Project AM2R - Another Metroid 2 Remake

So, NCFC is finishing today, it was another year with awesome fan-games, and a great community. For those who didn´t visit the convention yet, today´s the final day. This year AM2R showcased the first, official Demo with actual content from the game. No minigame with tedious bosses this time, this is pretty much what you´ll find in the fist section of the finished game. DOWNLOAD MFFHost Crocko FileFactory Mirror1 As usual, there were a couple of things that were not finished in time for the NCFC. The title screen song is halfway done, and I couldn´t finish the intro sequence (featuring the text I showed you in the last post). But the contents you do find were polished A LOT. Most of my time was spent debugging a lot of tiny details, half of them regarding the new music engine. Anyway, if you still haven´t tried it out, go ahead and have some fun blasting some Alphas. Just make sure you use all of Samus´s mobility during the fights. Metroids evolved quite a lot...

This year´s Nintendo Community FanGame Convention is near! That means there´s going to be some exclusive, never seen before AM2R material shown. Make sure you bookmark that URL, and visit the convention on the 23rd. Thanks to all the great people who participated with the intro sequence text ideas. I already chose an intro, so congratulations to Lex, author of the following: Metroid. After all that transpired on Zebes, the Galactic Federation has come to view these creatures as highly-dangerous life forms. By enlisting me to exterminate the remaining Metroids on their homeworld, Planet SR388, the Federation hopes to secure peace in the galaxy. Once again I find myself standing alone against the Metroid menace. What horrors await me within the depths of this vile world? One neat idea that has been discussed in the forums is about having a Log in the game. I like how the idea included details about making it passive, not intruding the normal gameplay at all, so people who w...

Most of the work these days was spent on the soundtrack. You might remember a couple of posts ago that I lost the data of one of my hard drives. Well, fortunately, most of my sample libraries and custom sound banks were in the other drive. All I have to do is redo the songs using the sounds I already experimented on and chose. Starting from scratch was tough at first, but remaking something that was good before made it even better, taking a fraction of the original production time. Also, having heard Harmony of a Hunter many times opened my head with ideas of how diverse the Metroid songs could get. You´ll be able to hear a preview pretty soon. In the meantime, I´d like to ask for your help. I´m working on the intro sequence, and my English is quite limited. So, if you have ideas for a short introduction text, I´d love to hear them. Simply head over to THIS THREAD on the forums, follow the guidelines, and write your suggestion. Thanks! PS: Comment moderation has been re-ena...

Metroid just turned 25 yesterday! It´s amazing how gaming was changed after the release of the original Metroid, 25 years ago. Platforming exploration was born, and Samus was the first strong heroine of gaming history. To celebrate the occasion, the great people of shinesparkers.net produced an awesome tribute album with songs of the entire Metroid saga. Darren, the project director, was kind enough to let me participate with one track. There´s a lot of variety of styles, and some neat surprises. If you haven´t downloaded it yet, get it here: Harmony of a Hunter I participated with "Danger in old Tourian", my own version of the Space Pirates song in Super Metroid. Instead of making epic orchestrated arrangements, I decided to go for the atmosphere, and try to recreate what my feelings were when I first heard the song. The rest of the album is simply impressive, it shows how professional and dedicated the Metroid fan community is. Thanks to all the people who contact...

Before you freak out with the title let me tell you this: AM2R IS SAFE, I keep weekly backups of the main project folder in different media types. A couple of weeks ago one of my SATA drives stopped working. It was the main project drive in my studio PC, so all of my current audio projects can´t be read anymore. As I usually backup audio projects as soon as they´re finished, I have some very angry customers who lost their on-production album. Also, one of those projects was the AM2R soundtrack. While I have some test mixes in my laptop, most of the music engine work was done using placeholders (the original Metroid 2 soundtrack). I was already tired of hearing the songs during production, hearing them all the time in-game during testing would be even more tiresome.  Now, I did some testing on a friend´s house. We tried replacing the drive´s controller board, using parts from the same drive model. The motor starts, there is drive activity, but it´s not recognized by the bios (...

Before I start with the progess of these weeks, I want to tell you about a special event. The guys at Metroid Headquarters are celebrating their 7th anniversary, and they´ll be doing a 101 hour Metroid Marathon, streaming live playthroughs of all the Metroid games on their hardest difficulty, with 100% items and scans. These awesome guys will be collaborating with Child´s Play , the famous and respectable charity. The marathon will start on Monday, July 11th at 8pm CST. For those who will watch it, I´ll be ocassionally on the chat room (I´ll try to tune in the entire Metroid 2 part). Regarding AM2R, there was some progress. Mostly playtesting and balancing issues with many enemies. Some Alpha Metroid fights were tweaked, mostly the first ones. Fighting Alphas with a limited supply of missiles and only 1 energy tank can get pretty hectic. A new save station was added near the bottom part of the first area, for those who want to retreat from any of the Alphas there and res...

I was able to work on AM2R quite a lot these days. The most interesting addition to the already complex game was a cutscene system. Before, all the small puzzles had their results in real time. So, in order for the player to see the outcome of his/her action, the entire puzzle had to be constrained to a single screen (sometimes a little bigger). Now, when an important event is happening, it takes control of the camera and shows the event properly. Cutscenes done so far are very short right now, and can help make bigger puzzles (don´t worry, the level design doesn´t depend entirely on them). Many small tweaks and improvements were done in a lot of rooms. New level tools were done to provide Metroids proper ways to avoid cramped areas, helping them follow Samus more effectively. There were small places where you could hide and rethink your approach, but now Metroids give a fierce chase. You can´t hide anymore!  The rest of the progress was mostly changing some naming conventio...