Room of the Month - February 2017

[Retroo]

Thanks BF for tiles.

[squishy_ichigo]

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9331202/inspiredbyproject.png

Here, have a room custom made just for you.

[TobiMikami]

Welcome to the Tallon Overworld.

[dewhi100]

[spoiler]

Welcome to the Tallon Overworld.

[/spoiler]

I'm a fan of 2d Prime, so I like this. A few thouhgts: Are those sunbeams crisscrossing the room? Is that blue material Phazon ore? Is this based on any specific area in MP? The background is cool. So are the colors and tiles. Only a couple nitpicks: The low-points in the hanging vines should be more towards their centers, unless you put something else like a flower onto them which affects weight distribution. And not necessarily a bad thing but the overall architecture is simple. A bigger room would have meant more to love. But the attention to detail is great, along with the theme. Nice room.

[TobiMikami]

This was originally a reenvisioning of the Tallon Canyon, it was shrunk over time and overhauled on details, the sunbeams are designed to give a sense of depth to the room, which I feel it does well. The vines are based on the Sap Sac, which I would like to include as an actual in-game object, eventually at least. The blue Phazon is designed to give a foreshadow of the planet's corruption, some areas feature more of this effect than others, giving the player an idea of how far they are from the impact site, and how badly corrupt a given area is. The original room was actually twice as large, but I felt like this idea kept the room smaller, but more detailed, it really jives with the 320x240 screen resolution, which makes it seem larger than it really is.

[Cpt.Glitch]

[spoiler][/spoiler]

[TobiMikami]

If I recall correct, that's one of Vismund's tilesets, it has a nice contrast. The tubes don't make a whole lot of sense, and I think it's just a little too square for Crateria tiles, but I definitely like the detail of the doors, are they your customs?

[Cpt.Glitch]

Indeed it is Vismund's tileset! Without context, I suppose the tubes do make little sense. They are supposed to house contained enemies. Wont make much sense until the hack is done and people can see for themselves exactly what they are there for, but I assure you they serve a purpose. They are BigDomino's doors. I noticed they were never used and liked how the looked so I decided to use them.

[TobiMikami]

I thought that design was vaguely familiar, I always wondered what happened to that guy, his Samus ship was pretty badass too, and he had a ton of information on elevators for SM. I get what you're going for with the concept now, I personally would have tried to work with a Tourian/Mother Brain's glass type design, but it is probably pretty hard to mix those two tilesets together in one room. I do like that Phazon-y feel it gives off though, reminds me slightly of Phazon Mines.

[Jiffy]

Guess we're gonna go down the Craterian route for this month, then:

[spoiler][/spoiler]

[Quietus]

Coralteria^TM. :^_^:

[Jiffy]

Coralteria^TM. :^_^:

Hell yeah! It's based on the coral because it resembles vanilla SM's lead-up to Maridia, which is one of the most exciting build ups to a new area in my opinion. Had to make it look nice, and feel like Gravity suit is actually worth it. What's best is the room can be run through very quickly, because the 2 blocks between floating islands are super missile tiles.

[benox50]

Going for crateria also, anyway I'm not far enough to have alot of choices.
I know that my door is long, but long is good  :grin:

[spoiler][/spoiler]

[begrimed]

[spoiler][/spoiler]

[altoiddealer]

@benox50 I like the room, but that all of those crystals / pillars happen to be at 0/45/90 degree angles just looks so unnatural. The ones that branch off of another one look particularly odd.

I love the colors, but not so much the orange pipes/screws

[RealRed]

WOW. good work everybody. I'm especially digging tobi's. you could bring some more contrast into that grass you drew, but right now it's working.

[TobiMikami]

I'm really liking the extreme variation of the same base tileset, this month is a great illustration of how fresh and fruitful Super Metroid still is, even after all these years.

I would like the next variation to include more colorful foliage, maybe some flowering stuff mixed in, little more variation, but I think the room brings enough to the table to keep that from standing out too much as a flaw, it accents well enough to say the least. Prime did a great job with all of its atmospheres, it's been a great motivation for my best works.

[passarbye]

Here's my entry. It's sort of a hub for my Kraid area, but I really wish I had a better tileset for foliage, plants, and other cool shit.
[spoiler][/spoiler]

[biospark]

Looks good. I like the palette.

In the future, I'd like to have MAGE draw the sprites on the proper layer (between BG2 and BG1), though it's not a high priority atm.

[Vismund Cygnus]

Welcome back to Room of the Month! As usual, real life gets in the way and I update this a week late.
Quote managed to narrowly defeat Project's room in last month's contest, winning by just a single vote (though one of those for Project's did come in technically after the end of January)!
[spoiler][/spoiler]

This month, we have 8 contestants throwing their talents out for you to critique:
[spoiler=Retroo][/spoiler]
[spoiler=TobiMikami][/spoiler]
[spoiler=squishy_ichigo][/spoiler]
[spoiler=Cpt.Glitch][/spoiler]
[spoiler=Jefe962][/spoiler]
[spoiler=benox50][/spoiler]
[spoiler=begrimed][/spoiler]
[spoiler=passarbye][/spoiler]
Can Crateria close out the contest? Will we see Fusion fight for first? Or will Brinstar beat the bunch? You decide, Metroid Constructionites!



In other news, if you want to get in on next month's contest, submit your best work here for everyone to judge. And don't forget about the Winter Hacking Contest! I suspect many of you will have rooms from those hacks that are just itching to be judged by your fellow Constructors.

[Quietus]

Grime for me, for the lovely cave structures. :^_^:

[Quote58]

Retroo: background is good but the foreground on the left side of the room is a weird pairing of colours and the filler is not varied, making a pretty bland combination. More varied use of the tiles would be better in the room in general imo
tobi: cool ideas, neat background (although I don't think it fits the style of the foreground at all), but the grass and plant tiles don't blend at all, the palette for the plants is really off-putting, and the structure of the floors/ceilings is too chaotic. The variations in elevation is nice but too frequent and similar. It looks like it'd feel weird to run through as well.
squish: best use of that tileset I've seen and a great palette too, but the cave tiles don't blend well enough with the metal tiles imo
glitch: feels kind of stale over all. Not bad, just not very interesting, and the filler feels kind of sparkly, which looks weird with the gray ground and cave setting.
jiffy: fucking love that palette. Pretty uninteresting room overall but the structure is good, the background works well, and the palette is on point. I feel like this room should have a name, or at least you would remember it in your head as being the tall room at the edge of the area. I really love the vibe I get from this room over all.
benox: one of the coolest backgrounds I've ever seen, but the foreground is a mess. The room is a mashup of a number of different themes, none of which complement each other. Some tiling errors, some weird uses of tiles, but over all it looks overwhelming to play through. Cool ideas, awesome background, weird foreground.
grime: neat structures, but why is it so incredibly empty? It's just massive rooms with structure only at the outer edges. I dig the aesthetic, and I'm assuming there's lots of enemies and you have space jump, but it just feels lonely and empty.
passerbye: solid room, no complaints really. Good palette, good structure, but not very interesting. It looks like the kind of room that you run through and don't think about or remember much, which is both a good and bad thing. Solid design meaning the player won't have a problem with it, but it also isn't memorable at all. I can see this room being part of a hack no problem, which is good.

Neat stuff this month, lots of entries, all of them pretty different from each other. Good effort by everyone.

[benox50]

Retroo: I like that tileset, however that room looks uncompleted, mostly the filler tiles. So gives it more love
Tobi: Cool organique stuff coming from the ceiling. Is that the sun that cast yellow effect on the BG ? Cause it creates sharp cutted lines and I dont quite understand how it works. Also the blue part on the middles platforms looks weird.
Squishy: Oh yea, nice colors ! Varied cubic tiles that form the structures, makes me think of axiom Verge. Only the blue stuff is not right, it looks like it sits ahead of the dark tiles instead of merging with them. You get my vote !
Glitch: Nice colors, everything is right, but nothing fancy. Just one big question tho, where is the BG ?
Jiffy: All the elements are in harmony, but it lacks detail and the BG is merging with the FG filler which remove all depth
Benox: Worst room ever :>
Grime: Love the colors and new slopes. Its simply really empty, I guess its a level design choice, but then you could have took another room
Passar: No filler and only use of two elements with literally the same metal part as floor and ceiling, but bubbles are varied and the use of both those two elements is great

[Jiffy]

Retroo: background is good but the foreground on the left side of the room is a weird pairing of colours and the filler is
jiffy: fucking love that palette. Pretty uninteresting room overall but the structure is good, the background works well, and the palette is on point. I feel like this room should have a name, or at least you would remember it in your head as being the tall room at the edge of the area. I really love the vibe I get from this room over all.

Funnily enough, the general set of these rooms are similar to the useless path to Maridia, except it's not very useless. The section is full of Skulteras, Lift enemies(?) and various speed booster walls that only Gravity suit players can get through.  :^_^: