General Hack Ideas

[Crashtour99]

Not to crush your dreams... but:

1. Have fun putting in a completely new Samus pose and animation.
2. Have fun allowing movement with X ray enabled. The game does not update screen VRam while it is on (or anything else, for that matter, but the VRam is the problem)
3. Have fun making a spider ball, but that's already getting made by a few people afaik, so maybe you'll get lucky with this one.

4. Have fun making an extra munitions pickup for the Hyper beam system, since there is no freespace in $8D (which is where the tilemaps need to be for such things, so you'd have to get rid of something else first).  Not to mention limited VRAM space for always loaded gfx.

[Vismund Cygnus]

*stuff*

Well, there's no denying that you're extremely ambitious. I wish you luck, to say the least.

[Quietus]

I'm still not sure, but it sounds like everybody is assuming that these haven't been created, and are just ideas.  Do people know something I don't, or are we just assuming that they haven't been created, due to them being very difficult?

It's just that this:

I already have all types of upgrades, including beam upgrades. I should upload them...?

...led me to believe they may already be done. :O_o:

[BowToNightmare5]

Not to crush your dreams... but:

1. Have fun putting in a completely new Samus pose and animation.
2. Have fun allowing movement with X ray enabled. The game does not update screen VRam while it is on (or anything else, for that matter, but the VRam is the problem)
3. Have fun making a spider ball, but that's already getting made by a few people afaik, so maybe you'll get lucky with this one.

4. Have fun making an extra munitions pickup for the Hyper beam system, since there is no freespace in $8D (which is where the tilemaps need to be for such things, so you'd have to get rid of something else first).  Not to mention limited VRAM space for always loaded gfx.

Well, I just had the ideas that I thought were really cool. No offense taken, really. It's alright. But, maybe I can find a way...hopefully.

[BowToNightmare5]

I'm still not sure, but it sounds like everybody is assuming that these haven't been created, and are just ideas.  Do people know something I don't, or are we just assuming that they haven't been created, due to them being very difficult?

It's just that this:

I already have all types of upgrades, including beam upgrades. I should upload them...?

...led me to believe they may already be done. :O_o:

Oh, sorry.

I thought you meant the names and mechanics of the upgrades. No, no. I'm actually working on that. I really am going into development. I just need to find a decent amount of sprites. I don't want to take the easy way out and use a Game Maker engine, but if all else fails, I might as well.

[Quietus]

Ah, that makes more sense.  It can be a little confusing, as we are generally talking about Super Metroid hacking, so when anybody mentions anything else, it can be tough to change your mindset. :^_^:

[Crashtour99]

Unless he can pull a Metaquarius and show some stuff off, I'm assuming they're ideas and not implemented yet.

As someone who has worked with some of this type of stuff, I can say that it isn't the easiest thing in the world.  You'd have to have some pretty damn good ASM skills and intimate knowledge of SM's engine to pull off these off.

Remember JAM's spazer/plasma mixing patch, and how much effort went into that (and it's still not completely finished yet)?  To make another missile upgrade (ultra missiles) you're going to run into similar problems with projectile tables/indexing, enemy resistances, etc...  Some of these ideas are VERY big, and involve a ton of work rewriting huge sections of code.

:Edit: late reply is late  lol  These ideas are indeed better suited to a custom coded fangame engine, and not to a SM hack.

[Quote58]

well, actually those wouldn't be too hard in general.
the hyper beam thing would be easy as long as you replace the super missile pickup with the hyper one by having missiles upgrade to supers (shamelessly advertising my asm which I need to optimize and make a better version of).
The ultra missile is very easy considering all he said was it's 4 times as powerful, and increasing the strength is easy. Add a new palette and icon and there you have it.
The spider ball is being made by at least 3 different people (I say at least cause jayths did make one a long time ago), and the grapple thing is sort of there already. Red monkey added doors which open by using grapple first, so aside from the animation it's not a big deal.
Also I see why quietus was confused as the way the guy phrased it sounded as though he had made them already, but he seemed to think quietus was wondering about ideas for upgrades? I dunno, just another miscommunication I suppose.
Lastly, in response to quietus' beam upgrade idea, I have had similar ideas and I quite like that one, I hope someone implements it someday.

[Kitsune_Phoenix]

*deleted post*

[personitis]

The thing with this idea is that the E-Tank squares are already 8x8 tiles which is the smallest a tile on the HUD can be read as (this is afaik however). That said, you would have to do some trickery to make rectangle tanks appear properly and I don't think it would be easy, but it wouldn't be terribly difficult either (especially if you know what you're doing). On a similar note I was talking to Shadow the other day and mentioned taking out the AUTO of the HUD so that you could squeeze two extra E-Tanks per row making for a total of 18. :nod:

[Kitsune_Phoenix]

*deleted post*

[Quote58]

well with regard to the etank thing, you and person are both right in a way.
Thing is, you can't do it with the way nintendo set up etanks (or the way most people do). As the index for the position wouldn't allow that due to what person mentioned. Each etank is already the smallest size of tile you can put as an entry in said index. However, it's certainly possible as long as you are prepared to remake the etank system (for reference, I made a new etank system for SMP which includes the concept that you'd need to use, but only as a small portion). It really wouldn't be difficult to make a shotty version of it by taking a long boring approach, but if you want to make it a nice, clean, system making use of loops and indexes, it'd take some actually thinking and effort.
Btw though, here was a concept hud I was putting together a little while ago which included those etanks.

[BowToNightmare5]

I'm currently working on the in-game map. It's huge.

[Quietus]

Just being curious here... but how hard is it to combine two items with ASM?

Depending on how pretty a fix you want, this may not even be necessary.  In SMILE, you can use an item pickup, and just change its value to reflect the upgrades you want it to give you.  e.g. Hi-Jump's value is 0100, and Varia Suit is 0001.  Changing the Hi-Jump's value to 0101 gives you both items.  As I say, this isn't a pretty fix, so it depends on what you want it to do.

[Kitsune_Phoenix]

*deleted post*

[Crashtour99]

I've played around with Grapple's coding a bit here and there.  While it definitely IS possible to extend it's range (I managed to make it latch onto blocks that were actually offscreen) the animation is designed for it's current length, and altering that makes it look strange.  And not in a good way.  Rapid fire would drastically reduce it's range as well.  As a weapon against enemies, that would require specific grapple reaction AI routines (could be done if you know what you're doing).

[Quietus]

I expect that making it longer would also either negate its use as a grappling beam, or would require more coding to fix the swinging routines.  Not to mention wacky, big level design to compensate for the wider arc.

[BowToNightmare5]

So, I've finished the map and I've been meaning to post it, but ImageShack is failing me once again. :sad:

I hate ImageShack.

I've started development and the project is underway!

[personitis]

So, I've finished the map and I've been meaning to post it, but ImageShack is failing me once again. :sad:

I hate ImageShack.

I've started development and the project is underway!

Just so you are aware, we have a specific topic for showing progress on your hack as this thread is more about discussing possible ideas to incorporate into hack rather than a showcase/talk about the work you've done. Also, people usually appreciate seeing some work done instead of hearing it being done around here. Just a friendly heads up. :wink: Best of luck with your hack! :^_^:

[BowToNightmare5]

So, I've finished the map and I've been meaning to post it, but ImageShack is failing me once again. :sad:

I hate ImageShack.

I've started development and the project is underway!

Just so you are aware, we have a specific topic for showing progress on your hack as this thread is more about discussing possible ideas to incorporate into hack rather than a showcase/talk about the work you've done. Also, people usually appreciate seeing some work done instead of hearing it being done around here. Just a friendly heads up. :wink: Best of luck with your hack! :^_^:

Thanks, man! :grin:

[Parabox]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=1FnPqA1UqNA#t=50s

Start watching around 50 seconds in.

"He's literally Kraid." - egoraptor, 2013

Would be cool if someone tiled Kraid over with this guy :D

[Quote58]

So I thought I'd ask this here as opposed to making a new thread cause it seems coherent enough. I was wondering if anyone had ideas for features they'd like to see in a custom hud. I keep starting to make one and deciding I don't like my idea and restarting later with a different design. There are certain features that I will deffinatly include, but I'd like to see what other people think would be useful or interesting.

[Kitsune_Phoenix]

*deleted post*

[Quietus]

A few things I can think of:

1. A thin gap to the right of the Energy Tanks, with another four blocks representing your reserves (perhaps keeing them grey?), rather than having to enter the menu to see them.
2. Similarly, moving your reserve bar to the HUD underneath them.
3. Icons compressed further to the left, to enable a larger area of the map visible.
4. The area name in the space to the left of the map.
5. For the number representing your energy within the current tank to actually count up or down (like when you're in acid), instead of just jumping.  The most damage I can ever really see something doing is about one tank, so it'd only need to count fast enough to cover this amount with your invincibility frames after being hit.

That's the few I can think of for now. :^_^:

Here's a mockup:
[spoiler][/spoiler]

[SirAileron]

With regards to the talk about a smaller-sized energy tank icon... I realize that's the smallest that the tiles will go, however is it not possible to have 6 different tile states instead of just 3?

Like, I get that there's the blank tile for there not being an energy tank there, one for filled, and one for empty. But if you made extra states to support increments of 100 per change, and 200 per new tile space, is that actually a ton of work?

I mean, I just made a tile mockup of how it'd look like by comparison: