[SM] On Soul Reaver 2 and the idea of Forges.

[QuarterCircleMetroid]

Hey all!

I was replaying through SR2 recently, and just did the last forge, the Fire Forge. For those who haven't played the games and have little to no idea what I'm talking about, a forge in SR2 is just a sort of dungeon in a way that is filled with a single puzzle that is made up of multiple little ones. At the end of it, you get your main weapon imbued with that forge's particular element. Altogether there is four of them, Fire, Air, Light, and the Dark Forge.

I mention this because I thought it'd be a (somewhat) cool idea to do in my hack, or any future ones. I thought it'd work like this:

Crateria is the main overworld, then Brinstar would be like the Charge / Spazer Forge, Norfair would be the Ice / Wave / Grapple forge, the Wrecked ship would be the Gravity forge, and Maridia would be the Plasma forge. Tourian would be the final area in which you have to put all these upgrades to the test.

Each forge would have you go through the area as normal, doing some minor puzzles with the equipment you already have, until you get to the end of the forge when you have to do one last puzzle to get your upgrade, and then traverse back using that upgrade to do more minor puzzles to get out. I'm not thinking puzzles along the line of Portal complexity or anything like that, maybe for actually getting the upgrade, but the minor puzzles would be something simple like finding out how to destroy an enemy in a wall, or how to traverse a room safely, and the major puzzle would be a little bit more complex. The puzzles end with Tourian / the final area.

And if not having a whole area dedicated to being a forge, since that would be a hefty amount of minor puzzles the player would have to go through (unless I make every other room or every two rooms a puzzle room), how about a small portion of the area being a forge to progress to the next area, kinda like how SM is already? And using custom message blocks (haven't looked into how those work so I might be wrong) I could have them pop up when you reach the "forge" area and it'll give the name of the area.

The problem is, I'm not too sure as to how to keep the doors open while you're getting to the upgrade, then having them be locked on the way back so that way you can do the minor puzzles or what-have-you. Maybe just have the doors leading to the item be open, and when you enter into a new room, the door behind you locks until you have the upgrade to unlock it?

[MetroidMst]

It wouldn't be too hard to do with clever use of roomstates. You can change what activates the roomstate change to be a number of things, or make your own events for that.

Another option would be more building, but require no roomstates. (You would however, be building the same exact rooms multiple times.) Basically, when they enter the item room, the door out does not attach to the same room. In the vein of SLT without being SLT, you can connect the exit door to the "same room," except that it is a copy room with nothing changed except for your doors. (Roomstates would be much easier I believe.)

[Crashtour99]

You can use the same level data pointers to save on space.  Still would require different room headers and door pointers however.

[Quietus]

It sounds a little like what is already happening in the original game, in that you need one item to bypass a restriction within a room, and the cycle repeats throughout the game.  You need bombs to reach Brinstar, you need Supers to reach Norfair, you need Power Bombs to explore Maridia, etc.  It just sounds like your hack's puzzles were be more involved and deliberate.  It could definitely work, however, and it would be interesting to see the puzzles' difficulty increase as the hack progresses, making each item more difficult to obtain, but also more rewarding.