Metroid X: Arcade style 2 player split screen coop

[Eikon]

Hi all, long time lurker, first time poster here. I am working on a complete rewrite of NES Metroid that aims to turn it into a fast paced, arcade style game, in the vein of a Bubble Bobble or Joust with randomized elements to keep things interesting. The main draw will be local 2 player split screen cooperative play. I will be updating this post as things progress, here are some details on the project so far!

Main Project Goal
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Somehow take NES Metroid, an exploration heavy and back tracking based game and streamline it into a two player split screen arcade type experience that can be enjoyed in short bursts, with the object being to defeat mother brain and make the online high score list. I will attempt to keep as much of the classic Metroid feel alive as I can with hidden items, bomb tunnels, powerups, etc.

The Twist
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As the name entails, X parasites have made their way to planet Zebeth, along with regular enemies you will find X infested enemies which are stronger and more difficult to defeat. Killing one of these enemies causes Samus' suit to absorb the parasite and allows her another charge of her 'X Beam.' Kill three infested enemies to fully charge your beam and open orange doors to progress to the next level. But stay too long in a single stage and a 'Metroid X Alert' will appear! It's best you make your way out of the stage as soon as possible or this X infested Metroid is sure to devour you..

Current version v0.25

Video of it running on a CRT for nostalgia's sake

Screenshots





Please let me know your thoughts on the project and I hope to build some excitement as I work towards release!

[alexman25]

I am extremely interested! I always thought it could be really cool to see NEStroid lean more into its arcadiness; the other day I was even writing up my ideas for how a score system could work in Metroid

I will be watching this with great interest!

[Eikon]

I am extremely interested! I always thought it could be really cool to see NEStroid lean more into its arcadiness; the other day I was even writing up my ideas for how a score system could work in Metroid

I will be watching this with great interest!

Thanks! It's definitely been challenging juggling the arcade aspect while still having it feel like Metroid. For instance flying zebs give you 100 points as they're easy one shot kills, but to keep you from farming them for points all day on smaller levels where Metroid X doesn't chase you ahead I just have to cut scoring off altogether, same for item rooms

[Eikon]

One very cool aspect I forgot to mention is that the two player split screen play opens up the posibility of a vs/deathmatch mode. I can imagine arenas where powerups spawn randomly along with health and missile drops. You could also configure all aspects like starting items, energy tanks, and whether enemies/Metroid X is present.

There were a few interesting developments in the past few days. I implemented the ice beam but buffed it over the original, it no longer doubles the amount of hits it takes to kill an enemy. It's now first hit freezes, second hit unfreezes but still does damage so it's equal to the short/long beam. The only downside I can see to this is one hit kill enemies are no longer freezable.

The second development is the addition of bonuses for speed running and skipping items. Certain items like bombs are unskippable, but if you choose for instance to skip the long beam or ice beam, you'll get a huge point bonus of 25k but it will make the remaining game much more difficult. Speed bonuses were added on levels where Metroid X is present that add a score multiplier based on seconds remaining. This should encourage some interesting playthroughs.

I will be editing the original post with a video showing off the single player mode shortly

[Dinar87]

Nice

[Eikon]

Latest update, just finished coding Kraid and the varia suit. I'll have to say that Kraid is one of the most involved bosses I've ever programmed, with his three freezable chest spikes and two claws on his back, there's a lot going on.

I made some changes to how the original fight goes. I felt that it was too easy in NEStroid to ignore the fight entirely and just bomb his feet if you had enough health so I majorly nerfed bomb damage on boss fights. No longer does a full round of bombs do 9 total damage but now only 3. This forces you to engage with him and try to freeze his projectiles to open up a weak point. Another change was due to two player. If players are on opposite sides of him the projectiles now change their facing direction randomly so that one player can't always focus his more open back side. If playing two player his health is almost doubled to further increase the challenge.

Having completed this I'd say I'm about 40% of the way done with the game. Norfair and all the new enemies that entails are up next!

[VacantShade]

Hey, this looks really good so far!
Looking forward to seeing how it comes along!

[Eikon]

Nice

Hey, this looks really good so far!
Looking forward to seeing how it comes along!

Thanks guys for the encouragement!

You might be wondering from the screenshots why the colors appear as they do, and it's because I'm pulling from a lookup table of 15 or so random color palettes. This is all in an attempt to make each playthrough as different as I can. Aside from the colors of each area changing, the map can flip from moving right to moving left, and also certain sections are randomized. So for instance you will always enter via teleporter to the same starting stage, but the next five sections or so before an item room can appear in any order as you progress. Certain tiles like the floor in brinstar and the bubbles in norfair are also random. Since I can't exactly randomly generate levels this is the best I can do, while also keeping things relatively consistent so high scores are fair.

One major change I made is that X enemies are now random as well. Instead of always running into the same tougher enemies in the same location, they're now placed via a 'group' within the map editor and then the enemy and its location are picked randomly at runtime. This helped change things up dramatically.

Another big change was concerning missile tanks/pickups. Originally I was going to have the full 255 missiles with containers granting +5, but I realized in this streamlined design that was way too many missiles so it has now been changed to 155 missiles total and pickups grant only +3, bosses grant +45.

I've been working the past week on upper Norfair, the X enemies there are gerutas and squeepts. Here are some screenshots









It's pretty much all enemy and map design from here on out, all of the engine framework is basically complete

[Dinar87]

It's pretty much all enemy and map design from here on out, all of the engine framework is basically complete

You made your own engine? Nice!

[Eikon]

It's pretty much all enemy and map design from here on out, all of the engine framework is basically complete

You made your own engine? Nice!

Yes, I forgot to mention that I guess. It's all coded from scratch in BlitzMax and will be completely open source. I'm also thinking of including the map editor with source so that players could make their own maps, but they'd have to stick to the basic brinstar > kraid > norfair > ridley > tourian layout as too much code is tied to that structure currently. I would also have to include some kind of CRC check on the map files to make sure they're the original for online high score integrity. Here's a pic of the map editor, pretty bare bones but it gets the job done

[Tower]

Will there be option to play it solo instead of coop?

[Eikon]

Will there be option to play it solo instead of coop?

Of course, the YouTube video in the top post shows off a little of the single player

Hey, this looks really good so far!
Looking forward to seeing how it comes along!

I just realized you're the developer of MPlanets! Massive respect to you, man. MPlanets has to be the single greatest piece of indie Metroid programming I've ever played, I'm so glad you gave that treatment to NEStroid since it often gets ignored for the later games. Your project is a big reason I was inspired to start on this game, and also the reason I went with this split screen/arcade style since everything I could think to do, your game had already done it better. Thanks for what you do

[Eikon]

Quick update, things have slowed a little due to the holidays but Norfair is about 90% complete. Wave beam is done and the only item left to code is the screw attack. I've been focusing on adding more arcade aspects to differentiate even further from the original. Enemies now show their score value when destroyed and I've added a whole new mechanic called hyper mode. X enemies will now randomly drop a green parasite as opposed to the usual yellow and grabbing this will put you in hyper mode where your suit and X meter will flash, and you're able to shoot infinite fully charged X beam blasts that're equivalent in power to a missile. This powerup lasts for around 10 seconds and is best equated to getting a star in Mario. Next up is Ridley's lair and then I'm into the home stretch!