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Newcomer's Board / Re: Mail from RhdnBot? Who sent this and how do I reply?

« on: April 12, 2019, 05:56:40 pm »

No, I don't have any personal messages. I assume this is from the "send e-mail" link on my profile, which I guess I had enabled (didn't know this was a feature). Have disabled it.


As for the message itself, digging into the original unformatted text, there was a correct reply-to in the message header. The problem is apparently just that Gmail currently both hides and ignores the reply-to field? (Seems like it might be a recent issue.) So the real problem was Gmail and not RHDN, as far as I can tell. Have reported it to Google.

Though if this feature is on by default, and not something I accidentally enabled... I'd maybe suggest that it should not be default. (Not sure if it is.)

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Newcomer's Board / Mail from RhdnBot? Who sent this and how do I reply?

« on: April 12, 2019, 04:44:57 pm »

I received e-mail from rhdnbot AT romhacking.net

It looks like a normal question about one of my hacks, but there is no information in the e-mail about who sent it. If I reply directly to that address, it will be rejected (rhdnbot cannot receive mail).

How did someone send me a message like this? Can information please be included in these automated e-mails to identify the sender?

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Personal Projects / Re: [NES] Metroid 1 hack - "Metroid - Rogue Dawn" - Released: 1/14/2017

« on: January 18, 2017, 09:39:39 pm »

...the health station it wouldn't heal me. ...check it again and it worked fine.

That happened to me as well (in 1.1 with that particular health station). The energy sparkles are sometimes orange instead of purple as well, not sure why this is.

Anyway, I'm loving the game thus far. Best Metroid hack ever.

I'd say best romhack ever, really.

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Personal Projects / Re: [NES] Metroid 1 hack - "Metroid - Rogue Dawn" - Released: 1/14/2017

« on: January 17, 2017, 05:43:37 pm »

I have made maps too. Did you need it?

I appreciate that Grimlock kept it small and trimmed to avoid being too much of a spoiler but I'd love to see the complete map at full size too.

[Spoiler:]

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Personal Projects / Re: [NES] Metroid 1 hack - "Metroid - Rogue Dawn" - Released: 1/14/2017

« on: January 16, 2017, 06:43:10 pm »

Spoiler:

I'm considering further modifying the warping area to decrease it's difficulty. ... Maybe I'll just do away with the whole thing.

In response to that, here's some detailed notes about things that I found myself stuck on during my (1.0) playthrough, and some possible suggestions regarding them:

Spoiler:

1. 10 missile doors. I know they were in the original, but in that game there was no precedent for super missile doors, power bomb doors, etc. I found these and thought there was some kind of key I needed to come back with (e.g. I wondered if the "access code" applied). I only realized what they were because I got frustrated after a couple hours of wandering around and auto-fired missiles at it in anger. A friend of mine who was playing it had the exact same problem, didn't realize he could already open them.

Obviously, getting 10 missiles is trivial, so I don't think these doors don't really add much except this potential for misunderstanding.

2. Energy refills. This is a minor thing, grinding for missiles doesn't take super long, though trying to find an appropriate infinite spawner can take some time, but it seems like you put the energy refills in to prevent that kind of empty gameplay. Why not have them refill missiles too? I was using missiles a lot until I eventually figured out how to get into the wave beam room.

3. At the beginning it took me a while to realize I could shoot the block in the aquatic area that eventually leads to the boots. Up until that point in the game, I think that's the only block you can shoot; the rest are on the floor, inaccessible until you get a bomb? That block was conspicuous, but I assumed I needed to get a bomb first and I left without getting through and did a few loops around the world before realizing. I think part of it is just that you need to stand in such a specific spot to shoot it too. This might be another way I was confused by later games' precedent where bomb-only blocks are a common thing.

I think it would help either to make that block look less like the rest of the ground (the original game had a very prominent "shootable block" tile, but MRD doesn't seem to), to invite someone to shoot it, OR place some similar looking but shootable blocks in conspicuous places the player is likely to shoot it before getting there.

4. The warping areas. I didn't mind the chozo ruins, because the warping was a very distinct feature of them. (What held me up in the ruins was the obscurity of which walls I could break to get places, not really the warping itself.) I did find it a problem in the federation ship, though. With the map showing me that the boss was just below an area I could reach, I literally spent hours going back and forth over that loop just above it bombing everything possible trying to find a hole that I missed. (At that point I was blocked on finding this boss, and the 10 missile door realization, so there was a lot of empty retreading.)

So, if I were to suggest anything there it would be to ditch the warp in the ship, or at least relocate the boss area so that it might hint the way to go to reach it, instead of being a red herring.

In the chozo ruins, the warping made sense to me, it was just how that area worked, and I kind of liked it, but the ship doing it really threw me off. (The SMB warp is completely OK, but it's not on the critical path of the game, obviously.)

I guess the rocky area with warps near the orange skeleton in the forest too is a bit odd. I don't think it held me up for a particularly long time, but when you can't figure out where to go next a place like that can easily sink a lot of time, because it's so hard to figure out if you've seen it all or not. Maybe best to confine the warping idea to just the chozo ruins entirely?

Re: escaping the ruins, if there was an elevator at the start of them, it would make save-warping to the entrance an option for people that get lost (instead of having to warp all the way back to the forest entrance).

Anyhow, I like your game a lot as it is already, so please don't interpret this as like a bad review or something, just some thoughts on parts I had a lot of trouble with.

[Spoiler:]

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Personal Projects / Re: [NES] Metroid 1 hack - "Metroid - Rogue Dawn" - Released: 1/14/2017

« on: January 15, 2017, 10:57:24 pm »

By the way, my very favourite part of this game was actually the room where

Spoiler:

the ship's crew ask you to leave the E-tank behind. Even though it doesn't seem like it affects the ending or anything, it really made me think hard about whether I should take it or not. Eventually I decided to leave it for them.

[Spoiler:]

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Personal Projects / Re: [NES] Metroid 1 hack - "Metroid - Rogue Dawn" - Released: 1/14/2017

« on: January 15, 2017, 10:36:34 pm »

I ended up stuck at the south-east energy fountain my first time because I ran out of missiles fighting the metroids (coming in with 230). Sometimes the drops are just really unlucky, but also I wasn't expecting so many metroids, especially being directly in my way and having to be destroyed! My subsequent attempt was fine though, I found that once I started being careful they did replenish faster than I was being worn down.

Incidentally I find it curious that the fountains refill energy but not missiles. Why alleviate energy grind, but not missile grind? It would also probably make this metroid drop RNG mostly not a problem, since there are a few fountains on that path.

I just finished a playthrough of version 1.0, notes here:

Spoiler:

I played through version 1.0, with 81% and it said 6:26:54 but there's a lot of wandering around that would have been unsaved (e.g. I spent  a very long time trying to get to the ship boss before I realized the entrance was one of those teleporting locations elsewhere-- my real time was probably like 10 hours). I had one missile tank not "take" after I collected it (next missile drop "refilled" me for -5), and I intentionally skipped the e-tank of the people who needed it for their radio, and apparently I missed the screw attack?? Not sure what else might have affected my percentage.

I dunno if that missile got fixed in 1.1... I couldn't find any change logs explaining what was different, or if it was safe to upgrade the ROM in the middle of a playthrough, so I didn't try it.

As far as the "secret" stuff:

Spoiler:

I also found the Grim Picker, and the Super Mario Bros. zone. I really liked the music in the SMB area, though I couldn't figure out if there was an exit from that place. So... that sounds like I found a couple of the easter eggs and stuff but it seems like I missed quite a bit? I don't remember any "art screens".

Anyhow, really cool. I enjoyed it a lot. Thanks for all the hard work!

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Newcomer's Board / Re: startropics hack

« on: December 09, 2014, 07:49:49 pm »

Use a different emulator.

Nestopia implements iNES mapper 4 in a way that is incompatible with Startropics and Startropics II and uses a CRC check to select a different implementation. So, as an emulator, it doesn't support hacks of Startropics.

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Newcomer's Board / Re: startropics hack

« on: November 20, 2014, 02:20:01 am »

Sorry to revive such an old thread, but I recently did a fully labelled disassembly of the StarTropics music code, and documented its music data format. If you want to hack music into StarTropics, this might help:

http://rainwarrior.ca/projects/nes/startropics_music_fix.zip

The StarTropics music engine is pretty limited, though. It might be a fun challenge just trying to work with it.