Another Metroid 2 Remake

Gaming Indie Works
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A little progress report.

The project has a dedicated spriter, Hyrule_SwordsMan. He?s redrawing the enemies to fit the overall style.
Some shots of the new enemies in action:

I am redoing some enemies? AI, mapping some of the second temple area, and balancing the stacked beam system. This is quite a challenge, since you get the beam upgrades in a quite weird order in the original game.

I?ll be posting progress more often, since now I have some more time to work on the game.

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Oh well, sorry I let you down :frowning: . Doesn’t matter =). The last enemy might need to be changed a bit, such as his grey pipes, tusks, eye and the black internal border for the shell (it should be thicker, with a brown, and I suggest that Hyrule_SwordsMan looks out for examples of shells in MZM…). It’s otherwise good!
Is there any way I can contact your spriter? If so, please PM me.

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You could always swap the order, though you might get some flak for doing so…
Mabey do it like in Super, and have it so only certain beams can be combined at the same time…

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Do what I did for my engine, each beam flips the boolean value of an array variable, and you decide what actions to take, decided on those.

For example, the wave beam means you can go through walls, and leaves trails, whereas the icebeam freezes enemies.
Have both of them on, and it leaves icy trails, goes through walls, and freezes enemies (and leaves a kickass effect in water, might I add).

Any sprite decisions can easily be chosen through ifs and switch statements.
(Also, I use for loops for movement, means the collisions are spot on, without it being slow)

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It?s kinda the way I did it.
Every time a beam is fired, the projectile is created with the corresponding flags (separate variables), depending on the enabled beams. So, firing while having Ice+Plasma whould create the object with ice=1; plasma=1; spazer=0; wave=0.
Then on collisions I check those.
There are different sprites for every combination, chosen with those variables too.

Here?s a brief description of my beams system.
The base damage is 5, and with every beam upgrade you get this base is multiplied by 1.5, this is permanent once you get the upgrades and doesn?t require to have all the beams enabled.
Now, I?m trying to give this some variety. An actual reason to switch the beam effects, so every beam type has its pros and cons.

Ice Beam

  • Freezes Enemies, they can be used as platforms
  • The first hit always freezes, even if the enemy should die in one shot.

Wave Beam

  • Goes through walls
  • It fires like in the original Metroid 2, alternating upwards and downwars, and oscillating. It can be tricky to aim. When combined with spazer, you get the classic 3 waving beams.

Plasma Beam

  • Goes through enemies, hitting multiple times (once every 3 steps)
  • Damage is reduced by half, so it should hit more than 2 times to be effective. Larger enemies are more affected by this.

Spazer Beam

  • Beams split in 3, covering a slightly larger area
  • Damage reduced by half. You should hit the enemies with the 3 beams to inflict 1.5 damage.

Charge Beam just multiplies the resulting damage *3.
I?m still tweaking this, since I?m trying to design situations where a certain beam combination could prove more useful. That is, before getting them all and having all of them enabled.

So, this is the order you get the beams. It should play like this:

  • First ruins: You get Ice Beam, you get more damage and freeze enemies. Yay.
  • Second ruins: You get wave beam, but only use it on certain situations where you can use the terrain at your advantage.
  • Third ruins: You get Plasma, and sometimes disable Ice to kill enemies in one shot.
  • Fourth ruins: You get Spazer. Wave beam is now easier to aim, and Ice beam shots now kill in one hit (if the enemy is weak enough). From now on all the beams enabled are the best option.
    By this time also, missiles become obsolete in normal combat, an play only the role of Metroid killing.

Tell me what you think about this system. I?m trying to make it as balanced as possible.

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It’s only balanced if enemies are introduced in tandem, remember that.
@Using variables instead of arrays; Yeah, most people do that.
Only advantage with arrays are the ease of use of for loops, but it’s no where near enough advantage for a rewrite.

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MUSIC PREVIEW

This is a premix of the main tunnel song. There will be variations that will sound more creepy and atmospheric as you get deeper into SR388, this version is for the surface and first area.
I tried to keep the catchy spirit of the original, but there will be deeper and darker songs for the ruins.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU2NzfGtuB0

There will be minor changes until the release of the game, mainly in the drums section.
Let me know what you think about the song.

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If you’re lucky, you can get better audio samples or have actual instrument players play it for you! Not bad, though. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Its projects like this that bring out the fantard in me.
The tech demo is awesome, the videos look amazing, and I haven’t been so eager for a game’s release for ages now.

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how long until this is done
:imp: :sunglasses: :imp:

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36.24 years.
In other words, NEVER.

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i have herd that the new demo is called metroid confruntation and will be avlible october 13th :smiley:>

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NEW DEMO RELEASED

Well, actually I gave it another name since it’s a small game after all.

There’s a lot of new content. And as always, you can post your best time.
New features:

  • JoyPad Suport
  • Customizable control
  • Jump Ball
  • High Jump
  • Spazer Beam
  • A surprise at the end :slight_smile:

DOWNLOAD
http://www.mediafire.com/?iumzz5dnztx
http://rapidshare.com/files/152831939/met-confr.zip
http://willhostforfood.com/?Action=download&fileid=36308
http://www.megaupload.com/es/?d=7JHHRII1

Have fun!

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I thought I’d let you know I’m copying some of your posts to another forum in their entirety, because there was a lot of interest from the Kotaku thingy about you. If you object or something, let me know…

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of all the chrono trigger characters why robo?

looks pretty good. looking forward to when it’s done :smiley:

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He’s the only one with this many overworld animations. And he’s awesome.

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DEMO UPDATE
This update fixes some sprite glitches and adds some enemies to the game.

DOWNLOAD
Download from 64Digits
Download from YoYoGames

Changes:
Fixed collision on spazer beam room (thanks emma)
Fixed sprite glitch (samus invisible sprites) (thanks lazure)
Added a lot more enemies, most for hard mode
Fixed Kraid Spazer exlpoit (thanks playerman1230)
Fixed Kraid nail not being hit by pseudo-screwattack (thanks miles07)
Added Hornoad spit projectile
Changed some enemies behavior on hard mode
Fixed blocks with tiles becoming invisible when coming from map screen
Added alternative way to exit the game (Alt+F4)
Menu options can be selected with fire button too
Fixed opening missile hatch without missiles
Modified layout of the speed booster room.
Kraid platforms speed vaires depending on the difficulty
Added extra health for bosses in hard mode
Fixed intro effect happening when returning to the first room

Hard mode is now much more interesting to play, try it out.

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Kotaku’d again!
http://kotaku.com/5067342/metroid-2-pc-remake-demo-released

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NEW TRAILER

Finally… Alpha Metroids!
AM2R Trailer 2

As always, comments and suggestions are welcome.

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Dude, your game is amazing. I’ve been watching it for so long. Screw attack looks amazing.