General Hack Ideas

[Crashtour99]

It's not an absolute ton of work, just a bit tricky to make sure your tables, indexing, and calculations are correct.

On another note, I've been working on a thing...
[spoiler][/spoiler]

[Scyzer]

That would be extremely impractical quietus. The ammount of GFX space needed to pull that off wouldn't fit into the small available space in VRAM allocated for the HUD (since much of that is not in whole tiles, you need a tile for every combination)

This was my HUD at some point last year.

[Quietus]

Yeah, I'd guessed as much, but Shadow made it sound like we were authorised to dream. :^_^:

On a related note, I'm guessing there are technical reasons behind the outer edge of the HUD being left blank, and not used?

[Kitsune_Phoenix]

*deleted post*

[SirAileron]

It's not an absolute ton of work, just a bit tricky to make sure your tables, indexing, and calculations are correct.

On another note, I've been working on a thing...
[spoiler][/spoiler]

Goodness, I remember seeing that in the SR388 project! Block pushing would arguably be something completely new to the series.

[Quietus]

I forgot to comment on Crashtour's animation.  It looks great, but I was wondering whether it could be improved by a slight movement of her rear arm, to better fit in with her footsteps?

[Quote58]

"That would be extremely impractical quietus." <--Indeed.

Also when I asked for ideas I was hoping for people to think a little bigger than that kind of thing. I mean sure the area name is easy enough (I have asm for that already btdubs), but it's not really a new thing nor is it particularly useful.
The map thing I agree would be cool to have but I only looked into the map code once cause I haven't needed to bother with it, but I'm sure that'd be pretty tough.
Anyway, I was really hoping to hear stuff I haven't heard (or done for that matter [etanks, area name, etc) before.
Hoping more for like, new ways to show information. A different way of making missile tiles or beam switching or something else fun but also functional.

On another note, I was watching that video scyzer posted and was thinking it's an okay hud, nothing really new. And then I saw the drop down and was like FUCK. Not in an I want that kind of way, but in an I want to know how she did it way.
On yet another note, that's looking pretty cool crash, can't wait to see it in action.

[Crashtour99]

Those particular graphics are cobbled together from a couple different vanilla animations, because I really didn't feel like spending a week trying to replicate SM's unique art style.  A single arm might not be too difficult, but I'll need to find space in the ROM to slap em in, so the more gfx there are the harder it'll be to find room.

The general idea is to replace moonwalking with push/pull abilities (using special coded enemies) and to pull blocks you'll need to have grapple to latch on (not actually fire the beam, but run up to the block with it selected so the arm cannon can latch on).  The hardest part will be editing the setup menu to remove the moonwalk flag.  To my knowledge Kej is the only one to have done a hack on that, so it'll be interesting.

[Quietus]

Also when I asked for ideas I was hoping for people to think a little bigger than that kind of thing.

That's cool.  I just assumed you meant things that we would be interested in having. :^_^:

If you're just after new ideas, well, that's a toughie, and is probably why you can't settle on one idea.  I guess there are only so many ways to have a practical, simple HUD.  It'd be very easy to over complicate things, but then you defeat the point.  It's also tough to know what's already been done.  An in-game timer would always be welcome on the HUD, but I suspect that's been done.  How about replacing the energy tanks entirely, replacing it with an energy bar?  Or how about a new box, with some kind of checklist.  It could start with different labels, such as Miniboss / Boss Defeated (which would get ticked), Items Collected for the area you're in (would count up to 100% in each area), and Map Discovered (would also count up).  How about an information bar, which displays the HP of whichever enemy you last shot?  Easy enemies may always display 0/20 or whatever, but tougher enemies would have a nice giveaway to how close to death they are.  Bonus points for energy bars again, I guess?

Just slinging them out there, now. :nod:

[Kitsune_Phoenix]

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[Quietus]

I'm not so sure I agree.  Since the original game requires a boss to be beaten in each area, and the game gives you a clear time and item collection rate, they seem to fit in to me.  Each to their own, I guess. :neutral:

[Quote58]

See that's more like it quietus :)
I can do most if not all of those pretty easily and I do like the idea of a check for the boss defeated.
The energy bar to replace etanks is interesting, but I prefer having them around.
Still think you guys can think a little bigger, but this is more what I was asking for.
"I just assumed you meant things that we would be interested in having." <--well yes, but I just mean don't restrict yourself to changes to the /exsisting/ one. I'm looking for ideas on how to revamp the whole thing.

[Quietus]

What about something like the scanner out of Aliens, which instead of indicating enemies, tracks powerups and expansions.  So in each room, it'd display one of eight arrows representing the direction of the item.  It'd only have to point to one 16x16 map square to be effective, and would be great as a late game item, for the 'clean up' period. :^_^:

[Scyzer]

Personally I feel that there should be very little help when it comes to searching for optional items. Getting 100% is supposed to be a rewarding challenge. Adding something in that tells you where every item is seems to ruin that feeling for me.
It would almost be the same as having every item out in the open on the main path XD

[Smiley]

It could work if it is nerfed a bit. Maybe some kind of a sound effect when entering a room if there are unpicked items. That way players would know there's an item, but they'd still have to bomb the whole room to find it.

[Quote58]

I agree with scyzer about this, the arrow seems like it would make things way too easy.
I had already discussed this other idea with people and I think it's about the most help you should give for that sort of thing. It would just be a box which would light up if all the items in a room had been collected or not; still an end of game sort of item though.

[Jordan5]

I think it would be a good idea to do the item collection like zero mission, where it says how many of each expansion there is and how many of them you've collected. The information could be part of the map download or something like that. That's probably a b**** to code, but would be pretty cool  :^_^:

[Quietus]

Yeah, the key thing in my idea was late game, so that the chances are you'd have most of the items anyway.  Or place it behind a particularly hard area, which is completely optional.  I like the idea of adding it to the aforementioned checklist, with item totals per area.

Edit: And another idea: How about having the start button take you straight to your inventory screen instead of the map (probably already done), but have the map page completely unavailable until you have actually accessed a map station for each area?  You could still keep the minimap, which would kind of represent what you had discovered, but wouldn't be able to actually look over the whole map unless you had found it.

[passarbye]

With regards to the talk about a smaller-sized energy tank icon... I realize that's the smallest that the tiles will go, however is it not possible to have 6 different tile states instead of just 3?

Like, I get that there's the blank tile for there not being an energy tank there, one for filled, and one for empty. But if you made extra states to support increments of 100 per change, and 200 per new tile space, is that actually a ton of work?

I mean, I just made a tile mockup of how it'd look like by comparison:

i'm trying to do the same thing, except i have zero knowledge of asm. :/
it shouldn't be too hard from what i've gathered, just that you have to actually know something to get it working.

[Scyzer]

Edit: And another idea: How about having the start button take you straight to your inventory screen instead of the map (probably already done), but have the map page completely unavailable until you have actually accessed a map station for each area?  You could still keep the minimap, which would kind of represent what you had discovered, but wouldn't be able to actually look over the whole map unless you had found it.

I did something like that, except pausing takes you to the screen you were last on. If you unpaused from the map screen, you go straight to the map. If it was from the Status, you go to Status, etc
And L / R cycle between the screens now, rather than one button for each. So pressing R takes you through Map > Samus > Stats > Map, etc. L does the same but in reverse. It's pretty neat :3

[Kitsune_Phoenix]

*deleted post*

[Quote58]

So I made that item finder thing [the box that is lit up if there is still an item left in the room] and it works great.
I still have a bunch of space left on my hud though [after the energy stuff, weapons, visors] and I have no idea what to do with it. So any more ideas are certainly welcome.

[Lunaria]

Maka an enemy radar that functions the same. (And whitelist environmental enemies.)

[Quietus]

We can haz patch? :3

We have a thread for sharing completed works with the community.  If Scyzer had wanted to share the patch, she could have done, so I think it's safe to assume that she wants to keep it to herself for a while.

[Scyzer]

It's also very safe to assume that it's simply not possible for me to release this.
It's not just a patch or a few byte changes. It's part of a completely rewritten pause screen that I've coded from scratch myself. I cannot simply make a patch for this, because it is incompatible with any hack except mine.