Stargazer: The 24 hour ZM hack!

[Ing-ing]

It was my birthday, June 16th, when I got this idea, to test my skill, tenacity and speed, by creating a small fullhack in no more than one day, starting at the zero hour of 18th of June. To make 24 hour story short, I did it, with help of One of 99's arrangements and Nathantech's SM tilesets.

The legend:

A piece of thought, free from gravity, is floating through the dimension of triumph. Chocked by mechanical ambition, its cries reach Samus. She knows what to do, to set the floating island free once again.


A Zero Mission Hack. Average difficulty (so it's an ing hack you can actually beat!) Latest version 1.4

I hope you enjoy playing this experiment as much as I enjoyed making it. The future of Metroid hacking is in ease, which fuels the great creativity that I have seen in the many GBA hacks that have been released, and I wish to see more!

[kkzero]

That new music is just...beautiful.
A short but sweet hack, nice job for 24 hours! It was fun to explore and not overly difficult.

[caauyjdp]

Thank you for the hack[spoiler=and thank you for]not putting anti power grip tiles in ridley's room.[/spoiler]

Found some minor issues:
Reo in the first room has trouble following you straight to the right for no apparent reason.
Also in the starting room, there are two crumble blocks near the reo, and no way to get to them?
In the big room with 1st super missiles, you can get slightly out of bounds on the right "wall", which breaks scrolling, and you can also wall jump up the same wall.
Top of the mother brain room is "outside the map".
Morph tunnel from imago room to power bomb room has visually bad door transition. Iirc it's fine on the first time you enter, but has issues if you revisit.
On the map, door just below imago eye door is shown as yellow, but it's a blue door iirc.
If you shinespark up the wind tunnels after mother brain, spark gets interrupted, but sound effect continues to loop.
Item counts on the map screen are wrong for both brinstar and tourian(unchanged from vanilla?).
In the 1st metroid room, there are three spots where bombs are pulled up(2) or down(1) without a visible "magnet" on that column. There's some slight inconsistencies in wave beam room too iirc, but maybe it's just because i think of those things as magnets.
I won't mention typos, but the first letter of the post mother brain text is corrupted?
Music doesn't seem to loop? And imho it's way too loud compared to other sounds.

Best moment was realizing what you've done to ridley's room.
Worst moments, farming in mother brain room before leaving. C'mon, that's just unfair to people on 1st run through.

And again, thanks for the hack.

[Ing-ing]

Thank you for the hack[spoiler=and thank you for]not putting anti power grip tiles in ridley's room.[/spoiler]

Found some minor issues:
Reo in the first room has trouble following you straight to the right for no apparent reason.
Also in the starting room, there are two crumble blocks near the reo, and no way to get to them?
In the big room with 1st super missiles, you can get slightly out of bounds on the right "wall", which breaks scrolling, and you can also wall jump up the same wall.
Top of the mother brain room is "outside the map".
Morph tunnel to from imago room to power bomb room has visually bad door transition. Iirc it's fine on the first time you enter, but has issues if you revisit.
On the map, door just below imago eye door is shown as yellow, but it's a blue door iirc.
If you shinespark up the wind tunnels after mother brain, spark gets interrupted, but sound effect continues to loop.
Item counts on the map screen are wrong for both brinstar and tourian(unchanged from vanilla?).
In the 1st metroid room, there are three spots where bombs are pulled up(2) or down(1) without a visible "magnet" on that column. There's some slight inconsistencies in wave beam room too iirc, but maybe it's just because i think of those things as magnets.
I won't mention typos, but the first letter of the post mother brain text is corrupted?
Music doesn't seem to loop? And imho it's way too loud compared to other sounds.

Best moment was realizing what you've done to ridley's room.
Worst moments, farming in mother brain room before leaving. C'mon, that's just unfair to people on 1st run through.

And again, thanks for the hack.

You could have just tried charge beam...

[caauyjdp]

My bad. I did try it(after posting, but before your post), but I guess I had bad position and diagonal shots with wave beam were getting blocked. Just retried and horizontal shots had no problems. My apologies. I do tend to forget that charge beam exists since I mostly play zm.

[Ing-ing]

My bad. I did try it(after posting, but before your post), but I guess I had bad position and diagonal shots with wave beam were getting blocked. Just retried and horizontal shots had no problems. My apologies. I do tend to forget that charge beam exists since I mostly play zm.

That's true, heh. ZM charge beam is the most forgettable.

[caauyjdp]

Just played hard mode up to cocoon. Is power grip actually gettable somewhere in hard(last room?)?

I really liked the feeling of paranoia in the 2nd room. I liked how wave is only gettable after ridley in hard(unless people with skills and can jbj there?).
Requiring people to wall jump off the screen edge is a bit odd, but at least it doesn't break scrolling in that room.[spoiler=the room mentioned above]room after normal power grip[/spoiler]
edit: though that might be doable with jump extend, didn't try

Probably won't finish hard, because I'm bad, but not complaining.

Best moment in hard: after getting ice, went to save below, checked the map, decided to grab speed, went to first room... turned around and went the long way :D

After replaying for third time, I really should have remembered charge beam, since I was using it without thinking on eye doors to save missiles anyway. Again, sorry for whining about that.

[Ing-ing]

Just played hard mode up to cocoon. Is power grip actually gettable somewhere in hard(last room?)?

I really liked the feeling of paranoia in the 2nd room. I liked how wave is only gettable after ridley in hard(unless people with skills and can jbj there?).
Requiring people to wall jump off the screen edge is a bit odd, but at least it doesn't break scrolling in that room.[spoiler=the room mentioned above]room after normal power grip[/spoiler]
edit: though that might be doable with jump extend, didn't try

Probably won't finish hard, because I'm bad, but not complaining.

Best moment in hard: after getting ice, went to save below, checked the map, decided to grab speed, went to first room... turned around and went the long way :D

After replaying for third time, I really should have remembered charge beam, since I was using it without thinking on eye doors to save missiles anyway. Again, sorry for whining about that.

Hmm, I didn't edit hard mode spritesets, nor have time to test it, so it's possible that things just break in that mode.

[makazuwr32]

Aaand completed with 3 deaths on normal mode in an hour of real time total.
95% items collection: 25 normal missiles, 2 super, 2 power bombs, 4 e-tanks; morph, charge, long, wave, space jump, ice, speed, screw attack and hi jump.
what did i miss?

Love that tile set, like that giant wasp fight, nice music, spikes and conveyor betls!
MB fight because of those belts is a bit annoying.

[Ing-ing]

Aaand completed with 3 deaths on normal mode in an hour of real time total.
95% items collection: 25 normal missiles, 2 super, 2 power bombs, 4 e-tanks; morph, charge, long, wave, space jump, ice, speed, screw attack and hi jump.
what did i miss?

Love that tile set, like that giant wasp fight, nice music, spikes and conveyor betls!
MB fight because of those belts is a bit annoying.

It's hard to say without a point of reference, but there's one super near ice that's easy to miss.

[caauyjdp]

Just found a nasty bug. In the bomb room, if you go down into the pipe, crouch without morphing, then press up to go back to standing pose, conveyor belt tends to grab you most of the time, pulling you inside solid tiles(sometimes even just wiggling left to right for a bit while standing will pull you in, but crouch uncrouch is the most reliable way to reproduce it). You can usually safely pass through to the other side, and get out, but if you spinjump, you tend to fall through the bottom of the screen and have to reset.
Can probably be avoided by removing conveyor tiles from the left edge of the tunnel.

[115Percent]

Just began playing. I'm liking the hack so far but, right off the bat, the Chrono Trigger Music failed to loop, I'm currently playing with no background music.

edit: Oh, the eyeball door in the room with floating spiky blocks (first one I've seen) isn't responding to either missile or attacking.

[Cpt.Glitch]

edit: Oh, the eyeball door in the room with floating spiky blocks (first one I've seen) isn't responding to either missile or attacking.

[spoiler] try charge beam [/spoiler]

[115Percent]

Oh that's what you need? Actually don't have that yet. I'll go look for it but I was pretty convinced something went wrong there given how the eye doors work in the series.

Edit: Am i supposed to get it from Deorem? Kind of worried because I'm pretty sure I fought that guy 3 times and he ran all times.

Edit 2: So apparently I had to return to the green fight room of his and fight him a fourth time, that's kind of bizarre given how out of the way it is. Was that intended?

[Ing-ing]

Oh that's what you need? Actually don't have that yet. I'll go look for it but I was pretty convinced something went wrong there given how the eye doors work in the series.

Edit: Am i supposed to get it from Deorem? Kind of worried because I'm pretty sure I fought that guy 3 times and he ran all times.

Edit 2: So apparently I had to return to the green fight room of his and fight him a fourth time, that's kind of bizarre given how out of the way it is. Was that intended?

Deroem is random in his escapes, though he rarely if ever leaves before having offered three chances to shoot him.