doesn't spawn until the checkpoint. I want the Clone to be seen as an added challenge and not as a condition which must be struggled through to advance.

EDIT: I made a thing:

Well, this is curious.

So get this, I've found a background glitch but I'm rather certain this is new.

Levels 3-A and 4-2 both have an "empty" Top BG, and the Bottom BG is a background from the original game which I have not modified. This is the only connection between these two levels.

However, for both of these levels the background will appear completely black only if I enter a Tower or Castle level beforehand. Otherwise the backgrounds are completely unaffected and there is no glitch.

By quitting to the Main Menu and re-entering the same save file the glitch will disappear, but it will come back if you go to a Tower/Castle level and revisit 3-A or 4-2.

I'll make enquiries into this strange occurrence but I won't make any guarantees that it will be fixed. It is only 3-A and 4-2 that is affected by this glitch, and only if this certain criteria is met. Additionally as it is a graphical issue it does not alter the gameplay at all so it's only a minor glitch.

EDIT: The glitch has been fixed. I'm also predicting an August-October release window.

World 5-2: Cold Clone Chaos is nearing completion. This will probably be the last level I make before my University break ends as of Monday.

But I have reached my goal of getting the hack between %60-70 done within that timeframe.

Provided I can still reserve personal time, I'll still be working on Clone Tag Team 2 actively. Again, I'm expecting the release to be between August-October.

I feel like I'm the only one ever posting in this thread, and that's only for updates.

So, to try and re-generate activity on the board I'm gonna release some screenies.

Presenting a screenshot of every level in World 1 of Clone Tag Team 2. Most of these may look familiar but do not worry- there is much more variety in level design and graphics than I'm letting on.



As for real updates, 5-Tower "Slippery Slope Tower" is finished and I've started work on 5-4 "Snowfall Woods".

You mean the background glitch? It was nothing really.

There was something corrupted with one particular BG slot. I just used one of my spare BG slots to replace the corrupted ones, and then just changed the slot in each level separately.

One promble. I don't like how the spike balls open the "Clone" blocks when i press left the clone dies.
_________________________

I got the base of the tileset from the NSMBW File Depot (with full credit to the original maker, obviously). I also ripped various textures from Super Mario 64 to use as scenery. I'm using a custom palette-swap of this tileset for the World 2 Castle, which is Princess Daisy's Castle.

The background is just the standard Toad House background that I edited slightly.



I was thinking the same thing about the Tower tileset. It's supposed to be a modernization of Super Mario World's Castle Tileset but I couldn't get it to fit in right, so I tried to give it a gritty look. Now it's too gritty.



I don't like that either. But it's something I can't really stop. I guess I could try placing a solid block in the bottom-right corner where the Spike Ball is located but I'm not sure whether it might cause the Spike Ball to "push" through the rest of the wall until it finds and empty space.

I'll give it a try though.

It might be tricky to get it working because the flying ? block is moving. But I can give it a try.

Here's another update, a little teaser video this time for World 7-A:



55 levels done, one more and the hack reaches %70.

I told you things would speed along. This may be the first time I release the hack before the deadline I set.

That's a shame, because I'm using the (U) version. It would be too much of a pain to import/export everything to a new rom.

I will be using an (E) rom for future hacks though.

If anybody's interested, I've updated the wordpress site for Clone Tag Team 2.

Just cleaning things up a bit, adding some new info, etc. You can check it out here.

It appears that my one and only beta tester  STORMENT is inactive or dead.

This is a problem. Something has to be done...

I don't mind beta-testing in is place, as long as you send me an already patched ROM in private messages since I can't get the editor to work.


blarg mac