Super Metroid: Ancient Chozo.

[albert v.]

Ancient Chozo is an expansion of the original Game
that contains the original Super Metroid Map layout with
extra largest new rooms and areas locations, plus new routes to find.

An all-new eye-pleasing experience.
It has new GFX in most of the areas and new palettes,
Ancient Chozo started from Project Base Hack, but it's not the same,
it has new color palette for the entire game, and even more places to explore plus
new custom enemies, moves, puzzles, music, and some few more stuff
The new routes makes the game more interesting and more fun to explore.
My intention was to keep the original route of Vanilla and add some new routes that can curious players could find,
and also the players with good skills can break the Game Sequence.
The gameplay now rewards both types of players,
those who likes going faster,  can now beat the game faster than cause they have new shortcuts and new routes to travel between each area much faster!
On the other hand,  those who like exploring or breaking the game sequence, now gets most of the upgrades and power ups! Although it's a task not to easy to perform!

Chozo Hack focused on Explorations and most of the original items locations has been changed!
There's a lot of new secrets to discover, new areas, new rooms and no longer have the help of the X-Ray vision, but there's a new feature find them, so the players can feel curious finding  new secrets and upgrades using a different method, so that makes the adventure even more interesting and enjoyable.
I've have added more rooms and more areas also new gfx and  I'll be adding some more in future versions.

Ancient Chozo Hack is my First Project!
I always wanted to have a different Hack with the same map but much more to explore using new and rearranged graphics
with some extra stuff like new music and more puzzles.
So I just wanted to share some of that.
I really like the feeling of loneliness and the  ambience in the Metroid series, the ruined places like chozo ruins abandoned spots, it's atmosphere, and the strange creatures, specially  the race of the chozo.


What can you expect:

https://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_RvNXgQZr4


SCREENSHOTS:
[spoiler]


[/spoiler]
                      ** THANK YOU GRIME ** 
                                     
- New Shinesparks Control can now steered left/right or up/down
- New Instant Bombs make bombs explode instantly with no jump (only works on the ground)
- New Tractor Beam (updated) charge beam attracts energy/ammo much faster and smoother than before




FEATURES:
- The intro story text can be fast-forward pressing a button.
- New -- Power bombs have now the ability to reveal special blocks!
- New -- Frozen enemies can be destroyed using shinespark or screw attack!
[spoiler]- Red bristar is back! and a new custom tileset has been used for kraid area.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]- New Secret Rooms added on Brinstar and Maridia, Some items are now on this rooms.[/spoiler]
[spoiler]- New area and shortcuts in maridia plus new rooms in brinstar.[/spoiler]
- New Suit palette, now with the one was equipped when the game was beaten.
[spoiler]- New Custom Music Background on Brinstar and a new section extension of Maridia.[/spoiler]
- New Puzzles, even more than version 1.1.0.
- New Mechanics as moving and falling platforms.
- New Rooms, and new areas added.
- New Color palette for the entire game.
- New Samus Suit sprites + palette added.
- Modified Enemies & Bosses including palettes.
- Faster Doors, Elevators, Rooms transitions & item-collection sequences.
- Detail on this Areas: Brinstar Upper/Lower, Maridia, and Norfair Upper-Lower.
- New Beams sprites and sparks Animation edited.
- Item Fanfare Has Been Restored to the Original Sound but doesn't prevents samus for keep moving freely.
- Explosion Sound Has Been now Restored to the Original Sound.
- New Graphics Added to Brinstar and maridia.




MOVES:
- New Diagonal Bomb Jump -- Bombs now thows you to a considerable distance! -- Place a bomb and slightly move to the side where you want to be thrown, Now Killing Enemies on its way! (Now optional)
- Instant bomb explosion -- place a bomb and hold down for an instant explosion, preventing samus to jump in ball form!.
- Project Base Psychics Modified.
- RESPIN -- Press jump button at any time during normal fall to resume spinning.
- BACK FLIP -- While crouched, hold run, then press & hold jump + back button.
- BOMB SKIP -- Hold down button to avoid bomb jumping.
- QUICK MORPH #1 -- Hold item cancel + press down button to instantly morph.
- QUICK MORPH #2 -- Hold L + press down button, this only works in the air.
- DEMORPH JUMP -- Until Spring Ball is equipped, holding run allows spin-jumping straight out of ball form!
- SPEED BALL -- With Spring Ball equipped, Samus gains the ability to run at full speed as a ball
- UP SPIN -- While standing still, hold run button to easily spin-jump straight up
- SPIN FALL -- Hold jump button as you fall from a ledge to flip automatically


FIXES:
- Permanents Stucks has been fixed.
- Glitched Palettes on some items-Fixed, thanks to Grime :)
- Some messing Sprites on Samus Suit has been fixed.
- Soft and solid blocks has been fixed in most of the areas.

CHANGES SINCE VERSION 1.1.0:
[spoiler]- Samus in the intro story has been restored.
- The intro story text now sounds much better than before.
- Edited -- less health on some Bosses and enemies.
- Faster fight with spore spawn mini boss.
- Many spikes were removed and  its damage has been reduced.
- I have removed Some yellow doors making the game less lineal now.
- some wall spikes were removed, letting the player to perform wall jump freely to get early stuff.
- 2 new custom songs has been added.
- much more not listed yet.[/spoiler]

CREDITS AND BIG THANKS:
-#Grime, Moehr, Stunt_sr, AnarchyGuitarist, Kottpower, Scyzer, Black Falcon,
  Realred, Smiley, Mccad00, Quote58, Shannon Cross, Geo Korf & Metaquarius
  For troubleshooting, resources, Publicity and gameplay testing.

Also thanks to The Metroid Construction Community!

[Steel Sparkle]

It looks really cool.
EDIT:thanks for putting up the patch. gonna try it now.

[albert v.]

Enjoy!  :heheh: and anything report it here please  :^_^:

[DonnyDonovan]

So is this a half-hack of PB or just a graphics and palette hack?

[albert v.]

It May be, but i think you should try it first and then give your opinion :)

[A Dummy]

Whoa, now this looks cool.
The modified tileset looks really nice, and the different Samus sprite is a nice touch as well, I'm gonna have to check this one out soon.

[PHOSPHOTiDYL]

I'm maybe halfway through it & I already want to play again.

[benox50]

One of the best looking hack if not the best. Has some Half hack elements but has its own design too.
Uses Project base with some Hyper vibe. Gonna review that properly when Im done with it.

[Steel Sparkle]

I beat it with 83% in just over 2hrs.


My thoughts! Beware!
[spoiler]-Graphics- 5/5
This game looks beautiful. Best hack i have seen to this day.

-Gameplay- 5/5
Using PB as the base makes this one a given. Samus controls fantastic and everything is fluid.

-Design- 4/5
The only reason i don't make this a 5 is because maybe it's just me but i feel there is a bit too much restriction on what items you can grab and when. I don't mind the game being linear as this can make it much easier to progress but what feels like constant blocking of simple things like Missile expansions is a bit much. This is probably a nitpick and others may not have a problem with this but to ME it felt like too many things were needlessly blocked till a much later date. Also i think it sucked that spazer was hidden behind speed booster blocks and i didn't know till i had plasma that was the spazer. there is no way to tell that the item is spazer and most players will probably think it's just another missile pack behind speed booster blocks.

-End game- 4/5
Now i have a problem with this part. I don't love you need most of the Super Missile expansions to complete this part because of large side hoppers that only your Super Missiles can damage. This forces a player to leave and come back constantly if they do not have around 40 Super missiles to spare. It's not bad and is short lived but i can see how this could be a problem. If there is another way to damage them i apologize but that seemed to be the only weapon that could.

-Overall- 4/5
I think this was a very good looking and solid hack to play. Good job Albert and i will look forward to seeing what else you make.[/spoiler]

[albert v.]

Thank you guys :razz: my intention was to make this hack the most beautiful possible, and make the exploration a great experience!  :^_^:

[MetroidX]

Looks interesting, can we get a trailer? Also want to wait for some reviews before jumping the bandwagon.

[0garrison]

Beautiful looking hack, going to play it later

[A Dummy]

Now I know why this looked familiar, I saw a video of this linked almost a year ago in the General Screenshots/vids thread. (Back in January 2nd to be exact.)
Caught my eye back then too, so additional congratulations for getting your hack finished and released.

[albert v.]

Thanks  but as I watch I think I'm going to do some changes on this or maybe make another version I'm not sure what to do, any suggestions?

[MetroidX]

Thanks  but as I watch I think I'm going to do some changes on this or maybe make another version I'm not sure what to do, any suggestions?

How come? So far everyone has said good things about it. I would wait until more players finish the game and post their reviews.

[Boomerang]

Just finished this today, with a time of 3:17 and 97% collection rate.

Here's a quick little review:

The Good:
+ A lot of the new tilesets are very beautiful, with Brinstar and Maridia being the standout examples in my mind.
+ The new spritework for Samus is great - I also like the new additions like having different animations for the shinespark when facing left or right.
+ Though this isn't so much a thing you did, using Project Base is always a plus in my mind.
+ The individual room designs are pretty good as well, despite using the vanilla layout and having to stick to it.
+ The rooms where you struck out on your own and did something original are standout rooms that show great promise. The turtle room in particular is something special and I think if you did more of this you'd have an amazing hacking career ahead of you.
+ Maridia's different instrumentation was very refreshing.

The Iffy:
* Norfair's tileset was a bit bland at times (mostly in the upper portions), which is odd because for the most part the added tilesets are much more diverse. In addition, it lacks any of the animated heat glow effects that cause individual tiles to glow. Before someone mentions that there is the wavy heat effect, there is indeed use of that, but the glow on BG1 tiles isn't present which really lends Norfair its hot, dangerous atmosphere.
* Tourian's tileset is also kinda bland, unfortunately. It's probably the tileset that borrows the most from the original game, and I was kinda disappointed to see it didn't have the same care and attention to detail the other tilesets (barring Norfair) had.
* EDIT: Forgot to mention, the opening text crawl has some changes that don't sound quite correct in English. I could punch it up and make it sound nicer if you want.

The Bad:
- There are a lot of arbitrary barriers to progression that neither Project Base nor the original game had. There are a lot of Power Bomb doors, speedbooster blocks and speedball blocks that seem like they were only put there to prevent sequence breaking. While I'm happy to say that there are definitely some good sequence breaks, like early Plasma, for the most part it felt very stifling to try and get to an item only to be blocked by some random blocks. Here are just a few examples: a PB door blocks early Supers, Speedbooster blocks prevent early power bombs, a PB door blocks the Wave Beam, speedbooster blocks prevent Spazer, speedbooster blocks prevent early Ice Beam, and more. Those are just the major upgrades, there are a myriad expansion tanks that are totally blocked by Super Missile Blocks or the aforementioned PB doors, speedball blocks, etc. The area that suffered the worst for this was Norfair, where I felt like I couldn't go anywhere without being walled off by an upgrade I didn't have yet, but in the original game, I could enter just fine. Another instance of this that doesn't directly block any upgrade progression, but is still annoying, is the grey door that blocks you from entering Maridia from the tube room.
- The spikes. I feel like this is probably an oversight but early on there are tons of spikes that deal 60 damage when you have one or two energy tanks. In addition, the spikes on the ceilings in Norfair and sometimes Maridia are often difficult to discern from the rest of the rocks, and it's just generally annoying to navigate amid them all.
- As mentioned before, the super missile blocks are annoying, but sometimes they get ridiculous. This image in particular is just ridiculous:

And this is in a hallway that has at least 6 more super blocks to get through.
- In addition, the mandatory sidehoppers in Tourian are only susceptible to Super Missiles or Bombs, which is just tedious to get through unless you went into Tourian with 50 supers like I did.

I apologize if this review was too negative, because this really is an amazing hack - there are just a few things that hold it back from being perfect in my mind. The negatives mentioned above are really odd to me, because Project Base's engine is practically designed for sequence breaking and speedrunning, but it seems at every turn the game wants to block you from using those abilities to their fullest. I'm going to refrain from posting this review on the main site, because I think just a little bit more polish could warrant a 5/5 rating on the main site, and I think it'd be an injustice to rate it in its initial form, especially considering this is the first release of your first hack. I look forward to whatever you release in the future!

Rating: 4/5

[albert v.]

thanks a lot for your though.  i may change some ting on the future i just want to wait for more opinions and yes i know my english is bad  :cry: maybe some one help me just with that in the history text  :neutral:

[Digital_Mantra]

This is amazing. God tier aesthetics, and smooth gameplay.

I'll echo what Boomerang said about the blocked paths, if you opened the hack up a bit more this is a solid 5/5.
It's the best hacks that need the harshest criticism because people can see the true potential for perfection and you're not far from it.
Maybe focus on opening some routes in your map layout before powerbombs.

That turtle room.. you're the Michelangelo of metconst.

[Black Falcon]

[spoiler]The idea to use the Norfair ruin tiles with an even greener Brinstar tileset is really clever, I never would've thought of that!  :wink:[/spoiler]

In all seriousness, though, I love this hack! It looks and plays just great!

[albert v.]

Thanks a lot black falcon  :yay: your video Metroid: Predator - Arboretum Concept and you tileset, inspired me to make this hack i have learn a lot and i wish to learn more stuff like coding for example I want you to know that I use the elevator in your room to honor your idea :razz: I must say that if I had never seen your video I would never think of doing this hack!  :grin:

[albert v.]

This is amazing. God tier aesthetics, and smooth gameplay.

I'll echo what Boomerang said about the blocked paths, if you opened the hack up a bit more this is a solid 5/5.
It's the best hacks that need the harshest criticism because people can see the true potential for perfection and you're not far from it.
Maybe focus on opening some routes in your map layout before powerbombs.

That turtle room.. you're the Michelangelo of metconst.

I feel so grateful to read these thoughts about my work  :razz:

[MetroidNerd#9001]

I'm going to remind you again to make sure this gets put up on the main site. More people need to see this hack, and I'm glad you got to see live critiques of it in Metroid MST's Livestream.

[benyabkn]

thanks a lot for your though.  i may change some ting on the future i just want to wait for more opinions and yes i know my english is bad  :cry: maybe some one help me just with that in the history text  :neutral:

Do you speak spanish?
If so, I think I can help you with that  :P  .

[albert v.]

thanks a lot for your though.  i may change some ting on the future i just want to wait for more opinions and yes i know my english is bad  :cry: maybe some one help me just with that in the history text  :neutral:

Do you speak spanish?
If so, I think I can help you with that  :P  .

i do speak spanish!

[albert v.]

I'm going to remind you again to make sure this gets put up on the main site. More people need to see this hack, and I'm glad you got to see live critiques of it in Metroid MST's Livestream.

I will, once I see the opinion of some other players and I just have to do some changes before uploading it to the main site,  I think I'll let a few more days pass, because I want to see what Grime thinks as well.