Samus Learns the Moves

By January of 2006 the project had the basics. It was time to add the signature abilities. Every time I added a new move, even basic stuff, I tested it. I made a test level for each one, so I could test the new ability in every possible situation. Once everything was working correctly, I compared it to the original games to do some fine tuning.

For example, I added the MorphBall. It´s simple, but it required the following items to work correctly:

• Change Samus´ collision so she is actually smaller and can fit small holes.
• Add a morph and unmorph animation.
• To morph correctly the crouch state change must be working, so you morph by double tapping Down.
• Rolling on the ground and falling in the air have different animations.
• Samus can morph and unmorph in the air. She also needs a double tap (one to aim down, one more to morph).
• Morphing or unmorphing in mid-air resets the speed.
• Whenever you unmorph you should check if there is enough room above to fit Samus.
• Falling from a determined height makes Samus bounce a bit.
• After unmorphing Samus goes to Crouching State, not Standing!

And this is just MorphBall. Other abilities are much more complex to implement properly. So AFTER checking everything I moved on to the next move.

Walljump! Actually it wasn´t hard to make.

PowerGrip was tricky, specially to align it right.

That´s 2 sprites, the legs and the torso (it changes depending on the aiming direction)

I struggled a lot to make the SpiderBall work.

ScrewAttack with some more eye candy.

SpeedBooster Test Levels were the best. I made some naughty shinespark puzzles.

The first beam, with all the aiming directions.

BombJumping! And that´s the first tileset I ripped.

All of Samus´ abilities were done in about a month. I had plenty of free time back then, and I could work on the project many hours a day.

By this time I really thought the project could be finished in a couple of months, but life had different plans.