Metroid: Space Complex (Metroid 1 NES Hack WIP)

[Mindflower]

Thanks for all your feedback, constructive suggestions and your points of view.
It's absolutely true, it's my first bigger graphic screen aside from the spaceship.
So it will be an all iterative process, in other words: much work ahead (still), but i want it to be good.
I take nearly all your suggestions plus some things i had on my to do, and make something out of it.

Now to your points:

Nice work Flower. I agree that the X doesn't match. the rest of the lettering.

[...]
Is the "X" intentionally stylized differently from the other letters?  If so, I think it should be more dramatic.
Otherwise, I think it should be wider.

Looking good but the X from Complex looks kind of squished compared to the rest.
Also looks like a misformed H in my opinion.

I already gave the 'X' another shot.


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The rock on the metal supports looks like a head. Intentional?

[/quote]

wow, your screenshots look fantastic !

As for the Title screen I know it's not finished, but I don't understand what I'm looking at in the middle of the picture 
What's under the "P" ?
looks like a glass globe in blue, ok, but what's under the rock just below it then ?

The ship is well placed in the sun.

To be honest, yes, and i think i will change it to something else, it's a bit infantile and silly.
I will go to drawing board again with this one.

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That looks great so far! Love the logo and the brown asteroids on the right/middle!
The orange planetoid on the left looks a little flat to me, though. I assume that part has yet to be finalized or something... hopefully in the final product it will be shaded as well as the others   :yay:

It's actually meant to be a dwarf star (so the redder colouring), and those shine less bright than usual stars, a bit in the redder range.
I could try and apply the darker red more in itself to give it more of a shading this way.

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That's really good man.  I have some comments!

I'm not sure why, but the blue guy in the bubble was the last thing I noticed.
The scale of everything in the FG seemed enormous until I saw him... that the structure + tethered rock(?) was maybe the size of a 40 story building.
After spotting him, I'm having trouble gauging the size of everything.  The scene seems too epic to be focused on something the size of a 2 story house.

I think the tether on the right might look better at a different angle - or, redrawing the thing securing it to be angled out further.  It looks odd to me that these are not pointing in the exact same direction.

Those are asteroids, right?  If possible I think they should have some variety rather than all looking exactly the same.  The closest one looks identical to the medium sized ones, too, except for the tethers.

Looking forward to what's to come! Nice work!

So, first of all, gladly i still have 28 tiles left (8x8 px tiles), so i have yet some room to work with.
There are several points you mentioned, i have not yet mastered to create convincing proportions and angles, this is a steady learning process i have just began to do.
What i want to do is include more stars, debris and more varied meteorites.
I strive for an convincing 3dimensional look, i hope i will achieve that.

[Ice Man]

The X definetely looks better now.   

[Mindflower]

This is another one of those Music Posts.
So at first i just wanted to crunch out some title track parallel to its screen creation, and then I went through my archive of tracks and began to decide which ones i am actually gonna use, and which area i use' em in.
Those are tracks spanning the period of 2016 till today. Some got some revision, others are not yet fully finished, but mostly they are!
So what follows next is the most recent playlist of Space Complex Tracks. I named the tracks after their dedicated area.
So this is as of 2020-04-2020:


+++++ SPACE COMPLEX BGM ++++++

TITLE THEME

SURFACE THEME

CAVE THEME

CAVE BOSS THEME

ITEM ROOM / QUIET THEME

WATERFALL THEME

UNDERWATER THEME

WOOD THEME

VOLCANO THEME

EVO-LAB THEME

ESCAPE SEQUENCE THEME

SNOW THEME (unfinished)

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Happy Listening

[Mindflower]

Hello everyone,
i am working on implementing Space Jump. I am fiddling with certain numbers that regulate the trigger points of the space jump (i.e. how fast you are able to jump again).
So i've got differently restrictive variants on it, and i need YOU to playtest the variants of the mechanic and give me some feedback.
Please let me know if you're up to it, thanks.
Just write here, send me a message or let me know on discord.
Some example gif? here:

[lexluthermiester]

Hello!

And this hot area is meant to be accompanied by this track i composed late summer.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/519241262029602826/697088037334548550/Leitton_2.0.mp3

I did break the long time hacking hiatus. Trying to organize my works more to make more progress. This actual quarantine situation is quite well suited for hacking, so i took the opportunity. Hope you're all doing great and stay healthy! Cheers

That looks very cool! Just excellent!

[iridium_ionizer]

The music sounds great! Great job.

[Mindflower]

That looks very cool! Just excellent!

The music sounds great! Great job.

thanks a bunch!


++++++++++++++++++++++     UPDATE TIME!     ++++++++++++++++++++++

Hello you crazy gaming nerds, I have done quite a lot recently and i wanna keep you in touch, also those not frequently checking out my discord.


Did manage to implement Space Jump and nerf it, so now it's a rewarding and balanced mechanic. Was quite a struggle to get it into the code as the NEStroid Code Bank has a serious space problem. Had to move and rewrite entire existing code sections to make it possible. Wall Jump is still in the game too, and it is permanent from the beginning, as in Super Metroid. Space Jump requires an upgrade, as it's still powerful and is considered an endgame upgrade, like seen in other troids.
Here is an example gif in a test room:




Have modified the sound engine, cause Metroid seemed to load music tracks in occasions i didn't want it to, so that's a change you won't recognize, so i'll let you know it's a change that has happened, and it was necessary. Two days of hacking time where spent here. Just so you know.


Then i started to materialize my idea of tree interiors in the woods. You may guess which means of travel is needed to scale upwards here.
It's not fully finished graphically but almost there. Here is the latest WIP tile design document:




And lastly, and most noticably i created roughly the half of the first area, the Planet Surface. You may test a demo if you so wish, in this case let me know!
With some inspiration from Super Metroid i finally drew and implemented a Heal Station (aka SM Save Station). Though SM was just the raw inspiration, as i had to make use of the only 3 colours available at once in NES palettes. Also i tweaked the tile graphic and the animation to my liking and now i am quite pleased. Have a look:




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That is it for now, i think. over and out, greetings to all of you, take care!

[ifightdragons]

Looks absolutely stunning.

[Mindflower]

Looks absolutely stunning.

thanks.

and also: animals saved. as someone has to teach you walljump 



also in one of my recent posts regarding Space Complex bgm i forgot to add the Surface Area Theme, so here it is:
SURFACE THEME
May 30, 2020, 11:13:43 AM - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)
Once again regarding Music:

I made a high quality album of everything that's done for the OST so far. for your pleasure.
You can find it here:
Metroid: Space Complex OST High Quality
June 02, 2020, 11:36:08 AM - (Auto Merged - Double Posts are not allowed before 7 days.)
OK, so i went on to design rock cave, the cave scene as a whole and the waterfall scene, which the cave seemlessly transitions to.
Be aware both are work in progress, but I'd like to show what is there now, as i've been working hard on this stuff lately.

Rock Cave Test Scenes:










aaaaaand Waterfall (well at least what has seen the day of light already):




Over and out! 

[Morinis]

I'll get to work on replacing that horrible suit.  Besides, that was for the old animation sequence anyway 

[Mindflower]

I'll get to work on replacing that horrible suit.  Besides, that was for the old animation sequence anyway 

Thanks Morinis, as always. yeah suit and enemy sprites could use some touchup.

I'll do something about the waterfall anytime soon. what you see is the first "hey it's in the game now, how does it look?" screen capture. So it needs mist where it hits the bottom, more legit and subtle colouring of the surrounding wall tiles, something it flows to and so on. I'll come back here when i have done something considerably about it.

What i have done in the meantime though is to work out parallax scrolling stalactites and -mites in the cave.

[SimplyDanny]

What i have done in the meantime though is to work out parallax scrolling stalactites and -mites in the cave.

I find it a bit odd how the stalagmites/stalactites in the background are alternating in height but not the ones in front; kinda makes it look like they change in size.

Aside from that, though, great work on the parallax effect; it looks pretty good, although the stalagmites/-ctites could use maybe some more detail/color? I dunno, it's good, but kinda looks lacking to me with all the black (unless that was to save on graphics/animation space, in which case, that's fine). Either way, good job.

[Mindflower]

I find it a bit odd how the stalagmites/stalactites in the background are alternating in height but not the ones in front; kinda makes it look like they change in size.

Aside from that, though, great work on the parallax effect; it looks pretty good, although the stalagmites/-ctites could use maybe some more detail/color? I dunno, it's good, but kinda looks lacking to me with all the black (unless that was to save on graphics/animation space, in which case, that's fine). Either way, good job.

There are many reasons i chose to do things as i did.
The parallax tiles take up 8 entire chr pages, as the effect has to be tricked by storing every individual frame in the rom, there are 32 frames.
The tiles have to repeat once so often to make the effect work, for the front stalactites it is evey 16 pixeks, the ones in the back every 32 pixels. They have different movement patterns. Hence why the front ones don't change in size, but the back ones do, as i wanted to bring variety in where i can.
The whole thing is rather complicated to figure out, i leave it like it is for now. Maybe for the time being. It's important to prioritize and manage your time. Spent two full days on the parallax, it's time to move on, and maybe come back to it later and polish further.
For the more colour thing, the stalacts mostly are black and just sprinkled with highlights to make them pop. Was a design choice.

[Mindflower]

Hey ya,
it's about time to inform you about the latest progress i made for Space Complex.


+++++ UPGRADES and ASSEMBLY CHANGES +++++

• rewrote parts of the Music Engine for that it does what I WANT IT TO, and not the sometimes really buggy Metroid Engine. Main reason is i have quite an amount of songs i wanna insert, and Metroid's Engine is not really well opted for that. Another thing is the "Item Room Music" - Procudure often produced buggs in the music or rather behaviour i don't want.
• tweaked Underwater Physics to my liking, they are a bit less restrictive as in Rogue Dawn. So you are a little faster in general and can jump a little further
• optimized the Space Jump, it's now fully working on land and underwater.
• worked out and implemented Gravity Suit. That was the most work. Days. Many Days.

--- STATS OF GRAVITY SUIT ---
Depending on the Upgrades you have found, the Jump Height underwater is different.
The Jump Height is calculated as follows, in order of Jump Height:

• None of the both upgrades
• Hi Jump only
• Gravity Suit only
• Gravity Suit + Hi Jump

Reason is i want the player to really 'feel' each upgrade.

Other thing that Gravity Suit offers is additional damage reduction.
That is calculated as follows:

• VARIA SUIT or GRAVITY SUIT only: 50% reduction
• BOTH SUITS: 75% reduction

... + many many other detail tweaks.

Learned and applied quite some assembly in the process, which was a pain in the a-- sometimes to figure out and get right, but here we are now.


+++++ BACKGROUND MUSIC +++++
Crafted the background music for the Temple Area.
You can find it here:
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/519241262029602826/721152718940536832/10_-_Temple_Theme.mp3


+++++ GRAPHICS, TILESETS and ANIMATIONS +++++
i am working on a Lavafall for the Volcano Area. WIP:


Worked out the tileset, background animation and the whole graphics for Marine Area.



+++++ GAME PROJECT MANAGEMENT in general +++++
Last days i also put much thought into the direction the game is meant to go, where what upgrades are, which upgrade does what, and came up with the progress chart of the whole game world. Therefore i had a nice long day with a good friend of mine,also a retro game geek as me (so like all of us ey?). That was so important to get a feel for the whole game world, how progression is meant to build during gameplay, how the world is interconnected and so on. Also we put together some scenes of the game, like some enemy rooms, that you need to beat to get something, something like grey doors in Super Metroid. and more.
In general, there are many different possible routes throughout the game world, so that each playthrough differs. I also thought off speed runners in that regard.
I could post the chart we drew, but that would spoil too much most certainly.
But let me say, this helps so much in getting a picture of the product, and thus start designing nice and well put together levels.


So I'm feeling accomplished and look into a bright future of this game's development.
Cheers!

[ifightdragons]

You have a meticilous and professional approach to development of hacks/homebrew that is very refreshing and positive to see.

[Xander max]

Congratulations, it's getting more and more beautiful!  At the beginning of the project I did not like the graphic style, currently the shape that I like a lot, the background animations are fantastic.

[alien nose job]

very beautiful, I'm amazed you're pulling this on NES !

[ultimaweapon]

The work you are doing Mindflower is amazing. I'm eagerly looking forward to this hack.

[StarWyvern]

 DO NOT STOP DOING THIS! It is so Awesome! Every new update I see shows more and more beautiful skills. Patiently awaiting this wonderful new hack. 

[Mindflower]

Thanks for the responses!

We came to the conclusion Space Complex is a rather generic name for the game, and also it's not representing the game's lore and story that well, so the decision has been made to come up with and make a more fitting and striking title.
A few proposals have been made, and those are up for vote now in my discord.
https://discord.gg/jfA2CCY
Choose wisely!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
On top of that some things were done for the hack:

WIP Tileset Designs:

WOODS


MARINE


DESERT



+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Recent screens of Marine Area:





+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The title screen is in the make right now, which can be considered roughly the third iteration.
Updates on that about to come!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Furthermore i am still searching for a new sprite designer, responsible for Samus Aran Suit Designs and Enemies.
My former companion sadly left the internet.
Maybe I'm looking for YOU?