Anyone think Prime might have been made to be broken?

2003-10-30 02:29:42 pm

I have no wish whatsoever to take any credit away from all the people who have done such amazing work on Prime but I have started wondering in the last couple of days if some of the things that are available/possible in Prime were intentionally left/put in the game. Mainly on the grounds they are so unfeasibly useful.

The Scan/dash jump and TBJ both seem incredibly convenient yet so simple (in theory) to execute I am surprised they were not picked up by game testers. Especially bearing in mind things like hovering/infinite bomb jumps were known "features" of Metroids Classic and Super. Further more some of the placements of object in the enviroments around the game like the ledge enabling the early space jump, the box, stalacmite in geothermal core and the little snowy ledge enabling you to skip the grapple beam to get the artifact (which names escapes me) at the top of phendra. Im no expert but there are certainly a preponderance of very helpful things going on.

The last thing is the whole secret world deal, I know prime is an unusual take on the large 3d roaming environment game but no other similar games in first or second person, feature secret worlds to the best of my knowledge. Even 1st genertion 3d games like Tomb Raider or Croc on PS1 or early true 3D shooters on PC had these present. Why does metroid prime have them when it is to far down the line of 3d development when none of its predecessors did? Maybe because they were a known feature of classic?

Makes me suspicous...

On a side note does anyone know if the Japanese have done any sequence breaking? I would love to know what they are down to.

Thread title:

I have no wish whatsoever to take any credit away from all the people who have done such amazing work on Prime but I have started wondering in the last couple of days if some of the things that are available/possible in Prime were intentionally left/put in the game. Mainly on the grounds they are so unfeasibly useful.

The Scan/dash jump and TBJ both seem incredibly convenient yet so simple (in theory) to execute I am surprised they were not picked up by game testers. Especially bearing in mind things like hovering/infinite bomb jumps were known "features" of Metroids Classic and Super. Further more some of the placements of object in the enviroments around the game like the ledge enabling the early space jump, the box, stalacmite in geothermal core and the little snowy ledge enabling you to skip the grapple beam to get the artifact (which names escapes me) at the top of phendra. Im no expert but there are certainly a preponderance of very helpful things going on.

The last thing is the whole secret world deal, I know prime is an unusual take on the large 3d roaming environment game but no other similar games in first or second person, feature secret worlds to the best of my knowledge. Even 1st genertion 3d games like Tomb Raider or Croc on PS1 or early true 3D shooters on PC had these present. Why does metroid prime have them when it is to far down the line of 3d development when none of its predecessors did? Maybe because they were a known feature of classic?

Makes me suspicous...

On a side note does anyone know if the Japanese have done any sequence breaking? I would love to know what they are down to.

Andrew Mills

2003-10-30 03:04:17 pm

Strategy Guide Writer

Quote from dpurdu:

I have no wish whatsoever to take any credit away from all the people who have done such amazing work on Prime but I have started wondering in the last couple of days if some of the things that are available/possible in Prime were intentionally left/put in the game. Mainly on the grounds they are so unfeasibly useful.

The Scan/dash jump and TBJ both seem incredibly convenient yet so simple (in theory) to execute I am surprised they were not picked up by game testers. Especially bearing in mind things like hovering/infinite bomb jumps were known "features" of Metroids Classic and Super. Further more some of the placements of object in the enviroments around the game like the ledge enabling the early space jump, the box, stalacmite in geothermal core and the little snowy ledge enabling you to skip the grapple beam to get the artifact (which names escapes me) at the top of phendra. Im no expert but there are certainly a preponderance of very helpful things going on.

The last thing is the whole secret world deal, I know prime is an unusual take on the large 3d roaming environment game but no other similar games in first or second person, feature secret worlds to the best of my knowledge. Even 1st genertion 3d games like Tomb Raider or Croc on PS1 or early true 3D shooters on PC had these present. Why does metroid prime have them when it is to far down the line of 3d development when none of its predecessors did? Maybe because they were a known feature of classic?

Makes me suspicous...

On a side note does anyone know if the Japanese have done any sequence breaking? I would love to know what they are down to.

Sorry to quote the whole lot, but I would have forgotten it all for answering! Embarassed

The thing with SB'ing in MP is that there HAD to be some left in it intentionally. The director of MP has already admitted that the vast majority of the team were avid SM fans, so they would have been well aware of the ability to skip items in SM etc. I too, have serious questions regarding the placement of the ledge for SJ First, but then Retro went and removed the Scan-dash VERY late in the development of the PAL version (as I have a playable PAL demo of MP where it;s still possible to do) conflicting such ideas...

SB'ing is in the blood of the series and Retro would know what injustice that would have caused if they done a "Metroid Fusion" on the game. TBJ defanitely was left in to be found, I have no doubts in my mind about that, otherwise they WOULD have removed that from the PAL version by altering the timing of the bomb refills for the PAL version if they REALLY wanted to stop it.

The "Secret Worlds" issue is also interesting, but probably explainable in the fact that they put in collision detection that they thought was sufficient and never tested EVERY single possibility of what was plausable. They DID have to release the game sometime! Although it's quite nuts what you can fit Samus onto, she can stand on some REALLY small pieces of scenery (SW 5 is a prime example).

And it's the exploitation of this that is what makes them findable (SW 2, 9 etc).

As long as they allow such stuff to be developed in MP2 we'll all be very happy fans. If they removed SB'ing completely from MP2, the outcry amoung the true fans would be insane. It's the biggest reason many fans don't like MF as much as they want to, because it forces you down a pre-determined path.

Oh, and with regards to the Japanese and SB'ing they did indeed get involved with it and came up with 3 original tricks of their own look here for the Japanese SB'ing site for MP:

http://www.ba.wakwak.com/~ykatogi/mp/

A new way to do Geo w/o Grapple, a boost version of the Furnace TBJ and how to dash-jump to waste disposal on PAL. Very clever they are. Shame the site hasn't been updated since August... :(

[quote="dpurdu"]I have no wish whatsoever to take any credit away from all the people who have done such amazing work on Prime but I have started wondering in the last couple of days if some of the things that are available/possible in Prime were intentionally left/put in the game. Mainly on the grounds they are so unfeasibly useful.

The Scan/dash jump and TBJ both seem incredibly convenient yet so simple (in theory) to execute I am surprised they were not picked up by game testers. Especially bearing in mind things like hovering/infinite bomb jumps were known "features" of Metroids Classic and Super. Further more some of the placements of object in the enviroments around the game like the ledge enabling the early space jump, the box, stalacmite in geothermal core and the little snowy ledge enabling you to skip the grapple beam to get the artifact (which names escapes me) at the top of phendra. Im no expert but there are certainly a preponderance of very helpful things going on.

The last thing is the whole secret world deal, I know prime is an unusual take on the large 3d roaming environment game but no other similar games in first or second person, feature secret worlds to the best of my knowledge. Even 1st genertion 3d games like Tomb Raider or Croc on PS1 or early true 3D shooters on PC had these present. Why does metroid prime have them when it is to far down the line of 3d development when none of its predecessors did? Maybe because they were a known feature of classic?

Makes me suspicous...

On a side note does anyone know if the Japanese have done any sequence breaking? I would love to know what they are down to.[/quote]

Sorry to quote the whole lot, but I would have forgotten it all for answering!  :oops:

The thing with SB'ing in MP is that there HAD to be some left in it intentionally. The director of MP has already admitted that the vast majority of the team were avid SM fans, so they would have been well aware of the ability to skip items in SM etc. I too, have serious questions regarding the placement of the ledge for SJ First, but then Retro went and removed the Scan-dash VERY late in the development of the PAL version (as I have a playable PAL demo of MP where it;s still possible to do) conflicting such ideas...

SB'ing is in the blood of the series and Retro would know what injustice that would have caused if they done a "Metroid Fusion" on the game. TBJ defanitely was left in to be found, I have no doubts in my mind about that, otherwise they WOULD have removed that from the PAL version by altering the timing of the bomb refills for the PAL version if they REALLY wanted to stop it.

The "Secret Worlds" issue is also interesting, but probably explainable in the fact that they put in collision detection that they thought was sufficient and never tested EVERY single possibility of what was plausable. They DID have to release the game sometime! Although it's quite nuts what you can fit Samus onto, she can stand on some REALLY small pieces of scenery (SW 5 is a prime example).

And it's the exploitation of this that is what makes them findable (SW 2, 9 etc).

As long as they allow such stuff to be developed in MP2 we'll all be very happy fans. If they removed SB'ing completely from MP2, the outcry amoung the true fans would be insane. It's the biggest reason many fans don't like MF as much as they want to, because it forces you down a pre-determined path.

Oh, and with regards to the Japanese and SB'ing they did indeed get involved with it and came up with 3 original tricks of their own look here for the Japanese SB'ing site for MP:

[url]http://www.ba.wakwak.com/~ykatogi/mp/[/url]

A new way to do Geo w/o Grapple, a boost version of the Furnace TBJ and how to dash-jump to waste disposal on PAL. Very clever they are. Shame the site hasn't been updated since August... :(

Toozin

2003-10-30 04:42:30 pm

Not impossible

just highly unlikely

Quote from Andrew Mills:

The thing with SB'ing in MP is that there HAD to be some left in it intentionally. The director of MP has already admitted that the vast majority of the team were avid SM fans, so they would have been well aware of the ability to skip items in SM etc. I too, have serious questions regarding the placement of the ledge for SJ First, but then Retro went and removed the Scan-dash VERY late in the development of the PAL version (as I have a playable PAL demo of MP where it;s still possible to do) conflicting such ideas...

Just because things are convenient doesn't mean they were intentional. There's a good deal of environmental structures in every room, and for every platform you can conveniently land on, there's 3 or 4 more that you can't.

Quote from Andrew Mills:

SB'ing is in the blood of the series and Retro would know what injustice that would have caused if they done a "Metroid Fusion" on the game. TBJ defanitely was left in to be found, I have no doubts in my mind about that, otherwise they WOULD have removed that from the PAL version by altering the timing of the bomb refills for the PAL version if they REALLY wanted to stop it.

They could have taken MANY things out of the PAL version if they really wanted to stop it, but I'm sure it would be entirely too inconvenient. In order to disable dash jumps off of scan points, they had to disable strafe jumping ENTIRELY on scan points. It's not as simple as turning something on or off. Besides, the way the bomb refresh works on the TBJ doesn't seem all that intentional to me.

Quote from Andrew Mills:

The "Secret Worlds" issue is also interesting, but probably explainable in the fact that they put in collision detection that they thought was sufficient and never tested EVERY single possibility of what was plausable. They DID have to release the game sometime! Although it's quite nuts what you can fit Samus onto, she can stand on some REALLY small pieces of scenery (SW 5 is a prime example).

And it's the exploitation of this that is what makes them findable (SW 2, 9 etc).

I'm in agreement here. Secret worlds were DEFINATELY not intended. No developer in their right mind would intentionally put a clipping glitch into a game. There's just some cracks in the walls that you can squeeze through, beyond all reason. Every game has them somewhere (Majora's Mask comes to mind as a big one, with that clip into Sakon's hideout).

Quote from Andrew Mills:

Oh, and with regards to the Japanese and SB'ing they did indeed get involved with it and came up with 3 original tricks of their own look here for the Japanese SB'ing site for MP:

http://www.ba.wakwak.com/~ykatogi/mp/

While I do commend the players for discovering some new stuff, these aren't really "original". They're variations of tricks that have already been found, that still work essentially the same way.

[quote="Andrew Mills"]
The thing with SB'ing in MP is that there HAD to be some left in it intentionally. The director of MP has already admitted that the vast majority of the team were avid SM fans, so they would have been well aware of the ability to skip items in SM etc. I too, have serious questions regarding the placement of the ledge for SJ First, but then Retro went and removed the Scan-dash VERY late in the development of the PAL version (as I have a playable PAL demo of MP where it;s still possible to do) conflicting such ideas...[/quote]

Just because things are convenient doesn't mean they were intentional. There's a good deal of environmental structures in every room, and for every platform you can conveniently land on, there's 3 or 4 more that you can't.

[quote="Andrew Mills"]
SB'ing is in the blood of the series and Retro would know what injustice that would have caused if they done a "Metroid Fusion" on the game. TBJ defanitely was left in to be found, I have no doubts in my mind about that, otherwise they WOULD have removed that from the PAL version by altering the timing of the bomb refills for the PAL version if they REALLY wanted to stop it.[/quote]

They could have taken MANY things out of the PAL version if they really wanted to stop it, but I'm sure it would be entirely too inconvenient. In order to disable dash jumps off of scan points, they had to disable strafe jumping ENTIRELY on scan points. It's not as simple as turning something on or off. Besides, the way the bomb refresh works on the TBJ doesn't seem all that intentional to me.

[quote="Andrew Mills"]
The "Secret Worlds" issue is also interesting, but probably explainable in the fact that they put in collision detection that they thought was sufficient and never tested EVERY single possibility of what was plausable. They DID have to release the game sometime! Although it's quite nuts what you can fit Samus onto, she can stand on some REALLY small pieces of scenery (SW 5 is a prime example).

And it's the exploitation of this that is what makes them findable (SW 2, 9 etc). [/quote]

I'm in agreement here. Secret worlds were DEFINATELY not intended. No developer in their right mind would intentionally put a clipping glitch into a game. There's just some cracks in the walls that you can squeeze through, beyond all reason. Every game has them somewhere (Majora's Mask comes to mind as a big one, with that clip into Sakon's hideout).

[quote="Andrew Mills"]
Oh, and with regards to the Japanese and SB'ing they did indeed get involved with it and came up with 3 original tricks of their own look here for the Japanese SB'ing site for MP:

[url]http://www.ba.wakwak.com/~ykatogi/mp/[/url]
[/quote]

While I do commend the players for discovering some new stuff, these aren't really "original". They're variations of tricks that have already been found, that still work essentially the same way.

nate

2003-10-30 07:56:37 pm

Quote:

They could have taken MANY things out of the PAL version if they really wanted to stop it, but I'm sure it would be entirely too inconvenient. In order to disable dash jumps off of scan points, they had to disable strafe jumping ENTIRELY on scan points. It's not as simple as turning something on or off. Besides, the way the bomb refresh works on the TBJ doesn't seem all that intentional to me.

i find it interesting how close the timing is for the tbj. speaking purely out of my ass, wouldn't a banks tbj be impossible if the stock refresh happened more than a second later?

Radix

2003-10-30 08:04:40 pm

Quote:

i find it interesting how close the timing is for the tbj. speaking purely out of my ass, wouldn't a banks tbj be impossible if the stock refresh happened more than a second later?

nope.... the first bomb is a waste remember? You'd just have to wait an extra second before you place bomb #2.

Yoshi348

2003-10-31 01:59:07 pm

PAGE BREAKER

Ready and willing.

9 out of 10 of the things we've done (we've? hah...) have been jumping on things you're not supposed to... with all the curvy ledges, it's hard NOT to have a few shortcuts. Then there's the L-lock jump. I'm sure the dev team knew that they couldn't stop it all, so they didn't need to purposely put some exploits in there... the harder, the better! :)

Kaotikeval

2003-11-18 12:01:03 pm

Ok, I'm pretty new to these forums. What exactly is this "secret worlds" thing I keep reading about. And especially the "clip into Sakon's hideout" in Majora's Mask.

I've played that game several times and I know what you're talking about, but how is it done?

Toozin

2003-11-18 01:24:40 pm

Not impossible

just highly unlikely

Quote from Kaotikeval:

What exactly is this "secret worlds" thing I keep reading about.

In the original Metroid and Metroid II, there was a way to glitch though the doors and make them send you to areas that shouldn't actually exist. People at the time thought they were intentional and called them secret worlds, but really they were just chunks of leftover data that sometimes resembled rooms. Now in Metroid Prime, people are finding ways to clip through the walls and exit the geometry of the rooms. They're called secret worlds as sort of tradition, but really they're just clipping glitches that you find in most every game.

Quote from Kaotikeval:

And especially the "clip into Sakon's hideout" in Majora's Mask.

I've played that game several times and I know what you're talking about, but how is it done?

Sakon's hideout has a big old stone blocking the entrance. But there are small cracks between the stone and the frame of the passage. If you roll Link into one of those cracks at the right angle and speed, he'll pop right into Sakon's hideout. Kafei will show up in there regardless of when you enter, so doing this will allow you to become Fierce Diety Link on the field by day one instead of doing the quest proper and waiting for day three.

If you want to know THAT one, equip a mask on Link and wear it. Then when you switch to Kafei, pause and put the FD mask overtop of the C button that Link's current mask is equiped on. Then when you switch back to Link, you're the Fierce Diety.

[quote="Kaotikeval"]What exactly is this "secret worlds" thing I keep reading about.[/quote]
In the original Metroid and Metroid II, there was a way to glitch though the doors and make them send you to areas that shouldn't actually exist. People at the time thought they were intentional and called them secret worlds, but really they were just chunks of leftover data that sometimes resembled rooms. Now in Metroid Prime, people are finding ways to clip through the walls and exit the geometry of the rooms. They're called secret worlds as sort of tradition, but really they're just clipping glitches that you find in most every game.
[quote="Kaotikeval"] And especially the "clip into Sakon's hideout" in Majora's Mask.

I've played that game several times and I know what you're talking about, but how is it done?[/quote]
Sakon's hideout has a big old stone blocking the entrance. But there are small cracks between the stone and the frame of the passage. If you roll Link into one of those cracks at the right angle and speed, he'll pop right into Sakon's hideout. Kafei will show up in there regardless of when you enter, so doing this will allow you to become Fierce Diety Link on the field by day one instead of doing the quest proper and waiting for day three.

If you want to know THAT one, equip a mask on Link and wear it. Then when you switch to Kafei, pause and put the FD mask overtop of the C button that Link's current mask is equiped on. Then when you switch back to Link, you're the Fierce Diety.

Faust

2003-11-18 07:02:00 pm

A game never fully goes through testing until it's released to the public. I'm sure the testers can't sit around and play for endless hours finding every hitch and glitch. So many people buy the game compared to the number of testers that finding problems post-release is common.

Plus, the game is rather long, well, not for you guys, but it's supposed to be, and they're not going to run through it a million times. They can't cover every circumstance. Like wall jumping in Super Metroid. That's a big sequence breaking maneuver and I'm sure the testers didn't have the time to wall-jump on every wall to try and get somewhere you shouldn't be so early. Sacrificing health is counter-intuitive as well but some people will do it just to get an item early.

I think games, especially Metroid, should reward the curious and dedicated player. I recently saw a video of some guy beating the first world in SMB3 in like, 5 to 7 minutes. He'd burn through a level and end with the clock at 295 or something and get a star card every time. A lot of that is skill but the placement of some of those koopas is a little too convenient to be coincidence.

Then again, it could all be coincidence and skill and if it is, then I suppose that's even more rewarding than finding a super-secret or extremely counter-intuitive trick.

A game never fully goes through testing until it's released to the public.  I'm sure the testers can't sit around and play for endless hours finding every hitch and glitch. So many people buy the game compared to the number of testers that finding problems post-release is common.

Plus, the game is rather long, well, not for you guys, but it's supposed to be, and they're not going to run through it a million times. They can't cover every circumstance.  Like wall jumping in Super Metroid.  That's a big sequence breaking maneuver and I'm sure the testers didn't have the time to wall-jump on every wall to try and get somewhere you shouldn't be so early. Sacrificing health is counter-intuitive as well but some people will do it just to get an item early.

I think games, especially Metroid, should reward the curious and dedicated player.  I recently saw a video of some guy beating the first world in SMB3 in like, 5 to 7 minutes.  He'd burn through a level and end with the clock at 295 or something and get a star card every time.  A lot of that is skill but the placement of some of those koopas is a little too convenient to be coincidence.

Then again, it could all be coincidence and skill and if it is, then I suppose that's even more rewarding than finding a super-secret or extremely counter-intuitive trick.

Kaotikeval

2003-11-18 11:10:58 pm

Cool, thanks a lot guys. I'm gonna try that out in Majora's Mask right now.