[SM] Z-Factor Hack v1.3

[Prime Hunter]

Really? With how my luck's been I probably left Botwoon's room in the wrong direction because I went to the right and back to that 3rd pipe.

Edit: Or... I could've missed a hidden pipe. Should've known.

[snibsnib]

I've been running around for hours and I'm still no closer to botwoon. (I did find spring ball and X-Ray though  :^_^:). I've attached my map so far (I'm not sure how to put it in a spoiler). Another hint would be greatly appreciated. Which direction should I go?

[Prime Hunter]

This feels eerily familiar.

[spoiler]If you head back up one of the turbo tubes towards where you've currently saved and start power bombing in the shaft nearby you'll find a hidden passage on the left side of the shaft that will eventually lead you to a 3rd turbo tube. It'll take you down to that 1x1 blue room on the edge of your explored area and towards Botwoon and Draygon.[/spoiler]

Edit: Just realized this could look incredibly vague if people are avoiding spoilers. This one's directed towards Snibsnib's question.

[LReyomeXX]

Any advice on how to navigate that room with the platform bug that goes down if you are on it and up if you are not, in the water and spike room past the Super Missle door seemingly on the way to Crocomire? I tried doing step freeze (freeze, move a bit, freeze, move a bit, then jump) but end up short all the time.

[Quote58]

9:45 with 60%

Well, this hack has been interesting. I was originally going to do a nice long wall of text review, but instead I'm just going to mention some things that stood out.

First off, let's go over some of the many sequence breaking there is to be done.
[spoiler]-lots of little room skipping in brinstar due to infinite bomb jumping
-huge amount of gates which can be green gate glitched. If it weren't for the gate right before croc, wave would be unnecessary.
-Wrecked ship can be broken into early and gravity can be obtained without both speed booster or grapple.
-Lower norfair can also be gotten into early, and skrew attack can be gotten easily (well, unless you have like 1 energy tank to fight the GT like I did, that was annoying)
-a bunch of lower norfair rooms can be skipped by crystal flashing in a certain tunnel and shooting a certain block.
-ridely can be fought before botwoon and draygon with some pause abuse (I haven't tested the pause abuse in the aforementioned tunnel, but it ought to work)
-and lots of little items here and there which can be gotten with ibj, ddbj, ggg, etc.[/spoiler]

Now for the stuff that doesn't break your hack.
-Love the use of animated tiles, enemies to look like falling water drops, cacooning kihunters, etc.
-tourian, although a little tedious, is brilliant. If you've played the hack, you know why
-although far /too/ open ended, it was also kinda good. It was interesting to see metconst kind of get together to figure it out. It was a nice reminder of what the community is at it's core. The fact that everyone was going a different way, trying to figure out where people could go was really fun, so the open endedness isn't really such a bad thing.
-a lot of enemies and bosses were far too difficult. Botwoon was ridiculous, and all you had to do to fix it was put a platform in the middle of the room. Draygon, wow. The fake space jump was cool, but he had 1000X too much health.
-the ending was meh. Not too bad, not great. Those running pirates were awesome though.

Overall I must echo what myself as well as everyone else has said in that the hack would be fantastic if it had been beta tested properly.

[Derakon]

(Current status: just checked the thread to find out where the hell to go after getting powerbombs; thus just entered Maridia)

This hack is really subtle about its hidden passages. Too subtle. I've made three full loops through the entire accessible game after finding new upgrades just to find the one secret passage that lead to the next important area. This would be more acceptable if the game wasn't so damned huge, but even if it were of a more normal size it'd still be pretty irritating.

The normal way Super Metroid hacks should be played is "Oh, sweet, I just got X upgrade, now I can go through those barriers I found earlier!" and one of those barriers is on the critical path to another upgrade. Here it's "Okay, none of these barriers actually lead to anything except for shortcuts / missile expansions, I'm seeing goddamned speed booster blocks everywhere and I have no idea where to go...oh, I was supposed to walk through that almost-totally-unclued wall, after which point my new powerup is used to break some blocks. Great."

The other thing Super Metroid does really well, and which hacks should also strive to do, is to lock the player into the area they're supposed to be exploring. Take Pink Brinstar in the original game for example: you go through a blue gate, then fall down a giant shaft. In order to get back out, you'll need some way to climb the shaft (ice beam) -- which in turn needs some way to get past fast-moving shutters (speedbooster), which in turn needs some way to get through heated rooms (varia), which in turn needs a way to make a jump (high-jump boots). Every one of these barriers is very in-your-face, so when you get the item, you know "Ah! Now I should go over here!"

Exploration is great. Rewarding the player for sneakiness is great. Requiring sneakiness and an obsessive attention to detail / willingness to bomb all 100,000 blocks to find the one breakable one? That's not so great.

On the plus side! The use of tiles is great, the environments are quite enjoyable, there's some reasonably clever rooms, and the ocassional changed behavior is quite interesting (c.f. the start of the Crocomire fight).

And another thing! Why is it that you let me go through a bunch of rooms only to get to a dead end? Why am I even allowed into the area when the only thing I can do in it is backtrack out? If the player's going to spend a bunch of time getting somewhere, there had damned well better be a reward at the other end, not just a "sorry, come back when you have powerups". I'm thinking in particular of the climb with the digging robot here, where at the top there's AFAICT nothing except for some speedbooster blocks. And no, I don't mean "slap a missile pack up there and it's okay."

[Digital_Mantra]

Well, a lot of his 'dead end paths' actually have stupidly hidden secrets to vital areas. Though I understand your frustration.
After about a dozen roundabouts, you end up finding something new and think.. 'well fuck you for that'.
After spending over 16 hours doing this however, I've pretty much understood his planet and layout and while it's annoying, its genius if certain things were changed.
Yeah, I know I've said that for that 100th time..

This version should be called:
? Factor or Super Metroid: Roundabout.

[Zhs2]

The other thing Super Metroid does really well, and which hacks should also strive to do, is to lock the player into the area they're supposed to be exploring. Take Pink Brinstar in the original game for example: you go through a blue gate, then fall down a giant shaft. In order to get back out, you'll need some way to climb the shaft (ice beam) -- which in turn needs some way to get past fast-moving shutters (speedbooster), which in turn needs some way to get through heated rooms (varia), which in turn needs a way to make a jump (high-jump boots). Every one of these barriers is very in-your-face, so when you get the item, you know "Ah! Now I should go over here!"

The same concept applies in this hack once you hit Red Brinstar. It's just slightly less obvious until you get Ice, and even less obvious until you get Wave.

And another thing! Why is it that you let me go through a bunch of rooms only to get to a dead end? Why am I even allowed into the area when the only thing I can do in it is backtrack out? If the player's going to spend a bunch of time getting somewhere, there had damned well better be a reward at the other end, not just a "sorry, come back when you have powerups". I'm thinking in particular of the climb with the digging robot here, where at the top there's AFAICT nothing except for some speedbooster blocks. And no, I don't mean "slap a missile pack up there and it's okay."

The funny thing is that you're in the right place to obtain Speed Booster once and for all.

Otherwise, all other criticisms are pretty valid.

[Prime Hunter]

I'm not trying to clog up this thread, but I'm getting incredibly frustrated and just want to get to the end of this now. Mostly to see what Tourian and the escape are all about, but also because I know I'm close to finishing this.

Can't find Lower Norfair this time. I see an elevator shaft on the map but 1: I can't get to it (big surprise) and 2: I don't even know if that's for LN or for Tourian, since I still haven't seen that entrance yet either. There's more locked doors and some dead ends that seem like they should lead me into Lower Norfair territory but don't, so once again I've been circling through this for a while with no progress. To be honest, I think that this hack was horribly mislabeled as being just as difficult as the original game because this type of exploration is definitely not for me and if I had known from the beginning what I was getting into I probably wouldn't have bothered starting in the first place.

[spoiler= Current Map][/spoiler]

Also, is this another troll room/dead end? It seems too suspicious for my liking but I can't get anywhere so I'm thinking it's just there to mock me at this point.

[Metaquarius]

Lower Norfair Entrance :
[spoiler]Don't be you fooled by that elevator shaft visible on the map, it leads indeed to LN but you can't access it by the nearby rooms. Time to take a lava bath with your Gravity Suit...[/spoiler]

So-called troll room :
[spoiler]An item is hidden in this room (no joke), why going down when you can go up ?  :^_^:[/spoiler]

[Derakon]

The same concept applies in this hack once you hit Red Brinstar. It's just slightly less obvious until you get Ice, and even less obvious until you get Wave.

Part of my point is that the original was obvious. It said "Here are the obstacles you need to surmount", and then when you got the necessary items, you were able to surmount them. In this hack when I get an item, well, sure there's some places I remember where I can use it, but 90% of the time the place I'm actually supposed to go to next is one I haven't even managed to stumble across yet.

The funny thing is that you're in the right place to obtain Speed Booster once and for all.

That doesn't change the fact that I was allowed to go down that tedious path with nothing being at the other end.

(I note this would have probably been more excusable if this weren't a suitless underwater sequence, speaking of which why does every hack maker think that lengthy suitless underwater segments are good ideas?  :nowai: )

EDIT: another bad idea: combining suitless underwater segments with giant sidehoppers. I mean really. If you can't avoid an enemy then it shouldn't be in the game.

EDIT 2: on a more practical level, the game often puts spikes on the very bottom row of the room, which is actually offscreen. For example, setting up a crumble bridge, where if you fall through the crumble blocks, you land on the "bottom of the screen" and take spike damage. Dick move, that, since you can't see the spikes and have no way of knowing in advance that the bridge will crumble. Hazards should be visible, or initially harmless, so that the player can recognize the pattern and learn to avoid it when it matters. But I'd say that 99% of the time the correct way to handle this is to not put anything important on the very last row of the screen.

[Digital_Mantra]

Luke Skywalker: I.. I just can't find the way. Ugh this is too much.
Obi Wan: Shut your eyes my young padawan, all paths do indeed exist.
Luke: Alright master.. .. ... there!
Obi Wan: No, those are just missiles..


Jesting aside, I did want to say something that Derakon made me think about.
That WS room with the small conveyer belt platforms where you have to kill enemies while jumping and there is SPIKES on the ceiling so jumping to another platform is hell.
Oh then you fall down all the way back into water. I would not play that on console. It's too unforgiving.

[Prime Hunter]

Lower Norfair Entrance :
[spoiler]Don't be you fooled by that elevator shaft visible on the map, it leads indeed to LN but you can't access it by the nearby rooms. Time to take a lava bath with your Gravity Suit...[/spoiler]

So-called troll room :
[spoiler]An item is hidden in this room (no joke), why going down when you can go up ?  :^_^:[/spoiler]

I only called it a troll room because that's what DMantra called the other one from Maridia that seemed like a dead end. But apparently I kept hitting my head on the pillars because until you mentioned going up it didn't seem like I could.

Unfortunately, I'm going to need something more specific regarding Lower Norfair. I tried that in every area I could think of and still couldn't find anything. There's a spot where I found an energy tank that seemed like the place but that was a dead end too.
[spoiler=Current Norfair Map]
[/spoiler]

[Digital_Mantra]

It took me a little while to find it too, but yes, that etank room is indeed the room you want to access by other means. You see that 4x4 room? that's just touching the top of that etank room. Go back there, and don't leave that room till you've found another way.
When you find the entrance, get ready to rage.

[Prime Hunter]

Can I borrow that picture of Samus kicking the monitor?

I swear I bombed that spot. I know I did. :FURY:

[MetroidMst]

This hack does that to you. I will say I found Lower Norfair to be much easier than I expected, it is almost another Wrecked Ship in how "easy" it is.

[Prime Hunter]

Wait... I did it? I actually did it with no more hints?

10:54, 65%

Add a bunch of uncounted time to this due to heavy savestate abuse. That time would've easily been higher still if it hadn't been for all of you helping me along the way, so thank you. I really mean it, because I would've gone insane otherwise.

It's funny too. After all of the headaches I received from trying to navigate and find hidden paths, once I got to Lower Norfair (and stopped being stupid by missing one of the few actual hints in the game that lead to finding the chozo who lowers the acid levels) things just started clicking for me for the most part. I'd only get stuck for a few minutes or more at best before coming up with an idea or simply bombing everything that looked even remotely suspicious until I found something new. Of course I was also incredibly lucky at times, such as falling right into the entrance to Tourian when I started my search for it.

Speaking of Tourian, I can only mirror what a few others have said at this point: This could very well be the best Tourian I've ever seen! Once I got to "that room" I couldn't help but grin at what you did to turn everything on its head. You nailed the atmosphere perfectly with that one moment. That, above everything else, made the entire trip through this game worth it.


When all's said and done, my only true complaint about Z-Factor is what ultimately holds it back in my mind, and I think you all know what that is by now. Because I came to realize at the end that I really was enjoying myself when things were going my way and I had a clear path before me. The Wrecked Ship, Lower Norfair, and Tourian are clearly the highlights for me because of that sole factor alone, although as I've already said, Tourian's just flat out awesome. I'll admit, compared to a lot of other hacks I've played this is a lot more open ended than most because very rarely did I feel like I was on rails or that there was a single path of progression. There was plenty of room to maneuver and search for expansions, no question there.

The problem, of course, was that when it came time for me to find the next major item there were almost no hints whatsoever, from either the map stations or the paths themselves. I like being able to explore and find my own way through the game world, but having no clear indication where the hidden passages are and having almost every major item be a victim of the "bomb every tile" mentality ultimately sours the entire experience because it pretty much became the only way to make progress in the end. Add in a ton of locked doors and dead ends and things become a mess quickly. (Maridia being the prime example of that.)

So yeah, if the hidden paths were a little more obvious (at least the main ones), some enemies and bosses were balanced, and modifications were made to the rooms that are navigated often so that they aren't a chore to cross through each time, this could turn into something great. The way it is now though, I don't think I'm going to play this one again anytime soon, if ever because I simply don't want to deal with that again. My opinion certainly took a turn for the better once I got going in Lower Norfair though, so at least it ended on a high note.

[snibsnib]

Done in 8:38, 66%.

My thoughts are pretty much the same as Prime Hunter. Although if I hadn't found X-Ray (by accident might I add) I would have given up a long time ago. In the end, the feeling of being completely lost for hours in Maridia was definitely worth it to see Tourain :^_^:. Also the custom backgrounds (Ridley's especially) were a great touch.

Suggestions:

• Extend the escape timer by at least a couple of minutes. There's no way I could escape after rescuing the creatures, even with save states.
• Make the path to Botwoon slightly easier to find (I was pulling my hair out over that one)
• After I killed Phantoon I went straight to the map station instead of going down the elevator, and I couldn't find a way back up (I don't think you can freeze these things ). I'm not sure but unless you can infinite bomb jump I don't think its possible to progress any further. That might need changing.
• I think the difficulty was almost perfect, apart from the mass of big sidehoppers/desgeegas early on in the game, removing a couple of them wouldn't hurt.

Other than that, well done on making a brilliant hack.


Bugs: If you use X-Ray in the room with the dead guy who gives you a message, before you talk to him, it will freeze the game (on snes9x 1.53 at least).
Also, random crumble blocks out of nowhere D:
[spoiler]


These really had me confused. [/spoiler]

[Metaquarius]

Thanks for playing.  :^_^:

I've taken into account your suggestions.
Concerning the Tourian escape, you're supposed to take the speedbooster shortcuts scattered around to have enough time to save the animals. ;)
As for those strange crumble blocks, these are special bts blocks which prevents enemies from crossing them.

[Digital_Mantra]

Concerning the Tourian escape, you're supposed to take the speedbooster shortcuts scattered around to have enough time to save the animals. ;)

I did another escape with 38 seconds left and I noticed areas where shinesparking would save even more time.
I think the timer is perfect, especially for those willing to learn the right shinespark paths to save the animals.

[Prime Hunter]

The only problem I had with the escape sequence was that 2nd room in Crateria with all of the respawning crumble blocks. I'd have about 1/2 the timer left once I reached that area but then wasted too much time falling back to the bottom and having to go around because of the placement of the spikes and pirate at the entrance to the top level. By the time I'd get out of that room there was 45 seconds at most left on the timer and one time I got to those two bomb blocks right next to the ship when it hit zero.

So other than that one room the rest of the escape was fine. Even something as simple as making the hole between level 2 and 3 slightly wider or moving that top pirate back a few squares would make all of the difference in my opinion.

[LReyomeXX]

must....kill.....bouncing.....balls LOL

Seriously, I have the pattern down, [spoiler]only hit the slowest one usually[/spoiler] but is there any other way to beat him?

[Derakon]

must....kill.....bouncing.....balls LOL

Seriously, I have the pattern down, [spoiler]only hit the slowest one usually[/spoiler] but is there any other way to beat him?

Think like you're playing Asteroids: target one and deal with it completely before going after the others.

[Digital_Mantra]

So I went for 100%.

17:50 / 99%...

99%... yeah fuck you missile tank.

[Derakon]

Currently in Lower Norfair. My quality of life shot way up once I got the X-Ray Scope. Though even then I needed help in Zaridia.

Places I've needed help finding in this hack so far:
[spoiler]
* Getting Wave after Varia
* Where to go after getting powerbombs (i.e. Maridia)
* How to do the suitless underwater jump in Wrecked Ship (I actually tried the intended solution once but Samus slipped on some terrain, so I assumed it was impossible)
* Finding Botwoon, and then after that, finding Draygon
* Finding the entrance to Lower Norfair
[/spoiler]

That's an awful lot. I've noticed a pattern with this hack, though -- the game gives you a preview of part of a room from a "more accessible" direction, and then there's a different way to access the room that actually leads forwards. I see three main problems with this:

1) The "more accessible" direction can still be really sneakily hidden.
2) Plenty of rooms can be accessed from multiple directions without being the way forward, because they're actually just shortcuts or hub rooms -- so I'm inclined to discount the "missing half" of the room as just being something I'll be able to access later.
3) The alternate entrances are basically completely unclued (Lower Norfair is a big offender here).

On an unrelated note, I got a freeze in this room:
[spoiler][/spoiler]

I jumped into the room, heard the sound of rising lava, and then the screen froze where you see it. Maybe something to do with hitting the spikes?