Metroid Coven - Top-down Metroid

[squishy_ichigo]

I had no intention to come across as 'mauling', merely try and give constructive criticism to what otherwise looks like an interesting project.  The baseball comment was merely teasing, so I do apologize if I came off as rude.

Glad to see the 11x11, it looks much better then the 7x7 imo. Hope to see more from you moving forward, keep up the good work.

[EchoJerichoX]

That's okay :) I just felt ganged up on. I see everyone's point now and despite my hesitation, it does look a lot better in-game and my tunnels still work just fine.

When I design my levels, the tiles are such that they overlap the player sometimes as they brush a wall. It adds a subtle sense of depth to the game. My fear in increasing the ball size was that it would overlap too much and not make much sense, but it actually looks a lot better now.

Thanks for the advice guys.

[Quietus]

Great to see that the future players get what they want AND that you're chuffed with it too.  Win-win! :cheers:

[Qactis]

chuffed

[Zero One]

chuffed

That is a word.

On topic, I really like what I've seen so far! The Morph Ball did need to be increased in size, so it's great to see that you've gone ahead and done that. Can't wait to see more development for this and a lot more videos.

[EchoJerichoX]

Well, chuffed has two meanings. I assume he meant, "pleased, satisfied, delighted." :P

But yes, I do plan on putting a new video out soon. My last few weeks of work will be insanely busy so time is extra constrained...

[EchoJerichoX]

Copied this off my site. Just putting this little preface to show that I have acknowledged previous posts.

=======================

Most of my time was spent working at my video store (My last day is on Sunday!), packing up meat and having my going-away party. Therefore, not as much got done as I wanted, but there is still a lot to share.

The main attraction of this post is probably going to be the new Morph Balls. This was a subject of debate amongst myself and others as well as one of my longest-standing criticisms. For the longest time, I had it in my mind that the Morph Ball should always be less than half of Samus' size in any aspect - 3D, top-down and side-view. My reasoning was based heavily on my method of level design; how all of my tilesets are set to a 16x16 or 8x8 grid. In general, Samus is meant to fit in gaps no smaller than 13 pixels wide. As a result, I ended up making the Morph Ball insanely tiny, rather than making it the proper size and then using a 7x7 collision mask. I fought and fought for this to the point where I now feel silly about having fought it in the first place. Increasing the size of the sprite catered to three major things that I had in mind from the start when it came to the player sprites:

1: Simplifying the level design by making Morph Ball tunnels 8 pixels wide.
2: Upping the size of the player sprites allows room for more detail on the sprite itself.
3: Showing a sense of depth by having parts of the scenery overlap the player.

To explain better, look at the following sample:



The purple circles are Samus' actual collision masks. This gives you a sense of depth when you are brushing against walls by making parts of the walls overlap the player - particularly in exterior environments, like in these screenshots:

http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot100-6.png
http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot101-7.png

All this explanation is just postponing what you are all probably wanting to see, so here are the new sprites:



They look excellent, but I might do some more palette tweaking with the Gravity, Phazon and Corruption variations to help give a little more contrast to the edges, in particular. I also used some of Rundas45's side-view Morph Ball sprites for the HUD element. The Corruption one is a placeholder edit and will definitely change. Palettes are slightly different from the actual in-game Morph Balls, but not far. Also, realistically, the Morph Balls in the HUD element don't reflect the top-down sprites, which is something I will fix down the road. For now, these are very adequate placeholders.

Moving on, I have been experimenting a bit with a new tileset. I aptly named it, "Shrubbery" and its purpose is to further attempt to detail the environments with plants and the like. The only trouble is that basically all of the tiles are supposed to be placed on walls. Thankfully, I am in the process of having them converted into original top-down works. Here are a couple screenshots for you to look at so please leave a little feedback:

http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot100-5.png
http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot101-6.png
http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot102-6.png

You can see that I also made the lighting system a lot darker so the lights themselves serve a much better purpose and actually make a difference when you play. I am still tweaking it a little. Other than that, the main things you should be eyeing are the fern-looking plants on the walls and the vines on the walls inside caves.

Veni Mortem has made some nice animations for the ice barriers. One is a shattering animation and one is a melting animation. I have not fully implemented them in-game yet, but the animations are pretty much done. Here they are:




The above are crappy .GIF files, so the transparency is a little messed up and the animation speed is off, but there they are.

Finally, as of late I have been making some new destructible block sprites, such as the Bomb Blocks, Missile Blocks, etc. I will put those up when everything is done. I should have even more stuff to show since I will be re-doing the 8x8 blocks and then making new 16x16 ones.

Some other changes I have made lately include making secrets break more traditionally like in the original games (Breaking one tile to reveal an item under it), adding a different block-break animation and many other things. Other than that, almost all of the sprites for the beams have been redone once again. Here are a couple screenshots from some of the beams that underwent drastic changes:

http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot103-3.png
http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot107-2.png
http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot109-1.png

From left to right: Regular Plasma Beam, charged Nova Beam and charged Dark Beam.

In this next week, I intend to add the ability to draw in pickups by using the Charge Beam and perhaps adding some new mechanic to the Morph Balls to give the player more of a reason to use it outside of going through tunnels. I have tossed around the idea of removing the Screw Bomb and putting the Boost Ball in. Please send me your thoughts on this.

On the topic of sending things, I am no longer using the "metroidcoven.com" email. Please use echojerichox@gmail.com from now on.

That will be all for now... and wow, this update is probably up there with some of the longest I have done!
- Echo

[Qactis]

i'd say the dark beam needs MOAR PURPL but other than that looks fantastic

[EchoJerichoX]

I agree, that was a bit of a slap-together palette. I will adjust it :)

Is this mo' betta? I really like the dark blue trails, but if you think they should be changed as well, just voice it.

[Quietus]

I think the ice shattering animation could do with some tweaking.  It looks like the entire ice block is atomised instantly, and I think it'd look better if it broke into shards.  It'd give it more of a crystalline feel.

[EchoJerichoX]

Yeah, I can understand that. It was something both my spriter and I both were talking about. We ended up sticking with it since I was going to supply other shatter effects in-game. I have plans to have many pieces shatter and scatter. The shatter sprite I showed here was just to be the epicenter of the explosion with 20-30 fragments scattering around the area and bouncing off walls.

[EchoJerichoX]

New update up on new site!: http://www.metroidcoven.com/en/news2.php.

Going to be solely putting updates on the site now, since I would have to make forum posts on 6 other forums.

[VacantShade]

I remember playing this years ago when it was on the Gamemaker Sandbox. Always thought it was a neat concept, sad that it has been abandoned...
Any chance there is a working demo still floating around? I would love to check it out again!

[Nommiin]

I remember playing this years ago when it was on the Gamemaker Sandbox. Always thought it was a neat concept, sad that it has been abandoned...
Any chance there is a working demo still floating around? I would love to check it out again!

I know this thread is ancient, but I'm only just now seeing it! As for the demo of the game, I don't seem to have any builds of it from my playtesting days but I did find the game's source code on Jericho's GitHub account: https://github.com/EchoJerichoX/Metroid-Coven-Real

As for a build, I went ahead and pulled the latest project file (hopefully) and built it myself... be weary of any bugs!
https://nomm.dev/misc/MetroidCoven005.zip

[EchoJerichoX]

Really flattered that you necro'd my thread just to try to compile the current state of the game, heh.

I know it's been years, but here is the newest repository, you are welcome to clone and tool around with it as you like: https://github.com/EchoJerichoX/Metroid-Coven

Just so y'all are aware, I have never really put a pin in this project. I also don't think I ever fully planned on a final release either. I used it mostly to learn how to code and have fun with all the aspects of game design in hopes it might spark someone's professional interest someday. I might never take it farther from that.

If I had a team of people fully committed to me, I would 100% complete it with them. I would need an advanced coder, a great pixel artist readily available, and someone to make original sounds and music, probably. That is way too much to ever ask of anyone with those skills for free, so I never got my hopes up.

Anyway, enjoy! Hit me up anytime on my Discord server if you wanna hang. Fair warning: we can be a profane lot. https://discord.gg/EapDFbm

[FelixWright]

Really flattered that you necro'd my thread just to try to compile the current state of the game, heh.

I know it's been years, but here is the newest repository, you are welcome to clone and tool around with it as you like: https://github.com/EchoJerichoX/Metroid-Coven

Just so y'all are aware, I have never really put a pin in this project. I also don't think I ever fully planned on a final release either. I used it mostly to learn how to code and have fun with all the aspects of game design in hopes it might spark someone's professional interest someday. I might never take it farther from that.

If I had a team of people fully committed to me, I would 100% complete it with them. I would need an advanced coder, a great pixel artist readily available, and someone to make original sounds and music, probably. That is way too much to ever ask of anyone with those skills for free, so I never got my hopes up.

Anyway, enjoy! Hit me up anytime on my Discord server if you wanna hang. Fair warning: we can be a profane lot. https://discord.gg/EapDFbm

Yee-Haw, dude! I'm happy to see another fangame project that isn't dead. I don't think I can help but I just joined the server anyway. Once again, very cool to see a sign of life!

[EchoJerichoX]

Glad I could bring someone's hopes up!

Also, I updated my original post if y'all want some more recent screenshots.

Enjoy!

[EchoJerichoX]

Hey y'all, wanted to pop in with a progress report and a poll: https://strawpoll.com/5xdse2sc Please let me know the results :) If you want more info, hit up my Discord which is linked in the first post.

Here is a cleaned-up dump of my GitHub changes since I picked the game back up for development!
- Added death sequence. Can now "continue" or "quit to title" after dying, complete with a game over screen and background music.
- Added music handling engine. All musical actions called from one line of code (starting, stopping, fading, switching, temp-muting, etc.).
- Added message handling engine completed. Includes 4 different types, subject to change: Standard, scan, notification, and option.
- Added on-demand screen fade and flash engine.
- Fixed Zoomers not animating.
- Further slowed down rotation of intro scene planet.
- Fixed tile tearing issue when view moves.
- Fixed transitioning issue that enabled us to pickup items that were in the center of a room on entry.
- Multiple room adjustments and fixes, including adjustments to design planning around tile layers.
- Removed old test code from vector collisions that was screwing up physics with oDestroyAnim.
- Fixed ability to open pause screen on Title, Intro, and Death rooms.
- Reorganized, renamed, replaced, and normalized volume of many assets in project file.
- Space pirate planning stages established.
- Updated various asset names and variables within eId (master controller) for consistency and clarity.
- ... and much more.

Honestly, the current state of the game is playable, but missing a lot of the features I want before I release anything. Here is my checklist for what I think is needed, off the top of my head, before I am satisfied enough to release anything:
- At least 2 more enemies, including Space Pirate, which will be a large undertaking in itself.
- Reduce room count in demo to a "less is more" sort of experience. Less exploration elements, more of a tech demo.
- Revise the HUD completely.
- Get the map system working. First, I need to DECIDE on a map style though... I considered just an outline of rooms without the secrets, but the traditional Metroid map seems okay too. I have already built a lot of elements around what would be used if we go with the traditional style.
- Obviously a decent bit of bug fixing and polish.
- Round out the items we currently have completed. I still plan to add a handful more powerups so the game is not as stale as "oh, I found Plasma, I guess we're done" or whatever similar end-game item is commonly indicative of "no more cool stuff to find". Grapple Beam, Diffuser, Lightsear, and any visor beyond the combat one will not be showcased in the first demo. These require vast rewrites and revisions to get how we want them to be.

Anyway, a demo is not as far off as it seems at the rate I have been going.

If anyone has any questions or wants to help out, please come visit my Discord :)

Take care!
- Echo

[Draconic]

Whoa! I thought this game had been dead for years! I'm thrilled to learn that I'm wrong!

Honestly, what excites me most about this project is how much could be done with the engine. I can imagine a whole subset of top-down Metroid games being created with Coven as the base once it's finished. Assuming, of course, that there are enough modules that are independent of one another.

Incidentally, what language are you using to program the game? I can't promise I'll be able to help any time soon, but nevertheless, I'd like to know for reference.

[EchoJerichoX]

This is being made on Game Maker Studio v1.4.9999. Glad you are excited to see it!

[DarkHiei]

i remembered playing this like 7 or so years ago, a test alpha release, and was impressive work, i hope this can see the light someday.