[SM] Z-Factor Hack v1.3

[Metaquarius]

SGE has planned to make a vid related to the SS room at some point, I'm not sure this is still current. In the meantime, I wouldn't mind if a map is made too.  :^_^:

Otherwise, I should mention that getting to that place requires a good amount of underwatery skills and an excellent knowledge of Zaridia region, so this might be a pain for the average player.

[DonnyDonovan]

I finally looked at Danibub's map but only because I got completely fed up in one certain room, figured that couldn't be the way, but it turned out that it was in fact the way.  It's a fun accomplishment but it's one of those things most players would only do once simply because of all the underwater acrobatics and ceaseless enemy freezing/unfreezing it entails.  If I can pull it off it's certainly something almost anyone could do, the question is whether or not a person wants to try. 

[Digital_Mantra]

In the meantime, I wouldn't mind if a map is made too.  :^_^:

[spoiler][/spoiler]

[advancedpillow]

I did it. I made it to the secret room. Very cool room. But I will never do this again.  :FURY:
Good puzzle design, though. Thanks for the assist Dman. This route would be impossible without that guide.

[Digital_Mantra]

I've already made an intended path and speedrun of Z-Factor on youtube, I could do a secret room video if you wanted.
It would take awhile, and annoy the hell out of me but I would do it.

[MetroidMst]

It would take awhile long, long time.

Good grief. This is certainly an interesting thing to record and put together. I may be able to slip this video into existence at some point within the next few weeks, but it could be later depending on life and Zaridia. It will happen though.

[Digital_Mantra]

I can do it in 1 day.

[MetroidMst]

I have yet to do it once. And on top of that, I am trying to do a couple of things. But that will manifest itself later.

[Quietus]

I've already made an intended path and speedrun of Z-Factor on youtube

I'd be interested in seeing those.  Can I get your channel / username?  I tried DMantra, but couldn't see anything more recent than Eris. :neutral:

[Digital_Mantra]

http://www.youtube.com/user/arntard

[Quietus]

Thanks. :^_^:

[Digital_Mantra]

Will upload path to secret room later today.

Edit:
[spoiler]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWYhfKkH5Ok[/spoiler]
(some parts are sped up due to copyright strikes to my account so I can't go past 15 mins anymore T.T)
Then again speeding up underwater fish freezing isn't that bad..

[Quietus]

The bizarre thing is that with my experience in sequence breaking, I actually crossed the first room with the fish / grapple on my first play of Z-Factor.  Obviously I had no idea, and got nowhere near the route after that, as I had assumed it was going to get me stuck, and I turned back. :^_^:

[snibsnib]

I made a video of this a while ago with a slightly different method and minimal items (no wave and only 3 e-tanks). The vid is for snes9x-rr 1.51.

[mw]

I finished 1.3 with 13 hours played and 82% and wanted to register just to post my comments.

I think it was great for the most part. It was fun to play, the environments were beautiful and the puzzle design was very solid. I did get stuck briefly in various parts but it was nothing unexpected with a Metroid game. The only part that I thought gave me the wrong signal was near Ridley's entrance. In the room nearly directly below him with the two pairs of grapple blocks and a fall back to a previous room I noticed the locked door and assumed that's where I want to go. Since I had seen an alternate path earlier and the opposite side of the room was seemingly mirror image from the way I came I assumed I had to go back, finish the other path, enter from the opposite side and the door would be open. I did notice the out of place block eventually and managed to proceed. Other than that there were no serious issues. I would never have figured out the Wrecked Ship dry to wet jump had I not been locked in the room but I was so it came to me eventually. Maridia took a while but just by using the process of elimination I found my way with no real issues.

Item wise I seem to have gathered all of them in the correct order so the issues of earlier versions that I noticed in the thread seemed to have been solved. I did get Spring Ball last but it was a conscious decision to proceed without it at first. I came back for it after Ridley and it was where I thought it would be. The only problem with a map this large is that you're bound to forget some of the doors you've been to and been unable to pass earlier and thus it would be awesome to have a map that showed door colors, but I suppose it's not really possible for SM hacks so I'm not considering this a downside.

What I do, however, consider a downside is the difficulty of this hack. The game is very, very, very frustrating to play at worst. This isn't my first hack and I consider myself a relatively skilled player in general and I would never have finished without save stating. 99% of the frustration in the game involved the Grapple Beam and coincidentally the first place I save stated was after getting the Beam. Later on I just save stated after every grapple jump because the punishment for failure was too harsh. I have to run all the way back there? And do several most-likely-to-fail grapple jumps on the way? No thanks, I think I'll just go back there instantly. I always opted to infinite bomb jump to avoid grappling, every time. This was most notable in Maridia and I specificially remember the fly-lit cavern in Brinstar. I tried to grapple it three times before I just ran over the spikes and bomb jumped up. I can only think of a single non-grapple instance of this but I think there were others too. Why wouldn't all of the crumble blocks reappear right before Dreygon? If I fail the charge I have to do this all over again. Why?

This provided quite the contrast for the boss fights that were laughably easy, another thing about the difficulty that I found weird. Outside of frustration and bosses the difficulty was spot on and this inconsistency in difficulty is the only major complaint I have.

Enough with the negative comments though. Many sections of the game were very memorable. The morph ball statue, the sneak peek of the egg containing X-ray, the actually helpful monkeys, the egg boss, the Screw Attack room,  entire Tourian, hell I was about to name Maridia, WS and all of the areas here but let's just leave it at that. There are definitely things to see and the are pleasant sights indeed.

I liked it a lot, thanks for making and sharing the hack.

[Quietus]

I can agree with most of that.  I think the thing with Grapple is that so many players are now experienced with the original game that they never use it, so skill is limited.  Therefore when hacks choose to use it, it makes us all feel like trial-and-error n00bs again. :^_^:

[Jordan5]

So I've finally finished Z-factor v1.3 in a time of 12:35 and with 82% items.
[spoiler][/spoiler]

I have to say I really enjoyed the hack overall, definitely one of the best hacks currently out there and I'd love to play any possible future updates you have.

I have to agree with mw, however, as any time i could avoid using grapple I would, often opting to IBJ up a room which took ages. I know I'm not the best at grapple but I've never really been one to IBJ anywhere (although after playing this I've gotten pretty good). The other thing is the entrance to Dragon, after getting to his room though all the puzzles i only had 3 E-tanks left and there was no place to refill properly. I thought some re-spawning bugs a few rooms back would've been a lot better, or removing the puzzle before the shinespark to his room.

I enjoyed the challenge and the rest of puzzles of the hack, there never seemed to be any clear cut path for most of it which was nice as you just got to explore round and get a feel for the hack. lots of items were very well placed and your graphical hints were subtle, yet noticeable enough to pick up on if you had a half-decent look.

Tourian was just incredible. It's been a very long time since I've been scared by some metroids but this hack certainly had my heart racing. The way when you destroyed the machine the lights went out and the whole place was in lock-down was a great idea - it's how Tourian should be. The escape was good too, not many hacks have I ran out of time but even in my second attempt time wasn't exactly on my side [spoiler][/spoiler]

So overall I thoroughly enjoyed this hack. it is definitely one of the top 3 I've played so far. Keep up the good work and I look forward to seeing what you make in the future  :^_^:

[Quietus]

I'm not sure when it was last updated, but in case anybody is interested, Danidub's map for v1.3 now contains more room detail, and also displays the route to the secret room.  I happened to notice that it differed from the v1.3 map I had already  Anyway, you can grab it from Danidub's Map Station. :^_^:

Edit: Speaking of which: Danidub, do you have a version of the map with all of the room detail, but without the secret room path?  If so, I'd appreciate it if you could post it.

[Balchmorn]

i was wondering what is item progression?, i just got supers and charge beam, i cant figure out where to go

[MetroidMst]

Now you need to be headed towards Norfair. There will be a green door in Brinstar you can get through now. Once you are in Red Brinstar, you can take two paths. One is a sequence break to Varia Suit, which isn't hard to pull off and I highly recommend grabbing, and the other leads to multiple heat runs in Norfair while you collect some more major upgrades.

[Balchmorn]

i already sequence broken to varia suit, now i am suspecting based on map that item next is p bomb? i dunno, i am not sure where to go next, map is pretty confusing and doesnt imply the clear hint of where to go next like i am used to from other maps like phazon, eris, and what not

[Quietus]

If you're using the map from the outset, it will likely be harder, because you'll remove the exploration, which naturally teaches you about what is blocked off.  Anyway, if you're in Norfair, you'll want to be grabbing Hi-Jump, Wave, and Ice, and THEN heading for the Power Bombs.

[craighypheno]

AAAHHHHHHHH I'VE JUST ENTERED ZARIDIA.

I'm playing v1.3 and not gotten into too much trouble so far, though I've been slightly out of practice after exams so the heat running was fun, plus bearing in mind I was never fantastic at this game to begin with ;)

Really enjoying it though!

[godeny]

I've just started v1.3 and I found it really impressive. I know that a lot of people already said this (I read ALL the previous posts... :grin: ), but I think I should say it anyway. Metaquarius, if Z-Factor is really your first hack, I can't wait for the next ones. The game make me feel like I'm playing a new version and not a just "more of the same". About the statue that holds the morph ball, I think I saw something like that in SM Zero Mission. You brought it from Zero Mission or you really created it? Anyway, the room is epic!

But I must say I struggled a little trying to make my emulator run the hack (I'm using ZSNES 1.51). I thought it would run like Redesign (I have it in .srm file), until I download it and find out that was a .ips file. After searching how to use, I've noticed that the hack wasn't working, due to the version I had be an european rom. So I've downloaded a pack with a lot of "versions" (explanations below) of SM. I patched the american/japanese version with the v1.0 using snestool and it worked. Then I tried with v1.3 and I found a bug.

The "versions" of SM are just the same game with little differences (the files are named with [!], [b1], [b2], [f1], [f2] and so on). The file that worked well with v1.0 was the [!] one, while the [b1] one worked with v1.1, v1.2 and v1.3.

Maybe all of this sounds very obvious, but I thought the info could be useful for noobs like me.  :heheh:

And sorry if my english isn't well written, but I swear I didn't used Google Translate. :lol:

EDIT:
This was my first post, so now here goes the image of the bug
[spoiler][/spoiler]

[Quietus]

Um, linking to ROMs or their sites is a no-no.  You'd better get rid of it. :^_^:

As for hacks and ROMs: Almost every hack is designed to work with the (JU) version of the ROM, so you should try that first with each hack you try.  The [!] just means that it is a good, clean dump of the ROM, and is ideally the one you should use.  Ultimately, the ROM you'll use will be "Super Metroid (JU) [!].smc".