I struggled a lot with deciding on a vertical scrolling scheme that would allow for both horizontal and verticality in level design while avoiding "maze-like" levels. At the same time I also needed to come up with something that isn't too complicated for me to implement.
Eventually I settled on something similar to Mega Man and Super Mario Bros 2. Levels are mostly horizontal scrolling, only 1 screen high, but multiple horizontal levels can be connected with a "single screen" transition room.
I further limited things by only allowing transitions at the left and right-most edges of a level (to make nametable streaming simpler).
Everything is working now, so I built a little test level to try out different configurations, and put together a short video. Enjoy!
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