Metroid Coven - Top-down Metroid

[EchoJerichoX]

I wanted to run through and update this with all of the current links and a few more current links, screenshots, etc...

Official Design Document (basically where we stated our goals, vision, basic controls, etc...): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JZ8-ApeWyJW4kdpvcetwzOcMfpBgyOHIeR4xU4GD0c0/edit?usp=sharing
Trello board (our virtual whiteboard): https://trello.com/b/lHavbCqm/metroid-coven
GitHub repository (rip, clone, edit, steal, learn to your heart's content): https://github.com/EchoJerichoX/Metroid-Coven
My personal Discord (where you go for Coven updates, to chat with me personally, etc.): https://discord.gg/EapDFbm
My old Blogspot page (replaced my website after the hosting expired and traffic went away): http://metroidcoven.blogspot.com/

UPDATES WILL BE POSTED TO THIS THREAD EXTREMELY RARELY. FOR UPDATES, DOWNLOADS, AND MORE, GO TO MY DISCORD!
Please head there if you want to keep following me or the project.
I will still reply and talk to people who post here :)
Thank you!

Some screenshots...
   

   

   

[Quietus]

I already replied over on m2k2, so I'll summarise here: Looks good, but I think the morph ball sprite should be 3-4 times bigger. :^_^:

Edit: Most of your links are broken, with repetition and quotation marks.

[EchoJerichoX]

3-4 times bigger? Even if it were 3 times bigger, that is bigger than Samus. That makes no sense.

Also, we are trying to update the website - when my admin wakes up and finally finishes that, I can fix all of the links. They are currently all hosted on our FTP which is a mess ATM.

[passarbye]

was wondering when i'd see the Coven post migrate here.  :^_^:
can't wait for the new site upgrade, i got a preview and it looks amazing so far.

[Metaquarius]

So what is this game basically about ? I know it is written "Top-down Metroid" in the title but... is that all there is ? I mean, what is the goal of this game ? Remaking an existing Metroid game with a top-down perspective ? Inventing a new game based on the Metroid series ? Is there a plot somewhere ? The official site seems pretty vague about this, the demo doesn't much help either.

Speaking of the demo, I have not much to say about it, its a technical demo, I guess many things are subject to be changed or fixed, but if there's one thing which bothers me a lot, its dat HUD. Seriously, what were you thinking making it so huge ? :O_o:

I agree with Quietus, the morph ball looks small, 2 times bigger would be nice... the size of a chozo ball basically.

BTW, "Coven", isn't that the name of that ghost wandering in the Wrecked Ship ?  :lol:

[Yuki]

It's a new game, not a remake. And he made the HUD so big so you can see all of the weapons. IIRC, he has toned it down for the new demo that is releasing soon

[Quietus]

Just to be clear, I didn't mean increase the morph ball's width by 3-4 times, but the total area of the sprite, so it'd be about 1.75-2.00 times wider. :^_^:

[EchoJerichoX]

I'm going to address each thing one at a time in detail...

What is this basically about?/Is there a plot somewhere?: I have not done much in the way of story yet. I feel that story developing in very early stages of development is a waste of time and contributes to feature creep. The only thing I have put out there in terms of story is that it will be somewhere between Prime 2 and 3 on the timeline.

Is that all there is?/What is the goal of this game?: See above.

Remaking an existing Metroid game in top-down perspective?: No. It will be its own individual title.

The HUD has been overhauled and will be probably be done again in the future. As it is, the HUD is pretty cluttered but still an improvement in every way. The next HUD overhaul will spread out the contents of the HUD as well as integrate all of the scannable bits into a detailed status screen, rather than a dominant distraction/eyesore/whatever in realtime play.

Yes, Coven is the ghostly creature that appears in the Wrecked Ship in SM.

I am going to address this Morph Ball thing once and for all... After much criticism from people about the size of the ball, I have upped the size of it by 2 pixels and touched the sprites up a little bit. This is under protest since I think it is an utterly ridiculous thought to make the ball the same size as Samus, which is what you guys are requesting. The old Morph Ball sprites were 7x7. Samus is (Not including the cannon) 15x23. What is the whole point of the Morph Ball in the games? To allow Samus to fit in small places. What would be the point of having the ball if it didn't make you any smaller? Understandably - in the platform games, especially - the ball makes her much SHORTER. This aspect cannot be portrayed well in the top-down perspective. Thus, since this is a NEW TAKE on the series, we had to make her smaller in terms of width and girth.

Under some protest, I still decided to increase the size of the Morph Ball sprites to 9x9. Example (Varia Suit):

Old:


New:

I am having a hard time budging on this and if I come off like an a-hole then I'm sorry. It has been a long-time brewing and a long-standing criticism.

On another note, thanks for the posts guys. I am always happy to answer questions wholly and honestly.

[Metaquarius]

So no goal whatsoever ? I don't believe a word of this.  :neutral:

The HUD has been overhauled and will be probably be done again in the future. As it is, the HUD is pretty cluttered but still an improvement in every way. The next HUD overhaul will spread out the contents of the HUD as well as integrate all of the scannable bits into a detailed status screen, rather than a dominant distraction/eyesore/whatever in realtime play.

That's definitely good to know.

This is under protest since I think it is an utterly ridiculous thought to make the ball the same size as Samus, which is what you guys are requesting.

I'm not requesting anything, I was stating an opinion, proportion aside, I think this morph ball is barely visible on screen, hence, the need to enlarge it. The final decision is up to you of course.  :^_^:

[Qactis]

IMO, there should be a 1 second delay for morphing and unmorphing, as well as an accompanying animation for it. I also think the speed booster animation needs work.

[EchoJerichoX]

A delay between morphing and unmorphing was added but I can, should and probably will extend it.

Was that a joke Meta? If not, then you have clearly misread or misunderstood my post. I said I have not added much in terms of story. Please use common sense... All games have goals, even ones that are vastly incomplete. Whether it is set in story or the player sets their own.

[squishy_ichigo]

The morphball shouldn't turn you into a baseball, that's just silly.

You say that you can't portray her being shorter in a top-down game, and yet its implied that she is shorter if she is in morphball. You can still have her be the proper size, AND have tunnels that you can only go into with morphball.  It just takes the right level design to portray these tunnels.

[EchoJerichoX]

Still wrong. Look at Prime. The ball is WAY smaller. As for the baseball comment, thats just silly itself. Even the old sprite was 3x bigger than her hand in the sprite so the exaggeration was pretty excessive and unnecessary.

[Qactis]

And by way smaller you mean about 3/4 the width of her suit from shoulder to shoulder? By your dimensions listed, the morphball in your game should be around 12x12 or 13x13

[Scyzer]

That was a joke... You didn't need to take it so literally.
[spoiler=Protip]
If you can't distinguish a joke on this forum, you will not last long.
[/spoiler]

Speaking of which, I'm just going to say that I agree with what everyone is saying about the morph ball. In all honesty, the only people who would ever play this game if it were to be completed would be people like us who are quite familiar with the Metroid series, and there are extremely few of us who would see that Samus is morphed and not have the common sense to realise that she is now shorter. There's no need to make the sprite tiny imo.

[EchoJerichoX]

I will take all feedback into consideration. In the meantime I do my updates on Mondays and we will throw ideas around.

Sorry if I come off defensive at times... I take pride in my game and while criticism is something all developers do and must endure, I sometimes take it personally.

[Drewseph]

I would like to point out that the MB in prime made a sphere which when resting on the ground was as high as Samus' waist, or HALF her height in diameter

[ProjectXVIII]

Echoing the criticism about the morph ball being too small, but that's boring, so let's talk about something else. After watching the video, this seems pretty legit. Only real dislikes I have are with the things that will probably be changed later on anyway (hopefully), such as some of the sprites look like ass (for example, the chozo ball is way too big, in my opinion). I also think it would look much better with more custom top-down styled tilesets, rather than just using ones designed for 2D platformers. The speedbooster was also pretty disappointing, needs more speedbooster-esque effects, maybe some Samus-looking speedboosting echoes.

[Zhs2]

Let's try again after fucking ReloadEvery fucked up my post by reloading the page and completely erasing the fucking quick reply bar.

I am going to address this Morph Ball thing once and for all... After much criticism from people about the size of the ball, I have upped the size of it by 2 pixels and touched the sprites up a little bit. This is under protest since I think it is an utterly ridiculous thought to make the ball the same size as Samus, which is what you guys are requesting.

In any other game, I would not be convinced that I could instantly kill Samus by stepping on her while she is in Morph Ball mode. In this game, I am. As for the ball not being the same width, there is a person inside it - you're kind of pushing the envelope on suspension of disbelief when Morph Ball becomes mouse-sized and it did not do so in any other game. Plus, besides being half Samus' height, the main kicker is being perfectly spherical - the space pirate tuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuubes are likely much easier to navigate than if you were crawling or literally rolling as a person.

Understandably - in the platform games, especially - the ball makes her much SHORTER. This aspect cannot be portrayed well in the top-down perspective.

The smallest it makes her is in Super Metroid: she goes from being 2.5 blocks tall to 1. Most other games retain a 2:1 ratio between Samus and Morph Ball. As for being portrayed, squishy's idea is probably for the best, but one of the windows becoming a sort of height meter scan or even a pseudo first person camera would work. Height meter scan idea stolen from MetroidRL.

[Qactis]

Long story short, I think you went about it wrong. Rather than making the morph ball small to illustrate Samus being compacted and able to navigate cramped areas, you should simply find a way to give players a REASON to use morph ball (there doesn't appear to be one short of tunnels at the moment), and then you need to find a way to denote the requirement of morph ball around tunnels and such with graphical hints, or some sort of HUD indicator.

[EchoJerichoX]

Would an 11x11 sprite meet a happy medium between us all?

I took the day to think on this at work.

[squishy_ichigo]

I made a very crude mockup/comparison.

7x7 on top, 9x9, then Samus sprite, 11x11, and last 13x13.

[passarbye]

i think the 9x9 sprite is fine, it doesn't need to be any bigger than that really.
(plus if he keeps increasing morph-ball size, then how will he make morph-ball tunnels when samus is near the same size in width?)

sure, samus' proportions should be relatively the same from game-to-game, however in top-down this does not translate very well because of perspective.
i don't think increasing the size anymore will fix that "issue" you guys are having.
yes, i think it needed to be a bit bigger. but no, i think increasing from 9x9 on out would just fuck everything up.  :<_<:

[Quietus]

Judging my squishy's mockup, even at 13x13, the morph ball is only slightly larger than her head / neck area, and looks like a reasonable size.  I'm confused over the issue of tunnels, since even if you were to use the 13x13, it's still less than half the width of Samus, so surely just making the tunnels thinner would offer the same movement restriction?

I won't labour the point any more, as I don't want you to feel like you're getting mauled over it - it's your project after all! :^_^:

[EchoJerichoX]

Mauled is a good word. It feels like such overwhelmingly negative feedback :blush:.

That aside, I bent a little and decided to go with an 11x11 sprite. It looks so much more detailed now that I decided to scale it up. It looks AWESOME in-game. Here is my full WIP sheet and then below that I put the finished products...








In the WIPs, I tried using different types of light styles. 1- and 2-pixel wide variations and I ended up settling with the outer 1-pixel wide ones.