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FPzero posted:It's also worth pointing out that Limit was also a hack from 2005, and at the time would've been probably the earliest example of a full hack that was also a challenge hack. It experimented with all kinds of ideas that weren't as well known to the small community yet, with mixed results such as the Plasma Beam being nearly impossible to get. But for every bad idea, it also had some really cool ideas. True, it was an early one and I was brand new to the scene, so the idea of "challenge hacks" was a foreign concept to me. I thought the idea at the time was to make it feel like the original. I do remember the Super Missiles/Power Bomb thing but couldn't remember what hack it was. Limit also had the Blue Suit room. Maybe I'll try it again now that I'm not 18 and see if I find it better now Rabbi Raccoon fucked around with this message at 23:15 on Mar 27, 2024 |
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Mar 27, 2024 19:03
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biosterous posted:kinda random question: in a previous romhacks megathread, somebody played some super metroid hack with tool-assisted gameplay, recorded those inputs, and then made the vid based off of replaying the inputs. the hack was also very visually messy, i had a really hard time telling what was foreground/background. the actual question is, does anyone know what hack that was, and/or what thread? Yeah, that was me. I was planning (with FPZero's permission) to share the playlist once their playthrough of Eris was done, for folks who wanted to see the entire thing. The "tool-assisted" thing is a little overblown, in that I wasn't remotely trying for perfect gameplay. I just wanted to keep things running smoothly, not have to stop to farm, and get some clean takes of Samus "acting" in response to the stuff she encounters. If I recall correctly, the rerecord count (a.k.a. number of times I loaded a state) was a couple thousand, while a serious TAS of a Super Metroid hack of this size would probably be in the neighborhood of 50-150k rerecords.
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Mar 27, 2024 19:12
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sweet, thank you both for solving my brain mystery
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Mar 27, 2024 20:15
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I find the discussion about Gravity Suit placement to be interesting, because official games have dabbled in suitless underwater sections too. There's a short required underwater section in Prime 1, and Dread has quite an extensive one that doesn't even lead to Gravity Suit on your first visit.
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Mar 27, 2024 22:58
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Bloody Pom posted:I find the discussion about Gravity Suit placement to be interesting, because official games have dabbled in suitless underwater sections too. There's a short required underwater section in Prime 1, and Dread has quite an extensive one that doesn't even lead to Gravity Suit on your first visit. I like the concept of it, but like I said earlier it REALLY depends on how it's done. One of Samus' biggest asset is her agility. She moves really fast and it can be neat to put her in an environment where that's taken away. And it's one of the things that make the EMMI's so drat terrifying because they're even more agile than her
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Mar 27, 2024 23:57
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FPzero posted:Having recently beaten Vitality for the first time, I'm open to it because I think he definitely learned how to better tile things to still have detail but also be pretty visible on what's foreground and what's background and generally enjoyed my time with the game, but I think I'd want to change out commentators. My VLDC LPs partner-in-crime Tyty expressed interest to me about sitting in a call and recording it some time. But Vitality will require at least a little bit of editing towards the end due to, uh...., artistic? decisions? on the part of DMantra. Whatever the case, that's probably gonna be a later project if it happens. Could probably just ask for permission to alter the graphics of those parts in the ROM itself. It's certainly not load-bearing to the story.
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Mar 28, 2024 01:04
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Suitless underwater in dread didn't feel terrible IIRC. You were still very mobile you just lacked things like your slide and had muted jumping ability.
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Mar 28, 2024 01:14
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Bloody Pom posted:I find the discussion about Gravity Suit placement to be interesting, because official games have dabbled in suitless underwater sections too. There's a short required underwater section in Prime 1, and Dread has quite an extensive one that doesn't even lead to Gravity Suit on your first visit. The Gravity Suit isn't quite as bad because water doesn't kill you, but it's interesting to see how the official games have handled things like that. Part of it is map design--when Fusion and Dread want you to go through water, they usually semi-lock you in a small area where it's clear the water is the only way forward. But they also have Adam around to tell you things like "here is the general location of your objective, also avoid hot areas, they'll kill you," so you know you don't have to do a hell run. SM doesn't allow that level of communication with the player, so it's up to the hack creator to signpost things like that, and it's a really tough part of the design.
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Mar 28, 2024 18:34
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Or like in Other M when they make you do a hell run, Adam explicitly tells you you'll need to run through those areas. Of course, this gets into the whole "authorizing powerups" mess since it could all just be avoided by Adam letting you turn the drat suit on beforehand, but that's another topic. Prime 2 also has them with the dark world atmosphere, and for as much as people complained about them, I think they're handled pretty well pre-Dark Suit. In the end though, it all comes down to communication to the player, and Super Metroid doesn't really have the framework to make that happen. With Subversion's logbook and extra terminals, maybe the tech can evolve to give players messages about needing to go through dangerous environments, but in the end it still relies on the designer to communicate with the player in some manner, otherwise we just get stuck wondering what we need to do.
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Mar 28, 2024 18:43
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It's not that hard. Like you said, just lock the player into a small area where the hell run is their only possible path forward. But I feel like hack creators are allergic to restricting the player's freedom. Which, yes, makes it a lot harder to tell the player which way to go. Edit: also, specifically regarding hell runs, health is an issue. So maybe don't have a section of your game that says "you need to have scoured the rest of the game for E-tanks before going here."
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Mar 28, 2024 18:44
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:It's not that hard. Like you said, just lock the player into a small area where the hell run is their only possible path forward. But I feel like hack creators are allergic to restricting the player's freedom. Which, yes, makes it a lot harder to tell the player which way to go. One way I can think of to put a band-aid on the health issue is the following: If you know you need, say, 3 Energy Tanks on average to complete the run, you could have a room prior to the hell run's start that has 3 E Tanks in it. Then you take each of those E Tanks and assign them the same item index as other E tanks available earlier in the game, preferably ones that are just sitting on a main path somewhere. By making two items have the same index, you create a situation where collecting one item will delete all other items with that same index across the whole game. (The same works for colored doors, and can be used to make impassible gray doors disappear after you open the doorcap on the other side of it.) This way, you create a situation where, if the player hasn't found the minimum number of E Tanks required to survive, you can provide them when needed instead of making them break their flow and go back to explore. It's not a perfect solution by far, and the better way to handle it would be to either not have a hell run at all, provide generous amounts of refill bugs during it, or to guarantee that the player has some number of E tanks before getting to that point by forcing them to collect them to progress, such as in a mandatory morph ball passage.
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Mar 28, 2024 19:01
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Imo the best way to communicate that it's ok to be in harmful areas is to not make it imminently lethal. Subversion does this with cold areas and the metroid suit, and even Prime 2 has the dark suit still slowly take damage while on Dark Aether.
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Mar 28, 2024 19:14
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FPzero posted:By making two items have the same index, you create a situation where collecting one item will delete all other items with that same index across the whole game. Well, that explains how they managed to have undiscovered space station item pickups in the crashed space station in Subversion.
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Mar 28, 2024 20:20
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Hell Runs would be less confusing if bomb blocks weren't a thing, is kind of the problem. In the origin games, the answer is never to run through the fire, it's to check for weird wall tiles. And people are naturally going to carry that expectation forward and act appropriately. If you really want to do Hell Runs in your SM romhack, maybe hand out the X-Ray Visor first.
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Mar 28, 2024 20:28
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I will give Redesign a lot of poo poo, but one really cool thing that Axeil Edition did was modify the hell run requirement. Originally, after beating Kraid, you had to do a very tight hell run through a section of Norfair to get to the ice beam, and then back again so you can climb some enemies into where the varia suit is hiding. Axeil Edition removes the hell run requirement by adding a back door to the varia suit room, which unlocks after beating Kraid. Additionally, if you try to enter Norfair without Varia, the game plays the boss/escape music to help signal that you actually shouldn’t be here yet. You *can* still do the hell run, but the music change (normally, you’d just have the upper Norfair music playing) worked well at yelling “come back later”.
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Mar 28, 2024 20:55
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Einander posted:If you really want to do Hell Runs in your SM romhack, maybe hand out the X-Ray Visor first. One of the things I appreciate about Fusion is how they bundled the X-Ray Visor into power bombs. Drop a bomb, and not only will it blow up everything it can, it'll also reveal the tiles that it can't break. Easier and faster than scanning the room, and uses a technically limited resource, so you're probably not just going to spam them on every single screen. ...too bad most of what you get from using power bombs is more power bombs 
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Mar 28, 2024 21:00
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 Episode 3 (FINAL...?): I speedrun the five stages of grief Yeah... As I mentioned in the hack's OP, I think we're just going to stop this one right here. It doesn't seem like anyone's having a good time commentating, and if my commentators aren't having fun I'm not either. Contrary to my note at the end of the video, I may return to this some time, maybe as a solo stream or something.
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Mar 30, 2024 17:21
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You should've just returned to the red door after getting missiles from the ship. But I do think the lowered missile count is some hot garbage. That alone would be enough to turn me off from playing it.
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Mar 30, 2024 18:18
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The lowered missile count would be OK, I feel, if the ammo requirements for doors was reduced to 1 shot. It's never felt good to discover that what you thought was progress was in fact "you have the right tool, but not enough of it". I've seen hacks do things like bury progress behind 15 super missile blocks or something, which is similarly dumb. Anyway! As was mentioned briefly upthread, I did a subtitled Let's Play of Super Metroid: Eris 2012 (i.e. the same hack that FP was playing) back in uhhh 2018. So if you're curious about what wasn't shown by FP's crew, this is a decent option. I'd been watching Freeman's Mind, and thought it was a neat concept, so the subtitles are Samus' inner monologue as she tries to figure out how to blow up this planet. That makes this the only "narrative" (i.e. fanfic) video LP I'm aware of  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrY5keLjSDjpQuUr2QlMdYxswTm9gAFbK If you want to skip the parts that FP already covered, jump in at the second episode at around 8:30. Said second episode has what I consider to be the hardest fight in the game, so I'd say FP quit at a good point. It's not the Spore Spawn fight, though if this was the 2009 version, it would be! The 2012 version adds the ledges in the corners; in the 2009 version, you have to stay in constant motion, using Evasion to avoid taking hits. It sucked. EDIT: also: thanks FPZero & crew for showing the hack off! TooMuchAbstraction fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Mar 30, 2024 |
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Mar 30, 2024 18:57
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Really started on a high note with Subversion I see.
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Mar 30, 2024 19:29
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I'm so glad that FP and I have done enough together that not only did he know my exact reaction to that door, he even heard it in my exact intonation. 
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Mar 30, 2024 19:58
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Geemer posted:You should've just returned to the red door after getting missiles from the ship. I had this realization when I was editing the episode 
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Mar 30, 2024 20:13
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I still love the random rear end gate at the entrance that exists entirely to make sure you have Morph Ball before getting to the labs, but then is a massively annoying speedbump when you're just trying to go back and forth.
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Mar 31, 2024 04:52
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There's something powerful about "I wish I was playing the pre-remastered version"
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Mar 31, 2024 12:14
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Geemer posted:You should've just returned to the red door after getting missiles from the ship. imo this hack looked fine, and I'd be interested in seeing more of it - be that as a later finish solo with post-commentary, with other commentators, or however else. It's true that the room layouts, what's a platform, what's a wall etc. can get very confusing, but it's mitigated a lot by FP knowing what he's doing. Overall, it seems like a game that's made for people who have played a hack or two before - there's lots of jumps and other little setups that would have me tear my hair out, because I already struggle with some movement in vanilla Super Metroid, but FP just does them because he's so used to it. That's every mid-air morph ball, lots of the underwater movement, things like the grapple escape with the wall-cling fully utilized, and quite a few mandatory walljumps (I can do those but not with FP's panache). Within the framework of that expected skill, I think the hack shows a modicum of restraint wrt its difficulty that isn't quite the norm, so I'd praise it for that. The exploration itself both suffers and profits from the game being so open, and also from said level of difficulty. I'm sure I wouldn't get anywhere not only because there's walls you can walk through, but also because I'd go "okay this jump seems impossible without Gravity/speedboost/space jump/spring ball" but it's intended for you to do it with the various more complex base tools you do have. However, even just watching you, it felt kind of like playing a fresh randomizer seed in a game where you haven't done a rando often yet - you can go unexpected places quite early, maybe even feel like you cheated a little with some speedrun tricks, and then you go "oh wait but was that intended? Are these enemies too tough for now? Should I press on despite not having a lot of ammo?", and I think that's kinda cool.
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Mar 31, 2024 16:00
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Simply Simon posted:I'm sure I wouldn't get anywhere not only because there's walls you can walk through, but also because I'd go "okay this jump seems impossible without Gravity/speedboost/space jump/spring ball" but it's intended for you to do it with the various more complex base tools you do have. You just reminded me of one of the more niche "wait that's a thing?" tricks in Super Metroid's movement rules. If you jump from a crouch, you go something like a half-tile higher than if you do a standing (not running) jump. Sometimes hacks use this, typically underwater so that you can't just walljump your way up to a high ledge. Even worse is that Samus' "looking down" pose when jumping has a shorter hitbox than her other poses, so you can use that to "ledge grab" and land on platforms that would otherwise be too high to reach. I'm sure some hack somewhere has used that for mandatory progression, but if so, I haven't played it. Actually, it wouldn't surprise me if Super Metroid Impossible did it. (Half-Life 1 has a similar rule, and I remember playing Black Mesa, the fan remake, and tearing my hair out because seemingly every jump required you to crouch jump. I ended up modifying the INI file to just make Freeman's base jump height higher. This was before Black Mesa's official release, so maybe they fixed it, but the version I played exemplified the "fans of the game have been playing it for so long that they don't even realize they're using advanced tech any more" problem)
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Mar 31, 2024 18:38
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 Searching for Items Episode 3: That item jingle dopamine rush As I mentioned last time, I decided to pick us up from where we left off in SFI despite the camera trouble we ran into at the end of Episode 2. And it turns out I might've been able to avoid that problem all along because, it turns out save stations do exist and even work properly in this hack! Amazing!
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Apr 2, 2024 18:37
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The save room from hell looked kind of cool.
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Apr 2, 2024 19:52
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I like how the thumbnail shows off Weird Tileset poo poo where you can actually tell where the ground is, in contrast to the grapple room in Eris. If the GBA hack you talked about was Metroid Desolation, it does have a final boss... but only in hard mode for some reason. It does something interesting where hard mode has you take a very different path through the map, you get morph ball late and spend most of the game finding morph ball tunnels you used without a second thought on normal mode but are now impassable. It's a neat idea but progression gets obtuse (also they put in a hard-mode-only lost woods puzzle because gently caress you) As far as Master of Time nostalgia goes, have you seen that the author made a Majora's Mask mini-hack since (Revival)? It's not as out there as MoT was but I found it fun. It's at least notable for being the first (only?) Majora hack to actually be any good.
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Apr 2, 2024 21:30
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:(Half-Life 1 has a similar rule, and I remember playing Black Mesa, the fan remake, and tearing my hair out because seemingly every jump required you to crouch jump. I ended up modifying the INI file to just make Freeman's base jump height higher. This was before Black Mesa's official release, so maybe they fixed it, but the version I played exemplified the "fans of the game have been playing it for so long that they don't even realize they're using advanced tech any more" problem) Bit weird to send the player through that big foreboding Ridley door and then just have a dead end after the Power Bombs.
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Apr 3, 2024 01:25
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 Searching For Items Episode 4: Happy Metroid Pride everybody I tried to get a Metroid Prime/Pride joke in the title but failed to come up with a good one.
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Apr 6, 2024 17:39
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Hey, I like fighting Crocomire
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Apr 6, 2024 18:40
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Getting stuck behind the wall due to approaching Botwoon from the wrong way is a thing that can happen in randomizers. It then turns into a charge and wave beam check.
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Apr 6, 2024 19:49
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The jingle takes like 6 seconds, so once you get your final completion percentage it should be pretty easy to figure out So how do you fight Draygon "properly" in a way that it isn't a huge slog? I hate fighting Draygon and romhacks love removing the quick kill
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Apr 6, 2024 20:09
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Procrastine posted:So how do you fight Draygon "properly" in a way that it isn't a huge slog? I hate fighting Draygon and romhacks love removing the quick kill The strat is to get Draygon to slowly fly in from the left or right, spitting gunk at you. Run to the opposite side of the arena and spam your beam at the gunk to get rid of it until Draygon stops spitting gunk. Then you can get in there and rapid fire missiles into the weak spot. Keep doing that until you win.
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Apr 6, 2024 20:21
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XavierGenisi posted:The strat is to get Draygon to slowly fly in from the left or right, spitting gunk at you. Run to the opposite side of the arena and spam your beam at the gunk to get rid of it until Draygon stops spitting gunk. Then you can get in there and rapid fire missiles into the weak spot. Keep doing that until you win. Pretty much this. The only other thing I'll add is that you want to follow Draygon to each side, because he starts spitting gunk based on whether or not he's in camera range. By making him spit early, you have a bigger window to fire as he moves towards you after clearing the gunk. It also works without Gravity Suit, though you may need an extra round or two because you can't run to the other side as quickly.
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Apr 6, 2024 21:06
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Dropping a power bomb is also a good way to clear the gunk. If you get everything lined up well, you can drop like 6-10 super missiles into Draygon's stomach in a single pass. Since she only has 6000HP, that's up to half her health gone in one pass. With good timing, you can also hit her during the swooping phase: crouch in the middle of the room, aim diagonally up, fire a shot, then morph to dodge her swoop.
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Apr 6, 2024 22:11
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I always jump into her while she's spitting goop (avoiding the goop) and tank the contact damage while spamming super missiles inside her belly. Or, if I have charge, plasma and X-ray thanks to randomizer bullshit, microwave beam is the fastest kill.
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Apr 6, 2024 22:38
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 Episode 5: I've ruined my chance at a cereal sponsorship Other titles for this episode included "Ray Optics are a lie!" and "The Norfair Discotheque".
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Apr 9, 2024 17:01
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Respin is my #1 pick for making the game easier, assuming you've mastered SM's movement rules already. Being able to wall jump, fire, then wall jump again without landing first is so nice. Or anything else that puts you in a falling state, such as unmorphing.
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Apr 9, 2024 18:34
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