Post Hack Scrubs Contest - Hack Discussion

[caauyjdp]

[spoiler]Where is that? I have tried scaling every wall that path takes me to, but to no avail. Here's my current map:



[/spoiler]

[spoiler=reply]
Way back that starts at the top of low gravity shaft is not marked unfortunately(and I didn't remember that until your last post). It's kind of meant to be found from the other side.
[spoiler=specific location]
Look at the map, there are two save rooms. From the top one, to the right side of it is a room that shaped like an upside down L. Go to the bottom of that room, and walljump up the left wall. There's a morph tunnel there, and you will ledge grab the wall where it is.
[/spoiler]
[/spoiler]

The rules are as follows:

• At least three items required to beat the game must be collectable in any order. Our hope is that the player can choose their own route and this adds an aspect of replayability to the hack. (Also interesting blind races YEAH)

I wonder how much emphasis is put on the word required.

Of the three hacks that I've played:

Metroid Fusion C.L.E.A.N.S., as far as I can see, only required missiles and power bombs, other items were optional.

Super Metroid: Space Junk had listed "The 3 items you can get in any order"(Hi-Jump, Grapple, Varia) and of those only grapple was required. One could argue that grapple and power bombs are required and gettable in any order, but I'm having trouble thinking of a third item that would be part of this set. Draygon was meant to be required, so grapple, power bombs and hi-jump or varia can be easily argued to be the three items required but collectable in any order.
yet another edit: turns out space jump(which required the power bombs) can be substituted with hi-jumpmorph&bombs+varia+5(maybe less) energy tanks, so now I have no idea to even considered as required. Opens up the possibilities though.
can't stop being wrong/editing: grapple can be substituted for speed booster, so it's not required, but speed booster requires varia so it can't be part of the set. Glad I found a thing to make an elephant out of.

Symphony of Soap had three items(morph/bombs, missiles/hi-jump, super) that were required and were collectable in any order(although, grabbing morph in any order only really comes into play if you don't know where it is).
edited:crossed some snarkiness, grammar, updated space junk section

[Mar99troid]

The rules are as follows:

• At least three items required to beat the game must be collectable in any order. Our hope is that the player can choose their own route and this adds an aspect of replayability to the hack. (Also interesting blind races YEAH)

I wonder how much emphasis is put on the word required.

Of the three hacks that I've played:

Metroid Fusion C.L.E.A.N.S., as far as I can see, only required missiles and power bombs, other items were optional.

[spoiler]That's why I made V1.1 for CLEANS, so gravity is also a required item. You can sequence break it by using some difficult methods if you know exactly what to do, but that's not that easy and almost no one is going to do this on their first playthrough, so I find it to be a required item. It's debatable though. I wonder how important this point is, too.[/spoiler]

[spoiler=possibly stuck in Symphony of Soap]
I went to revisit imago cocoon room, and there doesn't seem to be a way out if you go past crumble blocks(floor doesn't stay broken).
So I reset and continue from the save room just before that point, and try to go back, but there doesn't seem to be a way back through big room with water?
I got missiles, super, power grip, hi-jump and charge beam.
Do I need to restart or look harder?

edit: Restarted and beat it with 100% but... It was fun up to the first save room, and then it was just pain and bewilderment. I liked the new Imago look but that's about it. Sorry, I wanted to like this.
[/spoiler]

[spoiler]The same thing happened to me. Luckily I always save state on a different slot when reaching a save station, so this didn't effect me that much. Still a very big oversight though.[/spoiler]

[spoiler=Symphony Of Soap: Other problems]I also found a softlock during the demos of the hack (screen freezes) and you can glitch above the wall in the last room. Also there's a save spot during the first boss fight on the highway from where you can kill him easily without any risks. It's the first hole in the ground from left to right. I don't know if that was intended.[/spoiler]

[caauyjdp]

@Crystal_Knight
[spoiler]In the room before last boss, were both doors meant to open when kraid was dead, or did you mean for one of them to open when draygon was dead?
edited: reworded slightly[/spoiler]

[Crystal_Knight]

@Crystal_Knight
[spoiler]In the room before last boss, were both doors meant to open when kraid was dead, or did you mean for one of them to open when draygon was dead?
edited: reworded slightly[/spoiler]

[spoiler]
Yeah... One was supposed open up each major boss. Oh dear... that is a very major screw up. Apparently I accidentally set the high for both doors to 80 instead of 10. Yeah,I really need to have other people test my hacks.   
[/spoiler]

[Jiffy]

This thread is for discussing the submissions for the Post Hack Scrubs contest. Hacks can be found here.

[nodever2]

So I just beat M2: Metroid Purge and wanted to share my thoughts on it. When I beat the other contest hacks I might edit this post with my sentiments on the other hacks as well, but this is the first one I played.

[spoiler=Metroid Purge]
I'll be the first to tell you that this hack has issues. I found this out when I ventured right and down a few rooms from the start and encountered a floating mass of letters and numbers which I quickly realized was a metroid.
But I also realize that this entire hack was built in just a couple of days, and with that in mind it's actually rather impressive to me. There are quite a few rooms to explore, and it feels very open. You can even fight the queen metroid before beating all of the other ones, but good luck - it's kinda hard to beat her without getting some more upgrades first, although this was the first time I'd ever beaten her myself.
Overall this hack is exciting to me in a strange way. This is the beginning of something. This is the beginning of metroid 2 hacking. So of course it's going to be rough around the edges, especially when combined with extremely limited development time, and I feel like we should point out the technical issues with this hack so that they can be looked into and fixed in future hacks.
[spoiler=Technical issues]

• As previously stated, the first metroid I encountered was a mess of letters. There was one other one in the hack that was like it.
• After beating a metroid, the music sometimes doesn't resume playing correctly. I think it's because of collecting an item while the music is resuming, but I don't know for sure.
• There were some missile powerups on the left side of the first room, but they didn't appear until... well, I don't even know, I just kinda messed around over there a bit and they suddenly did. Maybe it was because I bombed them? Maybe it was because I scrolled them offscreen and back onscreen again? (upon closer inspection, they appear when starting a new save file, but if you immediately go right and get varia and then come back, they will be gone and behave strangely as previously described)
• Sometimes, after fighting metroids, the save station text prompt becomes a garbled mess.
• One of the energy+missile refills is not correctly aligned to the tiles - I believe it is the rightmost one.
• In the room before the queen metroid, trying to exit through the 1-block high bomb tunnel seems to just send me to the queen metroid room anyway. If I had used that save station, I don't think it would have been possible to go back and pick up more upgrades, which is not good
• At one point I found bombs... even though when I started the hack I had them anyway?

[/spoiler]
Yeah. I know this hack isn't perfect, but I still enjoyed it. Playing the first exploration metroid 2 hack was pretty much a new experience on its own, and even though the world itself seemed to have a lot of reused rooms, I can say that the metroids kept things interesting without overstaying their welcome and made the powerups feel more rewarding to get, something that wouldn't be quite as easy to do in short hacks of other games.
Most importantly of all, though, this hack makes me excited for the future. I hope Liam gets more opportunities to hack metroid 2 without losing his data on his hard drive, and there's a lot more to look forward to with the possibility of a M2 randomizer and maybe a public release of ROSE (Return of Samus Editor) happening eventually, there's a lot of potential here.

As far as this hack itself is concerned, would I recommend other should play it? I'd say yes - it's rough around the edges, but if you have a little time to kill, it's worth checking out.[/spoiler]

[liamnajor]

So I just beat M2: Metroid Purge and wanted to share my thoughts on it. When I beat the other contest hacks I might edit this post with my sentiments on the other hacks as well, but this is the first one I played.

[spoiler=Metroid Purge]
I'll be the first to tell you that this hack has issues. I found this out when I ventured right and down a few rooms from the start and encountered a floating mass of letters and numbers which I quickly realized was a metroid.
But I also realize that this entire hack was built in just a couple of days, and with that in mind it's actually rather impressive to me. There are quite a few rooms to explore, and it feels very open. You can even fight the queen metroid before beating all of the other ones, but good luck - it's kinda hard to beat her without getting some more upgrades first, although this was the first time I'd ever beaten her myself.
Overall this hack is exciting to me in a strange way. This is the beginning of something. This is the beginning of metroid 2 hacking. So of course it's going to be rough around the edges, especially when combined with extremely limited development time, and I feel like we should point out the technical issues with this hack so that they can be looked into and fixed in future hacks.
[spoiler=Technical issues]

• As previously stated, the first metroid I encountered was a mess of letters. There was one other one in the hack that was like it.
• After beating a metroid, the music sometimes doesn't resume playing correctly. I think it's because of collecting an item while the music is resuming, but I don't know for sure.
• There were some missile powerups on the left side of the first room, but they didn't appear until... well, I don't even know, I just kinda messed around over there a bit and they suddenly did. Maybe it was because I bombed them? Maybe it was because I scrolled them offscreen and back onscreen again? (upon closer inspection, they appear when starting a new save file, but if you immediately go right and get varia and then come back, they will be gone and behave strangely as previously described)
• Sometimes, after fighting metroids, the save station text prompt becomes a garbled mess.
• One of the energy+missile refills is not correctly aligned to the tiles - I believe it is the rightmost one.
• In the room before the queen metroid, trying to exit through the 1-block high bomb tunnel seems to just send me to the queen metroid room anyway. If I had used that save station, I don't think it would have been possible to go back and pick up more upgrades, which is not good
• At one point I found bombs... even though when I started the hack I had them anyway?

[/spoiler]
Yeah. I know this hack isn't perfect, but I still enjoyed it. Playing the first exploration metroid 2 hack was pretty much a new experience on its own, and even though the world itself seemed to have a lot of reused rooms, I can say that the metroids kept things interesting without overstaying their welcome and made the powerups feel more rewarding to get, something that wouldn't be quite as easy to do in short hacks of other games.
Most importantly of all, though, this hack makes me excited for the future. I hope Liam gets more opportunities to hack metroid 2 without losing his data on his hard drive, and there's a lot more to look forward to with the possibility of a M2 randomizer and maybe a public release of ROSE (Return of Samus Editor) happening eventually, there's a lot of potential here.

As far as this hack itself is concerned, would I recommend other should play it? I'd say yes - it's rough around the edges, but if you have a little time to kill, it's worth checking out.[/spoiler]

Yeah, the hack was supposed to be several times larger and more detailed. Glitches 2 and 3 are engine glitches, the rest are my fault. You also happen to be correct about glitch 2.