Super Metroid: Unambitious

[dewhi100]

Super Metroid: Unambitious



Screenshots:
[spoiler][/spoiler]
[spoiler][/spoiler]
[spoiler][/spoiler]

Version 1.2- Fixed defect allowing 101% items, fixed map, removed timer. Minor changes to item progression.

My first hack. It's small. My goal was to learn the basics of SMILE, and to practice things like project planning and management, and map/room design. And by all means, please make recommendations on how I can improve in future iterations. Notably absent: Elevators, Charge Beam, Gold Torizo, Wrecked Ship along with Phantoon, and Tourain/MB. Bomb Torizo is the "final boss". If you collect everything, you'll get 100%.

Patches used (no need to apply; they are included):
   Scrolling Sky Fix (JAM)
   Skip Intro (Phosphotidyl)
   Custom Zebes Timebomb (FullOfFail)
   Scyzer's Map Fix

Difficulty: 2 out of 5.
Est. playtime: 50 minutes.
Don't forget to save the animals!

[Quietus]

(There's a typo in the title.)

[Mayo-chan]

That timer though

Interesting gimmick for a hack. As a test of your skills, it seems pretty good, I can't wait until you make the sequel to this, which would no doubt be called Super Metroid: Slightly Less Unambitious.

[andlabs]

Unambitious? Not really — definitely full of humorous stuff and made with effort so far =P

In this room right before Crocomire,



1) is that doorcap on the left correct?
2) is that left save station supposed to be nonfunctional?
3) going out the door on the right sends me back out to the left in the wall (is there a name for this kind of glitch?); is this correct?

Or is all of that emulator-specific (bsnes v080)?

[dewhi100]

Unambitious? Not really — definitely full of humorous stuff and made with effort so far =P

In this room right before Crocomire,



1) is that doorcap on the left correct?
2) is that left save station supposed to be nonfunctional?
3) going out the door on the right sends me back out to the left in the wall (is there a name for this kind of glitch?); is this correct?

Or is all of that emulator-specific (bsnes v080)?

I think that at some point I got careless and corrupted the save rooms registry or something. This save room was mirroring the one before Ridley, any change to one would affect the other. I solved it by using a different Norfair save room (so I thought). This must have made the room mirror to the one in Crateria instead, flipping it the wrong way. I fixed that one, and it flipped the Crocco Save as well.

[andlabs]

More issues:

Going *down* the Power Bomb door that connects Crateria to Norfair seems to break the game quite badly: graphics mess up once you cross into Norfair, stay corrupt if you go back to Crateria, and you can even glitch the door back to the un-bombed state!

Opening that door, leaving the room, and coming back will result in the door going back to the un-bombed state.

(The Power Bomb door connecting Space Jump to Norfair does not have the same issues.)

Or are these emulator-specific?

Anyway:
Clear Time 00:51
Item Completion 99%
This was pretty fun; good work! Now I just wonder what item I missed...
[spoiler=What I got]5 Energy Tanks
35 Missiles
20 Super Missiles
5 Power Bombs
Wave Beam
Spazer
Plasma Beam
Varia Suit
Gravity Suit
Morphing Ball
Bomb
Screw Attack
Hi-Jump Boots
Space Jump[/spoiler]

[dewhi100]

More issues:

Going *down* the Power Bomb door that connects Crateria to Norfair seems to break the game quite badly: graphics mess up once you cross into Norfair, stay corrupt if you go back to Crateria, and you can even glitch the door back to the un-bombed state!

Opening that door, leaving the room, and coming back will result in the door going back to the un-bombed state.

(The Power Bomb door connecting Space Jump to Norfair does not have the same issues.)

Or are these emulator-specific?

Anyway:
Clear Time 00:51
Item Completion 99%
This was pretty fun; good work! Now I just wonder what item I missed...
[spoiler=What I got]5 Energy Tanks
35 Missiles
20 Super Missiles
5 Power Bombs
Wave Beam
Spazer
Plasma Beam
Varia Suit
Gravity Suit
Morphing Ball
Bomb
Screw Attack
Hi-Jump Boots
Space Jump[/spoiler]

I just found that error with the door myself... It's an issue with the door in the morph ball room. Not sure how to fix it.

Anyway, you *are* missing one item.

[benox50]

The save room looks like a level data issue.

Both must use the same level data so you edit both at the same time.
Look your pointers for level data in those rooms, they should be the same, so repoint one of them.

[andlabs]

Found the item I was missing; it was in a spot I completely forgot about after I could actually access it!
[spoiler]Ice Beam, right across from that save room I took a picture of[/spoiler]

[dewhi100]

Version 1.1 fixes the respawning PB door, door scroll bug, and save room level data near Crocomire. Thanks @benox50, I hadn't realized the save rooms share data although it makes a lot of sense in retrospect.

[spoiler]@andlabs, did you skip bombs until after Crocomire? Ice Beam is barricaded behind nothing more than regular bomb blocks.[/spoiler]

[andlabs]

[spoiler=Reply to above post]I deliberately went to get Bombs last =P But I forgot to go back to check that spot after getting Power Bombs and Screw Attack, despite knowing it was suspicious before.[/spoiler]

[DonnyDonovan]

That was fun and original.   I got 100% in 42:00 and barely remembered to save the animals.  Your item names are clever.  I found Spore Spawn! and Draygon hard-ish but nothing overwhelming.  I was worried heading to Ridley that I had missed an item somewhere. 

I certainly hope we see more from you in the future. 

Edit:  I'm trying to replay this doing a no bomb/no timer run, but, I seem stuck after space jump.   I need either power bombs to go back the way I came or bombs to get back into crocomire's room.  Did I screw myself? 

[andlabs]

Edit:  I'm trying to replay this doing a no bomb/no timer run, but, I seem stuck after space jump.   I need either power bombs to go back the way I came or bombs to get back into crocomire's room.  Did I screw myself?

[spoiler]When you leave the Space Jump room going tot he left you should be in a room in Maridia with a single Super Missile pack in front of you. The other end of the room will take you to Norfair's main shaft; the door at the top takes you back to Crateria.[/spoiler]

[dewhi100]

Thanks for playing! Draygon was a pain for me as well until I found a trick to him (her?). It's vanilla Draygon, only difference is your potential max ammo. If I hadn't found a reliable way to win, I would have toned Draygon down. You can reliably avoid damage from spore spawn too. Riddles was too tough for me, so I increased his vulnerabilities.

I need either power bombs to go back the way I came or bombs to get back into crocomire's room.  Did I screw myself?

[spoiler]You don't need bombs to get back into crocco's room[/spoiler]

[Aran;Jaeger]

I wanted to mention that with tool-assistance, one could move through the transition blocks (as if the transition blocks were air tiles, and people really should pay more attention to such) that constitute the door with the red shell on the right side of the Landing Site room, and get back into the unedited area of the Landing Site room to collect the powerbomb pack to the upper right for 101%.

General important lesson/advice for Super Metroid hacks from a person that is generally experienced with SM hacks:
Close to the end of finishing a hack, make sure to go through the entire thing and not leave a single UNUSED TRANSITION BLOCK OR ITEM in any spot of any room that is intended to be accessible for the hack.  :neutral:

A suggestion for solving those 2 aspects would be to just put solid blocks on unused transition blocks and to change unused items e.g. into the well-known screen scrolling arrow PLMs. And this kind of fix really shouldn't be much of a tedious problem in any case.

Anyone that can follow this simple ''final polishing'' rule will have my appreciation (and can spare me headaches).  :bounce:

It also helps to treat transition blocks as if they were air tiles if one wants to get an idea of what places in a room can be accessible (in a lot of cases even by humans, when going through a transition block without interacting with it boils down to a 1 times frame perfect trick). And yes, this means the out of bounds of rooms is accessible to tool-assisted gameplay (and sometimes humans) in pretty much almost all SM hacks that exist, just because of the fundamentally game-breaking possibility of going through transition blocks as if they were air, but usually this leads to the out of bounds area and not remaining (editable) inbounds parts of rooms, and then going through a door is harmless in the case that one neglects out of bounds areas (as rule), since OoB usually allows for all kinds of crazy wrongwarps/accesses into new rooms and to new items anyways.

For some hacks, people among the SM community actually do speedruns of different categories for them, and for the 100% (or max%) category within the standard inbounds rule-set, random accessible unused transition blocks aswell as item PLMs (even if a hack author sees absolutely no way to reach them) can mess with what one would need to do in this category in strong and usually unwanted/annoying/tedious ways. Note that figuring out max% for a hack is part of making 100% TASes aswell (in case someone would want such for an own hack, provided it actually suffices some standards), and hacks in which this task becomes atrocious might then just be ignored which would possibly be a shame in some cases.  :neutral:

[dewhi100]

Wow, you really gave it your 101%!  :lol: I had no idea that this was a thing, thank you!

[DonnyDonovan]

Finished my bombs last/no timer run.   It adds a nice little bit of challenge.   Mainly because you can't collect most of the beam upgrades and can't collect screw attack before Draygon, which makes Draygon even harder.   Again, nice job on this.   It was a fun, original little time waster this weekend. 

[FPzero]

Pretty fun hack. I'm pretty sure I was playing on the latest version so these notes should still apply.

-The save room by Kraid loads you off the pedestal in the wrong X/Y position.
-Ice Beam's location doesn't have a map tile.
-Plasma Beam's location doesn't have a map tile.

I got 100% items but it's weird that there's no Charge Beam in the hack. I'm so used to having it as a backup against bosses. Either way, I still enjoyed playing it. I'd like to see you make a "Super Metroid: Ambitious" one day because what small level design changes you did make show promise. You just need to break away from relying on the existing room designs.

Good luck!

[dewhi100]

Version 1.2 is likely the final version. All the defects above have been fixed. The timer gfx are removed, due to boss fights breaking them. I've slightly changed item progression to make Screw Attack available sooner and Hi-Jump behind bomb blocks instead of super blocks. I considered removing the first power bomb upgrade, but ended up keeping it in case anybody wants an even easier Ridley fight. Maybe I should crank him up a little to make that wussy option more appealing?

[FPzero]

Is the power bomb effective against him or something? I just fought him with my normal Super Missiles and Missiles strategy.

[dewhi100]

Well he definitely doesn't like it. But it's mostly due to the fact that the last few upgrades are locked behind power blocks, and a few others become available if you're on a bombs last run. So conceivably someone could have trouble with him, and go back for the additional firepower.

[FPzero]

Fair enough! The hack is still pretty fun regardless.

[MetroidMst]

I actually rather enjoyed this experience. I definitely look forward to seeing your future stuff if this is your base.

[trill1996]

If I may ask, do I just use your IPS patch or do I use all the ones you listed PLUS yours?
Kinda confused about that...

[dewhi100]

Only mine. The others are simply giving credit.