=Metroid Vanguard= Samus.pk3 (Huge update!)

Lua doesn't support slopes yet though, so you *might* be stuck there for a while? Not entirely sure if there are workarounds offhand or not for now.

Apparently SRB2's slope collision detection is confused because of the Morph Ball's size and glitches out. This is an issue with ANYTHING smaller-sized, not just Samus. You'll see the same glitch happen if you made a half-sized Sonic spindash off the same ramp. Sooo...unfortunately, it looks like I can't do anything about this until slope physics work with scaled objects properly.

There should probably be some kind of "equipment" screen.

I did think about adding that. But is there some way to make HUD appear only when you're looking at the scores tab? I'd prefer not adding some weird button combination for this if I can help it.

Is there any reason energy tanks aren't in the single player/coop modes?

Enemies would become even more inconsequential if I kept them in. At the end of the journey you'd probably have 600 health, and even with 99 health, how often do you die to enemies? Any challenge you felt from fighting Metal Sonic or Brak would be gone for sure. Besides, don't tell me you're not happy to get those yellow energy orbs once you've obtained the Hyper Beam. :P Energy Tanks don't offer that same boost.

I feel like there's little reason to use missiles after you get the plasma beam.

I guess you're pretty smart with aiming, then! The Plasma beam is the only beam that doesn't assist your aim (The others have rapidfire, spread, are double orbs that bounce, or have explosion radius') and rewards you with the best power at the cost of having to be more precise, and being the rarest beam. Missiles still have uses for their huge explosion radius, or for breaking walls and shields, though! Enemies won't always be lined up for your plasma beam.


I think it'd make more sense to turn 1-UP monitors into energy tanks. Then, have instant-death stuff just take away 100 energy and return Samus back to the last starpost. And then just scrap the idea of lives altogether.

I couldn't disagree more. You can just tell everyone will switch to Samus for her no-life system when they're on their last life. Or they'll jump Samus into pits merely to regain some health if they're low, because there's no consequence. Early in development I was thinking of making Samus lose some powerups upon dying, though, so that system might make it work.

I also agree on giving enemies more variation when it comes to health and damage. Right now, everything feels so weak, even bosses. Metal Sonic and Brak Eggman are the only two who give me any trouble.

I'll probably boost the Egg bosses to 5 health instead of 3, maybe the FaceStabber too. Do you really want enemies to deal more than 38 damage, though? Seems weird when you earlier suggested more max energy.

I also wish the item drops were a little smarter. It sucks to constantly get items that you already have.

Hurray for the power of RNG~! I'll be updating it a bit for sure after playtesting, but keep in mind most monitors only have a few type of upgrades they can drop. Samus becomes downright unstoppable when she's at full power, so I feel it's necessary to get repeats that just grant ammo, otherwise you'd possibly have everything at GFZ3.

I couldn't help but notice that the Space Jump and Hi-Jump Boots sprites aren't what I expected. Space Jump looks like it has the Hi-Jump Boots sprite, while Hi-Jump Boots has the Spring Ball sprite. Also, it looks like you rolled the Varia Suit functionality into the Gravity Suit instead of having them as individual items. This confused me a bit when I fell into the lava in RVZ and didn't take damage, since I had not realized that yet.

metroidprimeguide_22.jpg


Since the Space Jump works like Metroid Prime's here, I decided to use it's boot design instead of the V shape in Super Metroid. Since you get the Spring Ball bundled with the High Jump, I went with the Spring Ball graphic for that. Also, the Varia Suit protects from extremely hot atmospheres, but it's always been the Gravity Suit that makes you entirely immune to lava.

Anyways, despite all that, it's still a very impressive mod. I definitely want to see more like this.

Thanks, man. You're a bit of a childhood hero to me, so hearing that you had fun with it means a lot!
 
Last edited:
But is there some way to make HUD appear only when you're looking at the scores tab?

"scores", as a hud.add hook.

Enemies would become even more inconsequential if I kept them in. At the end of the journey you'd probably have 600 health, and even with 99 health, how often do you die to enemies?

I mean, to be fair, the same or similar could probably be said of many of the actual Metroid games.

Besides, don't tell me you're not happy to get those yellow energy orbs once you've obtained the Hyper Beam.

The problem with that is that rings are everywhere, health is a fairly common drop from monitors and enemies anyways, and the ammo limit for the hyper beam is a paltry 99, meaning you'll stay at max pretty much all the time unless you're really just using it on everything. Even then, the hyper beam isn't something you'll always have, especially if you aren't a fan of the NiGHTS special stages (I don't hate them myself, but for a casual run i usually avoid them). I'd just rather have a super missile tank, in most cases.


for breaking [...] shields

Except the only shield in the game I can think of is the Egg Guard's, and the plasma beam rips right through that, i checked.

Do you really want enemies to deal more than 38 damage, though? Seems weird when you earlier suggested more max energy.

It allows for more granularity, at least. At the start of the game, when you're not all that strong, taking 1/3rd of your health from a buzz is pretty intense, especially given how easily they can sneak up on you if you aren't listening carefully (hard when samus has a massive arm cannon; naturally very loud.) Besides that, it'd allow for lategame enemies to feel like more of a threat, as large damage numbers combined with a large health bar makes healing more difficult by default.


On an unrelated note, i think it'd be nice (if possible) to have it so that knux-only breakable walls need a super missile, rather than the morph ball bombs or regular ones, if only just for those who might want to make a proper metroidvania-style map for this wad.
 
I couldn't disagree more. You can just tell everyone will switch to Samus for her no-life system when they're on their last life. Or they'll jump Samus into pits merely to regain some health if they're low, because there's no consequence. Early in development I was thinking of making Samus lose some powerups upon dying, though, so that system might make it work.
When I said "scrap the idea of lives altogether", I meant it in a Metroid way. That is, when you die, it's game over; restart from last save point. Starposts would only be useful if you got crushed or fell in a pit; you'd be teleported back to the last one you activated and lose 100 energy (similar to how Metroid Prime 2 handled pits)

I'll probably boost the Egg bosses to 5 health instead of 3, maybe the FaceStabber too. Do you really want enemies to deal more than 38 damage, though? Seems weird when you earlier suggested more max energy.
Again, these ideas are inspired by the actual Metroid games. For example, imagine being at the beginning of the game with only 99 energy, and Crawlas are dealing 10 damage per hit. Then, by the end of the game, you've got 999 energy, but lasers are dealing 50 damage, Snailer shots are dealing 75, and Sharps are dealing 100. Sure, you can take about the same amount of hits, but recovering energy is harder because rings still only give 1 energy, and the other energy pickups still only give their normal amounts too.

And yeah, bosses definitely need more health. They die almost instantly, especially once you get your hands on some super missiles.
 
I absolutely LOVE this mod due to its large focus on exploration and item collecting and just to play a character that plays very differently altogether (that, and the fact that the Speed Booster is just so fun to use). Having just gotten into the Metroid series, I was delighted to see something like this in the editing forum, and at the same time slightly disappointed that I wouldn't get to try out the online multiplayer testfire due to not being able to use a computer for a couple days. Now that I'm back and have gotten some decent time in to play around with this, I thought I'd share some of my thoughts on what could be improved upon.

A lot of what I think could be changed about the health system has already been said by Mr. Furious Fox above me. Do away with lives in a Metroid-y way and simply giving you energy tanks instead, and teleport the player back to the last checkpoint they touched if they get crushed or fall in a pit and losing a decent chunk of health because of it. I also feel that doing away with having monitors drop health and item pickups and slightly upping the chance of getting more of said drops from enemies would be perfectly acceptable.

Another thing that I feel should be changed is the amount of health various enemies have. I feel like you should be able to take out smaller enemies like Buzzes with fewer shots than big enemies like the CBFS, and not the same amount. Similarly, later enemies like Snailers and Jetty-syns should do more damage than early ones like Crawlas.

Also, could you make it so that in single player, Samus has to pick up the morph ball and missiles and regular bombs in order to use them? Maybe put them in ring monitors with a high chance of dropping. What she starts off with is fine in multiplayer because it gives her more of a fighting chance to start off with.

Finally, I feel like the random drops and weapon upgrades should be more based on what the player currently has, even if it's just in single player that it does this. In the original games, enemies have a higher chance of dropping health if you're low on health, more missiles if you're low on missiles, and a couple more rare things like power bombs and super missiles when you're low on those. You should make it so enemies don't drop power bombs, missiles, and super missiles if you don't have them yet and replace them with regular health/missile drops instead. Likewise, if you have a certain suit or upgrade already, missile tanks, super missile tanks, and power bomb tanks should take their place.
 
Last edited:
Tbh I'd rather Morph Ball and regular bombs stay as default features, they're too useful for certain levels in Single Player to take away. Like for instance ERZ1's gravity conveyor belt room, as mentioned in the google docs guide. Getting up to the extra life on the pillar in GFZ1 without the Whirlwind shield. Or pretty much anywhere that requires spindash height to get through.

That said, I found wall jumping saved me from being stuck in ACZ1 too. Apparently you can wall jump up the sides of the supports of the big wooden gate near the end.

I don't think I really made it clear in my last post, but I had a lot of fun playing this mod, it was a really different experience trying to beat SRB2 with this character. I haven't played any Metroid series games myself, but it certainly seems like it'd be something I'd like if I did ever play them if this character mod is anything to go by.
 
Last edited:
Tbh I'd rather Morph Ball and regular bombs stay as default features, they're too useful for certain levels in Single Player to take away. Like for instance ERZ1's gravity conveyor belt room, as mentioned in the google docs guide.

How would making them upgrades to find rather than part of her default moveset be a hindrance here, especially if the only thing you'd have to find is a ring monitor? Plus, if the morph ball is 100% the first item you get, then there's no real issue.

EDIT: Oh by the way, I just tried a charge shot with the default beam at a shielded egg guard in SUGOI's Robotnik Park, and got the following two warnings:

Code:
WARNING: samus.wad|LUA_MOBD:11: attempt to perform arithmetic on field 
"flags" (a nil value)
WARNING: samus.wad|LUA_FUNS:486: attempt to perform arithmetic on field 
"flags" (a nil value)

any subsequent shots now leave a giant explosion with tons of lag, using any type if explosion inducing weapon shot gave me the same warning as the second one listed, bombs no longer bounce Samus and the explosion sprite is huge, and I can no longer use a charged shot from the regular beam to break through an egg guard's shield or defeat mines with any form of shot, charged or otherwise. After completing the level everything was fixed except for the being unable to shoot mines.
 
Last edited:
That said, I found wall jumping saved me from being stuck in ACZ1 too. Apparently you can wall jump up the sides of the supports of the big wooden gate near the end.

Was that really the only way, or did you not know you could blow open spinbustable walls with bombs/missiles?

I just tried a charge shot with the default beam at a shielded egg guard in SUGOI's Robotnik Park, and got the following two warnings:

The new "update 1" SHOULD've fixed this, but I never was able to replicate it myself in the first place, so who knows! Lil' fun-fact, btw. Frozen enemies are much more likely to drop ammo when shattered.

I will not be making the Morph Ball or Bombs discoverable items. Too many stages, vanilla or not, are designed around being able to roll under a tight passage or breaking walls. I don't want the possibility of Samus getting stuck to exist at all. I'll have to think and experiment on the energy-tanks life system thing, but I still feel it wouldn't work very smoothly outside of a Single Player start-to-finish playthrough. SRB2 was never really designed around Metroid. Maybe I'll make that system for Single Player only.
 
I don't want the possibility of Samus getting stuck to exist at all.

I might be wrong, but as far as I know Samus cannot pass the start of CEZ1 if she doesn't have the double jump or boost powerups, without making it all the way over using bomb jumps. So she's technically not stuck there, but most players would probably burn out all their lives trying to get across, assuming they even knew how to bomb jump in the first place.
 
As far as I know Samus cannot pass the start of CEZ1 if she doesn't have the double jump or boost powerups.

I bet a lot of players forget the Morph Ball's top speed is quite a bit faster than their running speed. It just doesn't accelerate in mid-air very well.
CalculatingGrimCicada.gif


Also, let me put up a copy of update 1's changelog here.
●Charge Beam now attracts ammo/health pickups.
●Holding the scores button now brings up Samus' equipment screen in Single Player.
SamusPowerDrop command added. It's an admin-only command that can drop any individual powerups or tanks, including Energy Tanks.
●Monitors broken by Sonic characters in coop will now respawn too, so you no longer need to yell at other players for breaking them.
●You need Super Missiles/Powerbombs to break Knuckles-only walls now. Bombs/missiles still work on spinbustables, though!
●Fixed permanent Screw Attack invulnerability/reflect exploits.(Basically why I updated)
●If you fail to charge your beam all the way, you'll now fire a normal shot instead of nothing.
●Samus now starts with 50 health if she enters a new level with less.
●Sonic characters can now kill Samus in Match, and generally shouldn't cause as many bugs. I still wouldn't call it balanced, though.
●Tweaked balance. Some enemies do more or less damage, some have more resistance to Samus' attacks, Super Missiles only do 2x damage on bosses now, Powerbombs do 3x, some minor Match multiplayer balance tweaks, monitor drop rate has been slightly tweaked, etc.
●Some other minor fixes.

Unfortunately I could not fix the Morph Ball getting stuck on ramps glitch when going very fast. It's a bug with SRB2's scaling in general, not Samus specifically.

If anyone has an idea to work around the smaller scaled Morph Ball's slope bug, or finds another gamebreaking bug in vanilla play, I'll make a second update for that!
 
So I ran through the whole SP campaign as Samus, and I have to say that I love this wad. I'm a big fan of shooter-based gameplay in general, and this didn't dissapoint. The focus on exploring to find powerups led me to places I don't usually go during a vanilla run. I especially liked using the Spazer and Plasma beams. Great job on this wad!

also the hyper beam is so brutally destructive and I love it
 
Last edited:
That's an amazingly awesome wad.

I got bored from SRB2. But with Samus, I cleared Mystic Realm! It suited well in the world of SRB2.

It's difficult to use where long jump without much run-up (specifically speaking, Thok) is required. Power-ups/upgrades surely compensates for this but what if I didn't obtained them in whole level? For example → I started from the Sunken Plant Zone from save . All the upgrades were gone (which is normal I guess?). It was hard to jump over the pit before the end of Sunken Plant Zone 2. Thankfully I had speed shoes so I was able to do that (It was still not easy). In some parts of Verdant Forest Zone similar difficulties can be seen.

Is it possible to retain the upgrades in save file?
Also, It will be good if boost ball could do water skipping.
 
Last edited:
It's difficult to use where long jump without much run-up (specifically speaking, Thok) is required. Power-ups/upgrades surely compensates for this but what if I didn't obtained them in whole level? For example → I started from the Sunken Plant Zone from save . All the upgrades were gone (which is normal I guess?). It was hard to jump over the pit before the end of Sunken Plant Zone 2. Thankfully I had speed shoes so I was able to do that (It was still not easy). In some parts of Verdant Forest Zone similar difficulties can be seen.

To be upfront, I didn't actually test if Samus could beat every levelpack without powerups. But I did find one path in SPZ2 to be possible without any upgrades, it just requires some advanced techniques. Luckily the chances of you ever having to do that are incredibly low. Not sure about Verdant Forest, but maybe this section gave you trouble?

Is it possible to retain the upgrades in save file?

Unfortunately SRB2 doesn't let you save Lua'd stuff, so if you need your powerups back, you'll have to use the SamusPowerDrop command to drop whatever you had before. Or, if you had your fully powered suit before, just hold custom 3 as you re-enter Single Player.

Also, It will be good if boost ball could do water skipping.

That'd be pretty neat, I might put that on the todo-list!
 
Not sure about Verdant Forest, but maybe this section gave you trouble?
Yup. That part. Now It won't be a problem. GIF helped.
[Who plays Verdant Forest Zone anyway? (after completing level pack)]
Unfortunately SRB2 doesn't let you save Lua'd stuff, so if you need your powerups back, you'll have to use the SamusPowerDrop command to drop whatever you had before. Or, if you had your fully powered suit before, just hold custom 3 as you re-enter Single Player.
Thanks!
 
Werid.

srb20001.gif


When Samus spin, I Change the character and then I'm getting bounced by the walls.
 
Ah, seems like just a simple character swap glitch...I was sure I fixed that before. It's a minor nuisance, but I've put it on my to-do list! Thanks for reporting!
 
This wad is amazing, man! I remember hearing about the Metroid Dreadnaught mod and being disappointed that I couldn't buy the game required to play the mod. But you, Golden Shine, made my dreams come true! I've played this mod a lot, and I gotta say, you did an excellent job!

I do wonder what your future plans for the mod may be. You plan on adding stuff? Or just a couple of bug fixes and balances to the character? Possibly even... including her grappling beam?

No? Okay...
 
A review that turned into bad coding help.

A really, really good wad overall with super interresting gameplay that definetly gives a breath of fresh air from regular Sonic-ish gameplay, I don't know a whole lot about Metroid but abilities are well explained and work great overall, and the fact that you find abilities as a reward for exploring and popping monitors definetly add length to the experience.

My complaints however, would be that there's no real reason to use weapons with limited ammo as you can just spam click using whatever normal weapon on the already really passive enemies SRB2 has. (I only found myself using missiles on bosses). Also, what I said above about abilities is a double edged sword, sometimes I find myself farming a monitor for a power up I want to have only because it keeps giving me pickups I already have maxed out (missiles/morphball bombs). Maybe adding checks on the player's arsenal to prevent such scenarios would be good.
I also don't know how difficult it would be to implement, but having a system that saves your abilities similar to KeepStuff.wad if you are to get synched out of a netgame would be very neat, as I can see stuff being very detrimental to a player who just got a fully powered suit and happens to get synched out because someone has terrible internet.

Finally, while it's also way less of a complaint and more my fault for using terrible resolutions, the HUD really doesn't work well in software, the health HUD gets a bit all over the place when not using a green resolution and the canon ends up being in the middle of the screen rather than on the right, like in this screenshot. (I believe this is because you used V_SNAPTOLEFT to draw the arm canon)

For the health bar, it's due to the fact that you set drawFill improperly, the correct setup for it would be
Code:
v.drawFill(x, y, lenght, height, color+V_FLAG1|V_FLAG2)
rather than
Code:
v.drawFill(x, y, length, height, color, V_FLAG1|V_FLAG2)
(I know, it's super dumb as this is the only draw function that does this for no real reason.)

additionally you may want to have the HUD properly positionned with the actual vanilla HUD by using V_NOSCALESTART on patches and v.dupx and v.dupy to position them properly rather than V_SNAPTO flags.
As a reference, the RING's hud position using this would be somthing close to that:

Code:
ring_x = FixedMul(16*FRACUNIT, select(2,v.dupx())) / FRACUNIT
ring_y = FixedMul(42*FRACUNIT, select(2,v.dupx())) / FRACUNIT

-- and then drawing the hud like such

v.draw(ring_x, ring_y, v.cachePatch("patch"), V_NOSCALESTART)

-- the above doesn't work with drawfill since it only takes into account V_SNAPTO flags so you'd have to use an alternative that draws patches using loops I suppose

(again, I myself think this is super dumb since this requires extra effort that wouldn't be here if these HUDs used V_SNAPTO like the nice kids other HUD elements are)

I'm really sorry what should have been a normal review ended up as a "how to fix HUDs", it's just I found myself in similar cases quite often with something as dumb as drawing bars accordingly with the vanilla HUD no matter the resolution.

Keep this up though, I really like everything that's already in there and multiplayer with Samus is ridiculously fun!
 
For the health bar, it's due to the fact that you set drawFill improperly, the correct setup for it would be
Code:
v.drawFill(x, y, lenght, height, color+V_FLAG1|V_FLAG2)
rather than
Code:
v.drawFill(x, y, length, height, color, V_FLAG1|V_FLAG2)
(I know, it's super dumb as this is the only draw function that does this for no real reason.)

Oh, that'd be because in this case the palette color is the "parameter" part of the flags. It's the only draw function that allows any of the bits in V_PARAMMASK to be set, because internally the other functions use the parameter for a purpose that Lua shouldn't be able to do (that is, draw something to one of the other reserved screen buffers).


Also it should be "color|V_FLAG1|V_FLAG2" anyway
 
Last edited:

Who is viewing this thread (Total: 2, Members: 0, Guests: 2)

Back
Top