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1

Other Projects / Re: [WIP]Metroid Coven - Top-down Metroid

« on: January 13, 2014, 06:57:30 am »

Hey guys. Long-time no update! Just popping by one last time to let you guys know that I am exclusively posting updates on my website, YouTube channel and on Twitter from now on. I may look into just ONE forum to post on (Probably the one that is most active). Keep an eye on my website for that.

You can find my website here: http://www.metroidcoven.com/en/news.php
You can find my YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/user/EchoJerichoX
You can find me on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/EchoJerichoX

Lately, I have been trying to push most of the bigger features of the next demo out, like the new death animation, new items, and running the game through some serious optimizations. I am hoping to start putting out some real content this year. I am even starting to consider throwing out a lot of the feature bloat in the game and some pages on the website if it means I can speed up development and pull the game out of development hell.

However, I am in need a little bit of help, so if you are interested, I will be updating and bumping this thread in the very near future: http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=468874

If you guys aren't interested in my project, then you might at least be interested in a "Let's Play / Review" series I'm experimenting with that is specifically focused on fan games. I'll be posting the first one for Metroid: Father Hunt very soon.

If you have any questions for me, I sadly won't be able to answer them here as I am trying to cut back on non-development-oriented activities as possible. That means trying to reduce the amount of forums I keep track of and post on. You can, however, shoot me a question on Twitter, on the Shoutbox on my website, or by email at echojerichox@gmail.com.

The longer I type this out, the more I sound like a TV commercial, but I am really just trying to get some closure with each forum and provide an explanation as to what's been going on and where to keep following me.

Thanks for any support you guys choose to lend me
- Echo

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Other Projects / Re: [WIP]Metroid Coven - Top-down Metroid

« on: August 07, 2012, 05:09:54 pm »

@gm112: Thanks buddy! By the way, I'm not LEAVING these forums, I'm just not posting updates in them anymore I post on 6 or 7 forums and 4 of them use different formats for BBCode, etc., so I just said, "Screw it" and now I will only be putting them on the site. I will still be answering questions and such here haha.

The lighting system has undergone some more tweaking and probably will again, but it looks really, really nice.

Finally, I agree, the entire Metroid fanbase is naught but ROM hackers and kids who write plots for games but never DESIGN them. It needs a good push in the back from people like DM64 and myself. That being said, I do not put myself in the league of DoctorM64. He is extremely talented, classy, kind and treats his fans well and I could only HOPE to have such influence on an entire community.

@Frozen炎: Thanks for the response! And your taste in Metroid games is parallel to my own Super was my favorite with all the Prime games in a close second.

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Other Projects / Re: [WIP]Metroid Coven - Top-down Metroid

« on: August 06, 2012, 04:42:48 pm »

New update up on new site!: http://www.metroidcoven.com/en/news2.php.

Going to be solely putting updates on the site now, since I would have to make forum posts on 6 other forums.

4

Other Projects / Re: [WIP]Metroid Coven - Top-down Metroid

« on: July 30, 2012, 08:19:23 pm »

Most of my time was spent working at my video store (My last day is on Sunday!), packing up meat and having my going-away party. Therefore, not as much got done as I wanted, but there is still a lot to share.

The main attraction of this post is probably going to be the new Morph Balls. This was a subject of debate amongst myself and others as well as one of my longest-standing criticisms. For the longest time, I had it in my mind that the Morph Ball should always be less than half of Samus' size in any aspect - 3D, top-down and side-view. My reasoning was based heavily on my method of level design; how all of my tilesets are set to a 16x16 or 8x8 grid. In general, Samus is meant to fit in gaps no smaller than 13 pixels wide. As a result, I ended up making the Morph Ball insanely tiny, rather than making it the proper size and then using a 7x7 collision mask. I fought and fought for this to the point where I now feel silly about having fought it in the first place. Increasing the size of the sprite catered to three major things that I had in mind from the start when it came to the player sprites:

1: Simplifying the level design by making Morph Ball tunnels 8 pixels wide.
2: Upping the size of the player sprites allows room for more detail on the sprite itself.
3: Showing a sense of depth by having parts of the scenery overlap the player.

To explain better, look at the following sample:



The purple circles are Samus' actual collision masks. This gives you a sense of depth when you are brushing against walls by making parts of the walls overlap the player - particularly in exterior environments, like in these screenshots:

http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot100-6.png
http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot101-7.png

All this explanation is just postponing what you are all probably wanting to see, so here are the new sprites:



They look excellent, but I might do some more palette tweaking with the Gravity, Phazon and Corruption variations to help give a little more contrast to the edges, in particular. I also used some of Rundas45's side-view Morph Ball sprites for the HUD element. The Corruption one is a placeholder edit and will definitely change. Palettes are slightly different from the actual in-game Morph Balls, but not far. Also, realistically, the Morph Balls in the HUD element don't reflect the top-down sprites, which is something I will fix down the road. For now, these are very adequate placeholders.

Moving on, I have been experimenting a bit with a new tileset. I aptly named it, "Shrubbery" and its purpose is to further attempt to detail the environments with plants and the like. The only trouble is that basically all of the tiles are supposed to be placed on walls. Thankfully, I am in the process of having them converted into original top-down works. Here are a couple screenshots for you to look at so please leave a little feedback:

http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot100-5.png
http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot101-6.png
http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot102-6.png

You can see that I also made the lighting system a lot darker so the lights themselves serve a much better purpose and actually make a difference when you play. I am still tweaking it a little. Other than that, the main things you should be eyeing are the fern-looking plants on the walls and the vines on the walls inside caves.

Veni Mortem has made some nice animations for the ice barriers. One is a shattering animation and one is a melting animation. I have not fully implemented them in-game yet, but the animations are pretty much done. Here they are:




The above are crappy .GIF files, so the transparency is a little messed up and the animation speed is off, but there they are.

Finally, as of late I have been making some new destructible block sprites, such as the Bomb Blocks, Missile Blocks, etc. I will put those up when everything is done. I should have even more stuff to show since I will be re-doing the 8x8 blocks and then making new 16x16 ones.

Some other changes I have made lately include making secrets break more traditionally like in the original games (Breaking one tile to reveal an item under it), adding a different block-break animation and many other things. Other than that, almost all of the sprites for the beams have been redone once again. Here are a couple screenshots from some of the beams that underwent drastic changes:

http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot103-3.png
http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot107-2.png
http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot109-1.png

From left to right: Regular Plasma Beam, charged Nova Beam and charged Dark Beam.

In this next week, I intend to add the ability to draw in pickups by using the Charge Beam and perhaps adding some new mechanic to the Morph Balls to give the player more of a reason to use it outside of going through tunnels. I have tossed around the idea of removing the Screw Bomb and putting the Boost Ball in. Please send me your thoughts on this.

On the topic of sending things, I am no longer using the "metroidcoven.com" email. Please use echojerichox@gmail.com from now on.

That will be all for now... and wow, this update is probably up there with some of the longest I have done!
- Echo

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Other Projects / Re: [WIP]Metroid Coven - Top-down Metroid

« on: July 24, 2012, 08:59:25 pm »

Actually, there IS lighting system if you look at the screenshots. It is a little misrepresented in those screens though. I have made a few adjustments since then and it looks a lot nicer.

If you meant to have projectiles always show through the darkness, it can be done but it requires many little surfaces and probably would hurt the performance a good deal.

Thanks for the kind words! I can't wait to get out my boring-ass little town and away from the people who have annoyed me for over 20 years lol. I don't mean the people I live with, just the people I grew up around and helped at my video store, etc...

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Other Projects / Re: [WIP]Metroid Coven - Top-down Metroid

« on: July 23, 2012, 05:38:55 pm »

@gm112: Thanks for the praise! I am elaborating my level design methods with every pass I make and still have great plans for the future. Right now the main focus is environment detail and breaking up the monotony of the background. And yes, flaky team members is something I truly despise...

@FISSURE: No worries dude, I THINK I get the gist of what you're telling me . I will take it all as a compliment!

I post my updates on Mondays, so I will have some more to share when the time comes For now, if you guys would like to read through some old posts, you can go here: http://www.metroidcoven.com/en-us/news2.php.

Thanks for posting guys! I am trying to bring more attention to my game for help reasons as well as feedback (And a little pride ^.^).

Anyway, on to Monday's update!

=============================

Hello all!

This past week lots of progress has been made in the way of levels as well as a few mechanic changes. Let's start off with some visual treats...

First, I have redone the Wave Beam once again (This is now the 4th or 5th time, probably). The projectiles now use new code in order to follow a true sine curve along their path. All of the graphics were re-done again but there are a couple features within the beam that I am not sure will stay the same as time goes on.





You can also see on the left there that there are new suit images! They were posted by Rundas45 in the first post of his thread on the AM2R forums. I am still doing some tweaking to these images, but they look really nice so far.

Moving on, I am finally doing a little more coding as of late and I went back to remove the delay in the charge beam shots. It feels MUCH better and more functional now. I just need to go back and tweak the damage values for each beam for balance purposes.

As I mentioned in the ShoutBox not too long ago, I am in dire need of some more programmers. If anyone knows one then please let me know at echojerichox@metroidcoven.com. I am particularly favoring those with skills in AI to help program some of my enemies.

Well I am very pleased to share this next piece. Veni Mortem is proving to be an INCREDIBLY great asset to the project. She has started composing some music for me and so far - between 4 or 5 tunes - she is just blowing me away. This bundle of talent is hard to come by. An incredibly good spriter, pixel artist, tileset artist, etc. that also has an incredible ear for making music. She is currently doing the pixel art for the new title screen but in the meantime, she has created this amazing track. It has bits of the original Metroid theme as well as a good touch of Metroid Prime in it and the result is absolutely enthralling. You can hear it here: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/89748533/Metroid%20Coven.mp3. I will be using this as the theme for the title screen.

Slightly off-topic now... I only have a few weeks left at my current job and then I will be moving over to the other side of the state. I am VERY excited to finally leave home and this should open up some great new opportunities for me. I will be going to school online for game design - an obvious choice as it is a passion that has been in my life since I was 11 years old. Why am I telling you all this? Just to let you know that my enthusiasm on the game will be higher than it ever was before but that I also may have even less time to work on it. I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but I WILL have something to show for all this work I'm doing very soon.

Now that that is off my chest, I will try to throw a new preview video together as soon as I can. Something to really grab the attention of the public once again.

Thanks for reading, as always.
- Echo

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Other Projects / Re: [WIP]Metroid Coven - Top-down Metroid

« on: July 23, 2012, 01:33:41 am »

Yes indeed, this is something I need to add... It is in the back of my mind, but I still haven't written it down.

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Other Projects / [WIP]Metroid Coven - Top-down Metroid

« on: July 23, 2012, 12:55:07 am »

Top-down Metroid

Want to join the development team? Visit this link: http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=468874&st=0#entry3469160

Official site: http://www.metroidcoven.com.
YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/EchoJerichoX.

=====================================================

About the project...

A little over 2 years ago, I made a very primitive engine using only the keyboard for controls, making my own terrible sprites for Samus, projectiles, and other objects, tilesets from Super Metroid and space backgrounds from... well, all over the internet. The result was a terribly clunky engine that sat on the shelf for a few years. Until...

I was digging through my old games and I came across something I had named "Metroid Coven." I was checking it out when I realized that underneath all of the terrible quality was an idea. Since my skills with GM had improved, I was ready to turn the project into my all-time-consuming hobby. Before I knew it, I had 4 or 5 people working alongside me, a paid-for website, and a primitive Tech Demo available to the public. Even since then, the project has grown immensely.

The past year or two with Coven has been a roller coaster, what with hard drives going bad, team members leaving without notice, lack of interest/motivation, lack of time and a plethora of other problems. As you can see, the project lives on, despite having stopped development 5 or 6 times for months at a time.

Today, I am working on the new AI Demo. Version 2.0 of the technical demos has brought some much-needed attention to the game's long-term issues, such as bizarre resolutions, lack of options, fullscreen, sub-par graphics, lack of content and more. 2.0 Will really bring the game to life. However, life always takes precedent, and it is at this point the project is a glorified hobby. Will I ever kill the project permanently? Never. Will I ever remove the website? Not if I can help it. Will I still accept team members in the future? Of course. Will I ever finish the game? Simply, yes. It is all a matter of time. All I can do is thank my friends, family, fans and people who have helped keep the project afloat and work on the game when I can.

With that, below are some content previews that I am sure you want to see more than a lot of text and links.
- Echo

=====================================================

More information...

To find out more information and find download links, head over to the main topic on the GMC forums (http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=510903) or the project's official website (http://www.metroidcoven.com).

=====================================================

Screenshots...