Super Metroid Blood+

[PHOSPHOTiDYL]

So like a week ago I was playing a bunch of old hacks, & came across super metroid blood.
It was... unfinished.

Just spent the past eight days doing nothing but making this a legit hack.
Wrecked ship was unfinished, it's done.
Norfair was unfinished, it's done.
I cut out tourian & gave it a completely different escape route.

Reverted to vanilla palettes, except I added black in various places.
Same with enemy palettes.

All bg data & layer two has been removed.
Fixed literally everything I came across, ran through it probably 30 times.
There weren't 100 items, so I added enough to match vanilla.

Couldn't get the gravity suit without the gravity suit.
Somewhere in brinstar was a door that started the worst room loop ever experienced.

I added a bunch of code, also posting the item index so you can have the complete experience.
This hack already had respin, faster elevators, & faster room transitions.

Samus can now:
Bombskip.
Walljump & still hold charge.
Morph & still hold charge, bombspread is activated by either holding charge long enough or pressing jump.
Autorun.
Dash is walk/screen scroll.
Your least used button can now look ahead & avoid some giant sidehopper blindly taking your head off.
Xray is fire now due to above change.
Tons of other small things. The missile station has been repurposed for this...

Shortcharge is absolutely required in various places.
You may want to be good at space jumping too.
No changes to enemy stats were made, nor were changes to enemy AI.

The first half is very linear, then it opens up.
Lots of ways to run though it.
I recommend at least one minute left at the landing site if you want to save the animals.

Not gonna list everything, but maybe you want to shinespark in lava, just look through the asm.
It's very unorganized, but contains most of the changes made before the final ten playtests.
There were "new" suits, so changes made were to accomodate the flow of things.

Intentions were for metroidconstruction to have another hack to play, so I avoided using the superpatch.
Wanted to keep it as close to vanilla as possible.
Even gave it a generic title screen.

Some screenshots to get you hyped.



Credits to KT JDDD, Scyzer, JAM, & the rest of metroidconstruction for all the helpful posts.

Hell awaits you in far east norfair...

Posted hotfix to prevent any bugs shinesparking out of bounds in some room.

UPDATE:
Hi, minor update reverting the following back to vanilla.

- max fall speed
- boss minimap
- bombspread
- no respin
- vanilla transitiontable
- no autorun
- message boxes
- gamestates
- xray isn't fire
- morph ani plays
- spacejump liquid

Scyzer's save/load & skipintrosaveswork are still present.

Autorun has never been about adding screen scroll or not wanting a run button.
It's been about not having to take my fingers off the d-pad to switch or cancel items.
Autocancel doesn't solve the problem when you're fighting in the moment.

Expect a dark souls patch combining run/jump so select/cancel are right next to eachother.
Also working on a 0.8.6 patch to address permastucks, poor tiling, backgrounds, stuff that turns you off.

In case you can't read the hieroglyphics on your overpriced piece of monitor, well it's english.
I only tiled the wrecked ship & half of norfair. The rest is credit to KT JDDD, it's not my hack.
Not trying to rewrite the super metroid formula, just improve it.

I only spent eight days making it completable, 2011 KT JDDD.

[albert v.]

I think I'll take a look at it and see what new things it brings I'd like a hack with many different graphics than the ones that are commonly used :grin:

[0garrison]

I played through this last night and finished in about 4 hours and 2:51 IGT. I uhhh, didn't like the experience very much.

The things that bugged me most were probably nothing that your adaptation outside of autorun. Most of my Super Metroid credentials come from years of speedrunning the game, so having autorun on was detrimental to me due to it killing advanced techs like Super short charges and making a simple mockball really awkward to pull off. I realize that it was put in to appease people who want the game more simple to control (or neutered for people with a greater degree of experience in vanilla SM) and I also realize that it was put in for the screen scroll thing. If I'm going to be honest though, I never once used the screen scroll because I somehow missed in the description that the run button harbored that function as well.

I think I ran into 5 permastucks in my playthrough, which is understandable considering the nature of this being a completion of someone else's work. If you desire to clean some of these up, I would take a look at the underwater areas as pretty much all of them can't be escaped if you show up without hi-jump boots. You can also fall out of bounds getting the missile in the right wall in one of the first rooms in the norfair replacement area. The other permastucks were common things like being a morphball and being unable to unmorph somewhere.

One thing that I found kind of annoying was the lack of save stations spread around the planet and the lack of refills. I know there is still a large portion of players who still rock snes9x, but there's also a rising population of folks with flashcarts who prefer the console experience. Kind of a minor complaint, but it definitely would have been nice to have had more refills or farming stations spread around the planet if nothing else.

One of the most annoying things for me in my experience with the hack was just how awkward some of the terrain was to traverse. Something that I think a lot of people don't really appreciate with the design of vanilla SM is just how well the rooms flow and allow you to maintain runspeed in most places. I'll just phrase it simple and say that there's shit everywhere in this and it makes the player focus more on jumping around obstructions than running and dodging through enemies. Also, the entrance for the wrecked ship should have been telegraphed a little bit more. Players can spend hours running around the planet and not realizing that one grapple block among many is actually a crumbling grapple block.

I guess as far as positives go, I enjoyed the spin on a lot of the tilesets for the reused rooms. Having Maridia structures used for heated rooms or Norfair places underwater was neat. I will also praise the tileset used for the SpoSpo area feeling like an underground construction site which is something I've never experienced in a hack. The different suits were kinda cool/

[PHOSPHOTiDYL]

The entrance to the wrecked ship was originally a hidden super missile block in blood.
All the vanilla rooms using different tilesets were from blood.
Save stations were lacking in blood.

I'm the one who enjoys golden dawn more than a save station every other room.
I also don't use savestates when playing.

Most changes were made to accomodate the flow of blood.
The code is there, if you don't like it, then revert to vanilla.
Wasn't trying to just come in & destroy years of vanilla super metroid, that's why I posted the code.

I'm just enjoying never having to use the select button on my controller.
I have my own project base, it's not of this world.

SpoSpo was all me doh.
Vanilla tile gfx, vanilla palettes minus some blackouts, some tiles copy/pasted & the palette line changed.

Blood was giving the snow suit later than the blood suit, so I placed east norfair in lava.
Couldn't speedboost out, so to accomodate the "new" suits, had to make some adjustments.

This took eight days from working on my hack to finish.
I had no intent to do anything with this hack but make it able to complete.

What about moonwalk though, have you ever used that in your speedrunning?
Should it just be a toggle for autorun?

Do you want a suit protecting you from acid, or do you want to burn in it?

I'm not some metroid fanboy, I'm here to hack.

[Mentlegen]

The entrance to the wrecked ship was originally a hidden super missile block in blood.
All the vanilla rooms using different tilesets were from blood.
Save stations were lacking in blood.

I'm the one who enjoys golden dawn more than a save station every other room.
I also don't use savestates when playing.

Most changes were made to accomodate the flow of blood.
The code is there, if you don't like it, then revert to vanilla.
Wasn't trying to just come in & destroy years of vanilla super metroid, that's why I posted the code.

I'm just enjoying never having to use the select button on my controller.
I have my own project base, it's not of this world.

SpoSpo was all me doh.
Vanilla tile gfx, vanilla palettes minus some blackouts, some tiles copy/pasted & the palette line changed.

Blood was giving the snow suit later than the blood suit, so I placed east norfair in lava.
Couldn't speedboost out, so to accomodate the "new" suits, had to make some adjustments.

This took eight days from working on my hack to finish.
I had no intent to do anything with this hack but make it able to complete.

What about moonwalk though, have you ever used that in your speedrunning?
Should it just be a toggle for autorun?

Do you want a suit protecting you from acid, or do you want to burn in it?

I'm not some metroid fanboy, I'm here to hack.

Just began playing this, however, it seems that whenever I die the game crashes ( permanent black screen )

Is this intentional?

pretty nice so far, although i don't really care for autorun

[PHOSPHOTiDYL]

Should bring you back to file select.

[0garrison]

None of my comments are meant to offend btw. I'm thankful that I got something new to play even if it did have a lot of things that I perceive as problems. Anyways..

I'm going to go on a little bit of a tangent here since obviously there's a degree of design philosophy differences between us. Honestly a lot of this isn't going to necessarily apply to this hack, but I do want to at least explain why I was a little more sour on it. Given the variety of ways a player can get stuck, having more save stations is usually a good thing. Thank you for adding the ones that you did. The main thing is that losing progress sucks and its a hell of a punishment to have, especially if its something that the player thinks isn't their fault. It doesn't matter whether it is or isn't actually their fault, but those kinds of thoughts are what will stick with them. I can beat hacks like the original release of Cliffhanger without save states and if I had the kind of spare time and sheer determination, I'm sure I could eventually beat it without save stations and I think honestly anyone could. That said, the original easy type, the save station hack, and Redux all exist for a reason and it's to make the hack appeal to more people by making being human less punishing. The thing that I feel a lot of people miss with challenge is that having an experience be smooth tends to aid in players feeling like they have more options and adds to replay value in a way that buffing enemies or removing save stations and refills harms it.

Anyways, as far as your general questions go, it's kind of mixed.

So in speedruns, people do use moon walk for a glitch that uncaps fall speed, but this is something that I feel a lot of people just looking to casually enjoy a hack aren't going to be upset if its missing. The moon fall glitch I'm talking about is actually pretty similar to how the player currently falls in Blood+, only that speed keeps on building beyond just being fast. I think having a toggle for autorun is something that will benefit casual players and more advanced players (not just speedrunners, I'm also talking about people who play a lot of hacks). That's my two cents on it.

As far as the suits go, honestly I thought the way they were implemented in this was pretty good! I do find the names a little cheesy, but I'm also kind of a stick in the mud so go figure. I liked that the Blood Suit didn't fully protect the player from heat, but it helped instead. For me I was a little bit concerned that it was just going to be some butchered Varia suit, but was relieved when it worked like Gravity suit. The Snow Suit is something that I'm not sure how I feel about it. It was pretty strange getting it so late in the hack and I was honestly kind of interested in seeing if I could get through the Lower Norfair segment without it. I don't think it would hurt the hack to have it appear earlier, but I'm kind of mixed on it. I will say while I'm talking about this segment that I didn't care for Charge Beam being such a late game item, but I can appreciate that it forces the player to rely on ammo more than they would otherwise. Between requiring ammo for bosses or buffing the bosses HP and damage output, I think I'd always prefer the former.

Anyways, sorry if I came off like I was being rude and insulting your work, I just know that the stuff that bugged me would turn a lot of players away. Given what you did with this, I'd say you're able to make something that would be pretty great and I look forward to seeing you work on other stuff. I also think it's cool to see old and abandoned hacks spruced up like you did with this or what Metaquarius did with MiniV2. Peace

[PHOSPHOTiDYL]

Nah no offense taken, just looking for feedback. Every bit helps.
I put the snow suit where it is in case players want to go for the hell run.
It was already in blood, but pretty much useless.
Xray is more of a collectable.

It's possible to do the hell run & save the animals in under five minutes.
You can do phantoon b4 the blood suit if you want a faster challenge run.
There's a secret power bomb that will save just a bit of time.

Fighting gold torizo in lava would force the player to spend more time collecting e-tanks, so it gets lowered.
I only tiled the wrecked ship & the ruins/lab in norfair. The rooms were unfinished.

All of the enemies were already in the unfinished rooms.
Originally the gravity suit was in maridia, which you needed to get it in the first place.
I could have done space jump underwater, but instead I swapped it with the gravity suit.

I mean it's a short project, you can probably get stuck going for springball without gravity, next room is a save lol.
It's decent for another playthrough though. I've already played everything so it's just in rotation for me.

[PHOSPHOTiDYL]

Warning: this topic has not been posted in for at least 30 days.

Minor update now, major update in the works.

[PHOSPHOTiDYL]

Two days in, this hack is at least 10x better than version 0.8.5.
I'm giving myself six days total to make it as awesome as possible.

I've put at least 100 hours into this, which is time not spent on my own hack.
So although it's only version 0.8.6, I'm not doing any more work to it.

Next version is much more enjoyable.
Pretty sure I ran through it 30 times today...

Anyone got speedruns from the last one??
1:03 was my best, phantoon wasn't too bad, draygon ruined my life a bunch.
Can't even explain getting owned by gold torizo, it's inevitable.

So yeah I guess the sixth will be release day.
See you next mission.

^_^

[Jordan5]

Pretty sure I ran through it 30 times today...

Anyone got speedruns from the last one??
1:03 was my best, phantoon wasn't too bad, draygon ruined my life a bunch.

So I'm guessing the new version is a lot faster to run? :lol:

[X-tradyte]

I had to make a post about this because I believe there is a few names that didnt get credited that should have been. KTJDDD was a good friend of mine a long time ago and Blood was an open project he asked anyone to help with. I became basically a leader of the thing with him and helped with level designing, the idea of Blood Beam, Blood Suit and Snow Suit were my ideas. Joey and Jamie Webb (Webber1900 and JamieWebb16) were also a huge help to the project and I believe deserve credit as well. Blood died slowly after KTJDDD's disappearance, and the last time we talked was 2014 on #CloudIRC which was Jamie's channel for his hack at the time.

tl;dr We deserve credit where credit is due as well, not just KTJDDD, while this was his hack, we all helped greatly to make it a decent hack.

I appreciate the work you put in to make it playable, but our contribution should not go under the radar.

[PHOSPHOTiDYL]

So I'm guessing the new version is a lot faster to run? :lol:

:grin:

We deserve credit where credit is due as well, not just KTJDDD, while this was his hack, we all helped greatly to make it a decent hack.

I appreciate the work you put in to make it playable, but our contribution should not go under the radar.

I got a sick idea for including all your names.
Thanks for letting me know, I had no idea.

[X-tradyte]

Youre welcome, it isnt a big deal I just dont want the work of others and myself to go unnoticed, I remember working a lot for Blood and it was fun while it lasted.

Lets see this idea of yours.

[PHOSPHOTiDYL]

Today may have been my greatest hack day.

Did my hack skillz give blood the ability to evolve into a whole new hack monster?
Or is blood really space parasyte XJ0023 "red ferrofluid" that is merely evolving me as it sees fit??

Also Gohan, is that what you want you name as??
Tomorrow is the last day I'm working on this, it's just credits & the smallest details left.

[X-tradyte]

My name at the time I was working on blood was DarkSamus so thats fine. I dont see a real reason to use a different alias for that project.

[PHOSPHOTiDYL]

Yeah so release is like sometime within 24 hours.

It's not some legendary massive exploration hack, but it wants to be.
Should be entertaining enough for a few hours though.
Just gonna run through like ten more times & balance some stats, check back tomorrow.

Hoping to turn the heads of some newcomers so maybe we can get some new hacks...