Project AM2R - Another Metroid 2 Remake

First of all thanks for all the birthday greetings, they cheered my week up. Anyway, here´s the new video I promissed. You can watch the YouTube version here: Or, you can take a minute to download the high quality 60 FPS version (Requires XVid codec): Rapidshare - MegaUpload - MediaFire Basically, the video shows a comparison between the original and the redone versions of some places and events. There´s some old footage from past videos, re-recorded with the new tile sets. Oh, and you can see a Gamma Metroid, finally. Have a good weekend.

Last week I visited a friend of mine, who showed me some footage he created with After Effects. That woke up my curiosity, and I started some research about its capabilities. The feature that made me drool was support for 60 FPS video. I thought of making a high quality version of the trailer before, but that framerate wasn´t supported by the programs I use regularly. I tried it out, and the result is impressive. So, the bad news is: there will be no trailer this week. The good news: I´m re-recording all the previous footage in 60 FPS, and I´ll make a high quality version available for download (in addition to the butchered YouTube version). The video size will be 320x240, making it any bigger would distort the pixels. The original plan for the trailer was to show some updated areas, and some new ones. I revamped the tiles of some places, with the method I told you last time, and added some new backgrounds. There were places and features that were functional, and now they are also good...

Things are up and running again, not as good as before, but enough to bring food to the table. I manage to work on the project for about an hour a day for now, so progress is starting to be steady. Before starting with area 4, I´m changing the layout of some parts of area 3. Specially the lower parts. Many Metroid fights are too cramped, so I´m making slightly larger rooms for more exciting Gamma fights. I´m also editing all the Zero Mission based tileset to remove the black outline, so they merge much better with the background. The outline really helps in a handheld screen, here it looks quite cartoony. I´m recording some material from the original game, and some unseen parts of AM2R to create a new trailer. If everything goes well, you´ll be meeting the Gammas on the next update. I want to thank all the great people that understood this last delay, I really appreciate your support.

These last couple of weeks were strange. Most of my customers simply disappeared, bands were separated, musicians became sick, and in no time I had an almost empty week at the studio, and many expensive bills to pay. This happens frequently, economic crisis is part of our life here, but this time it´s taking my free time to gather new customers. Last week I couldn´t even find time to open Game Maker to, at least, lay some tiles anywhere. The project had these kind of delays before, but this is the first big one you people witness. I had no news on HyruleSwordsMan lately, he surely is busy too. Anyway. I´ll try to solve my work troubles as soon as possible, and make a teaser video with some Gamma Metroid footage. Thank you very much for following the project, for your great comments, and for your patience.

I´ve been with a lot of work lately. Life is eating my time away, but I manage to find time for the project once in a while. I even drew a tileset while I was recording voice actors for a documentary. I retiled most of the breeding area 3, I had to add more variety to the tileset, it was too repetitive. Changed the tiles of the tunnel connecting area 3 with the main shaft, instead of a recolor of existing brick tiles, I´m using new original tiles. The Gammas were tweaked yet again. Some fights are in very closed spaces, and some gammas were moving too fast. Zeta Metroids are coming out pretty well. Both HyruleSwordsMan and me are working on animating a wireframe sketch of the zetas with all the required actions, before he starts drawing the details. This gives us an idea of how many frames each animation will take, and how many positions need to be drawn for every part.We´re trying to make things look as fluid as possible. For example, the current sketch for the walking animation has 2...

So, Gammas are coming out nicely. Battles are challenging and fair, there´s much more attack variety compared to Alphas. The cool thing is that you´ll see new attacks as you discover more Metroids, so once you encounter a Gamma, you´ll surely experience something new. The customizable moves took some time to code, but it´s really worth it. The slow map screen was redone from scratch. Now the map is drawn using tiles, instead of hundreds of objects. Also, the scanlines effect was removed, it made the background too distracting. And last, but not least, Zeta metroid sprite production has begun. This sprite set will be a lot more challenging. Since this is a bipedal creature, animations will be quite complex. I´m sorry for the lack of updates these days, I´ve been working too much. Comments and suggestions are welcome, as always.

Earlier today I posted a general information page written in spanish, this will help me write the updates in 2 languages. Si buscas información en español, puedes hacer click en el link a la derecha. -> The progress these days: I´m constantly tweaking the Gamma Metroids AI. Right now they´re extremely hard to defeat. They have a couple of attack patterns, but they´re too difficult to hit, since the core is hidden deeper into the creature, compared to Alphas. And I haven´t coded the lightning attacks yet. I have plans to redo the map screen display system. A lot of objects are used to draw the entire map, this causes a severe slowdown on older machines. I´m trying to find a way to use fewer objects (and I´m already using deactivation). I know it´s not much progress, but work was unusually busy these weeks. Like always, comments are welcome.