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

[Golden Shine]

Metroid Vanguard is the project name for Samus.pk3, an update to the previous Dreadnought-inspired Samus.wad! There's been a ton of changes since then. A ship hub with in-game tutorials and new options, visual updates, new items, an item rate and time tracker+special reward for beating the vanilla game at 100%, more customization, reworked mechanics, many bugfixes, an optional soundtrack, and more.

TRAILER 1
TRAILER 2(old)

Samus teaches you how to play as you go and unlock upgrades one at a time, so you should be able to ease yourself into it even if you've never played Metroid games. Your ship unlocks advanced info, so stop back often if you like knowing all the intricacies!


DOWNLOADS
FULL PACKAGE(Contains Samus.pk3, SamusMusic.wad, a startgame batfile, and a tracklist)
SamusMusic.zip(Contains SamusMusic.wad, a startgame batfile, and a tracklist)
Samus.pk3(Just Samus.pk3, which received a 2nd hotfix on September 10th!)

SamusMusic.wad is simply music replacing the SRB2 OST. This means netgame joiners won't download it off your server and you can add it without getting kicked out of netgames for it.


Extra stuff!
GOOGLE DOCS (Cheats/Mirrors/Archives)
CHANGELOG (since Samus.wad)

 

[TehRealSalt]

Welcome to releases!

 

[Burning-Fox]

Awesome mod. Without a doubt one of my favorite wads on all of SRB2, if not the top right now. So good~

 

[NeoLucario87]

This is now one of my favorite wads, i like how Samus' gameplay is similar to that of Tails Guy/Doom Guy, i laughed a little of how the Sprites make it look like you're bigger than the Eggmobile, hah.

 

[GreenKnight9000]

OHHH SHIT
More SRB2 fun for me!
I'm gonna have a field day with this (Matches will be so much more interesting now!)

 

[Golden Shine]

I'm glad people are liking this! I expected this to be a very niche thing, since y'know....Metroid in a game all about Sonic.

I'm thinking of adding support for Samus crossover matches in the future 2.2 release, where Sonic and co could be supported too. But since Samus plays so differently from the Sonic cast and has basically infinite rapid-fire ammo, it's a difficult thing to balance! If anyone has any ideas or suggestions, I'd love to hear it!

 

[toaster]

If you're going to try and wait for 2.2's release before working on stuff, you'll never get anything done. Maybe just work on it for when you can, especially since that would change enough stuff to potentially break your work and leave you uncertain on how to proceed without restarting.

 

[Kuja]

Not only is this immensely fun, but is a technical triumph. I don't normally play with many character wads, but this might be by far my favorite one in nearly 10 years playing this game. It's like something I never asked for, but never knew I wanted up to this point. Amazing work, I look forward to playing with this all the time.

 

[GreenKnight9000]

If you're going to try and wait for 2.2's release before working on stuff, you'll never get anything done. Maybe just work on it for when you can, especially since that would change enough stuff to potentially break your work and leave you uncertain on how to proceed without restarting.

Welp, guess it's confirmed that you guys (or gals, I don't want anyone getting [TRIGGERED] here) ain't even halfway through 2.2
this just makes me even more excited

 

[Monster Iestyn]

Got up to ERZ3 before losing all my lives and game overing (completely my fault, kept falling in death pits lol). Must say, this mod is really fun to play in Single Player at least.

EDIT: Also GreenKnight9000, TRIGGERED isn't even that funny to be frank. =V

 

[Golden Shine]

Not only is this immensely fun, but is a technical triumph. I don't normally play with many character wads, but this might be by far my favorite one in nearly 10 years playing this game. It's like something I never asked for, but never knew I wanted up to this point. Amazing work, I look forward to playing with this all the time.

That's probably the nicest compliment I've gotten in a long time! Thank you!

If you're going to try and wait for 2.2's release before working on stuff, you'll never get anything done. Maybe just work on it for when you can, especially since that would change enough stuff to potentially break your work and leave you uncertain on how to proceed without restarting.

Actually, that's the main reason I want to wait. The more features I implement now, the more stuff is just going to end up broken in 2.2, right? Who knows how much the new version will screw with previous wads/scripts...I'd rather work on it when I don't have to be afraid of that.

 

[toaster]

Yeah, but I'm saying that waiting for it will just be boring and un-fun. All things are transient, and refusing to do anything until arbitrary milestones that shouldn't affect you too deeply (because they're distant enough that it shouldn't matter to you right now) will just increase the likelihood you leave the community due to feeling distant again.

Go with the flow! Don't wait on us. When it's done^tm.

 

[frozenLake]

Alright, I might as well get this out of the way.

Samus does not like slopes with morphball. Boost ball results in you snapping to the bottom of said slope, too.

Some glitches/lack of support for I don't have gifs are...

• Samus loses health in ring-drain liquid after getting gravity suit
• Hud elements (like the radar) get hidden by samus's arm cannon,
• Timing with morph ball bombs could probably use some tweaking?

(like, shouldn't you be able to lay a bomb right after the bomb explodes and expect to be launched up, like in the 2D metroid games? I don't know, but its not as major of a thing as the other issues, since that one is more of a matter of preference.)

But yeah, having fixes for Morphball physics, ring drain liquid (maybe) and the hud elements would be nice.

 

[TelosTurntable]

Does that mean 2.2 doesn't release this year, Toaster?

(I haven't touched this mod because I've been up in bed or half asleep for the past 2 days. Might try it out now)

 

[GreenKnight9000]

Got up to ERZ3 before losing all my lives and game overing (completely my fault, kept falling in death pits lol). Must say, this mod is really fun to play in Single Player at least.

EDIT: Also GreenKnight9000, TRIGGERED isn't even that funny to be frank. =V

I know, I meant it in a semi-mocking way ;)

 

[Golden Shine]

Go with the flow! Don't wait on us. When it's done^tm.

Oh no, it's still that far off? T-T Part of me hoped it would've released last Christmas.

Samus does not like slopes with morphball. Boost ball results in you snapping to the bottom of said slope, too.

• Samus loses health in ring-drain liquid after getting gravity suit
• Hud elements (like the radar) get hidden by samus's arm cannon,
• Timing with morph ball bombs could probably use some tweaking?.

I forget if Samus was made when slopes existed, but yeah, once vanilla SRB2 incorporates slopes, that's going to be a huge priority. I'm kinda hoping on Lua functions that let you mess with slope physics a bit.

• I dunno, should that be a feature? I've never seen Samus gain immunity health-draining sectors from the Gravity Suit, just acid and lava. I feel like she's immune to enough things as is, tbh.
• Wish I could do something about that. There's no way to change the priority on HUD elements right now other than placement within the same Lua script, so addons that change the HUD may just have Samus' arm cannon override themselves too. I could recreate the entire SRB2 HUD from scratch, but it's a minor ugly inconvenience for now. I will look into it, though!
• Oh, I just went with whatever felt natural since every Metroid game has different timing, but if it feels wrong to people I could mess around with it some more.

 

[TelosTurntable]

I forget if Samus was made when slopes existed, but yeah, once vanilla SRB2 incorporates slopes, that's going to be a huge priority. I'm kinda hoping on Lua functions that let you mess with slope physics a bit.

It's been more than a year, actually

Unless you're referring to the vanilla campaign, in which case I should tell you that slopes are so heavily used everywhere else that there's no real reason not to do them now

 

[Monster Iestyn]

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.

 

[LunarDestroyer]

This wad is absolutely amazing, probably one of the best I've ever played, but there are a few things I might like to see changed or added:

There should probably be some kind of "equipment" screen, so that you can see what you have and don't have, as well as stuff like your max missile/power bomb capacity. Still, I can't imagine you hadn't already planned to add one in. I'd probably put it on Custom 3, given it's not used for anything else.

Is there any reason energy tanks aren't in the single player/coop modes? They're a fairly staple item, and while they probably wouldn't be the MOST useful, they'd be good for replacing the 50 health drop from invincibility boxes, since getting something so useless out of a rare box like that is always disappointing.

I feel like some more variation in enemy health might be nice. As well, I feel like there's little reason to use missiles after you get the plasma beam, as not only does it also kill enemies in one hit, it pierces as well, meaning that even the explosive properties of the missiles are made somewhat moot. (well, i suppose missiles would still be good for shooting enemies through walls, but that has limited applications.)

Also, in single player/coop, I feel as if the power bomb is mostly inferior to the Super Missiles (well, outside of what it does to bosses...), simply because the range isn't nearly large enough to make up for how slow they are, and the ability of Super Missiles to be fired somewhere, as opposed to activated right at your position. (they both work quite well in match though, probably because of the health system)

 

[FuriousFox]

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

Lastly, 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.

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