Hyper Metroid Speedrunning

[bradzx]

Hey Foosda.  Why not upload on youtube?

[foosda]

I record at native resolution, so youtube wouldn't give it the proper 60 fps. I could have just uploaded the local recording somewhere, but it wasn't a good run anyway.

[bradzx]

Well Youtube already improve for 60 FPS.  Alot of people test with 60 FPS on Youtube and it look fine.

[foosda]

less failure of a run, still really really bad

1:16:03 RTA, :58 IGT

[spoiler]
http://www.twitch.tv/foosda/c/6791362
[/spoiler]


Edit: New PB, 1:15:16 RTA, :58 IGT

the first half was played poorly, the second half was played well, tourian was the best I've done so far, seeing as how I'm unable to use gamesaver to practice the metroid rooms.

[spoiler]
http://www.twitch.tv/foosda/c/6795125
[/spoiler]

[lorensj81]

No more speed running attempts?

[foosda]

feel free to do one yourself

[lorensj81]

feel free to do one yourself

hehe, I am having enough trouble just finishing it! ;)

[RealRed]

I've got some mind blowing theoretical sequence breaking concepts in mind. I haven't tested them but I'm pretty sure they're solid, at least for any%.

1. Skipping the missile launcher
Yup. A while back Dmantra showed me an alternate method to early crateria supers: damage boost. By using this, YOU CAN NAB SUPERS WITHOUT

2. Bombs. What? Bombs. I believe they're really skippable. Use supers to get the varia suit, which allows access to springball, charge beam, speedbooster, and powerboats all without bombs.

I'm not sure if this lowers the minimum percent. Missiles are likely still needed to weaken motherbrain's glass, but with the help of speedbooster, bombs might be totally skippable.

Insight?
I'll test this when I get the chance but if anyone else wants to try it, please, I'd love to see where this goes.

[personitis]

Keep in mind that just because something can be skipped, that does not mean that doing so will be faster. Just some background thought...

[RealRed]

While exceedingly difficult, I succeeded at number 1.



I was able to use supers to make it into the varia suit room in the wrecked ship. I grabbed 30 ammo running around crateria. +10 in the pre-varia death hallway in the wrecked ship.
Unfortunately, I got stopped by the varia suit room. The ledge is just way too high up to be reached from any direction with supers, it seems.

Shit! Dammit!

[Behemoth]

Hi all. I know there's a warning about not posting in a thread unless it's been active within the past 30 days but I was unsure about where to post this. Please direct me to somewhere else if this is not adhering to any rules.

In the post below is a theory run I did of this hack showcasing the route used by Galamoz on youtube which gets a time of 51:03. Though it has a few alterations here and there it's mostly 99% Galamoz's path. While browsing here recently I saw some discussion about routes and it seems there's a small handful of them already known. While a heck of a lot of research went into this run on the fly for individual room strats, ammo management and area routing, I did not research the most optimal governing route throughout the planet as it's just too much of a daunting task. So my proposal is that there should be theory runs for all established routes and eventually we can come to a definitive winner some day, unless of course there's ways around this to significantly reduce the workload with clever math/data handling. I put a lot of hard work into this run and I'm very happy with how it turned out, but by no means is it perfect, so please take the time to read the description where I highlight areas that I could have done better.

On a personal note, this was a blast to do this project on this top contender for best hack of super metroid. RealRed, You've created a monster of a game which is finely balanced between newcomer friendly and expert playability. Gorgeous level design. I really liked the Wrecked Ship here over vanilla's. The way you enter it from a small morph ball tunnel style hatch suggests a real crashed space ship and inside is just this massive, dark, looming craft with a starlit 'attic' area, and a murky, flora covered lower area suggesting nature taking over. Maridia really goes off on the water theme with the true ocean design and it's labyrinthine temple area. The journey through Tourian is also quite rewarding. The way you start off with a fully fledged rocky entrance area, shifting to the metallic halls we're used to, the laboratory rooms that have metroids incarcerated in cells barred off with zebitites and then ending up with the organic, fleshy, disgusting area. The true bowels of the space pirates headquarters with even stronger metroids, letting you know shits getting serious (pun not intended). You get the feeling playing this is what Dearforce actually wanted Super Metroid to be like, but due to limitations had to abbreviate a lot of it and in the process still created a classic. Hyper Metroid at times often feels like, given it's name: Super Metroid 2.0

Where the negatives may be: I'd say there's a heavy reliance on very large rooms which can be a chore to traverse, mostly on first time play through. Though perhaps this was just a natural solution to having samus so god damn fast and smooth courtesy of Project Base's physics. While also adding to the "omg I'm on a big planet" feel to the game, so this isn't really a minus. Next up would be the terrible lag the game suffers from at many points, particularly Lower Norfair nearer Ridley and the vast majority of Tourian and the escape. Again it's not so much a design flaw but a consequence of going to town on the design itself, which is a plus in my book anyway. That said, it's a real pain in the ass because it's so easy to make unforced errors and just looks very ugly. As for speed running during laggy sequences, well that's another topic entirely... Last but not least, the bosses. This is probably the weakest part of the hack for me. I feel like their difficulties are all over the place from pathetically easy: Torizo, Phantoon, to "You're fucking dead bitch": Golden Torizo, Draygon and to somewhere in the middle: Botwoon and Ridley. For the ultra hard type bosses there's just no real strategy to avoiding their attacks other than simply 'slugging' it out with them hoping to kill them before your tanks are gone. GT is the biggest culprit here and I feel he should be nerfed for the greater good of the hack. It's possible to keep speed balling under him to get out of harms way, shoot him a few times and repeat, but it just drags the fight out enormously. For Draygon: Having the sparks still float around the screen, albeit much slower gives the fight a decent challenge but his slow/gunk firing rounds are pretty over the top. Then there's the taking away of the possibility of an alternative killing method in the way of the grapple beam electrocution trick. Understandably it would make this fight a bit of a wash out since everyone would choose to do it. One of the biggest draws from vanilla was how we could kill Draygon with shinesparks which has been unfairly taken away here. Even though the ground is small there's still distance to short charge. When I got this the first time I was really disappointed to find that the sparks do no damage to him anyway. So really on the whole there's just no real dynamic to the range of ways to dispatch bosses in this hack compared to vanilla. Testament to my disappointment is the fact that Ridley was by and large the most fun boss to fight since since he's mostly a copied over Ridley from vanilla.

One other small negative was how accessible the super missiles were in crateria from bomb jumping off the crumble blocks. Even though in vanilla we could get early supers from a mock ball over the bridge, there was a method to your approach and you felt rewarded from doing such a cool trick. Here however it's rather lame how such an important item is stranded in this big room with not much effort put into acquiring them. I dunno i think it's really just a stylistic thing for me, and any changes to what item it may be or any alterations to the room to prevent getting them may disrupt the games flow too much for what it's worth.

[Behemoth]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMORoKq7GuQ

[Vismund Cygnus]

Hi all. I know there's a warning about not posting in a thread unless it's been active within the past 30 days but I was unsure about where to post this. Please direct me to somewhere else if this is not adhering to any rules.

The 30 day rule generally only applies if you've got nothing to "add" to the topic. An example of that would be necrobump replying to someone's question that had already been answered.

That route looks pretty interesting though, now that I'm mostly over the horrific experience that was my first playthrough, I am almost considering giving speedrunning Hyper Metroid a chance. But hey, we'll see.  :^_^:

[RealRed]

You can make it out of bounds using crystal flash in the ceiling tunnel of the shutter room. I'm trying to use this to make it into Torian early, but I haven't found anything useful yet. Anyone else want to try?

[Zekator]

Hey there!
This is my first post on metroid construction.

i just finished this hack and its pretty good. This is the best hack I played in terms of arts (great set of tiles, nice colors but couldve been somewhat darker) but bosses were too hard and the rest was too easy. Nothing really suprising. Also didn't really like the easy infinite bomb job even if i can't pull it in vanilla (but thats project base right).
Whatever this thread isnt for reviews...

Main point is
I just wanted to say that Ridley can be bugged in the ground :o
I fought him once and found this bug and I was like omg haha.
You need to activate the crumble blocks JUST before he charges you at a vertical angle. If u make him charge in the crumbled block he will get stuck in the metalish tiles and he wont move at all.
I wasnt sure if I could kill him that way so after hitting him with my super weak gun maybe 100 times+200 ammo in missiles (I barely killed golden torizo with savestates and went right to ridley haha), i went under him so he took me and he got out of the tiles. Then he flew around a bit and just died there releasing the morphed me.

Maybe not for a TAS but for a regular speedrun it might be nice to know :P

[Gala]

Hello, finally made an account on here ><
@RealRed It's a little late to say, but this is an amazing romhack! I knew I just had to speedrun this game while playing through it casually.
I'm looking forward to returning to this game after getting my sd2snes.

[Gala]

My personal best is 59:44 so far. I haven't found other significant route changes than what I have right now...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQXjrQMKUPs

[altoiddealer]

Very entertaining run.  Crazy.

...Belated congrats!

[RealRed]

@Gala Kickass! Great work!

• You can obtain supers without bombs, potentially. There's an insanely tricky damage boost you can pull off using a metal skree. It's tough but you'd save the extra trip!


• Why'd you take the lower route to ruins maridia? There's no bomb wall on the upper route, I think it's faster.


• After Gold Torizo, it may be faster to take a different route to Ridley. Maybe? Lots of brown doors unlock after killing GT but I don't know for certain that they're faster.


• Could you save spore spawn for after Kraid? The way you took was pretty good though. You killed the hell out of him with missiles. It's a long roundabout to highjump otherwise so maybe probably not.

Just some suggestions/ideas. Your cleanup felt pretty solid. Maybe there are ways to save time earlier on but I dunno.
Anyway, very good run. I didn't know you could jump after a bomb jump... wow...

[SirAileron]

I've gotten kind of close to getting Supers without bombs, but I do kind of wish it were humanly possible, lol. I don't know what I'd need to change about what I'm trying to reach Supers early.

[Quietus]

Are you specifically trying to reach them without bombs, or are you trying that because you can't do the bomb-jumping?

In case you're struggling with the bomb-jumping, you may find it easier initially to just jump off the crumble blocks at the bottom rather than trying anything fancy like in the video above. The bomb-jumping in Hyper is pretty lenient, and you just need to lay a bomb each time you move upward (from a jump or another bomb) and just before your upward momentum stops.

Good luck anyway. :^_^:

[personitis]

Not sure if you've seen the video Dman posted earlier about it, but I suppose it wouldn't hurt to repost it.
www.digital-mantra.com/atleasttrybeforeibjstrat.wmv
Timing looks extremely tight if it were to be done under non-TAS conditions. Note the damage boost off of the second-to-the-left Skree pellet, not the left-most one. Height of where the damage boost starts looks to be a really important factor here. Not enough and you'll sail under the ledge across the chasm. Still though, that wall-jump at the end is last minute (at least running the vid back frame-by-frame it seems so).

[Gala]

@Gala Kickass! Great work!

• You can obtain supers without bombs, potentially. There's an insanely tricky damage boost you can pull off using a metal skree. It's tough but you'd save the extra trip!


• Why'd you take the lower route to ruins maridia? There's no bomb wall on the upper route, I think it's faster.


• After Gold Torizo, it may be faster to take a different route to Ridley. Maybe? Lots of brown doors unlock after killing GT but I don't know for certain that they're faster.


• Could you save spore spawn for after Kraid? The way you took was pretty good though. You killed the hell out of him with missiles. It's a long roundabout to highjump otherwise so maybe probably not.

Just some suggestions/ideas. Your cleanup felt pretty solid. Maybe there are ways to save time earlier on but I dunno.
Anyway, very good run. I didn't know you could jump after a bomb jump... wow...

Thanks!

I never have been able to get early supers using the d-boost method. I think it's really really precise and I kind of consider it a TAS-only strat.. although I could have been doing it wrong. I also couldn't find a consistent cwj strat or even got cwj to work at all when I was looking around for more strats.

Despite the bomb wall after the first Maridia elevator, I felt that it was a bit faster/more consistent than the upper route because of the straight runway + gravity suit speed. For a TAS, I assume that the difference between upper and lower paths are marginal at best.

I don't know too much about alternative routes to Ridley after GT. I thought there was only 1 real route to get to him? I might have to look around some more at some point to see if there are better paths.

And saving spore spawn after Kraid is something a couple of us looked into, but I couldn't find a good way to test which way is faster. But I found out that skipping spore spawn and collecting high-jump takes 5 more room transitions and an extra elevator sequence when compared to killing spore spawn and collecting high-jump. So I just decided to go for an early spore spawn route bc of that.

[Gala]

I also did a 100% run some time ago too. The routing could be better?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RRMi7_nj1A&t=6s

And here's that fun TAS I made too for the sake of entertaining TASes. Imagining what if speedbooster was available at the beginning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lymXLF0ATz8