Strange Allies - Twin Contests

[Moehr]

Alright Folks, here are 5 new songs for everyone to use.

I feel like these can be used in multiple contexts so i advise you -

GET HACKIN'

To my surprise, there are 6 songs in here, not 5, though a few are variations on others.
No matter how you count them, they all sound pretty great! Powerful and yet won't get in the way of the gameplay (I tend to prefer my custom music a bit quieter so sfx play in front of it, which these do nicely).
I believe they use the vanilla soundfont and I'm not recalling instances in SM Alliance (where the songs are featured) in which enemy sfx sounded strange due to the songs. Awesome!
Does some cool audio stuff too if you're listening on headphones, which I'd recommend.
If I had to choose I'd say the Pyroxis tracks stick with me the most, but all of them work real well in many contexts as Mentlegen states and you can play SM Alliance (and should!) to see how they were envisioned.

A set of SPC or wav for people would also be nice-to-haves, and make sure you get these on your media channels!

SM Alliance: Namesake track, for me it evokes an intersticial theme that one might come back to a few times during gameplay in-between areas. Has good cutscene potential, or just after clearing an obstacle and on your way to a new area.

Harbinger: A more moody track that makes me feel like I'm about to head into danger against my better judgement. Good for scenes where you're creeping around trying to avoid getting caught or setting off traps.

Stagnithyros: feels like a slow slog, gives me cave or mountain vibes, where one is a hair's breadth from a bad fall. THe slower pace of this song also plays nice with water.

Pyroxis: These two themes are my favorites of the bunch, and it's nice to have both of them since they have the same vibe but one  or the other may add / ease tension to the area depending on your needs. The chanting over the background is done in a way that makes it sound like it is echoing a lament from the depths of the past.


Contest Points are as follows (max 20pts):
4/4 pts: aesthetics / polish of all resources in the submission:
5x4 pts: each new song (the two tracks with different volume only I'm counting as one, though it's nice to have that available)

Total: 20pts (hit the max).

[Mentlegen]

Excellent assesment - I actually lied twice: There are actually 7 songs counting the final boss. there are two for pyroxias and two for stagnithryos

[Moehr]

Custom Enemy submission - helpful baby metroid that clears blocks for Samus! Includes gfx for M2's Metroid crystals.
https://youtu.be/pINaDNm5L5w

This was a neat idea and maybe inspires some people to try and put some m2 love into their SM hacks, or get some new ideas about what could be done with the baby metroid we all know and love from our SM cutscenes.

The patch is meant for use with Asar - there is no mention of this though, so I had to contact the hack author to find out what I was doing wrong. he suggested I download the Dopefish fork of the Asar utility since the patch doesn't seem to play nice with Xcas: https://github.com/thedopefish/asar/releases/tag/metconst4

Once I had done that, I simply added it to the RF folder, deleted Xcas, and renamed Asar Xcas (following Oi27's suggestions). THen I could easily add the patch using Smile RF.

It loads everything you need, just about, to get it working. Two things that are missing are the Smile RF enemy data .txt and .gif that allow you to set the enemy's gfx in the room 'enemy gfx' list on the lower right of the monster setup. So having those two additional files would be a big improvement (thankfully, you can copy any other enemy's files and name them F813.txt and F813.gif; the data in the file doesnt matter at all).

After completing that last step I was able to get the Baby up and running. Be sure to follow the comment in the ASM file - "Use solid tiles with a BTS value of 10"; other kinds of tiles with that BTS value probably crash the game :D

While the game comes with art for the m2 crstals that the baby eats in metroid 2, it doesn't apply the art automatically as far as I can see. This is strictly cosmetic anyhow and it's probably more fun to use new art for the tiles you wish for the baby to destroy.

2 pts: aesthetics / polish - some missing info users need, some missing assets for RF, and a lot of unused, commented out material in the patch makes it hard to follow at times
4 pts: each new patch that includes art and AI for a totally new enemy
1 pt: Bonus I'm including for thinking to include art for the crystals.

Total: 7 points.

All in all a fun idea that works pretty well once you figure out how to do the setup, and I'm sure a lot of people will be interested in using it! Nice job!

[Moehr]

Here are my resource submissions for this contest for everyone to use.

This tileset is called "botwoon's garden".
It mostly uses vanilla gfx with new palettes, but has also some custom gfx to spice things up
Put in in SMART's export->tileset->SCE and rename it to first consecutive hex number.
Preview of the tiletable:
[spoiler][/spoiler]
Example room:
[spoiler][/spoiler]

Now also all the tilesets used in super metroid alliance!

I'll be adding more resources to this post, so make sure to keep checking if interested.

At cut-time one tileset had been uploaded, the "Botwoon's Garden" tileset. It does exactly what it says on the lid, mixing mostly vanilla tiles from different sets and then adding a few custom tiles, and then leans into its palette choices to bring it to life. It has a nice, swampy feel excellent for a cavern grotto or a spongy cove below an undergrown river. It also makes for a neat transition set since it has some assets from many (maybe all) of the core vanilla regions. The zip includes the gfx sheet, tile table data and TPL palette setup for use with Smile RF and can also be dropped into SMART effortlessly. There's a room of the month entry using this set that one could refer to as well. A png in the zip folder of that entry would be nice to have, but not required.

Contest Points:
4 pts: aesthetics / polish - the files submitted have everything you need to get set up, and also include some plant structures for good pleasure.
4 pts: each new background tileset (the visual tilesets used to create rooms)

Total: 8 pts.

[Moehr]

Here's an M2 resource for y'all:

Aut-Series Enemy Graphics
Sprite tiles and metasprite definitions to port over the Autector, Autclast, and Autool from Metroid Dread (so they can finally meet their buddies, the Autrack, Autoad, and Autom).

Enemy AI not provided.

Last but not least, some m2 graphics and spritemap ASM to move some Aut-series bots found in Metroid Dread into Return of Samus! The art is totally worth checking this out for and they might make nice graphic additions for hacks of other games as well.
The patches are cleanly written but I'm not sure that they draw the tiles to the ROM to accompany the spritesheets, and without that feature, I'm not totally sure from reading the patches how I need to place the tiles in the ROM to work with the spritesheets. Furthermore there is nothing to run these sheets anyhow, meaning users probably won't find them immediately useful. Mention is made of adding that AI though, which I'm excited about for sure!

Contest Points are as follows:
2 pts: aesthetics / polish
3x 1pt: each new patch for an enemy sprite reskin to an existing enemy - The art for these three enemies is very nice on its own, it could have been a good idea to just focus on fitting the art to existing enemies so that users would be better able to drop it over some other enemy's tiles.

Total: 5 pts.

[Moehr]

And with that, I'd ask members who submitted entries to do a short review in a single post ranking the resource entries with a brief review, if you don't mind - and that'll be factored into the final scoring for those.

[Tundain]

Since I can't edit Mentlegen's post, here's the latest update for sm: alliance.
What's new you ask?
-added an escape sequence
-removed the biggest plothole in the story
-prob more stuff that i forgot about, but not too important

[drb]

I've compiled a screenshot map for Alliance, and took some notes along the way:

- The missile outside of the 2nd power bomb upgrade has a shared index with Varia.  It's pretty deep into the heated area so unlikely that someone would lock themselves of Varia, but you never know.

- Crocomire's room and the elevator room behind him play Vanilla's upper Norfair music, and it persists for a few rooms after.  Also, after killing Crocomire and leaving through the top door, the "tension" track sticks.  Seemed like maybe an oversight, as pretty much the whole game is original music.

- The gray door in the ninja pirate room stays gray after opening and returning.  May be intentional based on the path, thought I'd mention just in case.

- What's the deal with Screw Attack?  It's obtainable, but only with a falling blue suit as far as I can tell.  Seems waaaay out of place with the rest of the game difficulty-wise... unless it wasn't intended to be reachable?  If so, oops.  :grin:

108.4% is a weird number to finish with...
[spoiler=final loadout]
65 missiles (shared index missile not counted)
15 supers
10 power bombs
10 E-Tanks
1 R-Tank
Varia
Gravity
Charge
Spazer
Plasma
Morph Ball
Bomb
Spring Ball
Screw Attack
Hi-Jump
Speed Booster
= 32 40 pickups
[/spoiler]

Regardless, this is a fun play with incredible scope for a two-month contest hack.  Kudos to everyone involved.

[Mentlegen]

I've compiled a screenshot map for Alliance, and took some notes along the way:

- The missile outside of the 2nd power bomb upgrade has a shared index with Varia.  It's pretty deep into the heated area so unlikely that someone would lock themselves of Varia, but you never know.

- Crocomire's room and the elevator room behind him play Vanilla's upper Norfair music, and it persists for a few rooms after.  Also, after killing Crocomire and leaving through the top door, the "tension" track sticks.  Seemed like maybe an oversight, as pretty much the whole game is original music.

- The gray door in the ninja pirate room stays gray after opening and returning.  May be intentional based on the path, thought I'd mention just in case.

- What's the deal with Screw Attack?  It's obtainable, but only with a falling blue suit as far as I can tell.  Seems waaaay out of place with the rest of the game difficulty-wise... unless it wasn't intended to be reachable?  If so, oops.  :grin:

108.4% is a weird number to finish with...
[spoiler=final loadout]
65 missiles (shared index missile not counted)
15 supers
10 power bombs
10 E-Tanks
1 R-Tank
Varia
Gravity
Charge
Spazer
Plasma
Morph Ball
Bomb
Spring Ball
Screw Attack
Hi-Jump
Speed Booster
= 32 pickups
[/spoiler]

Regardless, this is a fun play with incredible scope for a two-month contest hack.  Kudos to everyone involved.

Excellent work here bro. I see you've found the R-tank, congrats. Screw attack is meant to be found via speedkeep (what you referred to as falling bluesuit). There was a scrapped fourth main area that was to be accessible to the right of the main lab area which was canned due to time constraints. This area would've been a challenging area which awarded screw attack. So screw attack was relocated, but it remains a challenge item.

[drb]

Excellent work here bro. I see you've found the R-tank, congrats. Screw attack is meant to be found via speedkeep (what you referred to as falling bluesuit). There was a scrapped fourth main area that was to be accessible to the right of the main lab area which was canned due to time constraints. This area would've been a challenging area which awarded screw attack. So screw attack was relocated, but it remains a challenge item.

Thanks, but part of my process for building maps is tearing the ROM apart in SMILE, so I take no credit for finding the super-hidden items. 

I assume speedkeep refers the maintaining of your speed when you land from a jump, but then my follow-up question is where is the player intended to get up to echoes speed?

[spoiler]I wanted to use the path to the lava controller and break straight through the floor, but I was unable to nail the last jump before the door with or without hi-jump.  So I used the kihunter room above to speed up and glitched to break momentum, keep the bluesuit, and jump from the ledge through the floor below without spinning.  That's what I meant by "falling bluesuit" - probably shoulda said bluesuit glitch.
[/spoiler]

[Mentlegen]

The player is intended to kill the ki hunters in the previous room, open the right door, and then run through the room while jumping on the platforms - by the time you go through the door you'll have enough speed for bluesuit. after exiting, trigger speedkeep, and jump down the shaft

[Marisko96]

theyre still making contests huh

[H A M]

there's a crash when re-entering the first acid divert room after diverting the acid