About to begin Area 3...

The second area is done, at least the map and tiles. There are some scripting events to be done and tweaked. Right now I'm preparing the tilesets for the third area. Just as many of you suggested, the ruins will be some kind of industrial/mining facilities.

Here is a snapshot of the caves before the third area, this shows the new tile color palette. The background will be properly replaced soon.


Alpha Metroids are being tweaked and improved all the time. Currently they have the normal introductions done (normal and coming out of the cocoon), I'll be adding more these days.

Sound production is becoming really funny. In order to do some cool screeching sounds for the different Metroid evolutions, me and a friend are recording some really weird screams here at the studio, and then applying a lot of effects. I'm ripping sounds from plenty of games too, sound test in emulators are really useful. These will be used to create new sounds for the game.

Music production has also begun, there's still a long way to complete the soundtrack.

Thanks everybody for your comments and suggestions, I really appreciate them.

Alphas are alive...

I won´t be showing you screens yet, the sprites are being tweaked.

I´ll share with you some info about the current state of the Alpha Metroids:

• Their behavior is very different from the original, since Samus can aim diagonally and you can see a larger portion of the level on the screen. Alphas charge at you at great speed.
• They can´t be damaged by frontal hits, you have to hit their core, this means you´ll have to avoid them and hit them from their back, or bottom.
• They are going to be more agressive as you progress. Later Alphas will take more damage to defeat, they´ll use a charge attack, and some will dodge incoming missiles.
• Alpha Metroids can´t be hit while stunned. You´ll make sure you aim every missile, instead of firing a barrage and depleting your supply in seconds.
• Super Missiles deal 2x damage to Metroids, instead of the normal 5x. Stun time is slightly longer, so if you want to keep attacking, you´ll have to time your shots differently.
• PowerBombs, ScrewAttack and SuperJump/Shinespark won´t have any effect on Metroids. There were cool ideas around about using any of these to temporarily paralize them, but they would be easily abused.

Right now I´m coding the intro sequences: Coming out of a Metroid shell, and normal encounter. The AI is quite challenging, I´m trying to minimize the possibility of cheap fight tactics to kill them. Battles are unpredictable so far.

I´ve read many cool comments suggesting cool abilities in the last post. Energy leeching grab attacks are planned for later evolutions, since Alphas have very small claws. Zetas and Omegas will be mainly walking, Zetas will be able to temporarily float, Omegas will jump.

I´ll mention this once more, just for the people who ask this every day:
NO SPACE PIRATES ON METROID 2, NO SPACE PIRATES HERE
This also means no Ridley. Sorry if you were excited about him.
It´s not that it wouldn´t be cool to make them part of the story, but I already have a lot of game to make, including pirates would make me take even longer to finish.

About the third area: Mining facilities is the best option I´ve read. Thank you all for your great ideas and thoughts.
It would make sense to gather minerals that deep into the planet, a processing plant could be a good part of those ruins too. I´ve been thinking of some mechanical puzzles, I even came up with a drill machine that, when activated, drills a path for you to collect an item. I have many ideas on paper right now, if you think of something cool, I´d love to hear it.