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#1
Metroid / Re: Metroid X: Arcade style 2 ...
Last post by Eikon - November 19, 2024, 11:03:56 PMOne 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
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
#2
Misc. Hacks and Games Development / Nutsimilian
Last post by alexman25 - November 19, 2024, 01:32:57 AMSo, anyone who knows me here knows that I make Metroid hacks. But, I work on a lot of my own indie games, as well! I basically never share much about them, so I figured I'd make a thread for one for a change. This game is called Nutsimilian. A download for the current demo is featured here: https://github.com/alexman25/Nutsimilian/blob/main/Nutsimilian%200.5(1).html
Currently, there are roughly 180 unique tiles in the game.
The simplest way I can describe it is as a 2D Minecraft clone, but that's not exactly completely accurate.
It started out as a concept for a Minecraft-like game that can be played on Paper inside of a notebook, which dictated a lot of the core mechanics and art direction. The game is depicted on a white sheet of lined textbook paper, and the world is divided into "pages" instead of scrolling smoothly. All of the blocks or tiles in the game were inspired by those old Minecraft block magnets that one could play with on their fridge, though obviously my textures are original and at a lower resolution. The world does not update in real-time; similar to old Rogue-Likes and such, the world only moves when you do.
It was after the basics were implemented that I started really diverging from the vision of Minecraft. Instead of having rigorous procedurally generated worlds, the worlds in Nustimilian are far more random and chaotic, featuring a set of randomly scattered blocks above and below the ground level of pages. The ground level pages used to be just a flat line of grass with air above it, but at some point I did add some minor terrain generation to it. I might remove that, because I like the flat vibes, though we'll have to see.
There is no UI in the game. You add blocks to your inventory in a linear order. Inventory management is a very important part of the game.
There are no completely farmable resources. You can find things in the world, but once it is gone it is gone. Matter is neither created or destroyed, with one exception. You can, for example, grow a tree, but that still requires the sacrifice of water to achieve. Your world's resources will deplete, and you will have to venture further and further to find more. Garbage will build up and you have to deal with it intelligently. Resource management is extremely important. Due to the infinite nature of the world, you will never truly enter a lose-state where your game is unsalvagable, but if you are inconsiderate of the environment you will find yourself having to move away from your home.
As a result of there being no UI, crafting is done differently. Tiles can be transformed into other tile types by being placed next to other certain tiles. For example: Water next to dirt transforms the water into air and transforms the dirt into mud. A hammer placed on top of a stone will turn into gravel when the player walks on top of the hammer. Two different kinds of tiles could even be hammered into each other in some circumstances.
The controls are as follows. You can click on a tile to pick it up. You can left click to place the least recent tile you picked up, or right click to place the most recent. You can press space to dump your entire inventory into every available air tile on your current page. Use the arrow keys to move around, and Z to jump. Pressing down does nothing except for tick the world without you moving. Press the "1" key to load a player skin (Very buggy!). Press "2" to save the player skin currently being used. Press "3" to save your world. Press "4" to load a world. Press "[" to export the game's tile behavior data. Press "]" to import tile behavior data (Mod support, woohoo! (enter "y" when prompted)).
As for how to beat the game? I dunno, I think trying to beat it isn't really the point. But, if you want a goal to work toward, try to obtain a green crystal, or climb 100 pages into the air!
Currently, there are roughly 180 unique tiles in the game.
The simplest way I can describe it is as a 2D Minecraft clone, but that's not exactly completely accurate.
It started out as a concept for a Minecraft-like game that can be played on Paper inside of a notebook, which dictated a lot of the core mechanics and art direction. The game is depicted on a white sheet of lined textbook paper, and the world is divided into "pages" instead of scrolling smoothly. All of the blocks or tiles in the game were inspired by those old Minecraft block magnets that one could play with on their fridge, though obviously my textures are original and at a lower resolution. The world does not update in real-time; similar to old Rogue-Likes and such, the world only moves when you do.
It was after the basics were implemented that I started really diverging from the vision of Minecraft. Instead of having rigorous procedurally generated worlds, the worlds in Nustimilian are far more random and chaotic, featuring a set of randomly scattered blocks above and below the ground level of pages. The ground level pages used to be just a flat line of grass with air above it, but at some point I did add some minor terrain generation to it. I might remove that, because I like the flat vibes, though we'll have to see.
There is no UI in the game. You add blocks to your inventory in a linear order. Inventory management is a very important part of the game.
There are no completely farmable resources. You can find things in the world, but once it is gone it is gone. Matter is neither created or destroyed, with one exception. You can, for example, grow a tree, but that still requires the sacrifice of water to achieve. Your world's resources will deplete, and you will have to venture further and further to find more. Garbage will build up and you have to deal with it intelligently. Resource management is extremely important. Due to the infinite nature of the world, you will never truly enter a lose-state where your game is unsalvagable, but if you are inconsiderate of the environment you will find yourself having to move away from your home.
As a result of there being no UI, crafting is done differently. Tiles can be transformed into other tile types by being placed next to other certain tiles. For example: Water next to dirt transforms the water into air and transforms the dirt into mud. A hammer placed on top of a stone will turn into gravel when the player walks on top of the hammer. Two different kinds of tiles could even be hammered into each other in some circumstances.
The controls are as follows. You can click on a tile to pick it up. You can left click to place the least recent tile you picked up, or right click to place the most recent. You can press space to dump your entire inventory into every available air tile on your current page. Use the arrow keys to move around, and Z to jump. Pressing down does nothing except for tick the world without you moving. Press the "1" key to load a player skin (Very buggy!). Press "2" to save the player skin currently being used. Press "3" to save your world. Press "4" to load a world. Press "[" to export the game's tile behavior data. Press "]" to import tile behavior data (Mod support, woohoo! (enter "y" when prompted)).
As for how to beat the game? I dunno, I think trying to beat it isn't really the point. But, if you want a goal to work toward, try to obtain a green crystal, or climb 100 pages into the air!
#3
Misc. Hacks and Games Development / Re: XGA: updates I guess...
Last post by Dinar87 - November 18, 2024, 03:59:32 AMAlso, collision code improvements here. I'm changing the hitbox's speed every frame and the collision code is still working. He's not getting stuck in mid air.
#4
Misc. Hacks and Games Development / Re: XGA: updates I guess...
Last post by Dinar87 - November 18, 2024, 03:51:30 AMQuote from: VacantShade on November 14, 2024, 04:49:18 PMHey, I played up to the first boss, didn't notice any issues on my end.
I've struggled with optimizing various things in my project too. It was a bit difficult to figure out, but I've found the Profile feature is really helpful for things like that.
You might already be well familiar with the Profiler, but if not, feel free to hit me up on Discord and I can share a couple things I learned about using it! :^_^:
That's good!
Haha I use the profiler constantly >;) but they weren't showing on there either.
#5
Misc. Hacks and Games Development / Re: XGA: updates I guess...
Last post by Dinar87 - November 18, 2024, 03:50:12 AMQuote from: SpineShark on November 14, 2024, 05:43:35 PMI played it on my 5 year old lower-end laptop up until the chasing monster shows up, and I didn't notice any stutters.Fucking awesome!
#6
Completed Stuff / Re: Metroid - Galactic Marine
Last post by junkrares - November 17, 2024, 09:54:43 PMPlayed and finished this today, 1:23 @ 92%. Not sure what/where I missed it, but I felt flushed out enough to make it through every challenge. For a first hack (I assume?) this was very well done with just the right mix of quickplay and exploration. Just had a few quick thoughts I'd like to share, both positive notes and some constructive criticism.
Pros:
Good tiling and palettes, especially for a first hack. Sometimes the lower frozen areas were a little too blue in metal rooms, but otherwise very well executed. The use of layers and parallax were also well done. To add to this, the overall layout of the map was pretty decent as well. Nothing felt useless or too big or arbitrary.
The map screen was well done, with good clues to the invisible walls and secret passages. I liked the open circles for event rooms, the dots and crosses for unfound/found items, and that the maps/data didn't reveal every room. I also enjoyed the map data blurbs. Highlighting thermal damage rooms was also appreciated.
The story was decent, and the atmospheric details made each area unique and enjoyable to be in. I didn't even get bummed out by the forced suitless water areas. It just felt like that was an obstacle to overcome to explore the world. Well done!
Excellent use of existing ASM/resources. Its always enjoyable to use charge missiles and the grenade launcher. The tooltips on pickup for things were also a nice touch. At a certain point, I didn't even miss having morph ball or the other usual Power Suit upgrades.
Cons:
The absolute lack of health drops was a downer. I am sure it is intended, but I felt it made the game more of a chore than it needed to be. Not being able to farm and instead having to backtrack to recharge rooms was not a positive. This is also on the back of making normal shots very weak and charged shots very strong. Combine that with some truly oppressive enemy/environmental damage in some areas and overall low health and ammo access -- it made a lot of the difficulty feel artificial.
Touching on the above no-health-drops, making missile tanks only have one missile, and then also making missiles slow, AND making SpoSpo, Phantoon, and Torizo not drop missiles was a bit cruel. I'd bring the drop pattern back to vanilla for all enemies, and also make missile tanks worth at least two if not five.
Given that the ASM for recharge at save points exists, it felt a little weird to have recharge and saves be separate pods in the same room. I understand the goal was to have rooms that sometimes had one or the other, but it felt a little cumbersome.
The lack of spin jump was very weird. It made walljumping a little awkward, and lead to odd sprites like charged beam wall jumping where you're bouncing off the walls or CWJ'ing without spinning. I get that you are trying to eliminate pseudo-screw, but it just looks funky. I think you would be better off tweaking or zeroing pseudo-screw damage and still giving us spin jump frames.
Speaking of walljumping, there are some very easy sequence breaks that seem to be punishable by either getting nothing/nowhere or getting your ass beat by a boss you weren't ready for. It is almost childs-play to accidentally stumble into Phantoon with three missiles and zero e-tanks. This is not really a criticism, just wanting to mention that it is easy to get in over your head with some basic game skills.
Just a nitpick, but maybe find a better name for the planet than "Snowball." :P
I am sure I had some other thoughts, but they've escaped me at this point. Overall, I enjoyed this hack and look forward to what you come up with next.
Pros:
Good tiling and palettes, especially for a first hack. Sometimes the lower frozen areas were a little too blue in metal rooms, but otherwise very well executed. The use of layers and parallax were also well done. To add to this, the overall layout of the map was pretty decent as well. Nothing felt useless or too big or arbitrary.
The map screen was well done, with good clues to the invisible walls and secret passages. I liked the open circles for event rooms, the dots and crosses for unfound/found items, and that the maps/data didn't reveal every room. I also enjoyed the map data blurbs. Highlighting thermal damage rooms was also appreciated.
The story was decent, and the atmospheric details made each area unique and enjoyable to be in. I didn't even get bummed out by the forced suitless water areas. It just felt like that was an obstacle to overcome to explore the world. Well done!
Excellent use of existing ASM/resources. Its always enjoyable to use charge missiles and the grenade launcher. The tooltips on pickup for things were also a nice touch. At a certain point, I didn't even miss having morph ball or the other usual Power Suit upgrades.
Cons:
The absolute lack of health drops was a downer. I am sure it is intended, but I felt it made the game more of a chore than it needed to be. Not being able to farm and instead having to backtrack to recharge rooms was not a positive. This is also on the back of making normal shots very weak and charged shots very strong. Combine that with some truly oppressive enemy/environmental damage in some areas and overall low health and ammo access -- it made a lot of the difficulty feel artificial.
Touching on the above no-health-drops, making missile tanks only have one missile, and then also making missiles slow, AND making SpoSpo, Phantoon, and Torizo not drop missiles was a bit cruel. I'd bring the drop pattern back to vanilla for all enemies, and also make missile tanks worth at least two if not five.
Given that the ASM for recharge at save points exists, it felt a little weird to have recharge and saves be separate pods in the same room. I understand the goal was to have rooms that sometimes had one or the other, but it felt a little cumbersome.
The lack of spin jump was very weird. It made walljumping a little awkward, and lead to odd sprites like charged beam wall jumping where you're bouncing off the walls or CWJ'ing without spinning. I get that you are trying to eliminate pseudo-screw, but it just looks funky. I think you would be better off tweaking or zeroing pseudo-screw damage and still giving us spin jump frames.
Speaking of walljumping, there are some very easy sequence breaks that seem to be punishable by either getting nothing/nowhere or getting your ass beat by a boss you weren't ready for. It is almost childs-play to accidentally stumble into Phantoon with three missiles and zero e-tanks. This is not really a criticism, just wanting to mention that it is easy to get in over your head with some basic game skills.
Just a nitpick, but maybe find a better name for the planet than "Snowball." :P
I am sure I had some other thoughts, but they've escaped me at this point. Overall, I enjoyed this hack and look forward to what you come up with next.
#7
Misc. Hacks and Games Development / Re: Samantha Arantes' Brand Su...
Last post by Dinar87 - November 16, 2024, 06:33:00 AMQuote from: RT-55J on November 15, 2024, 09:44:04 AMExcuse me, Mr. Nintendo? How can you claim that Samantha Arantes (2021) is a ripoff of Samus Aran (1986), when it is abundantly clear that Samus herself is a ripoff of the space pirate Alpha from the hit LX-II game Velgress (1984). Riddle me this.Riddle Deez....
#8
Metroid Fusion / Re: Metroid Fusion: Special Ed...
Last post by Nicholas Steel - November 16, 2024, 12:59:45 AMHey, just ran in to a bug. I defeated Nightmare and when Samus landed from collecting Gravity Suit she became stuck in a running animation... hard locking the game as the cutscene of the suit upgrade never occurs and I've lost control of Samus.
Seems to happen while holding across when dismissing the "You've acquired Gravity Suit" message. Might be a bug in the vanilla game as I feel like I've experienced this before.
Edit: Also happens when taking damage during the final boss fight though it can knock you out of the bugged state if it knocks you in to a stunned state, might be either a issue with the hack or more likely, an issue with the really old emulator I'm using.
Seems to happen while holding across when dismissing the "You've acquired Gravity Suit" message. Might be a bug in the vanilla game as I feel like I've experienced this before.
Edit: Also happens when taking damage during the final boss fight though it can knock you out of the bugged state if it knocks you in to a stunned state, might be either a issue with the hack or more likely, an issue with the really old emulator I'm using.
#9
Off-topic / Re: Light mode forum sucks
Last post by OmegaDragnet9 - November 15, 2024, 01:19:05 PMQuote from: Zhs2 on November 15, 2024, 11:25:33 AMQuote from: WillowPunch on November 15, 2024, 07:02:42 AMThis is temporary.
One would hope, but I believe the forums are low priority. It would definitely take effort to reinstate the old skin because it was for an older minor version of SMF, but there are a couple nice dark themes to choose from on the SMF customization site. Poke the admins with your favorites. Too bad about the banners also.
Honestly the only thing I really feel at a loss for are the forum attachments and the spoiler functionality.
Aside from those things the mobile browser implementation of the forums has never been easier for me. (Gotta remind myself of the positives.)
#10
Off-topic / Re: Light mode forum sucks
Last post by Zhs2 - November 15, 2024, 11:25:33 AMQuote from: WillowPunch on November 15, 2024, 07:02:42 AMThis is temporary.
One would hope, but I believe the forums are low priority. It would definitely take effort to reinstate the old skin because it was for an older minor version of SMF, but there are a couple nice dark themes to choose from on the SMF customization site. Poke the admins with your favorites. Too bad about the banners also.