∑++ Non-update

[Lunaria]

(If you did something and I left you out of this list, please let me know! I'm very sorry if I did!)

More like, what did I do to get on the list in the first place? O.o;


Also, I may give this a spin later.... we will see. I generally don't like playing demos for several reasons.

[MetroidMst]

Well... I can't seem to get it to work, unless it looks like the original in every way. I don't know if it is because I didn't enter a password, or maybe it is for a headered ROM instead of unheadered?

Also, I explained the BG Line Shift option.

[Silver Skree]

You're doing something wrong. Keep try.

[Hiroshi Mishima]

Yeah unless he did something after we tested it this morning, it should work fine.

Personally, I like the what he did "No Fair" (yes proper name). The greens and the reds go well together. Like the place is so warm that plant life just drips all over it. Even the walls in the room of his sig look like it's covered in moss (or vomit) and the gives the area a strange otherworldly look to it.

[MetroidMst]

Very pleased so far except for Draygon. The tile layering in his room is great, but having parts of him show while other parts don't make it odd and a little confusing at first.

Palettes are great except for Brinstar.

Draygon was way hard for the items I had. Might want to gimp him some because I thought I collected most of the items before I could face him

Hope the completed version comes soon!

[Digital_Mantra]

Wow.. this is just incredible.
Gameplay, aesthetics, concepts, room layouts... perfection.

edit: The more I play, the more stunning the rooms get. This is the most visually appealing hack I've ever played.

genuine lol @ that sign. Hi back!

[Silver Skree]

Pffahaha. I'm glad you like it! :heheh:

* Silver_Skree  proudly stamps 'DMan Approved!' onto the title screen

[THE Purple Helmet]

First off, I can't wait for the finished version! As has already been said the visual appeal is spectacular! I particularly enjoyed the wave beam but was disappointed to find the sigma beam didnt have the same visual splendor.

I loved the idea of the energy accumulator as well. I saw it as sacrificing the offense of missiles/supers for the increased durability that comes from the extra energy and for once I didnt mind the wait that comes with charging. This also added to the balance of the hack as I thought it to be a little difficult but not in a frustrating way. The whole idea is pure genius

I dont know if this will be changed much in the full release but the fact that I never got lost was a huge plus for me. I admit I prefer skill hacks over exploration but there is nothing worse than a hack that has you unsure of what to do next or where to go the whole time. Sigma++ does a good job of indicating what to do next and I know that I will never have to bomb everywhere due to a certain change made to how bombs work (which caused my first gameover by the way)

I dont go hunting for glitches and I will only mention that the sloped morph ball path has the same problems that they do in every hack but I did however find a glitch in room 7ADAD. While looking for the path onward I tried shinesparking at an angle to the right wall so that I glazed just over the statue and when I crashed into the angle just UNDER the gray door I actually went into the room you enter going to the left of this room.

I also want to mention that I love the way you made every tired old boss fight fresh especially Crocomire (who is damn near impossible with only 3 Sigma tanks) and that was the best intro ever! Cant wait for more but I just want to know if I have to play as "Will" the whole game  :lol:

[Silver Skree]

Thanks! I'm really glad that you took the time to make a serious post about it. I wish more people would make nice long posts like that!

Anyway, I'm relieved that people find it as visually appealing as I had hoped. I've been thinking about going back and touching up Brinstar, but it's been a low priority. And as far as adding trails to the Sigma Shot, I'll see what I can do. :shocking:

It's also great that the hack hits your sweet spot for challenge; I know it's just beyond some people's tolerance. The bomb damage may seem cruel at first, but when you get the Energy accumulator, they kinda act like Yin/Yang toward your energy. Plus, they're instant, so bomb jumping is trivial if you just have enough energy!

Thanks for the comments, but have you found the Phalanx yet? You're intended to take on Crocomire AFTER finding it, though it is possible to take him on before that. I'll be sure to make it so that you absolutely HAVE to find it to progress after dear ol' Croco there.

[Silver Skree]

All right. I've decided that there's no way I'm going to be able to do all the tasks I have lined up for Sigma++ by myself, so I've decided to open up the project and call on the help of anyone who can spare some effort. If we want to get this hack finished 100%, I'll need some of everyone's cooperation. I ask anyone who is willing to help with this to please lend a hand in any way you can.

There are several things that I'll need, and I'll be listing them over time and as I think of them. First of all:


Ridley's AI - I need someone that knows their way around his AI to find me a hijack point and help me write a few new subroutines for him to run every frame. I'm also going to need his palette changed, and in place of his reddening to represent near-death, I want a pallete cycle to happen in the final quarter of the fight (measured by HP). Anyone that can help with this, please let me know. The first step is the hijacking.

Custom Music - Oh yes, that unreachable dream of so many super metroid hackers this far. I'll tell you right now, we'll be doing it The Hard Way. I know Sadiztyk has an ASM format set up that you can manually write music into; Sadi, if you'd please post that up for us here. I'd like anybody that understands music theory and willing to help rewrite part of a song note-for-note to speak up. This will be a wide collaborative effort, most likely, and I do plan to be helping out extensively if there aren't enough people willing to help to make it go smooth. We'll talk about it more as people start volunteering, but the track I want rewritten is this. Loop points to be discussed later.

Putting Draygon in Front - If you've played the demo through, you probably know the issue here. Draygon is rendering behind the BG of the battlefield. I don't know the first thing about how to fix this, but I know there are some of you out there that have heavy experience with the workings of layers and how things are rendered on them. Please help with this; it's a major problem. You're free to open the ROM in SMILE and look at his room, 7DA60, and look at how the level is arranged. This task, again, goes out to anyone that can manage it; I don't care how you accomplish it or how inefficient your work is, as long as it doesn't cause slowdown during the fight.


That's all I can think of for now; definitely more to come later. Who's up to lending me some effort, no matter how little?

[Hiroshi Mishima]

Well just to let people know that I'm helping you out. Obviously I'm your primary Test Player (not counting yourself), but I'm also helping with a few custom graphics, as well. Which I'll probably be working on tomorrow (or later today, whatever).

[Crashtour99]

Putting Draygon in Front - If you've played the demo through, you probably know the issue here. Draygon is rendering behind the BG of the battlefield. I don't know the first thing about how to fix this, but I know there are some of you out there that have heavy experience with the workings of layers and how things are rendered on them. Please help with this; it's a major problem. You're free to open the ROM in SMILE and look at his room, 7DA60, and look at how the level is arranged. This task, again, goes out to anyone that can manage it; I don't care how you accomplish it or how inefficient your work is, as long as it doesn't cause slowdown during the fight.

I went and moved a section of the back wall to layer 2, and it looks like it doesn't actually display a layer 2 in his room because everything that I moved there blacked out.  However the sections that blacked out did allow Draygon to be seen properly.  It looks like his main body is displayed behind EVERYTHING, while his "fingers" and tail pieces are displayed in front of background tiles (in the SMILE graphics editor, the tiles with the red box in them), but behind foreground tiles (tiles without the red box).  I think this is because his main body is drawn on the actual background layer.
I hate to say it, but it looks like in order to see Draygon properly you're gonna have to knock down that beautiful wall in the background (which is actually on layer 1).  Unless of course someone does some asm to switch up the layer priority for that one room.  Maybe getting the main body to display like the other parts of him somehow.

[Silver Skree]

Unless of course someone does some asm to switch up the layer priority for that one room.  Maybe getting the main body to display like the other parts of him somehow.

That's the idea. I refuse to sacrifice a room's beauty to accommodate a stupid quirk in the boss AI, and nobody should have to. Besides, it gives away the boss if you're trying to be surprising. I'm tired of that shit; that's why I want us to overcome it. Not just for this hack, but everyone's hacks in the future.

Yes, this has become something very important to me.

[Hiroshi Mishima]

I remember being rather taken aback by the whole "Dragon in the background" issue. On the one hand it makes it a bit hard to see where you're supposed to hit, but on the other hand it also makes for a really beautiful room which just happens to contain a boss that doesn't like said room. As Silver said, if we can figure out how to overcome that, I think it'd be a big step forwards for Super Metroid ROMhackers everywhere as it expands upon what can be done. So far, I've really only seen Ridley and occasionally Spore Spawn capable of being stuck in new places. It'd be nice to be able to do something like that with others.

[Scyzer]

About Draygon, this is some serious changes you're talking about.
The reason part of him appears behind everything is because his main body IS the layer2 in the room, while his arms and tail are enemy sprites. The reason for this is that his body is simply too big to handle as a sprite completely. If Draygon was all sprites, a lot of data would be overwritten in the ram, and stuff would be screwed up.
If you want an example of what happens when you have too much enemy GFX loaded from the rom, put a heap of enemies into the allowed list and you'll see what I mean (they dont have to be in the room though), as well as causing lag from having too many sprites animating (try putting 20 Geemers into the same screen at once).
This is also the exact reason that Kraid, Croc, Phantoon and MB are sprite/layer2 bosses.

With all that said, have you tried using the layer2 over layer1 effect in the FX1? Though I'm not sure if his AI will setup the FX1 itself. A few bosses do that.

As for Ridley, his AI is a disasterpiece, but there's quite a few points you could use. Easiest would probably be in the start of his main movement AI (ran every frame).

Also for the music, the setup ASM for every song is different. It doesn't really work universally because of the different instruments to be loaded, channels to set up, pointers, etc. It's not quite as easy as simply chucking notes in, cause there's quite a bit that needs to be set up first, depending on the song :S (Some of which I still dont get, contrary to popular belief XD)

[Silver Skree]

With all that said, have you tried using the layer2 over layer1 effect in the FX1?

:holyf:

[spoiler=sup wacky transparencies][/spoiler]
The only downside is I loose the awesome water visual effect, but I can modify the palette to match it for the most part. But holy shit, why didn't I ever think of that...

EDIT: Even so, I remember talking with BF about Draygon and he said something like it might be possible to have all the level graphics on layer 2, tell draygon to use Layer 1 instead, and have the tile interaction properties matching the Layer 2 level visually. Which basically just boils down to making Draygon use Layer 1 instead; any idea on what that would involve? I recall BF saying something about having to change every single tile's properties in Draygon's tile table?

Easiest would probably be in the start of his main movement AI (ran every frame).

All right, sounds good. I'm going to need some help actually writing the ASM, but I'll start on it and post the beginnings of what I come up with here. Will talk more in-depth about what I actually want the subroutines to do in another post; can I get an offset for now?

Also for the music, the setup ASM for every song is different. It doesn't really work universally because of the different instruments to be loaded, channels to set up, pointers, etc. It's not quite as easy as simply chucking notes in, cause there's quite a bit that needs to be set up first, depending on the song :S (Some of which I still dont get, contrary to popular belief XD)

Just anything for a template will do; we'll discuss what instruments to use and how to set it all up in this thread.


Like I said, massive, messy collaboration :P

[Silver Skree]

Allright, update. I talked with Sadi over IRC and she helped me set up the hijack for Ridley's AI, and I've got most of that written, minus the palette cycling and music track swapping (for obvious reasons). I'd like to talk to DSO on IRC about setting up a pallete glow cycle on Ridley, so if he could drop by, that'd be great. *ahem*

I still need people that'd be willing to help out with converting that music, and an example music .asm file from Sadi. If anyone out there has a MIDI editor/arrangement viewer, I might could dig up a MIDI version of the song I linked to. That'd help us get an instrument set and base arrangement down, and we can artistically expound upon it later.
EDIT: I couldn't find the MIDI of the song I posted before, but I went digging around, and found this MIDI and decided I liked it better anyway. I also edited the other post to now link to it as well.

As for Draygon, I'll settle with using Wacky transparencies and a palette alteration.

And something I've remembered: I need a hijack point for code that will run just once when the Big Metroid finishes nomming on Samus. Can someone find a spot for me?

[Parabox]

Touhou 7 - Track 18. Better known as Yukari Yakumo's theme if I'm correct. Sounds nice in SynthFont with SGM 2.1 soundfont. Implemented in the game as a MIDI already, the complete OST is available. Very busy song, especially the bass at the start.
Don't see how this would fit your game, but whatever. I recommend SynthFont to look at this song, it's a free program that you can evaluate indefinitely. You could also use FL Studio, but that'd cost you. A lot. A quick Google of SF would get you to the site.

Any objections, Silver?

[Silver Skree]

My brother actually has a legit copy of FL Studio, but I'll definitely look into SynthFont, thanks. Parabox, would you be up to maybe helping me write some of the channels? that's the big thing I'm looking for: people willing to help out with that.

Don't see how this would fit your game, but whatever.

And just trust me on this one. The final quarter of the 'Ridley' fight will be the most intense thing in the entire game. I might even go so far as to say that it's the fastest-paced action segment of any Super Metroid hack so far.  :wink:

[Hiroshi Mishima]

Don't forget I need the thing we talked about before I can work on the stuff you needed me to do for Sigma++.

[zephyrtronium]

People sometimes forget the function of PMs and then they try to talk to one specific person in a public place and it sounds weird.

[Yonowaaru]

Also, I found a somewhat gamebreaking glitch.....
In Brinstar, in the big room at the beginning, if you go down to where the little elevator dude is, there's speedbooster blocks on the right. If you go through them, the game glitches out and doors start appearing at wrong places and all that jazz. You might wanna fix that.

[Hiroshi Mishima]

People sometimes forget the function of PMs and then they try to talk to one specific person in a public place and it sounds weird.

There's no point in PMing him about it. I put it the way I did so as not to give everything that I'm working on away. If Silver would rather, I'd discuss it openly. By the sound of it, half of this thread ought to be in PMs. We're all talking about the ROM hack and work being done on it.

*sigh* Look, I'm not trying to start anything, I'm simply saying that what I said is still a valid part of the discussion and if Silver either can't find or needs assistance in locating what I asked him for, this is the best place to bring it up in so that said assistance can be given. May we please get back to the main discussion?

Also @ Yonowaaru: How are you getting past the speedbooster blocks to begin with? If you don't have the Speed Dream, you shouldn't even be on the other side of those blocks.

[Yonowaaru]

I have the speed booster. I went through the blocks easily because the time you need to charge is way shorter

[Hiroshi Mishima]

Huh, that's weird. I've been running through the game regularly since it was just 1 room, and I can't recall it doing that in any of the recent runs I've done. I'll see if I can duplicate it, and I'll tell Silver, as well (in case he hasn't seen this yet).

EDIT: Silver says it's a scrolling glitch/error and he forgot to fix it. I'm guessing it was something in the Demo release, or else I just never encountered it. Weird, but at least we know about it now. :p