One year already?

I just noticed the project has been public for over a year. I could´ve prepared something, a trailer, screenshots, anything, but it completely slipped my mind...
My girlfriend is right, I suck at remember anniversaries.

Anyway, the progress these days:

- Added the automorph and autoclimb features. Automorph requires to hold down diagonally for 4 frames when near a ground tunnel, then Samus crouches and 4 frames later she morphs. This avoids accidental automorphing. To automatically climb a 1 or 2 block high ledge, touch the wall holding the direction and press Jump. Kinda like pulling up from the grip state. If the ledge leads to a tunnel, Samus automatically morphs after climbing.
This control scheme does not interfere with the classic style, so purists won´t be affected at all.

- Changed jumping mechanics a bit. Morphing while jumping doesn´t reset the vertical speed, unless you´re falling (otherwise the charge-bomb attack becomes useless in air). Also, firing from a spinjump preserves the vertical momentum as well.

- Expanded the transitions system. I tried to revamp it, but it was a complete failure. Instead I´m expanding the existing system with extra transition types. Now accessing the subscreen looks great. I had to do some serious bugfixing to the camera system. It´s incredible how fadein/outs can hide camera glitches.

EDIT: Here´s a video showing some of the new features.

- Started with the map screen eye candy. I had to tone down the scanlines, they looked horrible with the map grid on top. It´s still very basic:


The top bar will display the remaining metroids in the area, and in the whole game. The bottom bar will display the current game time and item completion percentage.

That´s about it.

Before I forget it again, AM2R got featured in an interview at Ars Technica. It´s a very interesting read: Resurrecting Classic Games
Thanks to Andrew Webster for letting me participate.

Ok, as always comments an suggestions are welcome.

Back to work

These couple of weeks were refreshing, I rediscovered Cave Story (finally got to the Hell stage), I started another run of Soldexus, and played countless hours of Call of Duty 4 (it´s so fun I forgot completely about Unreal Torunament).

Anyway, here are my plans for this summer:
- Work on Area 4
- Do the map screen
- Finish the subscreen
- Redo the transitions and fade system
- Rework Samus´ physics and some moves
- Code Gamma Metroids AI

Area 4 is my primary goal. Since I´m revamping it almost completely, I´ll be able to make interesting layouts instead of the basic design of the original.

The map screen is working, I´ll just make it look good, and accessible from the subscreen.

I came up with an idea about making a better and faster method for the transitions and fade in/outs. Since now I have to link the subscreen with the map screen, I need more flexibility to make transitions look better. I hope I can pull it off.

I might change one or two things about Samus´ moves:
- Change the spiderball command to the Aim button (several people suggested this, I´ll try it out)
- Keep vertical speed when firing from spinjump. Stopping in the air when firing is part of the "heavy" physics of Zero Mission, but I found it makes air combat feel unnatural. The battle against Kraid in the second demo could have been much more fun if the jumps weren´t limited this way. This change will be applied only to firing states, NOT the mid air morph. You have Power Grip for those situations, and you get it early in the game.
- Add an "Auto Climb" state and animation for small ledges (1 block high), and a slower one for high ledges (2 blocks high). The idea is, when you run against a ledge, samus automatically climbs it if you´re pressing the upwards diagonal direction (this way you won´t climb it accidentally if you´re just looking for cover).
- Add an "Auto Morph" state, similar to the one above, but for small openings on walls. It could be triggered by using just the downwards diagonal direction while running against the opening.
These are just ideas right now, I´ll try them out and see if they fit the current engine without changing the "Metroidy" feel too much.

The Gammas. HyruleSwordsMan finished the sprites before christmas.
Right now they behave like Alphas (I´m using them as a template), I still have to add the new states, and animate them. I made a basic sprite limbs system, it saves a lot of static frames, but it´s really tedious to animate.

I don´t know if I´ll finish all of these within these months, but there will be a lot of progress.
As always, all your comments and suggestions are welcome. If you asked questions in the last post, take a look at the comments, I´ll answer them in a minute.