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[Rostiger]

Wow, haha, awesome! Great work JLJac! I'd suggest making his head segment a little bigger? So it maybe goes better witht he resst of the segments?
Other than that, pretty rad. I wonder how hard this will be to code though - I suppose you made sepparate segments that can be saved as single files?
Edit: that rotation looks pretty swell - have him come out at a random x position and this could work out quite nicely. Good job!

Also nice work on the distant worm animation, godsavant. 
Here are a couple of suggestion for the level though:
In the original game the ground was up a bit higher in the screen, so the player could actually see what's happening underneath the earth's surface. I think this would be appropriate here too because the player would get a short time span to see where the worm is coming from.
Also it gives us the possibility to add cool stuff like weird animal skeletons in the earth's crust. 

I think it would be a good idea to visually declare where the ground the player will actually be standing on is at. This is only important in levels that fake a perspective like this one, but right now, the player could be standing anywhere between the bottom brown line and in the field further 'to the back'. Maybe when moving everything up a bit, you could make the brown line at the bottom the same sand like structure, but lighter or somehow visually readable that this is the floor where the player will walk upon.

I really like what you have done with the background already, but the sky just seems a little bit boring. I know this would differ from the original, but maybe you want to add some clouds or mountains at the horizon?
Generally I think it's  a little bit too flat, Maybe take some creative liberties and put larger stones in the front that are just deco or make the landscape a little more uneven.

The crashed probe searcher thing looks pretty sweet, but the crashed airplane looks like it's in mid air flying downwards. You could put the whole thing down a couple of pixels and bend the nose harder to show that it actually has crashed. Also using more dark gray and black on it wouldn't hurt to show that it has been burnt out or something.

I'm not sure about the plattforms. They just seem to be a little uninspired and the setup is imho a bit too similair to the bonesaw stage. I'm sure we could come up with something a little more interesting.

Sigh, I wish I just wasn't so busy with the Heroes&Villains stuff. 

[shig]

Can we add one or two more segments to that huge sprite?

The worm seemed a little bit longer at the far-away gif.


FAKEDIT: Or maybe we could just take some segments from the far-away gif? It would be easier and I don`t know how long the worm was at the original game.


NOTFAKEDIT: Also, JLJac for pixelhead.

[Soulliard]

That looks really good. The only issue I see is that if the Death Worm only attacks the platforms and the sides of the stage, players will gravitate to the completely safe ground in the middle.

[mokesmoe]

We could have a tank roll across the bottom of the stage from time to time.

[battlerager]

Also the worm could emerge in the middle and go either right or left and go back underground offscreen.

That way, there would always be one safe place to be. The "does he go left or does he go right" could be made obvious by making him face left if the last thing he did in the background was go right and the other way around.

[Valter]

You could have the worm do several appearances in a short amount of time, and then head back into the background. Then it would become a scramble to reach the safe zones whenever the worm does arrive.

[godsavant]

 

Oh my god.

In the original game the ground was up a bit higher in the screen, so the player could actually see what's happening underneath the earth's surface. I think this would be appropriate here too because the player would get a short time span to see where the worm is coming from.
Also it gives us the possibility to add cool stuff like weird animal skeletons in the earth's crust.

NOT DONE.

I think it would be a good idea to visually declare where the ground the player will actually be standing on is at. This is only important in levels that fake a perspective like this one, but right now, the player could be standing anywhere between the bottom brown line and in the field further 'to the back'. Maybe when moving everything up a bit, you could make the brown line at the bottom the same sand like structure, but lighter or somehow visually readable that this is the floor where the player will walk upon.

Done, the black line is where the players will walk

I really like what you have done with the background already, but the sky just seems a little bit boring. I know this would differ from the original, but maybe you want to add some clouds or mountains at the horizon?
Generally I think it's  a little bit too flat, Maybe take some creative liberties and put larger stones in the front that are just deco or make the landscape a little more uneven.

NOT DONE, unless someone is good at pixelling clouds...

The crashed probe searcher thing looks pretty sweet, but the crashed airplane looks like it's in mid air flying downwards. You could put the whole thing down a couple of pixels and bend the nose harder to show that it actually has crashed. Also using more dark gray and black on it wouldn't hurt to show that it has been burnt out or something.

Done, I've bent the nose and broken the tail. Tell me if it's still recognizable as a plane. I'm working on the colors.

I'm not sure about the plattforms. They just seem to be a little uninspired and the setup is imho a bit too similair to the bonesaw stage. I'm sure we could come up with something a little more interesting.

NOT DONE. Like I said, there really wasn't anything in Death Worm that floated or could act as paltforms w/o cluttering up the stage.

[Soulliard]

Also the worm could emerge in the middle and go either right or left and go back underground offscreen.

That way, there would always be one safe place to be. The "does he go left or does he go right" could be made obvious by making him face left if the last thing he did in the background was go right and the other way around.

I like this suggestion.

[JLJac]

Just playing around with some possibilities:

Imagined the wing on the plane could work as a platform. The worm emerges from the holes, either disappearing out to the side our flying in an arc to the other hole, damaging those standing on the plane's wing.

I'm not sure where on the wing the collision box is supposed to be though, or how to show it

Also I was too tired to add any details to the underground

[Yigguth]

It looks great to me But I think the holes should be shallower, and maybe not as boxy? We did have diagonal ground on a preview level once so not everything has to be 90 degree angles. Just a suggestion

[Soulliard]

While it looks nice, I don't think that level would play as nicely. Sloped ground is okay, but uneven ground is annoying in such a small space, because you have to constantly jump around to get anywhere.

Plus, the platform is so close to the ground that it's barely meaningful.

I think the initial stage design would create more interesting opportunities for combat. And, in a fighting game, gameplay trumps graphics.

[shig]

That crashed plane is totally rad and I really want to see it included as one of the platforms.

I don`t know about the holes, tho. They`d limit your movement too much. Maybe if they were shallower it would be better, but I think I`d prefer a completely flat ground.

[Soulliard]

That plane does look really cool. Maybe it could be added as an additional platform in the middle of the stage. Either that, or it could be used as an awesome background object.

[Rostiger]

That is plain awesome! (punintended pun phun!) 
I actually had a go at the sky but it's gotten too cartooney, so I'll wait with showing it off.. 

[shig]

That plane does look really cool. Maybe it could be added as an additional platform in the middle of the stage. Either that, or it could be used as an awesome background object.

I was thinking of somehow editing it to make the platform a bit higher and using it to replace one of the two lower platforms.

Adding it as just a piece of the background is fine, too.

[J.W. Hendricks]

That idea of seeing the worm moving in the background is plain awsome.

But I still think the hovering platforms should be changed to wrecks and rocks, making it more death wormly. Is editing it no more complicated than drawing edits on this picture? What jump height is standard?

I think the worm itself should be a hazard. Like the fish in the Ice Climber stage in SSBB. You could set it to a loop. You can have  it destroying things in the background, and eventually it will leap across the stage itself. Or you could have it to where occaisionally, if a player steps on the ground instead of a platform, the worm will attack the player.

[battlerager]

That idea of seeing the worm moving in the background is plain awsome.

But I still think the hovering platforms should be changed to wrecks and rocks, making it more death wormly. Is editing it no more complicated than drawing edits on this picture? What jump height is standard?

I think the worm itself should be a hazard. Like the fish in the Ice Climber stage in SSBB. You could set it to a loop. You can have  it destroying things in the background, and eventually it will leap across the stage itself. Or you could have it to where occaisionally, if a player steps on the ground instead of a platform, the worm will attack the player.

Well, that is a given.  (See the awesome death worm sprite JLJac posted?)

[J.W. Hendricks]

That idea of seeing the worm moving in the background is plain awsome.

But I still think the hovering platforms should be changed to wrecks and rocks, making it more death wormly. Is editing it no more complicated than drawing edits on this picture? What jump height is standard?

I think the worm itself should be a hazard. Like the fish in the Ice Climber stage in SSBB. You could set it to a loop. You can have  it destroying things in the background, and eventually it will leap across the stage itself. Or you could have it to where occaisionally, if a player steps on the ground instead of a platform, the worm will attack the player.

Well, that is a given.  (See the awesome death worm sprite JLJac posted?)

Awesome it was.

[godsavant]

Just playing around with some possibilities:

This was awesomely fast. JLJac for pixelhead.

However, a few complaints, because I'm a whiner: the first thing I notice is that there is a lot of jaggy lines, dithering and disparate pixel textures in this picture; I'm guessing this is part of your signature style, but it bothers me because it really clashes with the solidly-colored, cartoony feeling of the rest of the stage...and characters. In other words, those plane and pit textures would be excellent, if they weren't in this game. Tell me if this is hard to understand, I'm not good at holding trains of thought.

Why is the tail twisted in relation to the wings? The lateral end fins are supposed to be on parallel plane to the wings, and while I can understand a crash twisting it vertically, it probably wouldn't give it torsional stress.

Other than that, great, but I still can't think of how to reconcile this with the current design...idea time, people.

[Soulliard]

That plane does look really cool. Maybe it could be added as an additional platform in the middle of the stage. Either that, or it could be used as an awesome background object.