Rayman 1 Expert - 82 New Levels

[Chacanger]

A few years back I remember stumbling across a Rayman 1 review by Caddicarus and remembered him saying the game was to hard and people in the comments were saying things like "This game wasn't play tested" to which I thought, that's a load of <insert word here>.

So naturally I decided to make a more unfair hard version of the game that contains 82 new levels, with the difficulty ramping up from a moderate Bongo Hills'esque level of difficulty at the start of the game to an almost Glackum Rayman Designer level of difficulty.

The levels will stick to the formula of 6 cages each level, betilla stages, bonus stages, bosses etc and new breakout game layouts.

A promo video can be found here...

https://rumble.com/v3z8md4-rayman-expert-promo.html

Here are some screenshots...

The game is out!

Download link and setup instructions are available here.

[Adsolution]

Whoa that pink dream forest background- lovely! I want to give this a try when you're done. This is directly modifying the original game, not designer, right?

[Chacanger]

Whoa that pink dream forest background- lovely!

Yeah, was kind of a random change I ended up liking after playing around with the hue in a screenshot; and also the levels name had the word purple in it I just wanted to make it look pink/purpleish.

I made a small edit to a Blue Mountain one because I always thought the top part looked a bit harsh (see below screenshot)

I want to give this a try when you're done.

Hopefully, I follow this one through all the way seeing as the tools are available to do so. Be warned though it can get a bit hard towards the end game.

This is directly modifying the original game, not designer, right?

Yep, the original game (PC for the time being, but I have plans to release a PS1 version later on), you'll need to own the original game to play it as I won't be distributing the EXE, just new LEV, WLD and DAT files which I will create an installer for.

[RaymanRedemption]

Wow, it looks good!
Sad that it's not intended for casual players but it's still interesting to see.

Can we already play the 41 existing levels somewhere?

[ItzalDrake]

I have never hated the difficulty of Rayman 1, I have no memory of it but my parents always told me that I loved to play Rayman 1 despite it was too hard especially for a 3 years old kid like me
Well, I can't wait to try to test my patience with this mod!

[Hunchman801]

While I'm sure I won't get to the end of it, being a very casual player for the most part, I still think it's a great idea and I'll give it a try for sure when it comes out!

[Chacanger]

I think casual players will probably be ok up until the Hard Rocks equivalent, then they'll struggle a bit. Picture City gets very hard and as for the Caves of Skops well... lets just say the Eat at Joes 2 equivalent (aka the firefly level) will give some people Nyctophobia.

I was considering setting up an option in the installer to create save files that give you the opportunity to choose a slightly easier 99 lives (with continues) mode or the usual 3 (with continues). You could just cheat them in but I'm not sure if that's a good idea or not.

[Burtek]

tbh if you added an option to be able to finish the mod without all cages that would automatically make it easier for casual players than the base game (also yes please do that if possible thanks)

[Hunchman801]

I was considering setting up an option in the installer to create save files that give you the opportunity to choose a slightly easier 99 lives (with continues) mode or the usual 3 (with continues). You could just cheat them in but I'm not sure if that's a good idea or not.

I think there's no harm in offering such easier options: no one is forced to use them, after all.

[Chacanger]

Just a small update with this project.

It's taking me quite a bit longer than I'd hoped for in order to make levels.

I'm struggling a bit to make decent Band Land levels due to the lack of interesting combinations I can make with the tileset which is odd considering it's one of (if not the easiest tileset) to work with for most people; it's also probably down to the fact the world has so many levels (like Bongo Hills). Personally I'm finding that the natural worlds are easier for me to create like the Blue Mountains.

Still, 49 levels are pretty much done (maybe a few tweaks here and there)

I was considering making a playable demo, but not sure what level I'd pick at the moment.

[hoodlumsworld]

Are the levels entirely different from the original or do you try to retain some of the overall level design?

[Chacanger]

Are the levels entirely different from the original or do you try to retain some of the overall level design?

Pretty much entirely different, on occasion there are elements of the original levels due to the way the game requires certain events to happen at certain level slots.

For example, the Musician has to appear in the Mr Stone's Peaks level 1 slot, the Bzzit boss has to happen in the Anguish Lagoon 2 slot etc.

I could have gone down the route of "just add some more spikes" to existing levels, but I wanted to create something a bit more interesting, also gives me chance to demonstrate some new level obstacles that I can guarantee no one's seen before.

[Hunchman801]

Have you been able to make the boss battles more difficult? Editing their behavior sounds significantly harder than coming up with new level design, but I imagine you don't want them to feel too underwhelming compared to the other levels whose difficulty was increased a lot.

[Chacanger]

Have you been able to make the boss battles more difficult? Editing their behavior sounds significantly harder than coming up with new level design, but I imagine you don't want them to feel too underwhelming compared to the other levels whose difficulty was increased a lot.

I'll admit, it'll be tricky to come up with something different for the bosses.

We've seen slippery and Dark Rayman mods that make them more difficult, so I'll need to come up with something else if I can.

I have some idea's in mind for some bosses though as some bosses have command line behaviours I can edit, I can also change the World files animations which may allow me to create custom patterns.

It'll take some experimentation but also need to be done in a way that doesn't make you take obligatory damage.

[Hunchman801]

Good luck with that! I must admit that slippery tiles and Bad Rayman, though not quite new, would probably work well (in combination with some other obstacles if you're really gonna push it ).

[Chacanger]

I was testing a level a few months back and ended up getting a weird glitch that froze the game and presented a load of characters on screen...

I couldn't recreate it, but another different freezing issue came up in the same level at a different section that brought up errors in the console (I didn't manage to get a screenshot of that).

Anyhow as of writing this I've managed to complete 54 levels now (would be 55 but one need a revisit) which leaves me with 28 to go.

Here is a preview of what's to come (a UFO maze!)...

rayman_083.png (18.36 KiB) Viewed 4375 times

[Hunchman801]

Zalgo Rayman? That's great inspiration for a new creepypasta.

[Chacanger]

It reminded me of those ASCII based games you could play on MS DOS or Command Prompt...

[ItzalDrake]

Hehe this glitch is pretty creepy

[PluMGMK]

Zalgo Rayman? That's great inspiration for a new creepypasta.

I guess the game is somehow ending up on a codepath where it calls int 21h AH=09h with a nonsense buffer in DS:DX and then throws an exception that gets it caught in an infinite loop.

Either a bitflip or a really bad race condition