Update On Blue Glass and the Future... (v2)

[AuroraxPhilic]

UPDATE:
It's been awhile... When I first started on this Proof of concept, I had high hopes for what could be done in Nestroid. Unfortunately, My vision of what for what I wanted this hack to be cannot be done proper with Nestroid, and I am offically calling this project dead. Tbh... what killed this project was lack of tools, and lack of will. I might move this project off into SM territory, or as a stand alone game in the future...but for now...I leave you ...with v2. A perfected demo: [Below]
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I'll get this out of the way first. I have no clue how to use pictures on here. Yes yes...total noob. So instead, you can view some screenshots here:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B_GjdtGzab54aGVlR1QzVTh1MW8?usp=sharing

Now on to the important parts.

That's right, you read the title right, I have been working on a Metroid Nes hack for god knows how long. In the last week, I decided to knuckle down, and get it into a playable state. This is my first attempt at a Nestroid hack, and it was mainly for the purpose of figuring out how to hack this bloody game. I've definitely learned a thing or two, but I also have much to learn.

The inspiration for the odd door scrolling was from a really old hack with some random doors where morphball used to be. I took this odd concept, and with the help of Snarfblam's Door patch, I was able to go nuts with it. I tried my very best to make many new rooms, but many rooms had to be scrapped due to bad pallet issues. It was an absolute nightmare to fix and get working. I wouldn't be surprised if someone found a way into changing the pallets completely.

Another very important source of motivation was of course seeing Grimlock, and his hacks. I would be lying if I said I never abandoned this hack, because I did; something, however, always told me I needed to continue work on this. At first I wanted this to be just a simple level layout edit, but as I went on, I wanted it to be more. Heck, even in it's current state, this hack is NOWHERE near finished, but I thought I'd scrub up a demo for you all to play. This demo isn't very short. It will take you about an hour or more to complete. Trust me.

I guess you can call this demo a slight drink before the Rogue Dawn bomb shell rains upon us all.

P.S Don't ask why she's a furry. Just accept it.

#ProjectBlueGlass

-GEONET.

[AuroraxPhilic]

Oh, a 1.1 already. Yeah...

*Sigh* This "new" version, fixes a scrolling and pallet mistake I overlooked.
It also fixes other very minor things.

[Grimlock]

Nice to see another Metroid hack on here.   :cool:

You mentioned palettes being an issue for you.  If you're using Editroid you can easily modify the palette through the palette editor feature.  There's also a much more sizable feature called the advanced palette editor but generally you'll do most of your enemy and structure palette changes in the basic editor.

There's also the ability to do animations in Editroid that you should take advantage of.  I always encourage people to create their own graphics, I see you changed the doors and a few other minor changes.  You should consider taking the risk with a more extensive custom tile set.  You can use Tile Layer Pro to do most of your editing.  If you're a Photoshop user there's a few techniques for creating graphics there and converting them into something you can insert into the ROM.

[AuroraxPhilic]

Hey Grimlock. Sorry for snapping about Rogue Dawn's release date. You just gotta understand man...it's something I'm extremely excited for, and every time you announced a release date, I got hype, then disappointed. But hey...it's ready when it's ready.

Ah. The pallet issues I was having, wasn't editing the pallets per sé. It was getting the bloody pal swappers to work. With my insane layout of the original concept, Nestroid was just having a hard time with pal swaps, since it can't really do that in vertical rooms. A bit disappointing; found out late in development of this; changed all my rooms to accommodate this. It was bad. And caused me a lot of fustraition, moving things around drastically.

Hmm. Yeah. I was absolutely thinking of an overhaul of the graphicss, as I've been doing a bit of pixel art, but it way more tricky when you only have 3 colors to work with, and just a few pixels. :3
This demo was mostly a Proof of Concept more then anything, to see if I could make something decent. I didn't wanna go all out yet, because I had just barely started out, and had no clue what I was doing.

I used 3 programs for editing graphics: Tile Layer Pro (found it very annoying to use even with hacking Sonic games with it in the past still made it tricky for me to figure out), YY CHR (which I absolutely love for simplicity) , and another program on iOS called ArtStudio, which I do most of my semi professional drawings with. ArtStudio is basically just a Photoshop-esk  program for iPhones n' such, but I use an iPod. Cause it's all I have. I start here, then move the concept to YY CHR for finalization.

I knew the way I did my animations looked a bit choppy. But I wasn't sure how to smooth them out. I'm not sure if you've ever done an animation tutorial in the past...but if you haven't, it be cool if you could show me how to do animations with editroid.

I also tried reaching you for help, but PMing didn't seem to work or something, and I'm not one who likes to bug people, so I just tried figuring things out myself.

I will be scrapping this version of the hack, as Blue Glass is only just a working title, and this was so poorly made in the beginning. I'll be starting from scratch next time.

One last thing, once you get through the hack, can you tell me what you think of it? Criticism would be most appreciated.

[Thirteen1355]

The hack looks fairly interesting. When I have more time, I will take a better look.

[Grimlock]

Some of my tutorials I did here in the MC forums:



Basic Graphics Editing for Metroid 1 - (Using Tile Layer Pro)  - Includes info regarding animation.
http://forum.metroidconstruction.com/index.php/topic,3635.0.html

Creating Realistic Terrain
http://forum.metroidconstruction.com/index.php/topic,3209.0.html

Advanced Screen Scrolling Transition Technique
http://forum.metroidconstruction.com/index.php/topic,3208.0.html

Using Guitar Tablature in Metroid Tuner
http://forum.metroidconstruction.com/index.php/topic,3255.0.html

Metroid Tuner - Music Tracks
http://forum.metroidconstruction.com/index.php/topic,3260.0.html

[Steel Sparkle]

It looks interesting! Keep up the good work!

[AuroraxPhilic]

Hmm. I have read all if you're tutorials (deciding not to do realistic tiling yet, as I found it too ambitious at first), but non of them address anything I want to do currently with my gained knowledge of editing M1. How do you possibly find all the available tiles to do bigger animations, as well as smoother ones? Have you edited every single time in Metroid, because it seems in a way, that you have more tiles. This or, you're just that damn good at working with tiles.
Based on what I've seen from the Rogue Dawn trailer, you're animations seem to have more than 4 frames of animation. Is this the case? Or are you still only using 4 frames in RD?

[snarfblam]

The upcoming version of Editroid uses a mapper hack to allow more complex, finer-grained animation, or even multiple tilesets/animations using minimal ASM.

[AuroraxPhilic]

I figured some of it was a by product of better tools. Another reason to wait till after Rogue Dawn is released before I get serious with my hack.

[Grimlock]

My advice:

(If you plan on a complete level design rework like I did)

1. Come up with a basic concept for your game (where is it taking place, a basic story and such)

2. Choose themes for your areas. Draw out some maps and area design ideas on paper (don't get carried away).  Be sure to have an idea how each area will fill the over all map, don't worry about exact counts, everything is subject to change.  It's a hack so you don't have to go heavy into pre planning.

3. Develop a basic tile set for your first area only.  Why?  Because after you build your first area you'll be infinity better prepared to build your next tile set.

4. Place Enemies as you go but don't invest time in sprite editing until late in development.

5. Take the time to draw a few obstacles down as you build your areas and work them in.

6. Avoid reusing screens, you can copy screens and modify them to make them unique.

7. Don't worry about animations initially.  Set up your areas to use only one frame at first.  After your area is built then add animations.

8. Never consider a freshly built area as done.  Consider it a draft that you'll probably revisit multiple times to add layers of polish.  Also your design style will evolve as you work on your project so revisiting screens will bring them up to your current standard and skill level.

That's all I have the time for now, hopefully that helps.

[AuroraxPhilic]

I have taken many of these tips into account already, as I've noticed most of them while developing my small demo. There are a couple tips that I have not yet thought of that do seem pretty helpful, I will take those into account. Thanks Grimlock. :3

[Grimlock]

Oh, I meant to also say:

9. Don't build your area(s) and then rework the graphics.  I've seen many other people here take that approach but it's completely backwards.  you'll have to re-do everything since your structures will probably get scrambled (graphics).  If they don't then that just means you're forcing yourself to use the tiles in the same pattern as the original (very limiting).  I would suggest deleting all but maybe the first few structures (you can edit them), erase all of the combos by drawing over them in the structure editor (CTRL-Click)  Delete all the rooms except the first few.  Clear the screens off of the map.  Force yourself to start out from scratch.

[AuroraxPhilic]

I was just about to ask you for tips on that, because it also confused me, and I would be afraid to delete something I'm not supposed to.

[Tahazzar]

Some notes:

• Quaint graphical edits: use of color, animation, etc
• Really good use of interesting screen transitions
• Weird linearity at places(?)
• Too many (or too high) bomb hops got annoying fast

Some details about the playthrough (spoilers?):

[spoiler]I stopped playing at Kraid - trying to kill him with 15 missiles, 2 energy tanks, and ice beam was getting on my nerves. I think I found 3 to 4 energy tanks - when I continued the game with the password I only had 2. I think you mentioned about a bug along these lines but I can't find you saying that...

At the beginning, when you start by going left, I got this sense of linearity in which the power-ups were followed by each other:
ball -> jump -> bomb -> rocket -> ice beam.
I mean I guess it's a demo but it was still quite weird. The gameplay flowed rather nicely along that ride though. I think that one screen where you had to navigate through vertical invisible block maze/screen was a tad bit too complex - it was a shore to get through.
Once I got past that (got ice beam) and went right from the Brinstar beginning the game opened up a lot more (or at least it felt like it did).

The use of Tourian area was interesting. The whole sequence felt rather lonely though since there were no adversaries for one to fight. I think at least in one screen there you could have used Rinkas - those orange donuts that pop in out of nowhere and float around.[/spoiler]

[AuroraxPhilic]

Yes! Finally. Some criticism.
And, obviously with the information I was kinda expecting as well.

My most favorite thing to do, is to use dithering, so I guess that's why my graphics look quaint in a way.

The screen transitions were the highlight of the hack. I wanted to show what Bestroid was capable of. I think I did that fairly well without resorting to Grimlock's invisible door thing.

Yes, there are a few sequence that are linear. I'm not sure why I did it, but I did. Thought it'd be cool.

If anyone is as experienced with M1's physics as I am, this a cake walk, but I did realize that people did not have my skill, and so if you read the ReadMe file, it gives you tips on how to get through these bomb jumping sections. (Sorry about that)

Jarod's area was indeed POORLY designed. I slapped it together at the last moment, just to have another area to see. I threw in many things to aid the player in the fight, if you explored, you could have found screw attack, as well as Varia suit, to help fight Kraid. Again...sorry about that. (In the readme, it states there is a glitch with energy tanks, yes.)

Hah. XD In the full version, once you have one item, you would use it to explore in order to progress, but because this was a demo, I it would take longer to make that a possibility. I'm very glad it flowed nicely for you. It took a lot of play testing to get the feeling juuust right.
The maze took me nearly 3 days to construct. I wanted to make it hard as hell, but not impossible. I thought it would be boring if you just casually strolled in through Tourian.

Torian took me a very long time to construct. I made it so that I was impossible for the player to die (for reasons...). Tourian was supposed to feel empty. It is an abandoned sewer facility of the new Tourian later in the game (which I have yet to construct).

I hope you enjoyed the demo, it's a very small preview as to what I'm working on, on a much bigger scale, with new graphics and polish. Thanks for your words Tahazzar. :3 I will try your hack out as well, it looks interesting.

[Tahazzar]

If anyone is as experienced with M1's physics as I am, this a cake walk, but I did realize that people did not have my skill, and so if you read the ReadMe file, it gives you tips on how to get through these bomb jumping sections. (Sorry about that)

That's more of a knowing a niche trick rather than a skill...

Still, huh. Didn't know that you could just hold the button to drop bombs (or maybe I had just forgotten...) Dropping bombs feels especially weird this way since there's that strange delay before the next ones are dropped (it isn't like turbo or anything).

On a similar note I require the use of "unmorph-mid jump" trick in one of the "puzzles" in my hack. I mean, I guess we can assume that these hacks are usually played by veteran metroid players but in some cases they just might not know such a trick (since they aren't a necessity in anyway to finish the original game). I probably should cut that.

The maze took me nearly 3 days to construct. I wanted to make it hard as hell, but not impossible. I thought it would be boring if you just casually strolled in through Tourian.

Well yeah, but here that Tourian area is an early part of the game and seems also to be required to progress in the game. Hence it felt rather harsh.

Torian took me a very long time to construct. I made it so that I was impossible for the player to die (for reasons...).

You don't want to set the Tourian start area there? I also use (multiple) Tourian areas as non-final areas. I set the start area to the one that was the easiest to access. Not sure how incredibly frustating that can be when/if you die at the final boss...

Tourian was supposed to feel empty. It is an abandoned sewer facility of the new Tourian later in the game (which I have yet to construct).

Makes sense.

[AuroraxPhilic]

Jarod!? XD omg autocorrect please! I meant Kraid's place. X3

Well, most skills are just tricks in a way. I'm not sure...but you gain knowledge of such tricks through extensive play. Idk...after awhile, you just understand what the physics will do.

I did not put any veteran tricks in my hack. It seems very messed up to do that.

Hey, I added hints in the maze, to make it easier. It was gonna be a lot harder. ;3

Something like that would be very frustrating to the player...

[Grimlock]

I did not put any veteran tricks in my hack. It seems very messed up to do that.

You could add in some "veteran tricks" as shortcuts, I don't think anyone would object to that.

[AuroraxPhilic]

My hack actually does contain veteran shortcuts, as well as vet tricks to find items faster. What meant, was veteran tricks in order to beat the game. I'm fine with vet tricks for shortcuts n' such.

[Tahazzar]

I did not put any veteran tricks in my hack. It seems very messed up to do that.

As far as hacks go, it's actually (unfortunately?) quite common. I guess it's somewhat of a feature that can come up with amateur game designing - going "look at how clever I am" or "this is going to be the hardest game ever" instead of trying to make the experience enjoyable, but I digress.

You could add in some "veteran tricks" as shortcuts, I don't think anyone would object to that.

Yep. That's seems like the exact way one should utilize them.


The reason why I did place it where it is, is because it's part of a one room morph ball course, in which most of the (nonbomb) tricks are required. Since I haven't had the game playtested by anyone other than myself, I think there might be a slight chance the part where it's used would actually *teach* the trick to the player. I place no real hopes on that though.


I'm going a bit backwards with the thread here I guess, but whatever.

My most favorite thing to do, is to use dithering, so I guess that's why my graphics look quaint in a way.

This especially stuck on my eye since the though of "my hacks could probably look quite horrid" creeped into my mind. It's doesn't matter that much since that wasn't the focus of that hack. I would expect many of the screens in my hack to look very ragged/rugged compared to something like this.

Still, it did made me think that maybe trying to "conserve" the amount of different screens I have as much as possibly wasn't/isn't that necessary. This also goes back to whether trying to optimize the use of the 32x32 grid, like it's an endpoint on its own, makes that much sense.

For example, your use of Tourian in this sense is quite extravagant, in that it's the area with the least amount of screens available (somewhere around 10+). This doesn't matter if you don't plan on using it as your final area, but on the other hand - are you going to exclude Mother Brain from the hack? Theoretically she only requires a couple of rooms so you could place an elevator at the end of the "actual" final area with which the player would basically enter the "final boss" room/area, but still...


Also, funnily enough, this hack reminded of, you know of that one game, what was it called again?.. Metroid or something?
This made me realize (or reminded me of) in which aspects I might diverge quite a lot from the other hack designers here.


EDIT:

The screen transitions were the highlight of the hack. I wanted to show what Bestroid was capable of. I think I did that fairly well without resorting to Grimlock's invisible door thing.

Yes, this was quite impressive. I think I ought to include similar kind of transitions or loop-like, tightly packed designs/layouts in my hack.
I always worked on my initial designs of the map on a grip paper with various arrows indicating room transitions and cells/squares indicating rooms. Those kinds of designs require a much more of a lower level approach (screen by screen) that I think I kind of just forgot in the long run (or reserved for the puzzles/secrets alone).

[AuroraxPhilic]

I for the life of me could not grasp what you were trying to say. XD

So...do you hate Tourian then? That's what I got from your usage of the word "extravagant". I read the beginning of what seem to be points, but they seem to digress off into something I don't understand.

Mother brain will obviously be in the hack. Where you see her in the demo, is where you will fight her.

Umm...what? When I said dithering...I just meant the checkerboard effect man. I thought it looked cool. I wasn't talking about rooms or anything. I'm so confused (grabs ice pack)...

Boy...me not being able to grasp what you are saying is making me look like an idiot... XD

[Tahazzar]

I for the life of me could not grasp what you were trying to say. XD

I do have a high tendency to ramble and English language isn't my native language so that probably doesn't help either.

But never mind - I actually just only now realized that there's a "new room" feature in editroid. Obviously there is, why wouldn't there be(?).

How come have I never noticed it?! This changes everything.

[Flower]

This is no deep investigated feedback, just a little but i guess important hint, as i am - well i try to - play through your hack.
and i have to start from the beginning, because in one of your palette swap rooms i got stuck (i hate myself for not having auto savestates turned on).

What happened was this:


I like some of your graphical edits, others not.
For example i would replace some door tiles, they seem a bit misplaced (those placed in the middle of walls).

As far as i can see you did a good job with obstacle placements.

Further critics follow when i progressed through your hack. Cheers!

[Flower]

Why is it that there's no way out here? (Had to restart using Controller 2).
[spoiler]
[/spoiler]

and when i did i lost one missile expansion. so now it's getting really frustrating. what a pity, Tourian is a nice design... [spoiler]and it felt really rewarding finding the upgrades here.[/spoiler]
I guess you could solve the issue with disappearing upgrades when restarting by Editroid->Tools->Generate Password Tracking Data. Maybe give that a try. I had played till maru mari, 10 missiles, high jump and bombs. Cause of frustration factor i'm gonna give it a break now and maybe continue later.

What i liked as well graphically was those "liquid filling up"-animation in Tourian and that kind of "fire burning" in those Stones in Brinstar. Well done!
Why don't you add some more customized graphics and animations? I totally agree with Grim, that would add some character.
I commend you a more filigree use of the color palette. Some parts could be nicer to look at. As i see i am not the only one feeling that way.

I like the way you urge the Player to find upgrades by not letting him pass through certain passages. That has always been a trademark of Metroid games (why can't i get up / through there - hmm maybe i need to find an upgrade and come back later...). This was implemented quite well!
Your mazes are well designed. Consideration is necessary, i like that. I totally like the placement of the one missile pack in Brinstar. [spoiler]The one down at a long corridor - well hidden but not too far off.[/spoiler]

So far. All in all nice work. Maybe when i get some steps further with my hack i could encourage you to test a demo, too. Stay tuned!