Super Metroid: Recovery

[UDtheAesir]

Nice! I think I'll wait for the finished product. What I've played so far (about half-way through Tourian), doesn't seem to have any permastucks, or any glitchy graphics/tiles (I use Snes9x). Gets a little too open when I get into LN direction-wise, but do gain much from the effort.

All in all, you're doing good. I hope to play some more hacks from you in the future!

[LexyChan]

In WS you can get offscreen in this room when Phantoon isn't defeated yet.

[spoiler][/spoiler]

[MetroidNerd#9001]

Thank you for letting me know of that. It has been fixed. I've played through this version myself too and have fixed the problems I have found; however, if any of y'all find anything, don't assume that I found it because it is very possible that I did not notice it. If this version has the top of water replaced by a map tile, that has also been fixed so don't worry about it.

[LexyChan]

I found something...oddly interesting?

Bored me ran around aimlessly in Norfair (just about where Crocomire is) and didn't want to switch off ice beam so I went on with grapple.
Here it were it gets funky:

If you grapple this plattform from the left side (even height/below) it acts like a grappling block but not really? It glitches the screen slightly and you can stay in air for an infinite time IF you're fast enough that is.

[MetroidNerd#9001]

Thank you for pointing that out. I've redesigned that part a bit, though I don't know how to actually fix it, it should be harder to trigger now. I find this to be a good time to release version 0.99. I've gone through the hack a few times more and fixed a lot of other things, and made some room design changes, and finally added the extra roomstates I've been meaning to add. I'd like to have a few more others go through to hopefully find more things that I likely won't on my own. The next version will be the full release. Thank y'all for all the help y'all have given me, I hope people enjoy the finished product.

[caauyjdp]

Found a permastuck and a couple oddities.
[spoiler]
Permastuck. Room on the way from vanilla morph to vanilla first missiles.

Top of the red tower elevator. Secret passages without a secret. Same thing on the left side of the room.

Top of maridia elevator. Seems like two solid tiles under me. Also two odd air tiles in the room.

This room in norfair looks really odd after picking up the item nearby. Iirc it looked different/normal before that.

[/spoiler]
edit:
[spoiler]
Pirates in this room have corrupted sprites during kick pose. Also, mini kraid's projectiles are really dark, blending into the background.

[/spoiler]
[spoiler=frequent crash in one of the rooms]
After braking the blocks to cache of 4 items in red tower(happens both when just collected and when revisiting later) game tends to crash if you stay on that screen. Hud is still drawn but rest of the screen is black, can't pause the game, music continues playing, spacejump sound keeps going if it was playing. Can't figure out how to trigger it exactly, but it tends to happen after shooting(still happens with wave bream disabled, and also happens with bombs).
[/spoiler]

[MetroidNerd#9001]

Thank you for finding those oddities. I didn't think to check the elevator rooms. I'll be sure to fix the permastuck and tile solidity oddities. I will probably also change around the enemies in the room before Kraid. I will do my best to figure out why the game is crashing in the red tower. With the room before Spazer, it is like that because while you were in the other room, the ninja pirate took the rock formation and threw it across the room to get to where you are and try to corner you. The tiles are broken pieces of the formation strewn across the room.

[caauyjdp]

When jumping straight up, you're moved a bit in the direction you're facing. Doesn't happen if you hold angle up/down, or up/down. Doesn't happen when jumping with springball, but does if you unmorph in the air. It's really annoying :(

Missile refill room near draygon is suspiciously well hidden. It feels like there should be something else there but can't find it.

Couple more oddities
[spoiler]
These pirates start normal, but tend to become shadow ninjas(happens individually, not both at the same time). I think it happens during their "turn gold and become vulnerable" transition but not certain. Only seems to happen when on the right side of them(for right pirate you need to jump up to chozo statue, otherwise he'll keep kicking and won't change)

This is a permastuck. Granted it's not very likely to accidentaly happen unless you fumble the buttons(or if you're like me and think, this looks like a permastuck, surely there's an item hidden there and some way out).

Three of the speed blocks reform, other three don't.

This corner looks really suspicious. I think I've tried everything(except speed boost, can't quite carry the charge from where can build it, and can't shortcharge good enough).

[/spoiler]

[MetroidNerd#9001]

I am not aware of why the movement thing is occurring, I haven't really noticed it, but I'm sorry it's being annoying. Thank you for finding the various problems with speed blocks, and no, the spot in the Norfair room is not a secret, it's just a tiling error I failed to notice. I'll change the Charge Beam room a bit to keep the errors from happening. I may move a missile expansion or something to the Maridia Recharge area to make it more worthwhile to visit since it's so well hidden, or I might apply the "recharges all ammo" patch to make it more useful. Thank you so much for all of your help.

[caauyjdp]

Platforms "enemies" that you can grapple and that sink when you stand on them are vulnerable to plasma(didn't check if they were in vanilla). This can potentially lead to a permastuck in one of the pits behind wrecked ship(haven't fully tested this, but I'm pretty sure I've got speedbooster without hi-jump/gravity and iirc it's the only requirement for plasma).
[spoiler]

[/spoiler]

edit: might not be a bug, but still odd. I currently have 150 reserve energy max, and I've collected one reserve tank(maybe two, not sure). In two other playthroughs my max reserve energy was 500 by the end. Unless I've somehow managed to collect three now, and ten in previous playthroughs, the numbers don't quite make sense.
edit: got another reserve and now max is 250...

[spoiler]
Two "support pillars" are destructible for some reason, despite being non solid/in the background. Same thing at the top part of the room.

[/spoiler]



Ok, finally found 100%. Last item I found was energy tank closest to tourian entrance. It's not hinted at all. Only reason I found it was because I started watching your videos, saw it in a different spot and thought that you'd might still keep it in same room.

Favorite part was whole of maridia, despite doing most of it without gravity on first playthrough. Can't quite put to words why though. Part of it is that it feels least vanilla.

Also liked the added time pressure in room with two "silver" pirates before ridley, though I wonder if it forces you to get plasma to have enough dps(I did not think of missiles).

Tourian was somewhat interesting. I liked escape because alternative paths were possible.

"Easy speedball" from speedbooster+springball seemed underutilized. It potentially made getting one missile in wrecked ship slightly easier, but it was already pretty easy.
Some random trivia, apparently kzan(platform with spikes on the bottom that goes up and down) can be killed(at least) with speedball. It needs to be going down as you jump into it from below. Can't seem to do it with normal charge/shinespark, but killed four kzans with speedball so far.

Wish there was a way to get to draygon without gravity. I got as far as 1 tile wide gap between two spike walls in the big room before him, but couldn't quite walljump up(way out would have been impossible anyway because of the quicksand).
edit: nvm, dessyreqt did it

Currently trying to do kraid before phantoon. Bomb jumping from lava is possible but a bit tricky. Didn't actually need to start from lava. Doh.

[spoiler]
At the end of escape, after ship starts going up, it reveals some broken background. Background is normal during landing though.

After getting 100% still can't figure out why these speed blocks are here. Also, a random tiling error.

Found some/lot of other random(mostly inaccessible) air tiles, but not sure if you want to polish the hack that much. And it's kind of a hassle to upload screenshots.
[/spoiler]

[MetroidNerd#9001]

Sorry about responding so late. School makes it hard to work on hacks. I've attempted to fix most of the problems you have found. I'm glad you enjoyed it, thanks for finding so many things. The last energy tank you found I have made much less random in its location, so it should be easier to find now.

Edit: How did you even make it to the big room before Draygon without Gravity? I thought I made it impossible.

[caauyjdp]

Edit: How did you even make it to the big room before Draygon without Gravity? I thought I made it impossible.

[spoiler]
Not exactly intended way, I remember doing double jump with springball here, and then crystal flashing through crumble blocks to get further up.

Then again, I just redid it, and these grapple blocks make it seem like an intended route. They are certainly not needed when navigating the room from right to left, and they make getting into that gap much easier from the left side if you don't have gravity.

[/spoiler]
Off to play the release version.

[Strokend]

Been playing through this hack, wondering if I'm missing some powerup:
[spoiler]
I can't regain my run off a shinespark in this hack, but I do retain speed after jumping, so what I'd do is jump over the spikes and ram into the wall, then shinespark up... If I try to jump up I can't keep the charge.[/spoiler]

[MetroidNerd#9001]

You just need to be either fast enough at wall jumping or have space jump. Speedkeep helps to give you as much leeway as possible with where you can charge.

[piush]

When you leave Maridia and roll through the morphball tunnel into red Brinstar but then roll back into  Maridia  past the guardian you get this.
https://imgur.com/a/XEZg0qL

[MetroidNerd#9001]

It appears to have been the same problem with the alternate state that was found earlier with another room. Thank you for finding it. It was an invalid level data pointer: CE5B04 that somehow got past SMILE and still works in SNES 9x, but not other emulators. It has been changed to CEDB04. This change will be released with the 1.1 version. (or 1.02 if I release it and it's minor enough.)

[RogueLeader80]

Hi there. Long time Metroid player, first time poster. Saw MST was playing through this hack on his Youtube page, watched the first episode, and was intrigued by it, so I downloaded it and played it through.

This, to me, was the essence of how to do a so-called "half-hack" right. There were definitively rooms where I could tell exactly what the original base for the room was, but things were varied enough that I never felt jarred into remembering that this wasn't the original game; rather, it seemed like all of it was a well-executed homage to the original game. "Updated and refreshed" would be a good way to express it. The puzzles were different enough to keep me thinking, and the progression of the game forced me to explore through much in the same way the original game did -- in a way that felt natural rather than forced. Some of the homages to the original game made me groan, and a few made me laugh out loud. There was also plenty of opportunity for sequence-breaking, but rather than hide these or try to limit the player from using them, the hack seems to welcome the player finding their own way through a puzzle or to an item aside from the original intended method. All the same, the game was difficult but not needlessly so -- I felt challenged at times, and lost at times, but never felt like the hack was designed to be difficult just because. It felt, in short, like someone working on the original Super Metroid had grabbed the game's code and said, "If I had complete creative control over the game, this is what it would've looked like," which is as good of a compliment as I can think of.

If this is indeed the original poster's first hack, this is one incredible debut. Looking forward to more. Bravo!  :bounce:

Gonna hide some of my spoilery thoughts under here for anyone who hasn't played through.

[spoiler]The room immediately after Draygon quite literally made me get up from my chair laughing my head off. I never once pictured Draygon as the leader of the Space Pirates the way that that room implies -- that Ridley went and collected the Metroid for Draygon. Well done indeed.

The new Tourian was really brilliant. When I started walking through the first few rooms and it was just the normal rooms but no Metroids, I was disappointed...until I realized what had been done with it. Plus the escape sequence, complete with the place falling apart, was incredible. I found myself enjoying the scenery even as I was trying not to explode. Also, can't wait until MST gets to the part where he HAS to save the animals (I think? I did it and it felt like that main Crateria room changed afterwards to let me escape. If this isn't a feature and I'm just dumb, make it one! The lulz are worth it.)

Related to MST trolling: making the first two reserve tanks worth 150 was interesting and unexpected.

Some of the sequence changes I liked: saving space jump until basically the very end and thereby actually turning the grapple beam into something useful was awesome. Having spring ball early for some of the forced underwater was clever. The use of room states in rooms that didn't ordinarily have them to shift things around as the player progressed made the game feel more "live." And the boss order of Phantoon-Kraid-Ridley-Draygon was perfect, as was moving the mini-bosses around.

One of the only things I didn't like: getting speed boost before high jump resulted in Samus's jump height lowering due to that glitch. Is there a fix for that? If so, implement it. [/spoiler]