[Staff][Demo] Metroid Infinity

[DigiTan]

I like that second thing. One thing I always thought 2D platformers were missing was an ability to play a level through alternate perspectives/timelines and such; and Paper Mario, Mario Bros 2, and Sonic CD are the only exceptions I can recall. Maybe it was a size issue. But it gets my vote.

[CDI]

Yeah, I think though, the entire game may be played through the different perspective/timeline route. Being, there are 2 ways to change reality, you can flip into a different reality, or you can travel in time.

And I could also, if I do it right, make not only 1 time affect another, but 1 reality affect the other as well. Say I find a good point in the game [ possibly early on ] to break reality into the 2 different timelines. Then I could grant the player the ability near the "end of the game" to travel in time [ kinda, make it only on a given kind of rock or platform or something ] and have their initial travel be to the original breaking point and if they choose a different option [ assuming the breaking point is where you can, say, kill a boss after defeating him, or spare that boss ] and travel along reality #2, where at the same time or so that you originally got the ability to travel in time, you get the ability to freely travel between realities.

The cool part about this, is, I could get away with a small level [ say about the size of my original Metroid, but a little larger ] and the above ground portion as well. And then through causality I could add certain passages or change the look of the level entirely.

Though do you think people would get sick of the same levels 3 or 4 times over? lol

[Galandros]

Though do you think people would get sick of the same levels 3 or 4 times over? lol

If they are hard, no not really.
I played the same level 5 times to beat the boss with less of 2 lifes in Zero series.

[CDI]

Just a little update here http://ijuln.net/file/MIupdate.zip feel free to report bugs and such.

The update just includes AI and a bugfix or two, and an added room.

http://sites.google.com/site/ijulnii/file/SCMI.gif

[kalan_vod]

Necro Post: I know this is a pretty big necro post, but Fred this is some great work! It is a same that you didn't decide to release this "demo" elsewhere, I also liked your pixel fight..Not sure if you will read this, but I appreciate your example/demos as they lead to motivation for others!

[aeTIos]

Actually, that was more than a year I agree that this is awesome.

[CDI]

What's a good thirteen or so years between updates, eh?

I am sure at some point I am going to get this working on a calculator, but... that seems to be less my speed these days. I haven't done too much coding at all, but I fancied a play with a development environment called GB Studio targeted at making quick to assemble games for the Game Boy, and whilst it is more geared towards things that may not be quite like what I wanted it to do, I figured with a bit of work tweaking sprites, and connecting boxes, I could get something together in no time.

So I whipped together something super quick as a proof of concept to myself that this could actually be fun. Here's a link to an mp4 of that in action, the jumping isn't quite right, but tweaks and tweaks.

Honestly it was kind of refreshing to see this little sprite move that fast, hah. Speaking of sprites, I went through my old stack of papers from the early aughts, and put together a little timeline of all the Samus sprites I ever worked on, including an awful lot of tries at the Varia suit.



Color coded, purple ones were never used, with the notable attempts at 16px tall models and all the extra suits. Green are what got used in games as far as I know, with the last set being the ones I had planned for this game. And the blue set was ones I had used in some demos, but tweaked to produce the last one.

[benryves]

Nice to see those sprites back in action again, and GB Studio looks like a neat way to put a game together too (though I do wonder whether such fast action would be visible on an original "pea soup" Game Boy!) Very cool work.

[CDI]

though I do wonder whether such fast action would be visible on an original "pea soup" Game Boy!

That is a good point! I know it would be visible if one were to go the route of "bivert"-ing the screen ( along with a backlight mod ), as I have done that to a fair few of my original Game Boy handhelds and it has made ghosting a much smaller issue.

However a better way I have overcome this was simply by doubling up the pixels, which also has the added benefit of making it feel much more like a calculator game!




I have also done a fair bit of work in designing a whole swath of proper animations for the player sprite!

Which now does include shooting upwards a feature sorely missing from most builds of Infinity that were circulating.


I have also done some work on creating a whole tile map from scratch, which at the moment includes an absurd pattern that takes 5 tiles to repeat, and likely will be getting cut or changed, even if I do really like how it looks in maps. I also need to tweak a few tiles so that I can get rid of ones that are different by a single pixel.


I am currently working on enemy types, as well as hand drawing maps the old fashioned way to make sure I get the right feel for things. Plus still slightly tweaking the engine that is controlling things to make it feel more responsive but also not losing the spacy feel the game is to have.

If I had a flash cart for the original game boy, I would load up builds of this to test, but I lack one. However I am still making builds available for testing just via my google drive for now if you wanna test it on an emulator or actual hardware. In that build you have to discover the pickups for morph ball and the bounce functions before you can use those abilities, as is the norm.

[tr1p1ea]

The update looks magnificent!