V E R T I C A L I T Y

[junkrares]

Can someone make a video of how to get this missile?

[spoiler]
Crateria, near the elevator, after GT and Screw.
[/spoiler]

I can't figure out the right angle. I've done a downward diagonal spark from the ledge on the upper left (outside the door), and tried a horizontal spark from the ledge next to it. No dice.

I'm at 98.8%, 195/30/20 for ammo. It's literally the last item I need for 100%.

EDIT: Figured it out.

[spoiler]You need to charge your spark, spin jump, end the spin with Aim-Up, and then hit down to release the diagonal spark. Took a few tries, but I got it!

[/spoiler]

[advancedpillow]

I played your hack. Really fun. Here are some of my thoughts.

The beginning area was laggy as hell on my emulator, perhaps from the background elements and too many enemies? But it plays just fine on console.

The new music is hit or miss for me. Some tracks sound perfectly fine, though weird. But others sound awful with dissonant notes sprinkled throughout. Nothing was truly grating, in the music department, however. Ultimately, I do like that there is custom music, because I tend to feel custom music really helps to define a SM hack.

The rooms are mostly very well done. My biggest issue with the rooms are the blind jumps -- up, down, and across. I imagine there's nothing really to be done about that, taking into account the hack theme. Though nothing was truly egregious there, imo. I like how interconnected everything is, with a core that connects all the areas. Most of the puzzles were fun, but some were frustrating to figure out (diagonal-down shinesparking. How would anyone ever figure that out in-game?).

I played on 1.1 and I think you have a good balance here with the teleport puzzles. I thought they were fun, and I appreciate the warning of seeing the return pad in a room. Thank you, too, for making the jetpack item work in ball form.

That brings me, however, to the overall difficulty. I read that you had hoped this would be considered vanilla difficulty, but there's just no way that can be, no matter how you nerf the enemies. The very nature of your puzzles would stump and frustrate many players who consider vanilla either difficult or the difficulty to strive for. Difficultly in traversal counts towards whether something can be considered vanilla, or imo it should count towards that. Not that anything is truly HARD in your hack. I would say Verticality should be comfortably considered Experienced, in terms of the difficulty level. And I think you should maybe consider being content with that. Because to address things further, to hit the *vanilla* experience, I fear you might water-down your hack and your vision of it. For example, if you removed the teleport blocks altogether. Which I don't suggest you do.

I love the customized bosses. VERY well done. I've been playing SM romhacks for 11 years now and your work here was very fun to see and play.

I thought the actual size of the areas too was just right; playing never felt like a slog. Great job.

Some more specific suggestions:
1.) yes, you do need a save station before Botwoon. For sure. The run back, if you die, would be extremely frustrating. And he can be kind of a pain, once you're out of missiles.
2.) I think Ridley is balanced well, though maybe a bit more of a nerf could perfect his encounter. Maybe just a bit less damage to Samus?
3.) Those little insect buggers that fly towards Samus like gnats...as I'm trying to direct her through vertical shafts with horizontal moving platforms.... Yeah, they were my most hated aspect of the game. Please not while I'm trying to time my jumps with crumble blocks beneath. That to me is false difficulty, because it isn't difficult...it's just annoying. I only felt that way in the very beginning of the game. Then they kind of never appeared again, iirc.
4.) There is one teleport block puzzle I think needs more work. It's actually not even an optional path; you need to make it past these. When you first enter Maridia, there is a part where you need to ride bubbles up, diagonally through a thin rocky tunnel-path, a shaft. There are teleport blocks on the floor and ceiling of this tunnel path. I would suggest you remove the teleport blocks from the ceiling, one or two of them, at the very top of this area. Because the puzzle requires Samus to ride up the bubbles, and the fall back into it again, to get just enough height to make it to the top. Those ceiling teleport spikes near the top of the shaft, I hit those on my fall back down probably a dozen times. (This is an example of a part of the hack that I think defines the hack as Not Vanilla. I have friends who play SM casually, and they would have given up right there.)

I wish you did more with the kind of parallax scrolling in all the other areas like you did with Norfair. I loved that. But yeah, overall really good hack. I enjoyed my time with it. Thanks for making it; thanks for sharing it. I look forward to your next one.

It's a four orb for me.

[Tundain]

Well, good timing because V1.2 is out now!
Brings a lot of fixes, and rebalances a lot of stuff to hopefully bring the hack even closer to vanilla difficulty
read the changelog for detailed info about what changed

[hmsong]

First time playing this hack.  I dled v1.2.  I guess I made a good timing.  I'm at the plant boss, but I can't seem to be able to damage it.  I saw the YT to see how I can beat it, and apparently, I'm supposed to damage its "stem", but I'm not even seeing it.  I hope it's not some kind of error.

Some suggestions.  First, can you add in the item description, similar to what Super Duper Metroid did?  A simple one will do, as there are lots of new items (such as overcharge).  Second, I don't know if you can beat the game without wall jump (so far, wall jump was not necessary), but if you do, then can you have those animals somewhere near the beginning to "teach" the wall jump?

[junkrares]

First time playing this hack.  I dled v1.2.  I guess I made a good timing.  I'm at the plant boss, but I can't seem to be able to damage it.  I saw the YT to see how I can beat it, and apparently, I'm supposed to damage its "stem", but I'm not even seeing it.  I hope it's not some kind of error.

Some suggestions.  First, can you add in the item description, similar to what Super Duper Metroid did?  A simple one will do, as there are lots of new items (such as overcharge).  Second, I don't know if you can beat the game without wall jump (so far, wall jump was not necessary), but if you do, then can you have those animals somewhere near the beginning to "teach" the wall jump?

SpoSpo can be damaged by destroying the flying/bouncing red balls (the ones that used to make up his stalk). Destroy them all, SpoSpo opens. Rinse, repeat.

The etacoons don't teach you to walljump in this one, they serve a different purpose:

[spoiler]You ride their cute little heads up to the prize.[/spoiler]

I don't think walljump is specifically necessary, especially with increased jump height in this hack. But like all Super Metroid plays, it's wonderfully helpful.

[Tundain]

It's like junkrares said, walljumping is indeed not required to beat the hack.
Also i didn't really felt like item descriptions would be necessary since the custom items pretty much explain themselves once you try to figure out what they do

[hmsong]

SpoSpo can be damaged by destroying the flying/bouncing red balls (the ones that used to make up his stalk). Destroy them all, SpoSpo opens. Rinse, repeat.

I'm aware SpoSpo fires those orbs that needs to be destroyed (it was on YT).  The problem is, in v1.2, SpoSpo doesn't fire those orbs, and therefore is invincible.  Speaking of which, there is a dead zone on the right where SpoSpo can't touch you, which makes this boss a joke, assuming those orbs thing is fixed.

EDIT:  Okay, I reset and got back to the boss, and he's releasing those orbs just fine.  In the previous fight, maybe one of the orbs got inside that opening and couldn't get out or something.  Anyways, no problem.  There's still a dead zone though, which makes this fight the easiest fight thus far.

I don't think walljump is specifically necessary, especially with increased jump height in this hack. But like all Super Metroid plays, it's wonderfully helpful.

Dang, I was hoping you could spare at least one of those critters to teach you?  Or have 4 instead of 3.  Oh well.

Also, before a boss, maybe that door eye enemy would be good?  I got blitzed by that SpoSpo, and I couldn't save before the fight.  And now that I'm softlocked, I have to go all the way back.

It's like junkrares said, walljumping is indeed not required to beat the hack.
Also i didn't really felt like item descriptions would be necessary since the custom items pretty much explain themselves once you try to figure out what they do

That depends on whom the target audience is.  If you're aiming for those who already played SM and figured out all sorts of stuff, then you don't need any description.  But for a newbie, I think it would help.  At least in the original SM, almost all hidden abilities were taught, either by the animals, or by the demo (such as psudo screw attack, bomb jump, diagonal shinespark, one-beam supers, and crystal flash).

[junkrares]

That depends on whom the target audience is.  If you're aiming for those who already played SM and figured out all sorts of stuff, then you don't need any description.  But for a newbie, I think it would help.  At least in the original SM, almost all hidden abilities were taught, either by the animals, or by the demo (such as psudo screw attack, bomb jump, diagonal shinespark, one-beam supers, and crystal flash).

I think it'd be cool to record new demos specific to the hack, I know other hacks have done things like that -- maybe Hyper?

That being said, at the end of the day, the target audience for any Super Metroid hack is someone who's very comfortable with Super Metroid. I guess I'm showing my age there, because I've been playing this game since it came out on the SNES.  :lol:

[hmsong]

Request 1:  For Shinespark, I can do the up/down/diagonal easily enough since it can be controlled from the "ready" position (and is taught by that animal), but the forward shinespark is a bit more difficult, because you have to get the frame just right as you jump -- if you press forward and jump at the same time, you'll just do a spin jump, but if you do it too late, then it'll just go up.  Could you make it so that forward Shinespark can be done from ready position?  Kinda good to have, esp since you need it to get Plasma Beam and numerous other items.

Request 2: Are charge bombs the same as vanilla?  It was so useless in vanilla.  I figured you can make it spread forward when rolling forward (ex: Super Duper Metroid).  Can you maybe put that in?  It's just such a neat trick.  Or maybe it can be a new item of some kind ("Charge Bomb", or maybe even replace power bomb -- yes, it means infinite power bombs).  That would also allow people to retain the charge when turned into morph ball for the charge missile/s.missile.  Food for thought.

I think it'd be cool to record new demos specific to the hack, I know other hacks have done things like that -- maybe Hyper?

That would be crazy awesome, since "seeing" is overwhelmingly better than "reading", but I have a feeling that's even more difficult than simply putting in text descriptions.

[Tundain]

I tried adding demos to the hack because the editor i'm using for it (SMART) allows it. However, this time for some reason i couldn't import any demo file because SMART threw an error every time i tried to import one. I tried to add demos but it just wouldn't work, unfortunately.
Horizontal shinesparking was left untouched in this hack, it's the same difficulty to perform as vanilla, and i don't want to mess with people's muscle memory.

Bomb spread was left unchanged in this hack because there really was no good reason to change it at all, it isn't necessary.

[hmsong]

I tried adding demos to the hack because the editor i'm using for it (SMART) allows it. However, this time for some reason i couldn't import any demo file because SMART threw an error every time i tried to import one. I tried to add demos but it just wouldn't work, unfortunately.

Dang.  That's too bad.  I think VITALITY was able to successfully incorporate his own demo.  Maybe ask the creator of VITALITY to find out?

Horizontal shinesparking was left untouched in this hack, it's the same difficulty to perform as vanilla, and i don't want to mess with people's muscle memory.

Fair.

Bomb spread was left unchanged in this hack because there really was no good reason to change it at all, it isn't necessary.

It may not be necessary, but it's a neat thing to have.  As is right now, it's less useful than a regular bomb (at least regular bomb can be done in air, esp with gliding wing, or be used while moving).

Btw, how does the charge shot (including point-blank), Overcharge, Charge Missile, and Charge S.Missile's damage thing work?  I heard that S.Missile does x5 of regular missile (I assume that was kept as vanilla), but I don't know about the rest.

Also, does anyone have the 100% map?  I completed the game at 93.9%, but I can't seem to find the rest.

[junkrares]

Request 1:  For Shinespark, I can do the up/down/diagonal easily enough since it can be controlled from the "ready" position (and is taught by that animal), but the forward shinespark is a bit more difficult, because you have to get the frame just right as you jump -- if you press forward and jump at the same time, you'll just do a spin jump, but if you do it too late, then it'll just go up.  Could you make it so that forward Shinespark can be done from ready position?  Kinda good to have, esp since you need it to get Plasma Beam and numerous other items.

Learning how to cancel a spin jump with the aim buttons, release, and then do a horizontal or vertical spark is a very useful trick to master, and like Tundain said, it becomes muscle memory.  :grin:

Also, does anyone have the 100% map?  I completed the game at 93.9%, but I can't seem to find the rest.

Ambureon made an excellent map. I used it to go from 89.8% @ 4:33 to 100% @ 3:01.

excellent hack. some minor pain points and moments of frustration but the overall design and layout of each area is fun and easy to navigate.

immediately wanted to map this one out and got it done in like a week
[spoiler=LONG IMAGE WARNING (seriously it's like 7.5k pixels tall)][/spoiler]

[hmsong]

I just figured out the "easy" way to do horizontal shinespark.  And it works from the ready position.  When you are in the ready position, hold left/right, then press jump.  I can't believe I didn't know this all these years.

Btw, it seems that you need to know the "mid-air shinespark" in Tourian, just to proceed.  That's a very advanced technique.  Are you sure you don't want to change that?  Most people won't even know such thing exists.  That's not vanilla difficulty.

As for the "charge bomb" that I mentioned before, perhaps you can have it as a pseudo-X-Ray, assuming you can somehow enable Samus to morph into a ball in the air while charging.  You know, a regular bomb with a bigger blast radius to reveal the hidden blocks (and be able to damage the boss?).  That would make charge bomb a bit more use.

[altoiddealer]

I think I'm about halfway through, I'm playing v1.1

Just wanted to chime in that I got pretty massively screwed.

[spoiler]I saved just below Kraid, then proceeded up to collect shinespark, do a few puzzles, explore a bit - I loved that puzzle to get the super missile using the deflectors.

Maybe 20 minutes of gameplay without finding a save station... then I went into a room that seems like you're supposed to just do one diagonal shinespark up/right, except it kept failing repeatedly and toggling the mirrors did not help, they seemed to be aligned correctly.

The problem is that when you just barely miss a mirror and graze the side, it does a colossal fuckton of damage.  From a full 6 E tanks, I was dead after either 2 or 3 times of missing the mirror.  :nowai:
[/spoiler]

[Omegatroid]

I had fun playing this hack!
v1.2
12E Tanks 155/24/18
Clear time: 07:51

[DonnyDonovan]

Btw, it seems that you need to know the "mid-air shinespark" in Tourian, just to proceed.  That's a very advanced technique.  Are you sure you don't want to change that?  Most people won't even know such thing exists.  That's not vanilla difficulty.

I would agree with this.  I assumed there had to be another way to clear the room I think you mean, but if there was I didn't find it.  That's indeed a pretty advanced technique that few hacks require of the player. 

[Tundain]

Btw, it seems that you need to know the "mid-air shinespark" in Tourian, just to proceed.  That's a very advanced technique.  Are you sure you don't want to change that?  Most people won't even know such thing exists.  That's not vanilla difficulty.

Regarding this: mid-air shinesparking is far more known than you think, I doubt many people would completely fail to realize that that's what you're supposed to do.
It might not be a real "vanilla" trick, but I wouldn't  consider it that hard as to be the defining aspect that this hack can't be called "vanilla" difficulty. Also the only option above "vanilla" difficulty one can mark their hack as (on the site) is "veteran", which I consider too much for this hack (if there were an option in-between, I would use that, but such precision is not available from the main site)

Lastly, stop giving suggestions for improving bomb spread please, I have already stated I wasn't planning on adding anything of the sort, bc quite frankly, it really just isn't something that this hack absolutely needs to be better than it currently is. I appreciate the feedback, but ultimately this isn't meant as a thread for requesting new features that you'd like to have in the hack.

[hmsong]

Regarding this: mid-air shinesparking is far more known than you think, I doubt many people would completely fail to realize that that's what you're supposed to do.
It might not be a real "vanilla" trick, but I wouldn't  consider it that hard as to be the defining aspect that this hack can't be called "vanilla" difficulty. Also the only option above "vanilla" difficulty one can mark their hack as (on the site) is "veteran", which I consider too much for this hack (if there were an option in-between, I would use that, but such precision is not available from the main site)

I don't mind that certain puzzles require particular difficult trick, but my point was that many people don't even know that mid-air shinespark even exists (I certainly didn't, until I started talking to people who does the metroid hacking -- I didn't even know horizontal shinespark existed until I started talking to the metroid community), and therefore aren't even going to attempt it.  It'd be a different story if a demo showed something like that, but you already said that's unlikely to happen.  It just feels that that particular portion of the game could use a different thing, and I feel that it'll be an easy fix for you.  I don't know.  This may be an unpopular opinion.

Lastly, stop giving suggestions for improving bomb spread please, I have already stated I wasn't planning on adding anything of the sort, bc quite frankly, it really just isn't something that this hack absolutely needs to be better than it currently is. I appreciate the feedback, but ultimately this isn't meant as a thread for requesting new features that you'd like to have in the hack.

Okay, I'll stop mentioning about the bomb spread.

On a different thing, could you please tell me how the damage mechanic for overcharge, charge missile, and charge s.missile?  Those are new items, and obviously, they do more damage, but I don't know how much.  I think the vanilla s.missile did x5 regular missile damage (unless I'm wrong and/or you changed that), and the charge missile certainly uses s.missile graphic, so does it do x5 damage?  I know the regular charge beam does x3 of regular beam, so does overcharge do x3 damage of normal charge beam? (ie x9 of regular beam?)  All I can tell so far is that charge s.missile has the "slow spread" explosion (not sure if the hit does damage, and the explosion does another damage, or how much damage it does), and that charge missile seems to use 2 ammo, while charge s.missile uses 1 ammo.

[Tundain]

Charge missiles simply fires of a super missile, so it deals the damage of a super missile.

Charge super missiles spawns 2 projectiles on contact which themselves deal their own damage. (which scales with your equipped beams)

Overcharge triples the damage of your current charged shot.

[bmathew]

I finished this game.  I gotta admit, this was extremely well done.  Very fun.  Thank you for this masterpiece and giving me the experience.

Just some feedback though.  Tourian was certainly interesting, what with Metroids breaking out of the glass and all.  I assume you can't save the animals?  Oh well.  The boss fights, including the new bosses, were interesting too, although the first boss was a bit hard, mostly because the room was so narrow.  I think the narrow boss room idea should be used for later boss.  Still, the different room effect when fighting the boss was a GREAT idea.  For example the narrow opening for the eel boss.  Or the spikes in the plant boss -- maybe have more spikes?  Or the ghost reveal thing in Phantoon fight -- reminds me of ghostbusters.  I think Draygon boss fight can be improved though.  Maybe have him always hang around the top, esp when he's using his dirt projectile attack, and therefore you always need to jump high to attack him.  About the new weapons, the jetpack was very nice, and it goes well with the "return to the start" mechanic.  It feels like you mixed metroidvania with a platformer, and it's quite interesting.  Overcharge though, I get the feeling that could be improved upon.  I'm not sure how, but I get the feeling most people would turn that off due to how quickly you lose your health.  I mean, you'd want people to use it, right?  Maybe decrease the hp loss rate, maybe a quarter of what it is now, so that health loss isn't so high when using it?  Or give it the enemy piercing effect, even without the Plasma Beam?  The knockback is great though.  It really reminds me about one of the Mega Man games, which made you think about when to fire.

A bug that I found.  Maybe someone already reported, but I'll mention it anyways.  In the giant Metroid room in Tourian, when you jump down from the glass jar to the bottom, for a frame or so, you'll see the giant Metroid materialize at the bottom, then disappear.  I'm guessing it's some kind of transition problem.  Just decreasing the height of the room may solve this problem.  You may want to check that out.  Also, when you overcharge the beam and your health decreases, if you fire from the spin jump, it doesn't fire the overcharge shot, and just fires regular charge shot.

[junkrares]

I finished this game.  I gotta admit, this was extremely well done.  Very fun.  Thank you for this masterpiece and giving me the experience.

Just some feedback though.  Tourian was certainly interesting, what with Metroids breaking out of the glass and all.  I assume you can't save the animals?  Oh well.

You can save the animals.

[spoiler]You have to go down the elevator back to Crateria, follow the only blue doors, and go back to the room the Torizio boss was in (where you got Screw Attack). It's a bit of a jog, but it is doable.[/spoiler]

[hmsong]

Charge missiles simply fires of a super missile, so it deals the damage of a super missile.

Charge super missiles spawns 2 projectiles on contact which themselves deal their own damage. (which scales with your equipped beams)

Overcharge triples the damage of your current charged shot.

Thank you.

I must correct what I said earlier.  Earlier, I said that Vitality hack had the successful demo.  It turns out, it was Ascent that had the successful demo.  And it showed things like shinespark, wall jump, and bomb jump (among other things).  Then again, to beat Ascent (or was it 100%?), you needed both wall jump and bomb jump (because you can't turn back).

Btw, did you remove Crystal Flash?  If you didn't, then the original way doesn't seem to work, and I don't know how to activate it.

Also, will Samus die at the end?  She used an escape pod to escape the exploding planet, but she has no way to go anywhere, since an escape pod is simply meant to launch you away from the planet (probably to get to a space station in the orbit, which probably blew up with the planet), and it can't change the direction nor have enough fuel.  And even if it can change direction, Samus doesn't even have the space navigation system to know where she's going in an infinite black void that is the space.  She'll starve to death.  That's a very bad way to go (3rd worst way to go, among the common ways to die).  I find that funny and sad and horrified at the same time.

Overcharge though, I get the feeling that could be improved upon.  I'm not sure how, but I get the feeling most people would turn that off due to how quickly you lose your health.  I mean, you'd want people to use it, right?  Maybe decrease the hp loss rate, maybe a quarter of what it is now, so that health loss isn't so high when using it?  Or give it the enemy piercing effect, even without the Plasma Beam?

I disagree.  I think overcharge is fine the way it is (enemy-piercing may be good, although it shouldn't be wall-piercing due to unintended early sequence-breaking potential), because overcharge is probably NOT meant to be used for the regular enemies (and therefore should be turned off during that time), and only should be used for the bosses.  It is probably meant to reward you for knowing the timing of overcharge, and thus not losing much HP.  Missiles (or charge s.missile) are still the better option, but overcharge is simply another card in the deck against the bosses, should you run out of the missiles.

[johnnyutah22]

Is there a separate item for Dash Ball or is that function disabled? I obtained the High Jump/Morph Ball item but I can't seem to dash while in morph ball.

[Tundain]

Dashing whilst in morph ball form is not a vanilla feature, and only certain hacks have that as a custom feature.
Since you are unable to dash, you can safely conclude that i have not added this custom functionality in my hack.
(also I wouldn't phrase it as "disabling" a function if that function doesn't exist in the first place...)

[bmathew]

I don't know if this is a bug, so I'll report it, and let you decide things.  After beating the game, the planet doesn't explode.  Was that intended?  So why was Samus escaping to space?

You can save the animals.

[spoiler]You have to go down the elevator back to Crateria, follow the only blue doors, and go back to the room the Torizio boss was in (where you got Screw Attack). It's a bit of a jog, but it is doable.[/spoiler]

Yes!  Thanks!  Found them.  The saving sequence was a close call.  I had about 10 seconds when I got to the pod.

Also, will Samus die at the end?  She used an escape pod to escape the exploding planet, but she has no way to go anywhere, since an escape pod is simply meant to launch you away from the planet (probably to get to a space station in the orbit, which probably blew up with the planet), and it can't change the direction nor have enough fuel.  And even if it can change direction, Samus doesn't even have the space navigation system to know where she's going in an infinite black void that is the space.  She'll starve to death.  That's a very bad way to go (3rd worst way to go, among the common ways to die).  I find that funny and sad and horrified at the same time.

Yikes.