Metroid: Space Complex

[snarfblam]

I can only see Floralfair, but it's very pretty

[Flower]

I can only see Floralfair, but it's very pretty

Thanks. The other picture link should work again as well, the imgur link was broken.

[Grimlock]

Norfair, Flora Area

This is an excellent start, Nice work!  :cool:

[Flower]

Norfair, Flora Area

This is an excellent start, Nice work!  :cool:

Thanks i used a different approach here, using two palettes for inner and outer layer of the grass hill. Besides from black 5 different colors are used here,  with 3 different green tones.
I am not yet that happy with the interior Brinstar, i will polish that particular, but does anyone else also have a burning idea?

[Flower]

FEATURES:
Healing and Hurting Tiles 100%
Bomb Upgrade 50% (couldn't make it as an upgrade yet)
Walljump 0% (i would appreciate help here!!!!)
Springball 0% (help!!!?)
Spacejump 0% (is it even possible?)

Animations 10%
Slope Detection 0% (desperately waiting for Editroid 4)

P.S. I would love to see help in regards of asm modifications, to make the game more enjoyable. I got hooked into asm but on a very basis level, seemingly noob! (c and java are ok, but assembler is wicked for me!)

[Flower]

LITTLE BRINSTAR DEMO v0.1

Hey people,
I thought a bit and decided to upload a new demo, despite the fact that Brinstar's Background Music isn't near finished yet. I hope you can cope it. Apart from that, as always, things tend to change. The upgrades won't be where they are now, that's sure, they will be far more spread out. I stuck them so close to showcase the new design and some potential uses of level design shown here.

You found everything when you have found Maru Mari, 10 Missiles, Bombs, Varia and last but not least 3 "demo end" dead ends. Well, this will be part of another story. So far for demo v0.1
For one demo end you have to [spoiler]use bomb jump, as it is modified via asm![/spoiler]
Good Luck!

[Flower]

I removed the Demo v0.1. I am working on a far better level in terms of level design as it was in 0.1. It will be featured in an soon upcoming Demo v0.2. Stay tuned!

[Grimlock]

Thanks i used a different approach here, using two palettes for inner and outer layer of the grass hill. Besides from black 5 different colors are used here,  with 3 different green tones.

That's great, it's actually a pretty advanced technique for NES graphics!  It takes a lot of planing to pull it off and the results if done properly can even be confused as 16-Bit in appearance.

[Flower]

There are some good news concerning a polished Demo v0.2! :bounce:

It will be published somewhere after the upcoming release of Rogue Dawn, which i am also very much looking forward to. For many reasons. As a gamer and as a hacker in particular.
Stay tuned!

[Flower]

Concerning an upcoming Demo v0.2:

I need volunteers, i.e. play testers. Whoever likes to, please contact me! I appreciate some feedback.

[Flower]

Expanded on
Norfair, Flora Area (WIP)



P.S. I still need some funky play testers for Brinstar Demo v0.2

[Grimlock]

If you aren't getting too many volunteers (play testers) right now I'm sure that will change when you get further along.  Most people are probably hesitant to spend much time with early development projects.  When you get a couple areas done I'd like to have a look at it, offer up some feedback.

[Flower]

Most people are probably hesitant to spend much time with early development projects.

That's probably right, but I feel i need some "where do we go from here?", because i have a Brinstar part completed and it's self-contained on the one hand, but is also part of the whole game and i need to sort ideas and hence feedback could be helpful.
Nice that you try the hack later, I'll keep that in mind.

[Flower]

I wanna thank @Tahazzar, @Odb718 and @dewhi100 for each a very profound, considerable and comprehensive feedback.
Most thoughts were ones i also had, but you guys nailed it.
I wanna take all of this into account and heed your advices (let's say almost all of them!). As a game designer sometimes you get some kind of tunnel vision, thus your responses are really helpful! I will take you guys on the list for credits.

Next will be to implement your improvement proposals,  expanding the game map, maybe finally with the first elevator to a new area and then releasing a Demo v0.3.

Stay tuned!

[Flower]

An optimized, polished and gentle Brinstar Demo v0.3 is out! It was heavy work and rework and rework. I guess it's like for musicians you are never done and finished. anyway...
People interested please pm! Gonna offer you a link.
For sure i like feedback! I always try to outline your good improvement proposals!

Now i want to expand to new areas.

Stay tuned!  :bounce:

[Flower]

I have run into a dead end:
My Brinstar Bank Space is totally used up, thus i am unable to add anything new. That's the end for Brinstar, as long as there isn't a way to expand the memory (which i think is possible with MMC3?).
At least i have reached one elevator yet in my level design so that i can continue working here.

Other than that, continuing is impossible.  :cry:

I wouldn't have thought that the end figures out so fast. Wow.
Current count of unique Brinstar screens: 42. (I swear 42 is a coincidence!!!)  :O_o:

Over and out.

[Odb718]

It's not the end. Trust me. You just have to learn to use duplicated rooms tactfully.
Make 4 generic door rooms and you're good to go. One horizontal left, one horizontal right, one vertical left, one vertical right. You have to remember you're not working in Super Metroid. Unique rooms cant be EVERY where or you're going to have tiny areas. That's why they stand out.

It's important to start with an overall layout of how your areas will be. How is Norfair going to go from Brinstar to Ridley? Is Kraid going to be after that or before? then lay out your points. Make a general map in M$Paint or on paper so you know where you're headed.

[snarfblam]

I think I'd sooner suggest using duplicates for screens between doorway screens. For me, seeing duplicate screens used to connect rooms is what triggers that "where am I again" experience. The doorway effect does manifest in video games and that just magnifies it.

How you approach level design can affect memory usage too. Using tons of 1x1 structures eats up mountains of memory, as does creating lots of 16x8 structures. That, and some day there will presumably be a thing called Editroid 4.0 which will help greatly by approximately quadrupling available space.

[Flower]

Interesting suggestions, and a very interesting read on the doorway effect! Let me summarize the situation :
My hack is built from single 1*1 Structures, as this gives me the most flexibility.
I do not ever want to repeat / reuse screens, neither doorway screens nor in between. As snarfblam pointed out, this would stress the sense of disorientation. I know this style of level design eats memory, but i made this design decision.
I have made up a plan of the world map and know how it will be connected.
Maybe when i am the mood i will try to identify often used structures and make bigger structures to save memory, but this should be the last option for me.

[Odb718]

Do you know about stacking the blocks and using the layer attributes?
Like if you have 3 blocks that is 4x wide, 1x, and 1x you can get over 16 different, unique layouts. 16 blocks for the price of 3.

If I were in your shoes starting work on the next area, I'd limit myself to half of everything. Stretch that 50% out as far as it can go. Then give yourself another 30% to maximize your distances. and use the last 20% once everything's done for extra details. If you run out of options how are you going to fix things once bugs start popping up???

Palettes go a long way. It doubles your rooms for being unique once you hit the palette swap room. You need rooms where you can reorganize them and they flow together. Some players might recognize the rooms but it's unlikely. At the very least those people will know the rooms are different.

And reusing certain doors works OK as long as they're done where the 2 doors together are a unique combination. You'd have the 4 standard doors, and how ever many unique ones. You'd be able to make a lot more combinations by repeating the door(s) a couple times.
But I "grew up" in the unexpanded dark ages of Metroid hacking.

[dewhi100]

Do you know about stacking the blocks and using the layer attributes?
Like if you have 3 blocks that is 4x wide, 1x, and 1x you can get over 16 different, unique layouts. 16 blocks for the price of 3.

Just curious, does it work like this?

Blocks:
[] 
X 
OO
OO

Combos:

OO
OX

XO
OX

[]X
OO

etc?

[Odb718]

Well honestly I didnt even think about vertical. It was more like

MMMM X O for the blocks. you could do
MMMMXO  MMMMOX XMMMMO OMMMMX XOMMMM OXMMMM
Then
XMMO MXMO MMXO MXOM
XMMOM XOMMM MXMMO

Obviously there's more ways to do the 4 and 5 length set-ups.
And if you make one of your 1x tiles as an FF blank box, you can create all types of stuff by "deleting" blocks under it. One long structure would look like 2.

But yeah, dewhi100, you have the idea right. You just overlay one tile. If you have a stucture 2 blocks tall, you can hide it behind another block so only the top is visible, like

X
XMMM
and
X
MMMM

The top, the Xs are in front, and the bottom the Ms are in front. and you could also do
X
XMMMM
where they're just next to each other.

I'm pretty sure each of the Os for your example, and my Ms could also be 4 unique blocks, but because it's attached as 1 structure it takes up less room. I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure it works out. When I only had a certain number of structures total for Brinstar I'd delete one out of a room and be able to add it in another room. It's why you can Kid Icarus around in my game. I shaved as much off as I could to make other stuff cooler. Using the 2x8 blocks as the floor helped stretch things out.

Flower you might want to think about doing that too. You can always add little twists to each one, but you get a good length of floor or ceiling cheap.

----
I made this quick image to show how Nintendo maximized what they had by using layering. They used layering to cover bombable blocks in the first one, then used them to cover up regular blocks in the second one.

[Flower]

Yeah it's an interesting approach and i recognized the structure of Vanilla Metroid's structure layout, especially since i hacked Metroid a bit using Vanilla Tiles (my former Mechanical Flower Hack). Maybe i take that into account. Maybe i mix both design ways to have things even more varied.
I have to admit initially i had trouble interpreting your M X O kind of symbols. But i got what you mean in the end.

In my old hacks i used only bigger structures but had hard times here and there to get things in the shape i wanted it to, and began to do work arounds.
I make a plan how to mix both design opportunities in the best fashion 
Anyway thanks for ideas and suggestions.

[Flower]

Thinking about integrating a snow / ice area.
This could be the snow storm :


Urging questions to asm nerds:
Would it be possible to integrate some ice physics (in Mega Man-manner)?

[passarbye]

You could probably have a look at how it's done in megaman (the original) and re-implement it within metroid from there. From my understanding, the engines aren't too far off since they're both early platformers on the NES.