[SM] Z-Factor Hack v1.3

[Quote58]

don't know if people have pointed this out yet, but the game freezes trying to use x-ray in a bunch of rooms. Only norfair though I think. Might want to fix that.

[Weterr123]

Just started on this.

Just got to jungly green brinstar and had to give initial thoughts.

1) Not too keen on the name 'Z-Factor'. However, this actually means nothing, a name is just a name I guess.

2) Morph. Ball. Room. EPIC.

I was immediately put into a state of awe when I saw the face-on Chozo statue holding the morph ball, echoing the power grip obtainment from Zero Mission. Then, upon collection, it's eyes glowed red...
I can safely say that all other games and activities will be taking a back seat as I go through what looks to be very promising  :grin:

3) I don't like the corner tiles meeting up all the time. I think having corners meet up in the middle of a wall looks quite awful - it's like a set of arse cheeks trying to camouflage themselves, yet the crack gives them away. I can't help but check each of these with bombs, as they stick out to me.

4) I do however, like the level design, and that you're using different backgrounds but still using vanilla tiles. I think so far, my fave hack using vanilla tiles is Cliffhanger (Original). And given that, the following statement is making me excited for the rest of the hack:

review: this is pretty much one of the best hacks ever made.

I will give a detailed review when I'm done  :^_^:

[GoldenTorizo]

So far, this is a very good looking hack. Some of the rooms look very, very impressive mainly the Morph Ball room.
I'm lost... I have no Idea what to do next, I'm basically going in circles... I went to Norfair and got the High Jump Boots, what do I do now? Other than this, nice looking hack. :)

[MetroidMst]

If you have Varia, stay in Norfair until you pick up Ice, Wave, and Power Bombs.

[Weterr123]

4:30am and Supers have been acquired  :grin:

I should, but don't want to go to bed  :lol:

[DonnyDonovan]

I've played through power bomb acquisition on 1.0, and my frustrations are the same as everyone's.  Now I have to decide whether to start over on 1.2 to make the game an overall better experience. 

[Metaquarius]

Z-Factor v1.2
Huge update fixing lotsa stuff based on all feedback gathered during the past week.
Check out the main post for patch and complete changeLog.

Warning : this patch is not compatible with previous version saves, even if it seems to work, don't play this with an old save since some doors ids has been changed as well as room offsets.

Thank you for your support everyone.

[Zhs2]

Cool update, but there still seems to be a permastuck directly accessible to the right of your ship with morph ball... :razz:

Edit: Now that I've been playing this for a few minutes, I feel like map stations make things way easier than they were meant to be. Hopefully full map reveals take more of a backseat later on, since what killed a lot of motivation to play this hack was not the wandering aimlessly about, but the lacking better markings for secret passages on the intended route. (Bomb Torizo's hint was perfectly fine. Brinstar's map may not point out the full route TO Spore Spawn, but his room and the passage to it are very clearly marked on the map as well as the entire upper section of Pink Brinstar. Hum.)

[Metaquarius]

Cool update, but there still seems to be a permastuck directly accessible to the right of your ship with morph ball... :razz:

Why someone had to find that permastuck ? :portal:

Oh hey, you're right about the Brinstar map, it needs some adjustements indeed (might be also the case for Norfair and Zaridia)

[DonnyDonovan]

In that case I think I'm going to wait for 1.3 then start over.

[Metaquarius]

In that case I think I'm going to wait for 1.3 then start over.

Hey, that's just a matter of setting up which map tiles should be revealed by map stations, nothing fancy really. But I'm waiting to have a little more content to fix before making a new update.  :^_^:

[DonnyDonovan]

Understood.  The well-discussed frustration with some of the exploration of the main path aside, what I've played so far of 1.0 is excellent, BTW. 

[MetroidMst]

Just to reiterate some points I've made about the hack in general in IRC and add some more thoughts that popped in my head. First off, to echo the point of Zhs2, the main path and exploring around all over the place isn't the issue. The one thing that needed done is much better hints for the main path. Otherwise, there are just the perma-stucks to take care of, and a couple of other minor details. One of these details is in the room before Crocomire. If it hasn't been changed yet, it would be wise to not require the destruction of "that" enemy in the Space Pirate room.

Other than that, I haven't really come across another detail that might help. The only other thing is that you may want to check rooms in Norfair to make sure the XRay doesn't crash them. And since you removed it, put my gate back in. (You knew that was coming up eventually!)

[Crashtour99]

One of these details is in the room before Crocomire. If it hasn't been changed yet, it would be wise to not require the destruction of "that" enemy in the Space Pirate room.

Dunno if this is just me, but I killed Crocomire (now wandering through Zaridia) without ever seeing that room.

[Aerezoloh]

Not sure if this is affecting everyone, or just myself but I figured I would do well to bring this to attention. Just after defeating Phantoon, I got out, and found myself stuck, unable to do anything. Power Bomb to indicate where Samus ends up after leaving the boss room.

[spoiler]


[/spoiler]

Related to also getting out of the boss room here. The room leading to Phantoon ends up looking like this, which would be fixed by pausing, and unpausing.

[spoiler]

[/spoiler]

This is all on a clean ROM with version 1.2 of the hack. Emulator used being SNES9x 1.53.

[Derakon]

Okay, I've finished my run. Nominal time 06:11 -- but I probably spent twice that in fruitlessly wandering around. My habit of keeping a trail of savestates so I can rewind when I go the wrong way was definitely a blessing here. 73% item collection (all but one E-tank, 200 missiles, 25 supers, 15 power bombs, I think 2 reserve tanks, and all key items except Spazer).

Tourian was fantastic, and I can't really say more without spoiling it, but I wanted to leave that out there for people who are still struggling with earlier parts of the hack. So let's just move on to the overall review.

[spoiler]A lot's been said already about how hard the critical path is to find and stay on; I've said my piece in prior posts, I don't think I need to belabor the point there any more. So let's look at some other things:

1) The environments are very nice. The tilesets are used well, there are few rooms that look the same, and while the planet is a gigantic labyrinth, outside of Zaridia and some parts of Brinstar I was generally able to orient myself well. That said, I do feel like a lot of ornamentations were used meaninglessly -- perhaps I've gotten spoiled by hacks that use cracked walls to indicate where you can bomb or the like, but there were many times where I'd say "Hm, that wall looks suspicious" because of the tiles used, when it turned out to be just another wall.

One Norfair observation: what's all that water doing here? There's water in one room, lava in the next. It just feels weird.

2) There was, I feel, a slight overuse of sidehoppers / desgeegas, especially of the giant variety. These are the hardest-to-avoid enemies, since they tend to come in fast and not leave much room to maneuver. Throwing them into narrow corridors (especially that watery Brinstar corridor leading to Maridia where you can't jump properly) is not much fun.

3) The various tweaks to the code were great. The starts of the Crocomire and Draygon fights, the glowing / blinking eyes in the early game, and of course much of Tourian. Little touches like that go a long way to improving the atmosphere of a hack.

4) Suitless underwater segments have never been much fun. But this hack also taught me to hate sand. Sand is everywhere in Maridia! It sucks! Literally! The fact that you have to test a lot of sandpools to see if you can fall through them, and generally end up just getting spiked for your trouble, is not so great either.

The recommendation to put a platform in the middle of the Botwoon fight is, IMO, a good one. It's not like the middle is the safest place to be during that fight anyway.

5) What the heck was that dead soldier referring to when he said "Don't enter the ship from the back"? And BTW, it's "died and gone to heaven", not "gone and died to heaven".

6) The Tourian escape was on the whole pretty decent, but I have to say that one bit was frustrating -- that segment where you have to run along a crumble bridge and then jump up a spike-lined shaft. The problem here is that speedbooster makes placing precise jumps like that very hard, and if you hit the spikes then you're liable to fall through the crumble blocks.

In fact, there's a number of locations where you have to do tricky platforming with significant time penalties if you screw up. The conveyor jumps in the Wrecked Ship that Digital_Mantra mentioned is another example, and I know I've seen others that I can't now remember. As long as you have sections like that, playing the game without savestates is not really practical, since screwups are very easy and the penalty for screwing up is a lot of lost time. That gets frustrating fast![/spoiler]

Okay, that's about all I can think of for now. I think this is one of those hacks that would really benefit from a recorded playthrough; maybe if nobody's made one in a few weeks, I'll do it.

[Quote58]

maybe if nobody's made one in a few weeks, I'll do it.

MetroidMst has a recording of his playthrough. The first episode of the lp is up already.

[GoldenTorizo]

Found the Ice, Wave, and Varia suit, but I'm just going in circles to find the Power Bombs... WHERE ARE THEY?! D:

[MetroidMst]

Stay in Norfair. Look for a spot in the bubbly area of Norfair and a spot where you need to freeze a Waver to jump up and into another path. That will take you to a lava pit with dragons you need to freeze, and continue on that path. You'll reach Power Bombs soon.

[Metaquarius]

Not sure if this is affecting everyone, or just myself but I figured I would do well to bring this to attention. Just after defeating Phantoon, I got out, and found myself stuck, unable to do anything. Power Bomb to indicate where Samus ends up after leaving the boss room.

Damn it => I've updated v1.2 with a door fix, download the patch again, this should work now (compatible with your saves). Sorry for that. :sad:

Thanks for your review, Derakon. Several issues you mentionned have been fixed in newer updates, you might want to check the changeLog available in the main post. Something that might requires a bit more work is the overuse of ornamentations in some rooms which can be misleading indeed. Concerning the Maridia suitless sequence, I think this won't be changed since it would imply to alter a bunch of rooms and I don't want to make the updates too much different from the v1.0. The only exception so far is the remote gate switch in Southeast Brinstar that was removed because it is extremely confusing and cause the player to wander aimlessly throught the whole planet in search of a spot to progress with power bombs.

[Lunaria]

I will keep going on my run further soon, in other news: I have been asking this question several times in several places and I really want an answer to it; Do you plan on doing any palette changes to the hack in the future?

While I feel that the original palette may play on nostalgia for many, changing it up will make the hack more creative and stand out more; At least that's how I feel. Keep in mind, that even hack such as Redesign did indeed mix up the palette, even if many players seem to have failed to notice it.

[Metaquarius]

I will keep going on my run further soon, in other news: I have been asking this question several times in several places and I really want an answer to it; Do you plan on doing any palette changes to the hack in the future?

Short answer : No
Long answer : I really want to either take some vacations or work on something else, that hack gave me enough joys and nightmares. But I get your point, this is not a bad idea, like I said I'm not in the mood to do palette changes right now, may be later. :wink:

[GoldenTorizo]

Aha, I found Spazer and Speedbooster. Now where is that Grapple Beam?

[MetroidMst]

Find Kraid, and Grapple will follow.

[Derakon]

That reminds me: at least in 1.0 the path to Kraid is really dickish; I went over the same two or three rooms over and over again before finally finding the way forward. I was in the right place; I just wasn't finding the path.

[spoiler]Putting the way forward inside a normally damaging bit of terrain (one of those plant things) basically requires the player to jump into every pointy bit of the map in the hopes that this one isn't actually harmful. And there's a lot of pointy bits in that particular section of the map.[/spoiler]