Room of the Week 2010 - Archives

[DSO]

It's the corner tile being used in the up-right green section, that one small speck under the upper left "box detail".

[tbolt76]

Here another one from old school  i went all out on the retro this time. and yes I know that door tiles are not the correct color

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[FullOfFail]

This room is nothing special per se, I just like the way I used some of the tiles. The purple in the BG glows blue ingame.
The creature at the top is supposed to be like a lurefish.

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[squishy_ichigo]

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My entry for this week.

Those yellow blocks are crumble blocks btw, making that room quite fun. ;D

This room is doable with only the bomb upgrade, but it would be wise to wait until you had a few more abilities.  To save you the frustration of course.

[Charmander106]

Showing off my remade Crateria foreground...

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[Scyzer]

That is fraking awesome =O
I vote for contest closed right now, because it's obvious who's gonna win. I was just about to submit a piccy, but now I think i'll wait till next week =P

[Quietus]

I agree.  Webber: that is some seriously sexy work.  It's definitely one of those how-do-we-compete pictures.

[DSO]

I must say that the transition between the door cap and the door is a little rough. The Crateria ground itself looks... ghostly? Something about how the foreground seems slightly out of focus.

[FullOfFail]

I know Webber is going to win with flying colors so I'm going to give my vote to Tbolt. Because afterall that is looking really similar Nes Metroid. I feel it shouldn't be over-looked.

I'll edit this comment and give my usual commentary in a little bit.

[DSO]

I voted for Webber, however in the future I recommend .png images, as not only will they be sharper, but I'd imagine they'd be of lesser filesize on images like this.

Tbolt: Faithful to the original, but wow bright green... anyway it gives me a question. Have you ever done the door jumping trick used to access secret worlds? In Norfair, you can go left to the green bubble area, then use the door jump to get back to the purple area. However, since you didn't go through the tube room that sets the palette back to purple, everything is green still. When you go up, the gold brinstar area becomes blue, and the blue becomes gold... anyway, once that's done, the green area that your room is a picture of turns blue. And I love that blue palette... just something I think might be good to look into.

FOF: An instance of fuzzy .jpg... Had the room been full size instead of zoomed out I would've liked the pic better. It reminds me very much of Golden Dawn, only without the annoying hidden puzzles. Very nice.

Squishy: This room looks fun, as in a "You should have at least 70, if not 80 of these kind of rooms in your hack". You were a close second for me, much closer than how the voting is going :P

Webber: .jpg kinda worked in your favor here, cause the blur makes the room look ghostly. I do have some complaints about the doorcap not flowing well with the actual door tiles, and your horizontal/vertical tiles for the tileset don't look that great used next to each other. Maybe if you flip every other one? Anyway, it was the CRE that netted you the win for me, those are epic pipes.

[DSO]

Just playing around until the room reached it's level data limit.

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[Digital_Mantra]

I shall dub that chozo statue in the upper left corner the 'motorcychozle'.
Very nice room DSO. Bit of a color clash but then again I've no idea what FX you'll be using.

[thelicker]

My first entry...



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[Silver Skree]

Well, let's try my hand at this. Since you can't see the darkened water (it has a tide-large that troughs at the bottom of the rightmost platform in the lower half of the room, just below that seaweed and peaks a few tiles below the pipes) or the screen scrolls/bts/plms, some of it may seem weird with just a screenshot. Oh well.
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[JamieWebb16]

My second entry for this week.

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[Hiroshi Mishima]

Well damn, it's gonna be really hard to decide which of these I like the most, and I wouldn't be surprised if some more got posted before Monday. I'd love to post up an entry, but I don't even hold a candle to any of you. Well, that and my "best" looking rooms look like crap outside the game itself...

[DSO]

Things are looking spicy this week. I like.

[Digital_Mantra]

Silver Skree's got my vote.

[tbolt76]

If You want retro  YOU GOT IT!!!! :^_^:

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[Hiroshi Mishima]

All right, since I've noticed some people have gotten lazy and just opt for voting and nothing more, I'm here to remind people that we can (and shall) discuss out impressions/opinions on the entries we're seeing.

DSO: I really liked this entry. A lot. I loved how there appears to be stuff in the foreground and background, which gives it a feeling of being real. The Chozo statues interspersed throughout are a nice, touch as well. Some of them are even mildly amusing, such as the "eyes" on the Chozo statues in the upper left corner appear to be hearts. Or the one in the upper middle "holding" the bulb of a mushroom. The use of colours is a bit.. loud, but overall I think it's a nice feel to it. I'm giving you second place, man. As with Jamie's, I really like how this room looks, but I had to choose between you two and Silver, and his felt the most natural.

thelicker: I want to like this one, I really do. However, since I can't see the background and the markers all over the place, it really detracts from the presentation and doesn't give a good first impression. I do like the bit of background in the upper left corner and if that's the way the rest of it would look I'd have loved to see it. Unfortunately, I didn't make the rules or I'd have liked to seen this as it was meant to be. It's a good take on the Landing Site which I do like to see people making use of, although it does also feel an awful lot like the original with stuff missing and new tiles placed. So that's hurting, too. Like I said, I wanna really like this, because I'm willing to bet it looks a lot better in game. Sorry...

SilverSkree: I remember when you first showed me what you'd gotten done and I was impressed. Then I saw this finished version and I was blown away. I am constantly amazed at how you capture the feel of the original game when you create these new rooms. I could easily imagine this is right out of Super Metroid and not a romhack, and that's always a plus for me.  The use of Layer2 was also quite appealing, like how there seems to be pillars supporting the rocky ledges you can land on instead of them simply floating there. That gives it a more natural presentation. It also incorporates a good use of grapple blocks (which is always fun for a Maridia-based area when not using Gravity Suit). So not only is it functional, it looks like it'd be fun to explore, too. I'm giving you first place, but it was a very hard choice between you, DSO, and Jamie.

JamieWebb: When I first saw this I thought it was gonna be more empty space like thelicker's, then I scrolled and saw something that caught me off guard and amazed me. The lack of doors gives it a very natural feel, and the overall look of it makes me think of spelunking a deep cavern that's filled with vegetation and roots overgrowing what was probably a man-made structure. The little Chozo in the lower left corner was interesting and I'm curious to see how you'd get to it, if you can. It made me think of how I felt when I played Metroid 2, sort of, in that M2 also didn't have many doors and felt more expansive, like exploring ruins. I'm gonna give you second place, too, because I absolutely loved it from a visual standpoint.

tbolt: I honestly don't know how to grade this, because for a Metroid 1 styled room it looks really good, and I've been long interested in making a Metroid 1 styled SM game. I just can't make the damned tiles or I'd be blazing, just ask Silver. The real problem is that compared to the other entries this week, it just doesn't hold up next to most of them. I think what hurts this the most is that it feels like it doesn't take advantage of what Super Metroid allows that Metroid didn't; large rooms. If this'd been a larger scale room, perhaps, I might've had a real situation on my hands. Third place, mate.

[DSO]

I voted for Silver Skree as well, now let's get the party started.

DSO: It does look decent as is, but I suppose it's not the best choice to use that tileset and palette as it uses various glows and FX effects, as well as some custom ASM I've made to really make it shine ingame. No, that's the wrong way to say it... it "shines" as in it's good, but it's actually really dark and creepy. I bet should this ever get into a released hack, no one will actually be able to recognize it from this picture. Currently doing second place is not bad, considering how good the competition was this week.

thelicker: Very open and I hope that star background brings it together nicely. Maybe it's those squares in the dirt tiles that I don't like, and also the way the grass ends is another issue I have... Anyway, enough on graphics. I just wish this room had more tunnels and platforms. I love landing sites that you don't need space jump to explore the map effectively, where tunnels and platforms let you go everywhere. I'm just not as much a fan of hugely open design.

Silver Skree: You got my vote. This room has a lot of things I'd like to pick up on. I'm not going to bother listing every single detail, but it's just the way you use multilayering. It's not a Dmantra type visual festival, which I'm guilty of trying to be like sometimes (see room I posted in this contest :P). Instead, everything you do is to enhance how the room looks naturally, as if it was just a layer1 room. It just feels so natural and lends itself to an epic kind of hack. My favorite little detail is the seaweed toward the upper left part of the room. It's just a tiny, simple use of the effect, but it just enhances the room in a way you couldn't do without layer2 making it fit so well. Most importantly of all, though, it also looks fun to play. It's the most important thing a hack can have.

JamieWebb: Looks like you've got a little Dmantra in you too. I feel that in some ways, especially towards the lower right, the mushrooms were overused, and some of the mushroom designs don't seem right. They're too straight and right angles. I'm sorry, but I think the bottom part of the room could be done better.

tbolt: You're giving me the urge to play the original metroid again. I'm certain that in Super's engine everything will feel so much different, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the differences will play out. As far as the room itself... well, you're following the original well and that's good, but it also means that there's little for me to judge on your own creative skill.

[Sylux]

DSO: Okay room, reminds me a bit of Digital Mantra's work. It looks like it intersects with other rooms in some hidden places. But...those colors...srsly? It hurts my eyes to look at it for more than a few seconds. Tone down the acid-trip orange and yellow. Anyway, its a decent enough room, but there doesn't seem to be anything too remarkable about it besides the bad color scheme.

thelicker: Nice job on that slightly modified landing site. Also, forgot your layer2.

SilverSkree: As Hiroshi said, its a lot like baseline Maridia and looks like it could be part of the original game, but definitely unique and different as well. Very complicated room with lots of little nooks and crannies and different terrain types, with good transitions and naturalistic gradients. Great attention to detail and accessibility. 9/10 room so hot i came on cat he hiss at romhack.

JamieWebb16: Yours is probably the most creative of the entries, combining Crateria and Norfair aesthetic to interesting effect. This room looks very fun and challenging to navigate, and has crisscrossing hallways, which I like; I'm always pleased when rooms double back on themselves. However, it does have flaws; the background is a bit cluttered with all those mushrooms growing out of random places, and the bright green clashes with the rest of the colors. Very strong contender, though.

tbolt76: Graphics are cool, but...its a pretty empty room. Not much to it in terms of level design.


In the end, my vote goes to Silver Skree, but JamieWebb16 was very close behind. Work on your backgrounds a little, and you'll beat that shiny invertibrate next week for sure!

[thelicker]

Just to say, my room have a Layer 2, yes, you can see it in the top left corner.
But the scroll of it is X and Y Axis = 2. Then it not requires all the space of the room. Well, it is very better in the game ^^

[Digital_Mantra]

I'm sure DSO's room would look much better ingame as he likes his FX, however I feel the room isn't very coherent on what the theme is. It seemed a bit like a load of ideas in one room that could have been spaced. Basically saying the aesthetic value isn't balanced with the theme, unless the theme was do all you can wherever you can.

thelicker's room is pretty sweet. I like the hanging cliff path attached to a larger precipice. The tileset might need a bit more work though. The grass is a bit unnatural looking.

I voted for Skree because his room was perfect in every way. Attention to detail but nothing overboard, a conceptual room that holds it's theme without deviating. Better yet for it to be that good and still pertain to regular maridia is nothing short of tile loyalist genius.

JamieWebb's room had a bit too much going on with the mushrooms. Sorta overkill but not a bad room.

tbolt's room was alright. It's not easy to throw a M1 themed room in a contest where people give their all with more advanced tilesets.

[Hiroshi Mishima]

This is just an inflection on my part, but I actually kind of liked the colour scheme used in DSO's room as it was one of the factors that made it hard for me to decide between his, Silver's and Jamie's. And as thelicker confirmed, the Landing Site probably does look a lot better in-game. I'd be curious to see an in-game shot but I know that'd be hard to show without making maybe a quick vid or something. Wouldn't affect my vote, but I would still be interested.