Metroid - Rogue Dawn

[Grimlock]

There's 9 areas in the game total if you count the sub areas as areas (9 tracks there).  Three areas have boss music.  The final area also has a track for the escape. Title, ending tracks.  We may have a unique track played after 2 of the bosses are defeated.  Then there's the potential to have a unique track for some of the hidden screens.  Item/elevator room music...  :grin: lots of awesome music!  The tracks are much longer than the original as well as much more complex.

There might be one or two tracks left to do depending on how Optomon wants to proceed. 

[Grimlock]

Quick update: We're now in the process of integrating Optomons custom tracks into the main ROM.  Once complete we're going to be moving into playtesting while we wrap up a few graphical elements for the final release.   :cool:

[PonchGaming]

Niiiiiice. Glad to hear it's close to completion, can't wait! Here's to best nestroid hack 2016!  :grin: :nod:

[samplerInfo]

Quick update: We're now in the process of integrating Optomons custom tracks into the main ROM.  Once complete we're going to be moving into playtesting while we wrap up a few graphical elements for the final release.   :cool:

Yay! I'm so hyped for this :bounce:

[Steel Sparkle]

Been keeping my eye on this one in secret. looks like it could be a ton of fun. Can't wait :)

[RealRed]

best nestroid hack 2016!

And 2017, and 2018, and 2019, and...
The quality bar seems set higher than the original Metroid's. It's gonna be the very best for a very long time... I'm excited to see what Grimlock knows about gameplay design.

[Grimlock]

I'm excited to see what Grimlock knows about gameplay design.

So far I've received a lot of positive feedback.  There has been some feedback on the difficulty being higher than anticipated in a few areas.  I'm going to scale the difficulty back a bit before we do a 1.0 release.  Also I plan to include a second reduced difficulty patch (easy version) for people who don't appreciate traditional NES gaming difficulty.  The reduced difficulty version will be more than just fewer enemies, I'm going to change some of the passageways and platforms to make getting around easier also.

Unfortunately I'm going to be extremely limited on time for the next few weeks but I'm going to hit it hard once I have an opportunity!

[QwaserTresa]

pls a Sign of life :)

[DonnyDonovan]

The difficulty is what gave the original Metroid much of it's appeal so as long as it's in the same ballpark the normal version sounds perfect.

[Grimlock]

pls a Sign of life :)

Definitely alive and well.  I'm working on it as much as I can, my time is somewhat limited at the moment unfortunately.  I'm going through my punch list generated by the play testing and making adjustments as time allows.  I should have increasingly more time over the next few weeks.

[RealRed]

Difficulty versions? That doesn't sound good.
I hope your design is intuitive.
(also, I hope your testers aren't players of metroid.)

I know Metroid doesn't have a lot to 'teach' the player, but that doesn't mean the amount of difficult platforming/fighting sections need to scale excessively.

[Grimlock]

Difficulty versions? That doesn't sound good.
I hope your design is intuitive.
(also, I hope your testers aren't players of metroid.)

I know Metroid doesn't have a lot to 'teach' the player, but that doesn't mean the amount of difficult platforming/fighting sections need to scale excessively.

It's not as difficult as SM in my opinion but it's definitely more difficult than the original in some areas.  After we get everything tuned up we'll get it out for a final play test.  I think your right about getting some opinions from non Metroid players, just to see how it plays without a foundation of experience from the original.

If I do two difficulty versions it'll basically be normal difficulty and drop dead easy.  Since I've been so tied up with my recent move and a seemingly never-ending load of overly demanding projects at work I'm going to shoot for the normal difficulty release first and then if enough people request it, I'll do the beat it with your eyes closed version.

[Thirteen1355]

Really looking forward to this hack! I've played Incursion, and I loved it! It looked like some sort of Earth, completely overrun by robots and machines!

[Grimlock]

Update:

Just wanted to let everyone know the punch list generated by the play testing is getting increasingly shorter.  I finally got a decent number of uninterrupted hours in on the hack today.  I did a complete play through and re-balanced the difficulty.  The earlier areas are now fairly moderate.  The later areas now have their difficulty ramped as you progress through them.  The final area is a reasonable challenge, the final boss being the greatest challenge in the game.  I did make some changes to make the final battle a few notches lower in difficulty to be more fair.  I added more graphics in the planet surface (blue) area to help differentiate the solid areas from the areas you can traverse.  I fixed some palette issues and cleaned up some of the tile placement throughout the game.  A lot of minor level design fixes got done as well.  There's not a whole lot of level design changes left at this point, mostly other non-game play elements like the graphics changes for the save menu and mission screen.    :cool:

[Steel Sparkle]

that's really nice to hear. Sounds like it's almost done. Can't wait to try it :)

[Alukraid]

Yes yes yes! Let me at it!! :O

[Grimlock]

So here's some before and after screenshots of the early development vs final design.  I thought it might be interesting to show how the project has progressed from early concept to present:

Early design is on the left and current design is on the right

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[biospark]

Really cool stuff. I like that your work is iterative. It seems like you made most of the rooms a while ago but you've been improving them ever since. I'm glad you're taking your time and being diligent. Keep it up!

[Grimlock]

Thanks!  I've been continuously ratcheting and pushing the quality up as a whole which is sometimes pretty challenging considering the limits of the NES.  It's been fun but I'm ready to nail the last stretch, get it out there and see what I'd like to work on next, I'm still undecided.  I'm thinking about doing another very small Metroid hack that's primary purpose (besides being a fun short play) is entirely graphical in nature.  Just a fun thing to mess around with while I have some other primary (undetermined) project going.

[biospark]

You're always welcome to work on Zero Mission or Fusion ;)

[DSO]

You're always welcome to work on Super Metroid while I import your graphics with my editor ;)

Fixed that for you.

Also I'm confused by your top comparison images. The doors on the top left look better than the top right, and are also the doors you used on the bottom right. Did you change up the doors, not like it and change it back?

[PKstarship]

Those screenshots look really amazing, I love how much more varied and detailed the current designs are, making amazing use of the tiles to make something that looks overall more pleasing to the eyes.

I'm guessing this is coming out very very soon, I am gonna play this soooo much :grin:

[Grimlock]

I'm confused by your top comparison images. The doors on the top left look better than the top right, and are also the doors you used on the bottom right. Did you change up the doors, not like it and change it back?

Initially the doors were all the same throughout the game.  As the storyline and environment evolved it no longer made sense to have a pirate ship and a federation science ship have the same style bubble doors.  The upper right are the lower tech, more industrial looking pirate doors. 

I'm guessing this is coming out very very soon? :grin:

We're aiming for a release candidate by the end of the month (final play test) and hopefully a release in July!

[Yuki]

Something I was wondering about, it looks like the right images are all suitless, does that mean we no longer have that cool thing you mentioned about her having the suit when not on a ship?

[Thirteen1355]

Could you give us some more details about the story of the game?
I really like the idea of the Fed. Force actually being corrupt, and even working with Space Pirates/evil monsters sometimes.