How To Remove Softlocks From Your Super Mario Maker 2 Levels!

[Music] so recently i uploaded my brand new level the four hidden treasures in mario maker 2 which i had been working on for quite a while it was one of my favorite levels and when i uploaded it it all went well until disaster struck i received many comments about there being a soft block that i had missed which is probably the absolute worst thing to have in a level if you all didn't know a soft lock is basically a situation where the player can no longer progress in a level and there is also no way for them to die without time running out or starting over these are incredibly annoying especially after checkpoints because you could be waiting up to nearly eight and a half minutes depending on how long the timer is until you're able to try again like i said these are especially bad after checkpoints since you can't start over from a checkpoint as starting over will just force you to have to play through the whole level again which is something most players wouldn't want to do soft likes could lead to players booing a level or quitting them right away as these are super annoying so since these are extremely bad to have in your levels and it can be easy to accidentally have one in a level i decided it would be a good idea to make a video on some common soft block scenarios and how you can remove them or fix them before we start though only a small percentage of people who watch my videos are actually subscribed to the channel so if you enjoyed this video please consider subscribing as it helps the videos a ton and you can always change your mind later but with that out of the way let's jump right into some tips and tricks to remove and fix soft locks in your levels in super mario maker 2. before we get into the tips though it seems that i really need to clarify to a lot of you what a soft lock actually is it seems that a lot of people know the term soft block but don't actually use it correctly so i really want to drill it into your heads what a soft lock actually means so that maybe the incorrect soft lock comments will slow down a bit looking back at our definition it was when you can no longer progress in a level which most people seem to understand but the part most people seem to miss is that for it to be a soft block you can't have the ability to die to anything but starting over or the timer let's look at an example from my level during the goomba shoe segment i have mario need to jump over a pit before going under that pit for the ending section so since i couldn't make mario fall into the void since there was stuff underneath it this was the best solution placing one ways and spikes that when you fall you have to die this is not a soft luck as you can clearly die without needing to wait had the floor have been this then yes this would definitely be a soft block since you have to wait until the timer expires or you have to start over hopefully that helps you all understand because too many people have called sections like this where you can clearly die soft blocks when they are obviously not the situation with the spikes is much better described as maybe an sd lock however these are fine as they're sometimes necessary and unavoidable optimally you'd want to minimize the number of sd locks however especially in power up based levels as deluxe may be a necessity in order to keep the level's challenge intact so in short this is not a soft lock and is thus fine so i don't want anyone commenting on any level that there is a soft block when you can clearly die that goes for my levels or anyone else's by the way follow my twitter in the description but anyways now that we know what a soft block actually is let's discuss how we can try to avoid them one of the most common types of soft blocks i run into is being able to jump onto the top of a semi solid but not being able to get back down the solution for this one is pretty simple as all you have to do is block off the top of the semi solid now keep in mind you probably want to block it off with an indestructible block as there have been a ton of times where people have tried to block them off with like breaks or hard blocks and then you can just break through them to get on top there's pretty much no reason to not use ground to just do that another option you could do is just make the sides of the semi solid open so the player can just run down to the end and get back down usually it's better to just cover the top however sometimes it may be better to just keep the sides open one final thing you could do though maybe you could actually turn this thing into some sort of secret instead so what you would do is maybe you have a brick roof and if the player gets there then they're able to break through the roof and maybe find a secret room that would also give them an exit out of the soft lock this could be a fun way to expand upon your level if you so choose however just be careful that the player can't get soft lock by doing the secret approach make sure the player is actually able to run over the top as some blocks they won't be able to run over like ground so make sure it's something like bricks at the top if you want to do the secret technique another pretty common one is a pit that you can't jump out of or die in these will commonly be found in levels that weren't super well thought out where you can just maybe climb over a wall you weren't supposed to so here's some solutions to this pit soft lock one make the pit inaccessible completely by making the walls go all the way up to the ceiling and being indestructible this makes it to where obviously the player can't get into the pit at all so there wouldn't really be a problem solution 2 is to just make it an actual pit instead of having a floor where the player will just die if they try to jump into it 3 you could take the completely opposite approach and completely fill it in so that there's absolutely no way anybody could ever get stuck in there number four is to add invisible blocks to the sides of the player can jump out i use this in my pipes in the sky level where i added a 10 coin however it seems impossible to escape however all you have to do is hit invisible blocks on the side which is a good way to fix a soft lock and keep a somewhat hidden area secret my final solution similar to the last type is to turn this soft lock into its own section or secret area with a built-in escape for example maybe you could place a pipe down here that will take you into a mini section that could get you a secret and then let you leave the pit so as you can see there are a ton of different solutions on how to fix this so if you have any large inescapable pits in your level even if you think the player can't reach them it may be smart to do some of these techniques our next set of situations is based on if the player does or does not have a power up when they showed or shouldn't this could lead to a ton of unforeseen scenarios so i suggest always play testing your level with every power-up contained in it you can easily do this by just equipping them to mario and then playing the level from a certain point you can never truly know how a player may approach your level so it's best to make sure having or not having an item won't get them stuck let's go through some examples using most of the power ups and how they can be fixed for the super mushroom you could end up in a situation like this where mario can't go back where he came from but also can't go any further since the ceiling is too low all you have to do is either make this wall a block taller let mario go back through the door or make sure mario gets hit before entering the door by doing something like this keep in mind though that this setup here will only work if the only type of power up in the level are plain mushrooms so i would suggest just making the ceiling higher as it's a lot easier to do in this section mario would normally throw a fireball here to activate a bomb to let him progress however if you got hit beforehand then you can't do anything for this one just make the fire flower easily accessible in the room by putting it in a pipe or a track or on the floor if the challenge of your level though is to keep a fire flower throughout the whole thing then what you could do is make the floor destructible blocks themselves over a pit meaning that after some time has passed you would die that way the challenge of your level would stay but you wouldn't have to worry about a soft block plus it'll make this room look a little bit more intimidating and a bit more challenging as well okay moving on to the super mario bros power ups with a big mushroom and this is pretty similar to the pit one we mentioned earlier say that you have a hard block staircase at the end of your level like many traditional levels do however the player decides to destroy the staircase leading to a wall that is impossible to go past since you can't destroy blocks to the side of you ever since mario maker 2. granted you have to be a real idiot to have this happen to you but nonetheless it can happen you can make the staircase out of something indestructible like pipes or ground or you cannot have a staircase at all or maybe have something different in its place moving on to the master sword you may have a situation where the player needs to throw a bomb or shoot an arrow in order to progress by making it hidden on off block if the player gets hit or something before that part though then it can become a soft lock much like the fireflower placing the master sword in a pipe inside the room will make it to where this can't be a soft lock anymore also keep in mind with the master sword link can actually hit himself with his bombs which can lead to a lot of soft flock so keep that in mind when making your level as well the final smb power up is the mario 2 mushroom and there are a ton of scenarios that can soft block with this but we'll just talk about one for now the smb2 mushroom allows mario to pick up and destroy clouds underneath him which is the main premise of this room however if mario lost the power up before getting into this part he will again have nowhere to go for this one i would suggest placing a power up on a track like this however i also think having a roof chase down mario in this part is interesting as well that would make this room way more intense and fun as the player would have to go fast not only that but it would also stop mario for being softlock as he'll just get crushed instead so it fixes a soft lock and makes the room more interesting when when next up are the mario 3 power-ups the tanooki leaf can possibly allow the player to fly over a part of a level you didn't mean for them to reach this could lead to them maybe being trapped at the top of a semi solid or trapped in a pit like i mentioned earlier i would suggest doing the same fix as i mentioned before but additionally to that i would suggest just having an unbreakable ceiling over your whole level which would greatly help avoiding soft blocks and cheese as well with the tanooki suit the worst mario maker to power up i don't want to hear any arguments in the comments is able to go through doors at the surface of water if they're holding an item and at p speed however if mario drops the item loses the power up or loses p-speed at any point then he can't go through the door since he will sink to the bottom of the water this could lead to potential soft blocks if they have nowhere else to go i think the best solution here would either having a way to die or a way to retry the section like this if you want to do the retry method make sure to put items required for this section like the frog suit or held items in pipes so the player can re-grab them of the two methods i think the reset one may be better however it's a really case-by-case basis whether you think the player should die for failing or if they should get another try mario world's cape can allow the player to ground pound the floor like a pal to kill enemies this could lead to scenarios like this where maybe a bomb was supposed to blow up the exits however if mario does this then it could kill that bomb making it to where he can't progress to fix this you could just simply have a reset door so that the player could reset the room if they accidentally killed a bomb the p balloon i honestly couldn't really think of anything that's different from the tanuki leaf so just repeat what i said there while i'm at it the same applies to the propeller mushroom and super acorn as well i couldn't really think of anything unique for those ones since they're all pretty much just flying power-ups so yeah just make sure you fill in all pits and make sure that the player can't go on top of semi-solids finally onto the 3d world power-ups starting with the catsuit the catsuit has a ton of abilities though the two i could see causing the most problems are the wall climb and the claw swipe to break bricks if the player had lost their catsuit from a previous section then you could end up in a situation where the player can't progress as they won't be able to climb up a record semi-solid or clawed a set of blocks the two best things to do here is to provide another cat bell or let them die somehow a similar situation can arise when not having the boomerang or super hammer present as well now the reason i wanted to go through most of the power ups is because i find these to be some of the most common forms of soft blocks from my experience so it's really important that every part of your level is tested with every power up you have in it it's better to be safe than sorry another major thing that can cause soft blocks are items that you can carry bringing these into sections or using them in ways they aren't intended can lead to many soft locks some common ones i see is stuff like this where the player can drop an item below them trapping them in a small space in order to fix this just make the space open so that the player can't trap themselves another one involves springs mario can actually get stuck in a kind of similar situation like this this one is way less obvious as it looks like mario should be able to leave but he just can't fixing this though is basically the exact same thing where you just have to make this gap larger or make it completely open so that they can actually escape the last item one i wanted to go over is being able to trap yourself in a small gap like this by throwing a solid item like a p-switch chain jump post or 3d world spring on top of you this actually happened to me while i was streaming a really cool viewer level [Music] how am i so stupid it's very weird but it is possible so how can we prevent this well you could make the gap larger however that may defeat the point of this challenge so what you could do instead is maybe have the floor be one ways or the top of semi-solids that way if the player beams themselves they can easily escape and it won't ruin the challenge this segment will be focusing on how two state blocks dotted line blocks and p-switch blocks can create soft locks soft locks like these can usually occur if you don't think of your level as a whole and instead think of it in only parts this is actually what people were commenting about on my level as if you do the dry bone section on my level first dragons for smash it will switch the on off switch making the buzzy beetle part later impossible to progress through without dying first due to there being a wall there now this isn't an actual soft block since you can die though it is still obviously a problem as it's an unnecessary sd lock that doesn't stem from the player making a mistake so i definitely wanted to fix it anyways the reason i missed this was because in testing i always did the showment part here first as it was the hardest one in my opinion and if done in this order there wouldn't be any issues so anyways the simplest and easiest way to fix this is by simply gating off that section with dotted line blocks and a switch that way they have to be flipped the correct way before you even enter the room while yes this wasn't a soft flock it was still problematic and it could end up being a soft lock in a different level where you couldn't die anywhere so i wanted to make sure to include it in this video in the case of p-switch blocks these can have similar situations occur when they can go on or off at an unexpected time here for example there's a reward for getting through this segment quick enough however the p-switch blocks turn off right as you jump for the coin then you become trapped two solutions for this is to have bricks blocking them instead so that you'll just collect the coins so that they can't trap you however if you have a super mushroom that can defeat the whole point of the challenge meaning that it might be better to just do the second method where it's to have a one way so that you can just drop down but you can't go back up now for my last one and i know i say this a lot but it's really important here play test your levels a lot and have at least one other person play tester levels as well test as many different ways of beating or losing to challenges as possible to make sure no matter how they do it they can't get soft locked even if the player would have to be so incredibly stupid to get soft blocked it's way better to remove any and all soft locks in your levels i usually have my brother test my levels however if you don't have anyone near you then you can always ask someone to test it while online by inviting them into a friend co-op game and then spectating them this obviously isn't perfect as some of the mechanics are different like some stuff respawning however it's better than nothing so yes test out every single possibility that you can think of no matter how stupid it may be now i said that the soft block everyone was commenting about in my level wasn't an actual real one and it wasn't though it was still bad however there was an actual soft block no one seemed to actually notice and here it is if the player doesn't ground pound on the switch to flip the blocks and for whatever stupid reason they decide to jump out of their dry bone shell and break it then they get soft locked yes they would have to be pretty dumb to do this and yes it may seem ridiculous of test off like this but it's important to give them an out like placing a spike if they're dumb enough to do this who knows maybe it might help someone out but anyways that's it for this video if this helped you let me know in the comments because soft blocks are some of the worst things that can happen in levels play testing is so incredibly important and also blocking off areas completely where you don't want players to go but anyways if you do this video please make sure to leave a like maybe even subscribe for more on super mario maker 2 and anything else nintendo switch links to my twitter and discord along with my mario maker id are in the description below also check out the level i talked about this whole video now that i fixed it i think it turned out great and i really hope you like it but anyways i'll see you guys next time bye [Music] you

Channel: Odyssey Central

Views: 805,083

Keywords: Super Mario Maker 2, super mario maker 2, super mario maker, odyssey central, smm2, mario maker 2 kaizo, mario maker 2 tips and tricks, mario maker 2 tutorial, mario maker 2 tutorials for beginners, nintendo switch, mario maker, cheese, mario maker 2 softlocks, super mario maker 2 softlock, mario maker 2 anti softlock, mario maker 2 level tips, super mario maker 2 level tips, mario maker 2 levels codes, mario maker 2 softlock prevention, remove softlocks mario maker 2

Id: NLKFlhSKzmE

Length: 15min 4sec (904 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 11 2020