EDIT: Sorry, I meant to put this in the design forum, not the help forum.
I've wanted to make a 'world map' in a quest for a while, and I've thought of various ways of doing it, but each one kind of has its own drawbacks. Firstly, I say Mario 3D World instead of SMB3, or SMW cause unlike those games, Link will still be able to freely move around and enter levels. I liked this approach better, since it is frankly, easier. This could be done with tiered secrets, and we could call it a day, but, I would also like to have branching paths, and this would be nearly impossible without scripts, or some way of checking which "levels" have been beat. I'm thinking of using tiered secrets from a level "end" as normal for one path, then have lock blocks be used to gate off branching paths. Alternate paths are found in one stage, granting you a key to use on the map. Finishing the level normally will take you to the next level that isn't branched off. Basically, this part works like SMW. Each "world" would have its own keys too.
I'm not sure if this would work, as I haven't tried it yet, but I'm probably going to make a small test map to see if it can work. IIRC, I can have up to 8 warps from a screen, if I use the side warp flags, right?
Does anyone know if something like this has been done in a quest before? I don't think it has.