Project AM2R - Another Metroid 2 Remake

Things are going pretty smooth in Area 4. The scripted events are becoming a bit more complex and awesome than the original plan, but the extra effort is going to pay off. There's still some balancing to be done to the miniboss, and music production is a bit behind schedule for that particular area. But the place is starting to have its own personality and atmosphere. Area 5, on the other hand, is very likely to receive a complete overhaul (trying to reuse the existing rooms as much as possible), to make room for the new planned features that are exclusive to that location. I wish you have a great celebration, close to your loved ones. One of my wishes for this next year is to be able to play AM2R complete, as a full game. I'll do my best to make it happen. May your personal goals for this year be fulfilled, and most importantly, be safe and be happy. Happy holidays!

The year is almost over, again. As usual, preparations for the celebrations, gift shopping and those kind of things are taking most of my free time. But there's been some solid progress lately for both areas 4 and 5. I'll just let the pics do the talking: Area 4 now uses a brand new custom tile set, giving the place a lot more personality, compared to the older revision. There will be some interaction with some machinery, as you might expect. The outside part of the tower was also given an original tile set, custom made for this huge structure. And last, but not least, I started revamping the old Power Bomb animation. Up to last week, the power bomb looked like in the first trailer, with coarse polygon edges as the explosion expanded. Now it looks a lot smoother and pretty devastating in-game. Most of Area 5 doesn't have proper backgrounds yet, so I guess I'll be showing you those places in a later update. There were also some small optimization...

After the last update, no critical bugs have appeared. Looks like the transition to Game Maker Studio was a success. I switched my focus to contents production again. Both work and some personal things have consumed most of my free time this month, but I managed to get some progress going on Area 4. Some features and assets in that area are being revamped. It's not going to be as complex or big as Area 3, but it has it's own unique moments. I'll be posting some screenshots once I have the new tiles and backgrounds in place. Area 5 (the new, original area) is also under progress. In collaboration with the sprite artists, we are in the process of turning the place from a barely functional place where you find items, to a location with the purpose and personality that other areas have. This is mostly planning new features and special game mechanics, under the limits of what can be done with the engine. I would like to thank all the awesome people who provided feedback du...

One of the benefits of working with Game Maker Studio, compared to older versions, is that I can build updates much more easily. This means I can do bug fixes and release updates more often than before. This is the first update, tackling some issues you reported these last couple of days: DOWNLOAD UPDATE NEW IN THIS VERSION - Built without the YoYo Compiler to ensure WinXP compatibility - Music files are now available in the package for customization - Updated health pickup sprites - Fixed music crossfades playing part of the wrong track - Fixed collisions of spiked plants in Area 3 - Fixed missing keycodes on the keyboard settings screen - Fixed music not being played if you enter the sound options with volume 0 - Fixed very low music volume resulting in glitchy playback If you had trouble getting the demo to run in Windows XP, you should give this update a try. As always, feel free to report any bugs or make any suggestions here or at the forums .

Finally, after more than 2 months of hard work, this is the biggest overhaul the project ever had. The project has transitioned to Game Maker studio, giving the game a huge performance and stability boost. DOWNLOAD HERE NEW IN 1.33: - Ported the entire project to Game Maker Studio - Many features rewritten from scratch - Plenty of small bug fixes - Faster loading times - New graphic options include fixed screen scaling and window size presets - Some tweaks in the level design - Torizo fight was balanced - Spiderball can now be activated with any of the aiming buttons You'll also the Linux version in the download page. This was tested on Ubuntu 12.10, feel free to give it a try on other versions / distros. Also, a very talented graphic artist / 3D modeler has joined the AM2R team. We're in the process of producing the soundtrack album cover right now. I'll be updating the soundtrack links to include the cover, and post the cover here as soon as it's...

SOUNDTRACK RELEASE I dedicated this month to 2 things primarily: Fixing all the bugs that started popping up in the Game Maker Studio version of AM2R, and to give the soundtrack an update. Since I'm not using the Caster extension anymore, I now use the built-in audio functions for music playback. This means I have to change the overall volume of every track. This is a good opportunity to actually do a proper mastering work, after tweaking some instruments on some songs. AM2R Soundtrack V1.33 DOWNLOAD MP3: MediaFire  - Mega  - MyFlare FLAC: MediaFire  - Mega   Now, the soundtrack is not finished, the current tracks will be eventually improved, and more tracks are going to be added as they are finished. That's why I'm including a version number with it. This one corresponds to the upcoming demo update, that will feature all the speed optimizations I'm working on right now. The only thing missing is the cover art... AM2R IS LOOKING FOR A TALENTED...

Since the last demo update, I started the transition to Game Maker Studio. There are plenty of changes in the way variables are initialized, the order of code execution, etc. Many features need to be redone from scratch, and many unexpected issues are still appearing. This was also a good opportunity to rewrite ancient code, remove workarounds and do things the proper way. As of now, the contents of the demo are accessible without crashes. Also, I was able to compile the project using a virtual machine running Ubuntu: It's running at a steady 60 FPS in a VM, so performance using real hardware should be even better. I had to remove all the extensions and DLLs that were used, and replace their functionality with native GM code. The music engine is in the works now, along with some other features. So, what does this change of compiler mean for you? - The performance is a lot better, there's no random slowdown. - It loads really fast - Possibility of ports to other pl...