Project AM2R - Another Metroid 2 Remake

Next Saturday, the awesome people at Speed Demos Archives will be hosting a Metroid Speedrun Marathon. The cool thing about this marathon is that AM2R will be featured, along all the official Metroid games. The event will appear at the frontpage of Twitch.tv , professional speedrunner Dragondarch will be speedrunning the AM2R Demo v1.3. Here's the schedule , and the Twitch Feed that will be streaming the event. I'll do my best to attend, so feel free to drop by the stream chat. So, you don't want to watch the new demo on a stream because of the spoilers? We can fix that: DEMO 1.3 DOWNLOAD New in this version: - Acess to a new area - XInput support for XBox 360 controllers (Includding triggers) - Improved button hints in-game - Centralized menu control with dedicated buttons - Redone lighting engine - Aim Lock - Analog walking - Morph Button - Many engine improvements and optimizations

I know the DLC joke couldn't match last year's, but I had a lot of fun writing it. Too bad I couldn't make a screenshot of the cat launcher in time... Anyway, the new demo is almost ready for a release. The miniboss of Area 3 had several revisions, and it's still being tweaked during the final playtest sessions. As usual, as things get fixed and features are added, other things break. Sometimes it feels like a never ending loop. But things look pretty stable nowadays, just a couple of (hopefully) simple bugs left to fix. I know I entered into a "feature lockdown" to focus on the contents, but there was a feature that was requested a lot: Centralized menu controls. Now, first time players might find the subscreen controls a bit confusing (almos nobody reads the commands at the bottom of the screen), so I limited all the actions involving menus to 2 dedicated, customizable buttons. This is a small detail that makes things much more intuitive. Anyway, as ...

The final testing phase of the new store system is almost over. After yesterday's stress test, the servers seem to be stable enough to handle the load of the release day. Also, there were some changes in how the currency is stored. Now, instead of paying directly for items, you can buy " Galactic Federation Credits " that can be used to redeem the items, be gifted to other players, or bid at the casino area. Also, the in-game store has been finally added. You won't have to minimize the game and visit the store page each time you run out of missiles. Now the entire AM2R item store is available from the pause menu. Right now all the support crates that contain the items spawn at the landing site, but there are plans to expand the drop locations.   Bear in mind that the current store screens are in-development, there will be a better looking background and a bigger selection of items. Speaking of items, Reserve Tanks were added. These add 100 energy each...

Finally, the playtesting phase for the upcoming demo started. There were several playtest sessions, some of them in person, with good old friends, some of them remote. These sessions were really useful to detect some level design issues, along with some serious balance problems with the miniboss of Area 3. There will be more sessions later on, but for now I've been fixing most of the recently found issues. There were a couple dozen bugs that appeared because of the new control options, too. Even if they're pretty solid there were a couple of minor bugs here and there that went by undetected until now. I also spent plenty of time on sound design of existing objects. There are new ambient noises in certain rooms, along with dedicated impact and death sounds for robotic enemies. Al that's left to round up the contents of the upcoming demo is: - Finish and balance the miniboss - Finish the music tracks of the new areas - Test and polish everything This was a lengthy ...

So, these new features will give you even more options to customize the way you control Samus. Morphing with just a button can give you a lot more versatility, specially when using analog sticks. For those with analog controls, Samus can walk if you push the stick halfway towards a direction. And the coolest, and potentially most useful, Aim Lock. Holding the Aim Lock button will force Samus to aim in a specific direction, and walk instead of run. This makes some of the harder Metroid fights more interesting, since you can now strafe and position your shots better. These features have been in development for quite a while. Now that they're working properly and bug-free, they are officially a part of the engine. You'll be able to try these out on the upcoming demo. And last but not least, Decayed , an awesome AM2R fan, donated a Game Maker Ubuntu Export Module license. This means that, whenever the project is migrated to Studio, a Linux port will be very likely to be dev...

Again, the year is almost over. It's the time when we sit down and reflect on all the progress we made, and all the difficulties we faced. AM2R had some steady progress, and even if it's not as much as I expected, the game is a bit closer to be finished. A year ago, by this time, the second demo was released. This year, despite some rough times, there was progress in the overall engine, a lot of small bugs and some performance issues were taken care of. XInput support was added, and the game can be played with full XBox360 gamepad support now. Area 3, and the cave sections before Area 4 are almost ready to be played in a new demo. Besides a yearly retrospective, I always talk about what the new year will bring. In the following month I'll be moving to a new home. I'll have my space to assemble a small studio, and dedicate more time to all my personal projects. These last few months I spent a couple hours a day fixing and remodeling an old house, and working on AM2R...

The project is advancing slowly. So far all the different factors that limit the time I have for the project are still present. So, in order to guarantee the release of the game in a reasonable time from now on, I decided to do some changes regarding the contents that will be available on the first release, along with some level layout changes: - The caves between Areas 3 and 4 that had 2 Metroid fights will be slightly expanded and themed as a mining facility. Most of the assets are already produced and in place. This enhances a lot an otherwise dull area, with little time and effort. - The new area, the submerged temple, will not be accesible at launch. On the planned first release, the game will feature the original contents. This will save a lot of time, since there's still a lot of unifinished features in that area, that can be completed after an initial release. - The main tunnel will feature only one mix of the main song. Music production is prioritized for more importan...