General Hack Ideas

[DSO]

This is the place to post and get feedback on ideas you've got for your hack. If you really have a great idea, but aren't planning to actually do anything on it, then think hard about if it's really worth posting. This thread is mainly to get feedback on the ideas you are seriously thinking about using in your hack, not just a bunch of sighing "I wish someone would put feature X in Y game".



Here's what I'm thinking of doing with my Super Mario RPG hack:

To beat it, you'll have to get through while trying to take as little damage as possible. It'll be tested to make certain the difficulty is challenging without being overly frustrating, but there will be no way to recover HP at all. Instead, you must make it through the entire game without losing all your HP and being KO'd. You'll start at max level and will have 4, maybe even 5 digit HP.

So can't someone just skip all unnessecary fights and breeze through the game? Well, if you avoid fighting, your characters will start to lose experience after so long in the field and start losing their levels. Obviously, your stats, including HP, will go down as you lose levels, so you'd probably be better off fighting anyway. You can regain levels after you've lost them, but while your character stats will go back up for that level, your HP won't be refilled.
It's not going to be set up like you have to fight everything you encounter, it's just that not fighting at all will be detrimental. Characters who aren't in the main party setup will not get EXP or credit for battling, but they will not begin to lose exp nearly as fast. You'll want to switch party members eventually anyway, as some enemies will be weak to attacks by certain party members. The main thing I'm trying to go for is balance in this approach. (The exp loss will only start happening out in the field with monsters, it will not come into play in town areas.)

Also, another incentive to fight: you'll need the money monsters provide to buy your spells and equipment (You won't start with them all just because you're max level). Character spells will be availible at magic shops, and maybe I could add some new generic ones that can be used by any character.


There's a whole lot of stuff I have to do for this, balancing enemies so they fit this new system, changing certain effects like poison (Losing a 10th of your health in 1 turn in this game would be unacceptable...) But it's what I'm thinking of doing for my SMRPG hack and wanted to see what you guys thought. I'm aiming for balance in this idea, I hate grindfests as much as you do, but I don't want people skipping every battle for an easy victory.

[RealRed]

DSO: wow, that game would be hell if it was a really long one, 'cuz you could make some really long term fuckups.

anyway, this topic is gonna get sticky-fied. weeee!

[RealRed]

Bump.
Check this out. with a certain FX1, you can make some ugly muck!

This'll give you an interesting Background transparency, but you can make some water that covers up everything >:)
you could hide some spikes or something like that under the water. maybe you could make some sewer water that's filled with chemicals, and you can't see in it. well either way, here's what you need to set to get this:
Room FX1: water
FX1 secial effects: (last column when scrolling all the way over)
A: 2A
B: 1C
also, palette blends does always look nice.

[Untouchablekill]

Some ideas in Project: Zebes;
Mockball areas (and lots of them)
Single wall jump areas (:P)
New bosses
New beams
New suits
New places
New enemys
and finally...
A new ending,plot, and beginning.

[RealRed]

wow man
bast ida vvar
I think we should have a few more rules in this thread... like, not so general. A mucky water idea is a good idea to contribute, because it's not so general, which is the complete opposite of UTK's idea here... what do you guys think?

[DSO]

As I see it, this thread is either for posting things that people can do like Bloodsonic did, or for posting detailed information for the purpose of getting feed back. Thus, something like:

"New beams"
"New suits"

Is bad form, but something like:

"New elemental based beams with enemy-dependant elemental damage modifiers..."

"Can't say much, but the story takes place after the events of metroid Fusion and involves the Chozo..."

Is acceptable. While still not saying a lot, it still gives us something we can actually comment on. For UTK's post, there's only two things that we can reply to, and only that because we already know what mockballs are and we know what single wall jump is. We don't know what his new beams/bosses/suits are, and thus we cannot give any sort of comment on them and they are wasted in this thread. It also helps to show that it's something they've at least got planned out and have firm in mind.

The more general a post is in relation to its ideas, the more likely it is that there's no real set goal in the mind of the poster, and will quickly fizz away once they start running into roadblocks while trying to learn ASM. The only reason I've gotten as far into learning ASM as I have is not because my head was filled with abstract ideas like "I think Super Metroid would be cool with another beam." but rather because I had specific goals and ideas already planned out. When I didn't want other people to know about the secret things I had planned, I simply just never made mention of them.

[Zhs2]

I had an idea, but it'd probably take a bit of work to it. Basically, it'd be a completely ASM hack of Super Metroid that changes not the intrinsic gameplay, but instead the way you look at battles themselves. Basically, there would be no energy tanks in the game, but the player could fight enemies for experience points to level up and gain more onto their max health. It'd most likely be based off of some static value in the code, such as a percentage of the enemy's HP or such (that's the most likely solution, but there may be some other, easier to use static value in the game that could be hijacked to correctly determine the level of an enemy.) Perhaps a bit of assembly maths would be useful for that!

I've no plans for doing myself as of yet, as I only have a very rudimentary knowledge of ASM's workings... but it's an idea. General idea is general! :grin:

[zephyrtronium]

(EHealth+EDmg)/((PPercent+1)*(PHealth>>5))+1 sounds like a good formula for that. Example: ZM Zoomer has 3 health and does 10 damage, you start with 0% and 99 health. That would make it (3+10)/((0+1)*(99>>5))+1=13/(1*3)+1=13/3+1=5. Next Zoomer would do (3+10)/((0+1)*(104>>5))+1=5. Next would be (3+10)/((0+1)*(109>>5))+1=5, and that would continue until a) you reach 128 health or b) you gain a percentage, at which point your amount would fall. A ZM Geemer has 10 health and does 20 damage, so if you were to kill one after 3 Zoomers, where you would have 114 health, it would be (10+20)/((0+1)*(114>>5))+1=30/(1*3)+1=11. Get a % after that (from anything) then kill a Geemer and you would get (10+20)/((1+1)*(125>>5))+1=30/(2*3)+1=6, then another Geemer would give (10+20)/((1+1)*(131>>5))+1=30/(2*4)+1=4. Modifications might be wanted, since killing Kraid (400 health, 50 damage) with 100% and 1043 health would give (400+50)/((100+1)*(1043>>5))+1=450/(101*32)+1=450/3232+1=1. You might also modify it to account for resistances as well as other things, like having multiplication by the number of resistances plus one in the top half of the fraction (Kraid example with him being immune to Beam, Wave, Ice, Plasma, Bomb, and Power Bomb would still give ((400+50)*7)/((100+1)*(1043>>5))+1=3150/3232+1=1, but then again, you shouldn't really still be looking for energy at 100%), or using +ESpeed>>2 instead of +1 at the end (N/A for Metroid games other than SM which don't use specialized speed for enemies; perhaps area number could be used instead).

All-in-all, this sounds like a pretty neat idea, if a bit of a cliche RPG element. Having 65535 energy would certainly help against some of the bigger guys...

[minimod]Also, it seems like people are forgetting that this is a general hack ideas thread, not an SM one. >_>[/minimod]

Edit: I haven't made a post this long in years...

[Black Falcon]

Hack idea for SM:
Maybe someone could make a hack where the missile projectiles and the beams make some extra explosions and sound when hitting an enemy like in Fusion or Zero Mission and not "sink" into it and make it explode from the inside.  :rocket:
EDIT: Just noticed how much violence some of the smilies have

[Fizzer]

Heres an idea I came up with for SM, that could be adapted from other Metroids, that I wont be using:

Change reserve tanks into "oxygen tanks"; the suit cant extract oxygen from water, and youre oxygen level slowly decreses while youre under water. When you get the Gravity suit, oxygen tanks may no longer be necessary, but up until then, underwater sections have the same timed feel as pre-varia heat sections.

[Aile]

I got an idea for any one Mario game. Preferably Super Mario World. Have you ever played a game called Karoshi Suicide Salary Man?

Basically, you switch the events around so that you progress after you die instead of lose lives and have to start over. The levels are set up in a puzzle. There could be like a maze or a secret way to get killed in each level. And an exit for comedic effect. When Mario goes to the exit, the level end fanfare will play like normal, but not be able to progress on the map. :P

[DSO]

Little example of the idea I'm working on that's going to see a public release. Both pictures are of tileset 1, which itself has gained the option of using multiple palettes merely by using the FX palette blend number. Any value over 80 will activate it, so you'll be getting 128 new palettes you can use for any tileset. The IPS patch version will basically overwrite the colors for palette lines 0-7 with the colors at the location it jumps to based on the palette blend number. The locations will be written down, so you can go there and build your new palette in SABS. Also, the IPS is likely to be compatible even with ROMs that have been expanded and repointed extensively.

For those who want to put more effort for more reward, you will likely appreciate the Xkas file that I'll provide as well. If you want to put the palette blends in a specific bank, you can do that. If you want palette blend 81 to only overwrite palette line 6 and not change the others, it'll only overwrite line 6 and not mess with the other lines. If you want blend 87 to change the color of the enemies in the room, it can do that. If you want blend 89 to change the color of your beam... Lots of possibilities.

I can't really give an ETA on release of the patch, but I will say under a month is very likely.

[RealRed]

Dear god what
that's just O_O

[Parabox]

Well as some of you might have heard before, I uncovered a new technique. It seems to be possible to mockball underwater without gravity suit on. Here's the video:

Suitless Underwater Mockballing

Appearantly this was known.

[RealRed]

Moved because this is not a super metroid hack. Also, this isn't new I think.
water doesn't automatically drop samus's horizontal speed so of course this would be possible. :/

[personitis]

This has been bouncing around in my head for a while now. My idea is to merge the gameplay of Super Metroid into the world of Tallon IV, or Metroid Prime. I've already got a name: Super Metroid Prime. Only thing is I don't want to overwhelm myself with stuff as I'm already working on a full hack.

Idk yet, what do you all think? I wanna go for it, but don't know if I should.

[Big Gay Cell]

Idk yet, what do you all think? I wanna go for it, but don't know if I should.

More power to you if you decide to go through with it!  I'd love to play it.  Just keep in mind; that's one Hell of a project.

[RealRed]

[squishy_ichigo]

Funny thing.... I currently have plans to work on a SM:Prime when I have enough ASMering skills.

Would require quite  bit of reworking the code:
-enemies
-music
-many new PLMs
-HUD changes
-ablilties (no walljumping, charge beam item vaccum effect, heat/xray visor, etc)
-GFX
-not to mention how hard it'll be to change 3-D enviroments into 2-D
+ MORE!

a very large task to be done.  I already thought of a cool HUD idea, I might share it one day if I decide not to do this.

[RealRed]

We could do a #metconst community hack or something like that...
I could do level designing and graphics when I'm not lazy..

[GF_Kennon]

We could do a #metconst community hack or something like that...
I could do level designing and graphics when I'm not lazy..

i plan to thoroughly clean out a ROM at some point, we could assign banks for use so that we dont overwrite other peoples data and segments of certain banks (ie 8F)

This, sounds quite epic and i think we can do it ^-^, now, to finish this room. <.<;;

[personitis]

Well, glad to see it's so supported! A community hack would be awsome. If it turns into that, I'd gladly do map making and room layouts. A while ago I made a 2D map of Tallon Overworld but that's lost in the mess of my bookshelf...

So, community hack or not? I'm with you guys on w/e you want. =)

[RealRed]

I'm totally in because I could have a chance to use my kickass level design skills that I don't use. Because someone will be there to pester me to hack.. <3

[Black Falcon]

This is definitly a very good idea!
I support it, too! Would be great if I could join this! :grin:
I would made the level design, too.

[Phazar]

Ditto.  My level design skills have massively improved since that community hack I did once with GF_Kennon and Bloodsonic.