A more breakable map for Metroid Fusion [v0.0.2]

[sammy erinn]

NOTE: As the rename suggests, the patch is, to the best of my knowledge, fixed. I was able to complete the game and potential locks I found playing the game backwards were removed. Thanks to everyone who helped me figure out what was going wrong.

I loved playing Kazuto's event system hack so much that I made a variant map that allows you to take full advantage of it. Don't think this is quite what people had in mind for breaking Fusion open, but I had fun making it. The key items are power bombs, bombs, high jump, and speed boost. Once you get those 4, it should be possible to transition between any two areas without accessing the main elevator section or any nav rooms. In effect, you can skip all the dialogue from there on, if you're willing to make a detour. It may be possible to access most of the game without high jump, although it's untested as I couldn't pull it off. It is possible to access most of the game without speed boost.

Map edits add new routes as unobtrusively as I could think of. Hopefully, this means that most of the changes will not be obvious, including new routing options. If you want, you should be able to play the game normally and barely notice they're there. I have tried to avoid locked game states, but I haven't tested anywhere near enough to know that they don't exist. All the screw attack blocks that gate the secret sector transitions can be bypassed with a tunnel gated by power bomb blocks. Ideally, I would like to have dual pb/screw blocks, but I have not poked into editing code yet. All of this was done in MAGE.

Reverse boss order is possible* after Zazabi and possibly before Zazabi. All bosses except the big core X are accessible with just bombs, power bombs, and high jump (it requires either speed booster or screw attack). I was able to complete the game backwards (though only by replenishing health through the debug menu). However, if you do this the warning voice that plays in the restricted area will just keep going for the rest of your game. I guess it must be switched off by entering the restricted lab, which is skipped if you kill Ridley before B.O.X.

[spoiler=More details]
It may not be feasible to fight B.O.X before getting the gravity suit due to the water effect. I made sure this could not be a hard lock. I could do it because I was using the debug menu to heal, but the beam attacks seemed unavoidable. Maybe jumping out of the water and using screw attack for invulnerability would work? Everything else seems doable (although I'm not sure if you can farm for health near Ridley without a wave beam).

Many areas will appear to be magically fixed if you enter them the wrong way and then leave from the normal entrance, then go back. In sector 3, this appears necessary to trigger round 1 of B.O.X out-of-order, and in sector 5, fixing it would require adding additional rooms. I want to say I think the modified game file is no bigger than the old one, but I'm not sure if adding doors and area transitions adds data or if those tables have a fixed size.

There's a room I modified in sector 1 that doesn't display properly on the minimap. This is because making it show up correctly would have required altering all the headers in the sector, as well as the whole minimap, as it went above the existing map boundary. I was lazy about this one.[/spoiler]

There are probably still bugs, errors I made placing tiles, and locks. If you experience an issue, please make note of it to me, posting how you've progressed through the game and the items you've gotten so far. Screencaps, if you can. Testers very much welcome.

Thanks to Kazuto and Biospark in particular for doing the hard work making this possible, and also to Interdepth, because the cheat code that pops the debug menu doesn't work with Kazuto's hack and I could not have completed my own map mod without frequent health restores.

The first ips patch includes Kazuto's hack. The second is just the map edits.

*for someone much better at avoiding damage than me


NOTE 2: I would still recommend playing this with interdepth's debug menu patch enabled, in case you hit a snag.


EDIT: Added info from further testing, image to illustrate hack. I wish I hadn't lost my other screengrabs.

EDIT 2: Significant revision. The patch is now working.

[sammy erinn]

The patch now appears to be working. I've updated the topic post with the current version. Sorry for posting this in such an unfinished state earlier, but it should be playable start to finish now, in whatever order is accessible (I've only tested forwards and reverse after Zazabi). Enjoy!

Original patches retained here for posterity, didn't think before deleting them whoops.

[Paulinho]

I'll test your rom hack, really looking forward to have a good full sequence breaking fusion hack on the scene

edit: now playing.. is it possible to get secury level 2 green doors without speed boost?

edit 2: [spoiler] Is it possible to get security level 4 red door opened with just power bombs (and that opens all the previous security doors too
I've managed to do that with just power bombs, you just have to go to sector 2 and go ahead for sector 4 on the intersection, then do your way over to the security level 4 room, after this you can get back by the room you're supposed to get on sector 4 water level when you came by sector 5 after nightmare on vanilla game [/spoiler]

I've reached the B.O.X with core X boss on sector 6 without varia and gravity suit.. the boss fight is ok but it's impossible to beat that core X without gravity suit at least without any hacks or debug menu, i'm just using save states