User:Fawfulfan

Hi, I'm Fawfulfan! I'm a member of the SRB2 Message Board and a Maintainer on the SRB2 Wiki. My name comes from my obsession with Fawful, a minor villain from the Mario and Luigi series (I'm not quite as obsessed with him anymore, but I still keep the association for historical purposes. A laughing animation of Fawful is used as my Message Board Avatar.)

I have created several level and character WADs. Most of my Characters are sprite rips, so I have not released them on the SRB2 Message Board, but they can be found in my 4shared page. Most of my levels and level packs have been released on the Message Board, and a few, such as the NiGHTS level Skyline Paradise Zone, have been entered into the Official Level Design Contest. Probably my best known work is Tortured Planet, and it is certainly my most expansive project.

Info About Me

For those of you who care, I'm an undergraduate at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, majoring in Games and Simulation Arts and Sciences. I spend most of my time either making games for fun, making games for homework, and awkwardly trying to establish for myself some kind of social life that I can talk about without being ashamed.

While I'm at it, I guess I'll say that my favorite music groups are Counting Crows, The Fray, and Daughtry, that my favorite TV shows are Family Guy, Seinfeld, The Simpsons, and The Big Bang Theory, and my favorite book series are, in this order, The Edge Chronicles, Harry Potter, and Pendragon (each of which I have written fan fiction for, which you can check out at [1].

As my love of SRB2 attests, I am a huge fan of any kind of video game that encourages modding. For this reason, I also love M.U.G.E.N, and have created a couple of characters and stages for it (one of these days I should release Shroob Planet--it's far and away my best work for M.U.G.E.N). Historically, this has also shaped which games I loved at an early age. One of my longest and most intense love affairs with a video game was with The Incredible Machine: Even More Contraptions, and if you've ever played it, you'll understand what I loved about it.

I first came across SRB2 in 2008, stumbling upon the download link on the Caiman Games site. Even though the SRB2 community has been around much longer than that, it seems like such a long time ago. I've made quite a few addons since then. I started out terrible, but gradually my skills have improved.

I also run the second largest 4shared repository of SRB2 files (after Xtreme Starfox). It has hundreds of WADs available for download. I check it frequently, deleting spammed files wherever they occur, so that people don't have to sift through a mess of junk to find the WAD they want.

And, one last thing...I have a game development career that goes way beyond SRB2. A site showcasing my work can be found here.

Creations

Levels and Level Packs

These are all the levels I can remember making, in order of creation, and described as accurately and honestly as I can:

SRB2 1.09.4

• First Zone: Not really a "level", per se...just a tiny little box with GFZ textures, a Player Start, a Death Pit, and an exit sector. As I recall, it didn't even have a proper Thok Barrier. I only made it to test whether I was able to slap together something functional. Whether I succeeded or not depends on how you define "functional". It loaded, it didn't crash the game, and it could be beaten. That's basically all it had going for it.
• Egg Hall Zone: My first actual level, as well as my first release. It was crudely based on Techno Hill Zone Act 2. I don't hesitate to admit that it was an absolute mess with no redeeming value whatsoever. It was utterly cramped, no interesting gimmicks, cheap deaths, really short, messy textures, Hall of Mirrors galore, and a really shoddy Thok Barrier. Embarrassingly, I proclaimed when I released it that it was very good considering it was my first level...subsequent experience taught me that many first-time wadders do better than this. What a n00b I was! However, I did manage to avoid a couple other common first time level-maker mistakes. For instance, I had a proper MAINCFG lump, and...well, that's actually about it.
• Moon Palace Zone: My first attempt at a lengthy 2D level, as well as my first level that used FOFs. An unusual blend of Deep Sea Zone, Techno Hill Zone, a little Red Volcano Zone, and outer space theming, with plenty of front-to-back transfers that could easily get the player stuck. I also recall that there were some Goombas thrown in there too. Also a mess, but a least a little better than Egg Hall Zone.
• Mushroom Canyon Zone: My first Mario level. Still bad, but my best work so far, and the least glitchy. Also in 2D mode, and spanned all three Mario themes: plains, cave, and fortress.
• Fawfulpack: A compilation containing Egg Hall Zone, Moon Palace Zone, and Mushroom Canyon Zone. Crude and kind of pointless...I didn't even bother to change around the worst parts of the levels.
• Bowser's Castle Zone: My second Mario project, and my first attempt at a 3D Mario level. Set in Bowser's Castle. Broke all my records for almost-not-sucking-ness, but that's not saying much. It was still very bad.
• 3D Maze: At last, I managed to make a level that generated a slightly positive reaction. Designed to look and act like the classic Windows 98 Maze Screensaver. It even had the rocks that flip you upside down (but in this case, they just teleported you to a maze with reversed texturing (Now that I think about it, I could actually do the flipping gimmick much better in 2.0, but I'm not gonna bother). A few people praised it for its nostalgia value, but the level itself was terrible. Mazes don't work in SRB2. Though it was Single Player, somebody else converted it into a Match stage with my permission. It works better that way, but not by much.
• Wacky Tesseract Zone: A level with Special Stage texturing. Terribly cramped, and full of cheap deaths and repetitive gimmicks involving crumbling platforms. Not really worth going into any more detail about it.
• Frost Flare Zone: My most ambitious project up to this point. A complex, super-long level which switched back and forth between Xmas, Red Volcano, and THZ2 theming. I put a lot of effort into this one, but it was still really bad, mostly because of horribly cheap deaths. Much later in my SRB2 career, I went back and did a remake of this level. The remake was vastly improved, but still far from top-notch.
• Nowhere Zone: A level set in a big white void, based on platforming off of colored shapes. Full of cheap deaths, and only interesting for about 5 seconds. Later on, I brought back this theme in the last Match level of Tortured Planet, which pulled it off a bit better.
• Fawfulpack 2: My second compilation, containing Bowser's Castle Zone, Wacky Tesseract Zone, Frost Flare Zone, and Nowhere Zone. No changes were made to the levels.
• Thunder Towers Zone: A CEZ clone. Never actually released as a standalone level. In retrospect, I regret that; it wasn't that good of a level, but it was better than anything I had done up to that point. It had less cheap deaths, and at least one interesting gimmick.
• Fawfulcollection: This was a showcase featuring most of my major projects. It contained everything from Fawfulpack and Fawfulpack 2, Thunder Towers Zone, the option to play as a sprite-ripped Fawful, and a final boss level where you fight...Fawful. It was, as I recall, the first WAD ever to be submitted to the releases judging process, which had just started...and also the first WAD to be rejected. As a result, no one actually ever saw Thunder Towers Zone. By my current editing standards, however, it's not a very good level, so I doubt it'll ever see the light of day.
• Marble Zone: This level was probably my first ever success. A remake of Marble Zone from Sonic the Hedgehog 1, which used many textures from the game itself, this level's reception was highly polarized. Some people loved it for its retro look, gimmicks, and concept. Other people hated it for the horrendous frame lag in some places. It was also the first time I ever put a Loop in one of my levels. People seemed to like it much more then than they do now.
• Skyline Paradise Zone: This was not only my first NiGHTS level, but also the first time I submitted something to the Official Level Design Contest. It was a Dark City Zone themed level. It wasn't that great...it ended up receiving a 3.06.
• Adventure Island Zone: Another submission to the Official Level Design Contest...and I actually did better the first time. People hated this level, because it was Adventure Mode, and it had a lot of cramped spaces. It got a 2.41, which was my lowest OLDC score ever.
• New Super Mario Zone: My third submission to the Official Level Design Contest. This was probably the most effort I ever spent a level that turned out absolutely terrible. I put in all sorts of custom stuff to make it act like New Super Mario Bros. But in all the mania about awesome visuals, I neglected to realize that it was virtually unplayable because of the 2D physics system. This level got a 2.8, and it was probably the most discouraging reception I had ever received. At this point, I was beginning to think that I would never become a skilled level maker, and I abandoned all pursuit of WADmaking for a while...until SRB2 2.0 came out, and I was tempted to try again.

SRB2 2.0

• Misty Mesa Zone: My first ever Match and Tag level, submitted to the Official Level Design Contest. It had Arid Canyon theming. Originally, it actually was going to be misty, but the excessive fog blocks caused too much lag. It was criticized for being symmetrical, and for being too open in some areas and too cramped in others. But it got a higher rating than I had ever managed in the OLDC before...3.71.
• Fire Flight Zone: A fiery NiGHTS track, Submitted to the Official Level Design Contest. My second attempt at a NiGHTS level...and a huge improvement over anything I had made so far. It managed third place in the OLDC, and a score of 6.38.
• Upload Download Zone: My first ever CTF level, submitted to the Official Level Design Contest. The key feature is that to get to your opponent's flag, you must "upload" yourself into a computer, and "download" yourself out into another. It was criticized for weapon placement, among a few other things, but was still pretty solid. This level came very close to winning...it held a solid lead for most of the voting, but got bumped down by two last-minute votes, each of which rated it 3. It got a final score of 5.46, and Sunkist Falls took the victory.
• Wacky Tesseract Zone: I reused the name of that old level for my first ever Circuit level, which appeared in the Official Level Design Contest. Similar theme to the original WTZ, but with much better execution. It scored a 7.6, and was my first ever winning entry.
• SRB2 Tortured Planet: My first ever full-scale mod. Nine full zones plus a final boss zone, ten match levels, remakes of my previous three OLDC submissions, and a series of hub worlds providing access to the original versions of the first 28 levels, for a total of 72 maps. Still in progress.

Character WADs

I've made too many of these to count, so I'm just going to talk about my projects in a more general way.

My first attempts

The first Character WAD I made was a sprite-ripped version of Fawful. I released him without bothering to read the rule against sprite rips, and it was soon removed. Shortly thereafter, I created a new character called SIGSEGV, which was nothing more than the infamous error message with stick arms and legs (though I did create angles for him). This was also deleted for a lack of effort.

Enlargement WADs

I enjoyed using the Mario Pack WADs, but I thought they were too small. So I began to create my own versions, which were much bigger. I never released them on the MB, because they weren't my own work, but I put some of them on 4shared. Later, I did the same for a Sonic Advance WAD.

MEL123311

I then created my own version of HMS123311. It was Mario with similar markings and the same skin name, so that he would have identical powers. I called him MegaEnigmaticLuigario123311, and posted him on 4shared. I thought nothing of him for a while, until he was discovered by a member of the SRB2MB, who posted his bizarre finding, asking who made it. I promptly came forward. Then, I ceased to think about him again, until now, when I had to write this history of my creations.

Gallery of Sprite Rips

Now, I proceeded to make a massive collection of new Mario sprite rips, most using sprites from Partners in Time, but a few from other games too. I gave the Mario and Luigi WADs a wall-jumping ability that I had ripped off from Senku Niola, and their baby versions a levitating hammer SOC which I can't remember the original author of. Needless to say, none of these went on the MB, but most of them ended up on 4shared. I also created a few non-Mario ones, such as a Spyro the Dragon WAD. His abilities translated surprisingly well into SRB2, but his sprites clashed horribly with the rest of the game.

Saint Dane

This was probably my only real attempt at an original character WAD. I attempted to make Saint Dane, the villain from the Pendragon book series, playable in SRB2, and gave him the ability to transform into gas or into a raven. I got a crude demo version with badly shaded sprites done, but I never finished the project. I don't intend to.

SRB2 2.0

The only character WAD I have done for the new version of SRB2 is a new Fawful sprite rip, which uses sprites from Bowser's Inside Story. After that, I gave up on character WADs altogether, as none of my projects are up to the standards of the MB, and character WADs rarely bring anything novel to the table anyway.

Other SRB2 Creations

MD2

I never got that good at 3D rendering. The best thing I made was an MD2 Deton, and it was just a single sphere. I tried submitting it to the MB, but it was rejected. It wasn't original or good. I also made some MD2 bubbles, but they were awful.

WAD and SOC Icons

I also created some ICO files to use with WADs and SOCs. They were two pillow-shaded circles, one blue, one red, with "WAD" and "SOC" in the middle, respectively. I released these, but they never got that popular. I still use them, though.

Blecch Bouncer

My first SOC'd enemy. It appears in Tortured Planet, but also was released as a standalone graphics WAD. Also my first ever creation to be made available for public use.