Metroid Coven - Top-down Metroid Fangame

EchoJerichoX

Edit history:

EchoJerichoX: 2012-08-13 01:52:29 pm

EchoJerichoX: 2012-08-13 01:52:17 pm

EchoJerichoX: 2012-08-13 01:50:57 pm

EchoJerichoX: 2012-08-13 01:24:33 pm

EchoJerichoX: 2012-08-08 12:11:37 am

2012-07-24 07:18:00 pm

www.MetroidCoven.com

Top-down Metroid

Want to join the development team? Visit this link: http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=468874&st=0#entry3469160

Official site: http://www.metroidcoven.com.
YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/EchoJerichoX.

=====================================================

About the project...

A little over 2 years ago, I made a very primitive engine using only the keyboard for controls, making my own terrible sprites for Samus, projectiles, and other objects, tilesets from Super Metroid and space backgrounds from... well, all over the internet. The result was a terribly clunky engine that sat on the shelf for a few years. Until...

I was digging through my old games and I came across something I had named "Metroid Coven." I was checking it out when I realized that underneath all of the terrible quality was an idea. Since my skills with GM had improved, I was ready to turn the project into my all-time-consuming hobby. Before I knew it, I had 4 or 5 people working alongside me, a paid-for website, and a primitive Tech Demo available to the public. Even since then, the project has grown immensely.

The past year or two with Coven has been a roller coaster, what with hard drives going bad, team members leaving without notice, lack of interest/motivation, lack of time and a plethora of other problems. As you can see, the project lives on, despite having stopped development 5 or 6 times for months at a time.

Today, I am working on the new AI Demo. Version 2.0 of the technical demos has brought some much-needed attention to the game's long-term issues, such as bizarre resolutions, lack of options, fullscreen, sub-par graphics, lack of content and more. 2.0 Will really bring the game to life. However, life always takes precedent, and it is at this point the project is a glorified hobby. Will I ever kill the project permanently? Never. Will I ever remove the website? Not if I can help it. Will I still accept team members in the future? Of course. Will I ever finish the game? Simply, yes. It is all a matter of time. All I can do is thank my friends, family, fans and people who have helped keep the project afloat and work on the game when I can.

With that, below are some content previews that I am sure you want to see more than a lot of text and links.
- Echo

=====================================================

More information...

You can find out more information and download links, head over to the main topic on the GMC forums (http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=510903), and at the project's official website (http://www.metroidcoven.com).

=====================================================

Screenshots...

Thread title:

[url=http://www.metroidcoven.com][img]http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/NewBanner7.png[/img][/url]

[size="24"]Top-down Metroid[/size]

[size="18"]Want to join the development team? Visit this link: [url]http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=468874&st=0#entry3469160[/url][/size]

[i][b]Official site[/b][/i]: [u][url]http://www.metroidcoven.com[/url][/u].
YouTube channel: [u][url]http://www.youtube.com/user/EchoJerichoX[/url][/u].

=====================================================

[size="24"][i][b]About the project...[/b][/i][/size]

A little over 2 years ago, I made a very primitive engine using only the keyboard for controls, making my own terrible sprites for Samus, projectiles, and other objects, tilesets from Super Metroid and space backgrounds from... well, all over the internet. The result was a terribly clunky engine that sat on the shelf for a few years. Until...

I was digging through my old games and I came across something I had named "Metroid Coven." I was checking it out when I realized that underneath all of the terrible quality was an idea. Since my skills with GM had improved, I was ready to turn the project into my all-time-consuming hobby. Before I knew it, I had 4 or 5 people working alongside me, a paid-for website, and a primitive Tech Demo available to the public. Even since then, the project has grown immensely.

The past year or two with Coven has been a roller coaster, what with hard drives going bad, team members leaving without notice, lack of interest/motivation, lack of time and a plethora of other problems. As you can see, the project lives on, despite having stopped development 5 or 6 times for months at a time.

Today, I am working on the new AI Demo. Version 2.0 of the technical demos has brought some much-needed attention to the game's long-term issues, such as bizarre resolutions, lack of options, fullscreen, sub-par graphics, lack of content and more. 2.0 Will really bring the game to life. However, life always takes precedent, and it is at this point the project is a glorified hobby. Will I ever kill the project permanently? Never. Will I ever remove the website? Not if I can help it. Will I still accept team members in the future? Of course. Will I ever finish the game? Simply, yes. It is all a matter of time. All I can do is thank my friends, family, fans and people who have helped keep the project afloat and work on the game when I can.

With that, below are some content previews that I am sure you want to see more than a lot of text and links.
- Echo

=====================================================

[size="24"][i][b]More information...[/b][/i][/size]

You can find out more information and download links, head over to the main topic on the GMC forums ([i][url]http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=510903[/url][/i]), and at the project's official website ([i][url]http://www.metroidcoven.com[/url][/i]).

=====================================================

[size="24"][i][b]Screenshots...[/b][/i][/size]

[img]http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot115.png[/img]

[img]http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot116-1.png[/img]

[img]http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot117.png[/img]

[img]http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot118.png[/img]

Quietus

2012-07-24 07:43:04 pm

Super Secret Area - Dead Ahead!

Looks pretty cool. The only obvious gripe I see so far is that the morph ball sprite is miniscule.

EchoJerichoX

2012-07-24 07:55:15 pm

www.MetroidCoven.com

If you look at the size of the ball in relation to Samus in the original games, it generally is half or less than half her size.

Tyjet66

2012-07-24 10:40:28 pm

What'd you say?

Looks quite interesting. My only complaints (granted I have not played it, only viewed the video) are that item collections seem so close together and there seems to be a lot of backtracking for more obscure... "buttons"?... I don't even know what to call them as I wasn't sure what was going on.

Overall, this looks like an amazing project and I can't wait to see more.

EchoJerichoX

2012-07-25 12:12:43 am

www.MetroidCoven.com

Thanks for the feedback and the kind words!

Being that the playable demos that I have out now are merely to show the game's (Rather premature) items and features, yes, the level was rather small and there were a lot of things that I had to cram into it. Look at how HUGE Metroid games are. Try compressing any one game into just into one large room that DOESNT include 99% of the enemies, bosses, environments, etc... It would STILL be INSANELY cluttered.

The next demo is about 10x as big and the items may still seem a little close together, but much less so. You will have a (However brief) chance to try each out before grabbing the next one. It is more a revision update with the 3.0 demo that follows it to be the final polishing and rounding out of the engine before the full game starts development. It will be closer to a Beta stage of development, as opposed to what I call an Alpha stage that we are in now.

Thanks for the posts thus far, I appreciate them all! Please keep them coming as I will answer any and all questions as honestly and fully as I can.

Thanks for the feedback and the kind words!

Being that the playable demos that I have out now are merely to show the game's (Rather premature) items and features, yes, the level was rather small and there were a lot of things that I had to cram into it. Look at how HUGE Metroid games are. Try compressing any one game into just into one large room that DOESNT include 99% of the enemies, bosses, environments, etc... It would STILL be INSANELY cluttered.

The next demo is about 10x as big and the items may still seem a little close together, but much less so. You will have a (However brief) chance to try each out before grabbing the next one. It is more a revision update with the 3.0 demo that follows it to be the final polishing and rounding out of the engine before the full game starts development. It will be closer to a Beta stage of development, as opposed to what I call an Alpha stage that we are in now.

Thanks for the posts thus far, I appreciate them all! Please keep them coming as I will answer any and all questions as honestly and fully as I can.

Quietus

2012-07-25 06:04:05 am

Super Secret Area - Dead Ahead!

Quote from EchoJerichoX:

If you look at the size of the ball in relation to Samus in the original games, it generally is half or less than half her size.

I would agree on a technical standpoint. I was looking more from an appearance view, however, and in most of the games, the size of the ball is roughly that of her head. With your character model, I'd say you could easily make the ball four times as big, and lose none of the charm.

EchoJerichoX

Edit history:

EchoJerichoX: 2012-07-25 12:19:09 pm

EchoJerichoX: 2012-07-25 12:19:04 pm

EchoJerichoX: 2012-07-25 12:19:03 pm

2012-07-25 12:12:52 pm

www.MetroidCoven.com

I MIGHT expand the overall size by 2 pixels. As it is, I designed the player to perfectly fit through 16-pixel-wide gaps. The Ball was made to fit through 8-pixel wide gaps. If I were to up the size by 2 pixels, I could keep the same collision mask and it might make a happy medium.

EchoJerichoX

2012-07-27 01:58:23 am

www.MetroidCoven.com

So, due to popular requests on other forums and my website in the past, I finally upped the Morph Ball size!

I decided to go with an 11x11 sprite, up from 7x7. It looks so much more detailed now that I decided to scale it up. It looks AWESOME in-game. Here is my full WIP sheet and then below that I put the finished products...

In the WIPs, I tried using different types of light styles. 1- and 2-pixel wide variations and I ended up settling with the outer 1-pixel wide ones.

EchoJerichoX

2012-07-30 04:20:29 pm

www.MetroidCoven.com

Copied this off my site. Just putting this little preface to show that I have acknowledged previous posts.

=======================

Most of my time was spent working at my video store (My last day is on Sunday!), packing up meat and having my going-away party. Therefore, not as much got done as I wanted, but there is still a lot to share.

The main attraction of this post is probably going to be the new Morph Balls. This was a subject of debate amongst myself and others as well as one of my longest-standing criticisms. For the longest time, I had it in my mind that the Morph Ball should always be less than half of Samus' size in any aspect - 3D, top-down and side-view. My reasoning was based heavily on my method of level design; how all of my tilesets are set to a 16x16 or 8x8 grid. In general, Samus is meant to fit in gaps no smaller than 13 pixels wide. As a result, I ended up making the Morph Ball insanely tiny, rather than making it the proper size and then using a 7x7 collision mask. I fought and fought for this to the point where I now feel silly about having fought it in the first place. Increasing the size of the sprite catered to three major things that I had in mind from the start when it came to the player sprites:

1: Simplifying the level design by making Morph Ball tunnels 8 pixels wide.
2: Upping the size of the player sprites allows room for more detail on the sprite itself.
3: Showing a sense of depth by having parts of the scenery overlap the player.

To explain better, look at the following sample:

The purple circles are Samus' actual collision masks. This gives you a sense of depth when you are brushing against walls by making parts of the walls overlap the player - particularly in exterior environments, like in these screenshots:

http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot100-6.png
http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot101-7.png

All this explanation is just postponing what you are all probably wanting to see, so here are the new sprites:

They look excellent, but I might do some more palette tweaking with the Gravity, Phazon and Corruption variations to help give a little more contrast to the edges, in particular. I also used some of Rundas45's side-view Morph Ball sprites for the HUD element. The Corruption one is a placeholder edit and will definitely change. Palettes are slightly different from the actual in-game Morph Balls, but not far. Also, realistically, the Morph Balls in the HUD element don't reflect the top-down sprites, which is something I will fix down the road. For now, these are very adequate placeholders.

Moving on, I have been experimenting a bit with a new tileset. I aptly named it, "Shrubbery" and its purpose is to further attempt to detail the environments with plants and the like. The only trouble is that basically all of the tiles are supposed to be placed on walls. Thankfully, I am in the process of having them converted into original top-down works. Here are a couple screenshots for you to look at so please leave a little feedback:

http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot100-5.png
http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot101-6.png
http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot102-6.png

You can see that I also made the lighting system a lot darker so the lights themselves serve a much better purpose and actually make a difference when you play. I am still tweaking it a little. Other than that, the main things you should be eyeing are the fern-looking plants on the walls and the vines on the walls inside caves.

Veni Mortem has made some nice animations for the ice barriers. One is a shattering animation and one is a melting animation. I have not fully implemented them in-game yet, but the animations are pretty much done. Here they are:

The above are crappy .GIF files, so the transparency is a little messed up and the animation speed is off, but there they are.

Finally, as of late I have been making some new destructible block sprites, such as the Bomb Blocks, Missile Blocks, etc. I will put those up when everything is done. I should have even more stuff to show since I will be re-doing the 8x8 blocks and then making new 16x16 ones.

Some other changes I have made lately include making secrets break more traditionally like in the original games (Breaking one tile to reveal an item under it), adding a different block-break animation and many other things. Other than that, almost all of the sprites for the beams have been redone once again. Here are a couple screenshots from some of the beams that underwent drastic changes:

http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot103-3.png
http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot107-2.png
http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot109-1.png

From left to right: Regular Plasma Beam, charged Nova Beam and charged Dark Beam.

In this next week, I intend to add the ability to draw in pickups by using the Charge Beam and perhaps adding some new mechanic to the Morph Balls to give the player more of a reason to use it outside of going through tunnels. I have tossed around the idea of removing the Screw Bomb and putting the Boost Ball in. Please send me your thoughts on this.

On the topic of sending things, I am no longer using the "metroidcoven.com" email. Please use [url]echojerichox@gmail.com[/url] from now on.

That will be all for now... and wow, this update is probably up there with some of the longest I have done!
- Echo

Copied this off my site. Just putting this little preface to show that I have acknowledged previous posts.

=======================

Most of my time was spent working at my video store (My last day is on Sunday!), packing up meat and having my going-away party. Therefore, not as much got done as I wanted, but there is still a lot to share.

The main attraction of this post is probably going to be the new Morph Balls. This was a subject of debate amongst myself and others as well as one of my longest-standing criticisms. For the longest time, I had it in my mind that the Morph Ball should always be less than half of Samus' size in any aspect - 3D, top-down and side-view. My reasoning was based heavily on my method of level design; how all of my tilesets are set to a 16x16 or 8x8 grid. In general, Samus is meant to fit in gaps no smaller than 13 pixels wide. As a result, I ended up making the Morph Ball insanely tiny, rather than making it the proper size and then using a 7x7 collision mask. I fought and fought for this to the point where I now feel silly about having fought it in the first place. Increasing the size of the sprite catered to three major things that I had in mind from the start when it came to the player sprites:

1: Simplifying the level design by making Morph Ball tunnels 8 pixels wide.
2: Upping the size of the player sprites allows room for more detail on the sprite itself.
3: Showing a sense of depth by having parts of the scenery overlap the player.

To explain better, look at the following sample:

[img]http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/PlayerMasksExample.png[/img]

The purple circles are Samus' actual collision masks. This gives you a sense of depth when you are brushing against walls by making parts of the walls overlap the player - particularly in exterior environments, like in these screenshots:

[url]http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot100-6.png[/url]
[url]http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot101-7.png[/url]

All this explanation is just postponing what you are all probably wanting to see, so here are the new sprites:

[img]http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/CurrentMorphBallswithHUDElement.png[/img]

They look excellent, but I might do some more palette tweaking with the Gravity, Phazon and Corruption variations to help give a little more contrast to the edges, in particular. I also used some of Rundas45's side-view Morph Ball sprites for the HUD element. The Corruption one is a placeholder edit and will definitely change. Palettes are slightly different from the actual in-game Morph Balls, but not far. Also, realistically, the Morph Balls in the HUD element don't reflect the top-down sprites, which is something I will fix down the road. For now, these are very adequate placeholders.

Moving on, I have been experimenting a bit with a new tileset. I aptly named it, "Shrubbery" and its purpose is to further attempt to detail the environments with plants and the like. The only trouble is that basically all of the tiles are supposed to be placed on walls. Thankfully, I am in the process of having them converted into original top-down works. Here are a couple screenshots for you to look at so please leave a little feedback:

[url]http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot100-5.png[/url]
[url]http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot101-6.png[/url]
[url]http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot102-6.png[/url]

You can see that I also made the lighting system a lot darker so the lights themselves serve a much better purpose and actually make a difference when you play. I am still tweaking it a little. Other than that, the main things you should be eyeing are the fern-looking plants on the walls and the vines on the walls inside caves.

Veni Mortem has made some nice animations for the ice barriers. One is a shattering animation and one is a melting animation. I have not fully implemented them in-game yet, but the animations are pretty much done. Here they are:

[img]http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/IceMeltv1.gif[/img]
[img]http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/IceShatterv1.gif[/img]

The above are crappy .GIF files, so the transparency is a little messed up and the animation speed is off, but there they are.

Finally, as of late I have been making some new destructible block sprites, such as the Bomb Blocks, Missile Blocks, etc. I will put those up when everything is done. I should have even more stuff to show since I will be re-doing the 8x8 blocks and then making new 16x16 ones.

Some other changes I have made lately include making secrets break more traditionally like in the original games (Breaking one tile to reveal an item under it), adding a different block-break animation and many other things. Other than that, almost all of the sprites for the beams have been redone once again. Here are a couple screenshots from some of the beams that underwent drastic changes:

[url]http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot103-3.png[/url]
[url]http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot107-2.png[/url]
[url]http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o24/Arclese/screenshot109-1.png[/url]

From left to right: Regular Plasma Beam, charged Nova Beam and charged Dark Beam.

In this next week, I intend to add the ability to draw in pickups by using the Charge Beam and perhaps adding some new mechanic to the Morph Balls to give the player more of a reason to use it outside of going through tunnels. I have tossed around the idea of removing the Screw Bomb and putting the Boost Ball in. Please send me your thoughts on this.

On the topic of sending things, I am no longer using the "metroidcoven.com" email. Please use [url]echojerichox@gmail.com[/url] from now on.

That will be all for now... and wow, this update is probably up there with some of the longest I have done!
- Echo

EchoJerichoX

2012-08-06 12:43:31 pm

www.MetroidCoven.com

New update up on new site!: http://www.metroidcoven.com/en/news2.php.

Going to be solely putting updates on the site now, since I would have to make forum posts on 6 other forums.

Kitsune_Phoenix

Edit history:

Kitsune_Phoenix: 2013-04-26 09:47:42 pm

2013-04-26 09:47:28 pm

Ta'kaya as "Teyla the Demiphoenix"

Nice! I remember this project from a while back and I can't recall if I made an account on it. If I have, the username has been lost to the ravages of time.

EchoJerichoX

2014-01-13 01:53:12 am

www.MetroidCoven.com

Hey guys. Long-time no update! Just popping by one last time to let you guys know that I am exclusively posting updates on my website, YouTube channel and on Twitter from now on. I may look into just ONE forum to post on (Probably the one that is most active). Keep an eye on my website for that.

You can find my website here: http://www.metroidcoven.com/en/news.php
You can find my YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/user/EchoJerichoX
You can find me on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/EchoJerichoX

Lately, I have been trying to push most of the bigger features of the next demo out, like the new death animation, new items, and running the game through some serious optimizations. I am hoping to start putting out some real content this year. I am even starting to consider throwing out a lot of the feature bloat in the game and some pages on the website if it means I can speed up development and pull the game out of development hell.

However, I am in need a little bit of help, so if you are interested, I will be updating and bumping this thread in the very near future: http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=468874

If you guys aren't interested in my project, then you might at least be interested in a "Let's Play / Review" series I'm experimenting with that is specifically focused on fan games. I'll be posting the first one for Metroid: Father Hunt very soon.

If you have any questions for me, I sadly won't be able to answer them here as I am trying to cut back on non-development-oriented activities as possible. That means trying to reduce the amount of forums I keep track of and post on. You can, however, shoot me a question on Twitter, on the Shoutbox on my website, or by email at echojerichox@gmail.com.

The longer I type this out, the more I sound like a TV commercial, but I am really just trying to get some closure with each forum and provide an explanation as to what's been going on and where to keep following me.

Thanks for any support you guys choose to lend me :)
- Echo

Hey guys. Long-time no update! Just popping by one last time to let you guys know that I am exclusively posting updates on my website, YouTube channel and on Twitter from now on. I may look into just ONE forum to post on (Probably the one that is most active). Keep an eye on my website for that.

You can find my website here: [url]http://www.metroidcoven.com/en/news.php[/url]
You can find my YouTube channel here: [url]https://www.youtube.com/user/EchoJerichoX[/url]
You can find me on Twitter here: [url]https://twitter.com/EchoJerichoX[/url]

Lately, I have been trying to push most of the bigger features of the next demo out, like the new death animation, new items, and running the game through some serious optimizations. I am hoping to start putting out some real content this year. I am even starting to consider throwing out a lot of the feature bloat in the game and some pages on the website if it means I can speed up development and pull the game out of development hell.

However, I am in need a little bit of help, so if you are interested, I will be updating and bumping this thread in the very near future: [url]http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=468874[/url]

If you guys aren't interested in my project, then you might at least be interested in a "Let's Play / Review" series I'm experimenting with that is specifically focused on fan games. I'll be posting the first one for Metroid: Father Hunt very soon.

If you have any questions for me, I sadly won't be able to answer them here as I am trying to cut back on non-development-oriented activities as possible. That means trying to reduce the amount of forums I keep track of and post on. You can, however, shoot me a question on Twitter, on the Shoutbox on my website, or by email at echojerichox@gmail.com.

The longer I type this out, the more I sound like a TV commercial, but I am really just trying to get some closure with each forum and provide an explanation as to what's been going on and where to keep following me.

Thanks for any support you guys choose to lend me :)
- Echo