Gravitas
Story/Gameplay
Media
General Advice
Technical Stuff
Credits/Changelog
Download
Story/Gameplay
This year the Super Smash Brothers Tournament is in Hyrule. Mario has once again been invited, so he travels there with his newfound portal gun, hoping to mix up the competition. As he nears Hyrule, he discovers an ancient temple. Intrigued, Mario steps inside; but as he wonders whether anyone has found this place, the door seals shut behind him, locking him in.
Worse yet, Mario feels incredibly sluggish. He tries to jump... but he can't.
Yeah, you read that right - in this mappack, Mario can't jump. Instead, he must use his mind and his portal gun to search for the exit. Timing, thinking, and a good understanding of Mari0 physics are required to get through each of the temple's seven corridors. If you don't have any of that, don't fret - the puzzles are ordered in a way that helps you learn as you go along. But even if you have what it takes, you'll still end up relearning everything you know about Mari0.
There are strangely-colored stones scattered about that serve a dual purpose. Blocks made of this stone will absorb portal shots and generally make life harder, so you'll need to plan around those. But standing in front of statues made of the same material puts a spring back in Mario's step, allowing him to jump in front of the statues. Of course, these will be used to the fullest for puzzle design, so expect some head-scratchers.
Media
You can watch a playthrough of v0.5 here (the first four levels), courtesy of Mari0Maker:
General Advice
- You'll need to run a lot to cross gaps. Remember to get some momentum first.
- Your momentum will not carry you if you come out of a portal facing up. You'll stop just as suddenly as if you tried to jump. However, you'll still come flying out of sideways portals.
- You can jump just enough to get up from a light bridge, or to reach a portal over your head.
- In a pinch, a perfectly-timed jump will stomp an enemy coming at you. Don't rely on it too much, though - it's hard to do consistently.
- Always keep an eye out for ledges or walls you can portal to; your reticle might reach places you didn't expect.
- Remember to reload your portals; it's a useful tool for clearing space when there's not a lot of room. With two floor portals and a quick reload, you can accurately land on small ledges without flying off the sides.
- Think from the top down. The key is to go as high up as you can using portals, and then come back down the manual way.
Technical Stuff
So how does all this work, anyway?
To keep Mario from jumping, I used a special tile in place of the airspace. Combining the collision and invisible block properties creates a block that acts like an invisible block (Mario can walk through it, but stops when he hits it), but doesn't reveal a coinblock. It also has the advantage of hiding whatever the tile actually looks like, so I can see when and where I've added the tiles. I like to call them stoppers.
However, the block presents several complications, since it also acts as a solid tile in a sense. With the blocks in place, Mario can't run across gaps, since the game thinks he's running into a wall. Also, light bridges and lasers stop immediately when hitting the blocks. (Curiously, emancipation grills are unaffected.) So, to remedy those situations, I remove the stoppers where necessary. Most of the time these are along the ground and serve no purpose anyway, and other times the level is constructed so that the player can't jump into them.
With that in mind, here's a screenshot of a level in the editor:
Credits/Changelog
All tiles and backgrounds come from Zelda II, and were copy-pasted out of maps maps from http://www.nesmaps.com/. Ironically, that was one of the few games in which Link could jump.
Additionally, the music in the 2.0 version comes from The 8-Bit Adventure Album by Michael Staple, available on Bandcamp! It's a great album, be sure to give the whole thing a listen. Specific tracks used:
- Odd-numbered temples: 25. Grouda's Castle (Stage 1)
- Even-numbered temples: 9. Creepy Groove (Deadman Valley)
- Final temple: 29. Grouda's Castle (Stage 5)
Code: Select all
2.1 (Alesan's Entities only)
-Added helpful tips on the level screens
-Forced character choice to Mario
-Re-arranged some objects to make it easier to back-port Gravitas updates to Mari0 1.6 in the future
-Added a missing checkpoint in 3-1
-Made the second Tetris-platform puzzle in 4-1 easier
-Fixed the faithplate surfing section in 6-1 to make it more obvious that you need momentum
-Fixed cheesing the last puzzle in 6-1
-Probably other fixes that I can't think of right now
2.0 (Alesan's Entities only)
-Added music from The 8-Bit Adventure Album by Michael Staple: https://michaelstaple.bandcamp.com/album/the-8-bit-adventure-album
-Minor updates to puzzles across all levels to fix glitches, utilize and/or gates, and make alternate solutions more viable
-Shuffled platforms in 3-1's spiny/box puzzle to make it easier to get around
-Updated the first puzzle in 5-1 to make it actually a puzzle
-Updated the second puzzle in 5-1 to make it less frustrating to get around
-Updated the bullet bill puzzle in 5-1 to make it less reliant on reflexes
-Replaced the final puzzle in 6-1 with a completely new puzzle based on the old layout
-Replaced the bridge puzzle in 7-1 with a similar but better balanced one
-Replaced the multi-room puzzle in 7-1 with something more unique
-Added a hint about the "DLC" level once the main levels are completed
-Added a missing sublevel to the DLC level so that taking a certain pipe doesn't softlock the map
-Fixed several visual oddities across all levels
-Removed the warp zone property (finally!)
SE porting v1.0
-Changed faithplate-surfing areas; there was lag, but I fixed it
-Added gates to make things look smoother
v1.0
-Finished all seven levels
-Fixed more bugs (mostly related to emancipation grills)
-Added DLC level (press down when starting the first level)
v0.5
-Added two more levels (total of four)
-Fixed bugs in 1-1
-Added warp zone property to each level (so that the pipe to world 4 doesn't bring you to -1)
v0.2
-Released to the public
-Added first two levels
Download
In sum:
- You can't jump except in front of statues
- There's seven levels
- Refer to General Advice if you get stuck
- Think with portals
DOWNLOAD (Mari0: Alesan's Entities)
Older versions (v1.0): Mari0 1.6 || Mari0 SE/CE