Super Metroid: Up

[Silver Skree]

Super Metroid: Up is a small, linear side-hack I'm making. The gist of it is, you start in norfair, climb up, up, and to the surface...
[spoiler=pretty much the plan for the entire hack; Major spoilers on environments]atop the highest mountian, up SPACE STAIRS LOL, go through a horizontal space-platforming section, enter and go through a space station, go through another space platforming section, descend to another planet, and find a ship and take off.[/spoiler]

Any story? No.
Any bosses? None whatsoever.


Any pics? Not yet. You do get a video, though.


[spoiler=vid 4 u]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9qFyRBECXU

High Quality makes everything better. Suggest using. Also widescreen helps for this one. There's a picture of the finised (but unrevised) room at the end of the video.[/spoiler]

[MetroidMst]

I think the idea for the hack is awesome. The right side doesn't look so great right now, but it sounds like you are still working on that. This will be a nice change-of-pace hack from most of the ones I've played.

[Silver Skree]

Yeah, I almost always go back and revise my rooms after I "finish" them. That room still has some touching up to be done.

[Sylux]

I still think it would benefit from having more enemies, but whatever, either way it'll be fun.

[Zhs2]

Didn't watch the video, but I have to say that the idea is a spiffy one. I only have one suggestion for you to consider: Samus just beat the Last Boss and is now escaping the planet, collecting gear along the way. I can just see players getting bogged down by a not-too-short but not-too-long time limit that simulates the planet exploding...!

But of course, then it would be a saveroom-less hack. :sad:

[Silver Skree]

um, yeah, nuts to that timer idea. besides, it wouldn't work for the game's "plot" progression.

And by plot I mean all the places you go through.

[Hacker347]

So is this like a mini hack?

[GF_Kennon]

Yes, its a mini hack Hacker347, but a pretty unique one at that, on a side note I realised I never posted here, and I must say I'm really excited for this, and obviously if you need any help just ask.

[Lunaria]

This is a great idea and I would love to play it once it's done! :3

[Silver Skree]

I've decided to increase the hack's enemy count. Expect a total average of >2 enemies throughout the hack. Also, resprites. Quite a few.

Going to hold off on showing too much, but here's one of the two required screenies to make this a hack thread proper.

[spoiler=NO HUD 4 U OLOLO][/spoiler]

[attachment deleted by admin]

[personitis]

*raises hand* I'm just a little confused... Is there actually going to be no HUD or did you just disable layer 4 (?) on your emulator? If no HUD period:

Freakin' Sweet!

[Silver Skree]

There will be a hud. Layer 3 is not disabled; I just clipped off that part of the image in Paint.

[personitis]

Awww, it would've been challenging if you had to keep track of your own ammo and health. Meh, the hacks still a cool idea though .=D

[GF_Kennon]

Awesome stuff there Skree, also this amused me



YOU GOT TO GO DOWN NOT UP

[personitis]

LOL @ irony.

[Hiroshi Mishima]

As one of Silver's main game testers, I've been given the green light to write up a little "review" of sorts for what he's gotten done so far. In all, I went through about 7 rooms in all before I hit a rather abrupt dead-end in the form of a broken elevator (room 8 only exists in potentia).

I myself only play through a small number of romhacks, usually because I find people... don't use a whole lotta commen sense when designing them, and tend to think "harder = better" regardless of whether that applies to their hack or not. I'm looking at you, Impossible, Kaizo, and IWBTG. Suffice it to say, Super Metroid: Up is thankfully not among those sorts of titles. In fact, almost all of Silver's romhacks have been quite good. I have always marveled at his visually appealing designs, while still making use of techniques such as mid-air morphing.

As far as the seven rooms went, except for where he was obviously not finished (room 7, because it wasn't) the other rooms felt pretty well polished to the point that if they weren't in fact done, I couldn't tell. The concept of not so much facing off against enemies, but the room itself in the form of platforming, is an interesting idea. I am reminded of games such as Prince of Persia where the enemies themselves aren't your main concern, it's simply getting from Point A to Point B.

Overall, I found Super Metroid: Up to be, at this point, a unique rom-hack in the concept itself is not one I see often in games these days (hacks or actual games), and visually appealing. I was constantly wanting to explore the rooms just to see what he'd come up with. The fact that I wasn't constantly fending off enemies made that a lot easier. I'm really looking forwards to the finished hack.

[Zhs2]

Ass-kissing post? Can I ban for that? :O *shot*

In all seriousness, I don't know if having someone write up and post a review of a seven-room beta was a good idea. Can we gather the torches and pitchforks and start moving towards your house until you give us a piece of this awesome? :^_^:

[Silver Skree]

Hahaha, like Hiroshi said, he doesn't play ROMhacks, so all this is a novelty to him. To all of you, it's probably not going to be nearly as stunning; this'll probably be just above average for your run-of-the-mill ROMhack. If it's any better, I'll be quite beside myself.

[Hiroshi Mishima]

Probably the biggest reason I don't play many ROMhacks is because I rarely see ones that interest me. For instance, most RPG hacks feel awkward unless I know for certain it's worth my playing through it because of the ammount of time to invest in seeing it to the end. With Super Metroid hacks, the game itself is simple enough that you can often beat it in a day or two, so there's not much risk. However, many of the SM ones I see are full of stuff like "Hell's Run" which wasn't something that thrilled me in Redesign, and it doesn't make me leap for joy when I see or hear about it in other hacks.

With Silver, the first hack of his I tried, a very early Boss Rush, it was good, and I enjoyed it a lot. A good rule of thumb for me is design. If I don't like the way something is designed, I'll either shy away from it, or more often, I'll make myself heard in some fashion in the hopes that it gets fixed. I won't claim that's why Silver makes such good hacks, but I'd like to think so. :p

[Zhs2]

Ahh. Well, that explains a fair bit (I mean, the bit about why the review sounded quite glorified, i.e. you like hacks that make regular haxn members go "wtf too easy beat it in 0 hours 18 minutes".)

A good rule of thumb for me is design. If I don't like the way something is designed, I'll either shy away from it, or more often, I'll make myself heard in some fashion in the hopes that it gets fixed.

That's actually a good guideline to follow, provided you don't get stuck with people that can't listen to criticism (or generally annoy the heck out of most everyone else, possibly for the better.) But, this raises a question for me: If you're not complaining, why are you posting such nice things? =P (Yes, I do realize that this might be a spreadfire tactic to try and get more people to mod like this.)

[Silver Skree]

Here, have another picture. Consider this screenshot and the last one I posted the two screenshots to make this a "legit" hack thread.  :awesome:

[spoiler][/spoiler]

Edit: Finally! it's about time this got to page 2.

[Hacker347]

Are there any new tiles thats whats interesting.

[Sylux]

Are there any new tiles thats whats interesting.

A couple new tiles. Quite a few enemy resprites. Some other GFX changes to items and HUD.

[FullOfFail]

Climb up to the surface, huh. Should be neat. Though I'm wondering why you said there won't be any bosses. Seems to me like if you're going to make it short, you might aswell make it sorta hard. Nothing extreme, maybe just have one boss before you reach the surface or something. I'm also curious as to the ship situation. Will that be at the bottom or at the top? And if it's at the bottom, what'll be on the surface? Just a dead-end? If you want to keep that a secret, I understand.

[personitis]

I'm also curious as to the ship situation. Will that be at the bottom or at the top? And if it's at the bottom, what'll be on the surface? Just a dead-end? If you want to keep that a secret, I understand.

My guess on this is the hack will eventually run through a room with an "Escape Zebes" state (i.e. room directly after Mother Brain) to activate other similar states, leading to the ship to trigger the take off animation. At least that's how I'd do it.