[SM] Super Metroid: Soup

Edit history:

Xaggoth: 2008-04-17 03:28:09 pm

2008-04-17 03:24:14 pm

Well, I like it so far, just got to Ridley. *sigh* I didn't bring enough items. GT was pretty frustrating too, I have 7 e-tanks and 2 reserves.

and not enough super missles to crystal flash...(Edit: Found some nearby)

Draygon was interesting, took me a little while to get a grapple kill to work.

Cardweaver

2008-04-17 03:40:15 pm

Grapple kill you say? I thought I had pretty much nixed that. Care to show how?

Acheron

2008-04-17 04:01:04 pm

Acclaimed Threshold

Constant Sorrows

I refuse to leave the wrecked ship entrance room until I figure out this very strange speed booster puzzle. I love how you've set up some of these.

Sturmvogel Prime

2008-04-17 05:16:01 pm

Phazon Vasteel Autobot

I downloaded ZSNES version 1.51 and the game still crashes

Acheron

2008-04-17 05:38:20 pm

Acclaimed Threshold

Constant Sorrows

Sturm: make sure you're using an unheadered rom. I'm using ZSnes 1.51 and it's fine.

3:41, 77%. Found all the e-tanks but only had three r-tanks. Hrmm. Good hack!

MoogleEmperor

2008-04-17 05:54:32 pm

Mmm... tasty Soup! Very good overall. Some nice puzzles, and pretty sneaky at times. It also did a good job of being tricky without just being stupidly hard.

Just finished.
3:32, 62%.

Random comments:

- Draygon was a jerk. :P I couldn't seem to beat him with 4 e-tanks, 2 reserves, and Spazer, so I went and explored. Found a pack of PBs with an IBJ some PBs and got Plasma. That did the trick. But, what's with his belly turning orange after the first shot? Even shots that don't hurt him do it...
- Probably mentioned before, but the map gets a bit bugged when you enter the Wrecked Ship. I'd guess the door's bitflag got changed by accident. That speedball puzzle at its entrance is really mysterious. I can't figure it out... I got through a few, but it didn't seem to serve a purpose.
- Does the Ice Beam exist in Soup? The Metroids make me think not...
- The Wave Beam was a little bit mean. :P Took me a minute to figure out what was going on.
- You really do like mockballs, huh? :-) Good thing I was already pretty good at them. And speedballing is fun. The Speed Booster is awesome.

Mmm... tasty Soup! Very good overall. Some nice puzzles, and pretty sneaky at times. It also did a good job of being tricky without just being stupidly hard.

Just finished.
3:32, 62%.

Random comments:
[spoiler]- Draygon was a jerk. :P I couldn't seem to beat him with 4 e-tanks, 2 reserves, and Spazer, so I went and explored. Found a pack of PBs with an IBJ some PBs and got Plasma. That did the trick. But, what's with his belly turning orange after the first shot? Even shots that don't hurt him do it...
- Probably mentioned before, but the map gets a bit bugged when you enter the Wrecked Ship. I'd guess the door's bitflag got changed by accident. That speedball puzzle at its entrance is really mysterious. I can't figure it out... I got through a few, but it didn't seem to serve a purpose.
- Does the Ice Beam exist in Soup? The Metroids make me think not...
- The Wave Beam was a little bit mean. :P Took me a minute to figure out what was going on.
- You really do like mockballs, huh?  :-) Good thing I was already pretty good at them. And speedballing is fun. The Speed Booster is awesome.[/spoiler]

Acheron

2008-04-17 06:12:43 pm

Acclaimed Threshold

Constant Sorrows

Quote from MoogleEmperor:

Mmm... tasty Soup! Very good overall. Some nice puzzles, and pretty sneaky at times. It also did a good job of being tricky without just being stupidly hard.

Just finished.
3:32, 62%.

Random comments:

- Draygon was a jerk. :P I couldn't seem to beat him with 4 e-tanks, 2 reserves, and Spazer, so I went and explored. Found a pack of PBs with an IBJ some PBs and got Plasma. That did the trick. But, what's with his belly turning orange after the first shot? Even shots that don't hurt him do it...
- Probably mentioned before, but the map gets a bit bugged when you enter the Wrecked Ship. I'd guess the door's bitflag got changed by accident. That speedball puzzle at its entrance is really mysterious. I can't figure it out... I got through a few, but it didn't seem to serve a purpose.
- Does the Ice Beam exist in Soup? The Metroids make me think not...
- The Wave Beam was a little bit mean. :P Took me a minute to figure out what was going on.
- You really do like mockballs, huh? :-) Good thing I was already pretty good at them. And speedballing is fun. The Speed Booster is awesome.

-Draygon's kind of a buggy boss in general.
-Speedball puzzle had me confused. It's actually two different puzzles. From the left side you could take it as an alternate entrance to the Wrecked Ship. From the right side, speedball right before you exit the ship and hold left as you roll through the water and you can get the upgrade there. Not sure if it works w/o gravity.
-Ice beam's cleverly hidden near the grapple. You'll need to figure out a complicated speedball puzzle to get it.

[quote="MoogleEmperor"]
Mmm... tasty Soup! Very good overall. Some nice puzzles, and pretty sneaky at times. It also did a good job of being tricky without just being stupidly hard.

Just finished.
3:32, 62%.

Random comments:
[spoiler]- Draygon was a jerk. :P I couldn't seem to beat him with 4 e-tanks, 2 reserves, and Spazer, so I went and explored. Found a pack of PBs with an IBJ some PBs and got Plasma. That did the trick. But, what's with his belly turning orange after the first shot? Even shots that don't hurt him do it...
- Probably mentioned before, but the map gets a bit bugged when you enter the Wrecked Ship. I'd guess the door's bitflag got changed by accident. That speedball puzzle at its entrance is really mysterious. I can't figure it out... I got through a few, but it didn't seem to serve a purpose.
- Does the Ice Beam exist in Soup? The Metroids make me think not...
- The Wave Beam was a little bit mean. :P Took me a minute to figure out what was going on.
- You really do like mockballs, huh?  :-) Good thing I was already pretty good at them. And speedballing is fun. The Speed Booster is awesome.[/spoiler]

[/quote]

[spoiler]-Draygon's kind of a buggy boss in general.
-Speedball puzzle had me confused. It's actually two different puzzles. From the left side you could take it as an alternate entrance to the Wrecked Ship. From the right side, speedball right before you exit the ship and hold left as you roll through the water and you can get the upgrade there. Not sure if it works w/o gravity.
-Ice beam's cleverly hidden near the grapple. You'll need to figure out a complicated speedball puzzle to get it.[/spoiler]

Xaggoth

2008-04-17 06:38:51 pm

I'm not about to record it since I don't have a save near it, but you wait for him to shoot gloop swooping to the right and wait inside the the enclosed turrets. If you time it right you'll be inside the blocks while he's holding you. If you're too far back you get stuck in the blocks permanently or can't shoot grapple at all, but half a block in and out on the rightmost side works just fine.

Fano7

2008-04-17 07:02:10 pm

Every Bit Counts

lol, nice. In the early patches he didn't have a way to access the turrets, but he did that so you could destroy those. He sure didn't see that comming.

DMantra

(user is banned)

2008-04-17 07:48:06 pm

Breathe in the Future, Breathe out the Past

Quote from Acheron86:

-Ice beam's cleverly hidden near the grapple. You'll need to figure out a complicated speedball puzzle to get it.

I left that area after trying to do consecutive speed springballs to the grapple room. Came close but I don't use slowdown so I left it be, if I had known a major item was there I'd have kept trying.

Acheron

2008-04-17 07:53:16 pm

Acclaimed Threshold

Constant Sorrows

Quote from DMantra:

I left that area after trying to do consecutive speed springballs to the grapple room. Came close but I don't use slowdown so I left it be, if I had known a major item was there I'd have kept trying.

I never use slowdown, though savestates are my friends; took me about five minutes of attempts with savestating to keep me from having to start over and over every time I missed. Apparently it's also much easier if you don't have gravity on at the time.

Black Telomeres

Edit history:

Black Telomeres: 2008-04-17 08:24:10 pm

2008-04-17 08:01:39 pm

Quote from Cardweaver:

Well.... that never happened in testing. What exactly did you do to make that happen?

Had a DraygonGlobule on me, ran up into that corner just as he grabbed me. He can't get out since he tries to move diagonally.

Quote from Cardweaver:

And I could've sworn I fixed that. Well Crap. I'll see what I can do, but it might take a bit seeing as I have to work most of today. If anyone could tell me what the scroll PLM's index and index2 would have to be in order for it to scroll left in that room, I'd be very appreciative.

Couldn't you just use the scroll editor to turn those screens green? Or is there some purpose for them being red until you hit a scroll PLM?

I also thought there was an issue with the giant metroid room but CC solved it.

CaptainCanada

2008-04-17 08:11:30 pm

Finished. 3:21, 51%

Quote from Black Telomeres:

Also, you can get stuck at the giant metroid (I assume that was sort of the intention?) if you don't have a reserve tank or a save state from soon before the room. Luckily I had some reserves. Never used the manual energy recharge before now though.

Why not just run and jump through the blocks?

Xaggoth

Edit history:

Xaggoth: 2008-04-17 08:26:46 pm

2008-04-17 08:18:41 pm

3:18
57%

Never did get icebeam. ~~How do you break those booster blocks in the grapple beam room?~~

Had a funny ridley fight, right before I crystal flash, he grabs me while I'm morphed and suicides. I'm left at next to zero life and scramble to the top and stay there while the acid drains.

Aside from having to do a billion mock and speed balls (which make me have to use the laptop keyboard instead of this usb), the only annoying thing with my GT fight. I had 5 e-tanks and 1 or 2 reserves and he would almost never drop any life. Fun hack, since it's 82% I never knew what rooms I was supposed to get into.

Black Telomeres

2008-04-17 08:22:24 pm

Quote from CaptainCanada:

Why not just run and jump through the blocks?

Yeah that works, somehow I didn't think of that. I guess I was used to all the other puzzles in the hack which required a takeoff SB.

Black Telomeres

2008-04-17 09:01:57 pm

2:41 39%

Besides the added tedium of some more mundane things and Ridley/Draygon (which were just ridiculously out of balance with the rest of the hack =P), it was actually surprisingly easy for a tricks hack. The mockball and speedball puzzles were interesting though. You could probably make a pretty nice hack if you left behind the halfhack format.

Cardweaver

2008-04-17 09:50:55 pm

Quote from MoogleEmperor:

[spoiler]- Draygon was a jerk. :P I couldn't seem to beat him with 4 e-tanks, 2 reserves, and Spazer, so I went and explored. Found a pack of PBs with an IBJ some PBs and got Plasma. That did the trick. But, what's with his belly turning orange after the first shot? Even shots that don't hurt him do it...

Where is this that you got early pbs? I thought I had the area pretty well covered as far as SB's, and none of my playtesters found pbs...

Quote from Acheron86:

I never use slowdown, though savestates are my friends; took me about five minutes of attempts with savestating to keep me from having to start over and over every time I missed. Apparently it's also much easier if you don't have gravity on at the time.

Very much easier without gravity.

Quote from Black Telomeres:

Couldn't you just use the scroll editor to turn those screens green? Or is there some purpose for them being red until you hit a scroll PLM?

They were blue scrolls, thats why I don't know what the problem is. I tried switching them to green, but that also doesn't work. If you take a look in SMILE, everything should work, but it doesn't.

In other news, I'm glad that the feedback is generally good. I did notice that most of you have quite low percents, which could explain some of the trouble you're having with the later bosses. After getting pbs, almost every item becomes available, and after GT, every item is available, you just have to look.

[quote="MoogleEmperor"]
[spoiler]- Draygon was a jerk. :P I couldn't seem to beat him with 4 e-tanks, 2 reserves, and Spazer, so I went and explored. Found a pack of PBs with an IBJ some PBs and got Plasma. That did the trick. But, what's with his belly turning orange after the first shot? Even shots that don't hurt him do it...
[/quote]

Where is this that you got early pbs? I thought I had the area pretty well covered as far as SB's, and none of my playtesters found pbs...

[quote="Acheron86"]
I never use slowdown, though savestates are my friends; took me about five minutes of attempts with savestating to keep me from having to start over and over every time I missed. Apparently it's also much easier if you don't have gravity on at the time.
[/quote]

Very much easier without gravity.

[quote="Black Telomeres"]

Couldn't you just use the scroll editor to turn those screens green? Or is there some purpose for them being red until you hit a scroll PLM?

[/quote]

They were blue scrolls, thats why I don't know what the problem is. I tried switching them to green, but that also doesn't work. If you take a look in SMILE, everything should work, but it doesn't.

In other news, I'm glad that the feedback is generally good. I did notice that most of you have quite low percents, which could explain some of the trouble you're having with the later bosses. After getting pbs, almost every item becomes available, and after GT, [i]every[/i] item is available, you just have to look.

playerman1230

2008-04-17 09:52:04 pm

Hated by all

So you're saying once we find one item, we can find all items?

Black Telomeres

Edit history:

Black Telomeres: 2008-04-17 10:13:56 pm

2008-04-17 10:10:01 pm

Quote from Cardweaver:

They were blue scrolls, thats why I don't know what the problem is. I tried switching them to green, but that also doesn't work. If you take a look in SMILE, everything should work, but it doesn't.

Move all scroll PLMs that the player could possibly walk through out of the play area (unless they're hiding something I guess) and also check the scroll value imbedded in the door that leads to that room (last value in the door editor) and set that to 0000 if there is one. If that doesn't solve it, nothing will.

Quote from Cardweaver:

I did notice that most of you have quite low percents, which could explain some of the trouble you're having with the later bosses. After getting pbs, almost every item becomes available, and after GT, every item is available, you just have to look.

Well, I think the issue is, when designing boss difficulty, you can't really expect that the player is going to go back through the whole game searching for upgrades so they can have close to the amount you want for bosses and you also have to allow for the fact that they may miss some of the more well hidden ones even if they do (like that e-tank in the ceiling near the reserve tank speedball puzzle in Norfair). They're always going to want to just press forward with what they have currently (and since they don't have to search for the bosses and thus end up finding side items in the process, that's all the easier to do).

[quote="Cardweaver"]

They were blue scrolls, thats why I don't know what the problem is. I tried switching them to green, but that also doesn't work. If you take a look in SMILE, everything should work, but it doesn't.
[/quote]

Move all scroll PLMs that the player could possibly walk through out of the play area (unless they're hiding something I guess) and also check the scroll value imbedded in the door that leads to that room (last value in the door editor) and set that to 0000 if there is one. If that doesn't solve it, nothing will.

[quote="Cardweaver"]
I did notice that most of you have quite low percents, which could explain some of the trouble you're having with the later bosses. After getting pbs, almost every item becomes available, and after GT, [i]every[/i] item is available, you just have to look.
[/quote]

Well, I think the issue is, when designing boss difficulty, you can't really expect that the player is going to go back through the whole game searching for upgrades so they can have close to the amount you want for bosses and you also have to allow for the fact that they may miss some of the more well hidden ones even if they do (like that e-tank in the ceiling near the reserve tank speedball puzzle in Norfair). They're always going to want to just press forward with what they have currently (and since they don't have to search for the bosses and thus end up finding side items in the process, that's all the easier to do).

MoogleEmperor

2008-04-17 10:25:31 pm

I got the early PBs from the top of the Maridia-Crateria elevator. I cleared out enough of the Rippers to let me IBJ to the top; looked like it intended you to have the Ice Beam to get up there. (Though, wouldn't that let you get it before Draygon anyway?)

Acheron

2008-04-17 10:29:39 pm

Acclaimed Threshold

Constant Sorrows

Quote from Black Telomeres:

Quote from Cardweaver:

I did notice that most of you have quite low percents, which could explain some of the trouble you're having with the later bosses. After getting pbs, almost every item becomes available, and after GT, every item is available, you just have to look.

Well, I think the issue is, when designing boss difficulty, you can't really expect that the player is going to go back through the whole game searching for upgrades so they can have close to the amount you want for bosses and you also have to allow for the fact that they may miss some of the more well hidden ones even if they do (like that e-tank in the ceiling near the reserve tank speedball puzzle in Norfair). They're always going to want to just press forward with what they have currently (and since they don't have to search for the bosses and thus end up finding side items in the process, that's all the easier to do).

I always item farm before taking on bosses in any hack. Guess it's just me? If you bite off more than you can chew because you aren't looking hard for items, I think you've brought that on yourself.

On the flip side, I don't think it'd be fair to expect a player to have every item available either. Besides Draygon I didn't really feel like I was ever in trouble, so I think Soup wasn't too far off the mark on this one.

Actually, my playtesters for Aegis are given no help in item hunting and they find about half of the available goods, and that's what I'm tuning the challenge for. That's about what the original SM did... if you found about half of the upgrades available, the bosses were generally tough but not brutal. Of course we're all so used to fighting those bosses now that we can beat them with miniscule upgrades, but that's why I'm avoiding recycling bosses for Aegis.

[quote="Black Telomeres"]
[quote="Cardweaver"]
I did notice that most of you have quite low percents, which could explain some of the trouble you're having with the later bosses. After getting pbs, almost every item becomes available, and after GT, [i]every[/i] item is available, you just have to look.
[/quote]

Well, I think the issue is, when designing boss difficulty, you can't really expect that the player is going to go back through the whole game searching for upgrades so they can have close to the amount you want for bosses and you also have to allow for the fact that they may miss some of the more well hidden ones even if they do (like that e-tank in the ceiling near the reserve tank speedball puzzle in Norfair). They're always going to want to just press forward with what they have currently (and since they don't have to search for the bosses and thus end up finding side items in the process, that's all the easier to do).
[/quote]

I always item farm before taking on bosses in any hack. Guess it's just me? If you bite off more than you can chew because you aren't looking hard for items, I think you've brought that on yourself.

On the flip side, I don't think it'd be fair to expect a player to have [i]every[/i] item available either. Besides Draygon I didn't really feel like I was ever in trouble, so I think Soup wasn't too far off the mark on this one.

Actually, my playtesters for Aegis are given no help in item hunting and they find about half of the available goods, and that's what I'm tuning the challenge for. That's about what the original SM did... if you found about half of the upgrades available, the bosses were generally tough but not brutal. Of course we're all so used to fighting those bosses now that we can beat them with miniscule upgrades, but that's why I'm avoiding recycling bosses for Aegis.

Cardweaver

2008-04-17 10:52:19 pm

Quote from MoogleEmperor:

I got the early PBs from the top of the Maridia-Crateria elevator. I cleared out enough of the Rippers to let me IBJ to the top; looked like it intended you to have the Ice Beam to get up there. (Though, wouldn't that let you get it before Draygon anyway?)

I cannot believe I let that open!

New patch is up, and I request that if any of you decide to make a TAS, you use the new version, as the the early pbs would pretty much ruin the rest of the game order after grapple.

Black Telomeres

2008-04-17 10:58:01 pm

Quote from Acheron86:

I always item farm before taking on bosses in any hack. Guess it's just me?

There are some that do it and some that don't. It's much like grinding before bosses in RPGs. Some do it and some don't, but you shouldn't really be required to grind at set points or else the challenge is unbalanced. The game should flow and be structured in such a way that you pick up what you need naturally as you go. Otherwise it leads to the player going through a lot of managable if difficult rooms and then finding out that the boss basically physically requires around 3-4 more e-tanks than s/he has and being forced to backtrack back through all that stuff, find e-tanks and do it again. Although thanks to save states, that isn't really necessary. But then we just call it a "loadstate" fight. grin new

Quote from Acheron86:

Actually, my playtesters for Aegis are given no help in item hunting and they find about half of the available goods, and that's what I'm tuning the challenge for. That's about what the original SM did... if you found about half of the upgrades available, the bosses were generally tough but not brutal. Of course we're all so used to fighting those bosses now that we can beat them with miniscule upgrades, but that's why I'm avoiding recycling bosses for Aegis.

Well in the original SM, when going through the game in most of the obviously intended routes, you'd typically end up with around 5-7 e-tanks by Ridley, which is more than enough to kill him without too much trouble. I use Ridley as an example simply because he's basically the only boss in SM that could be considered that hard. SM is probably tilted a bit in favor of the player as far as this goes which is why people perceive it as not too difficult a game. However, I'm sure while going through most hacks in that fashion, including this one, it'd probably be more off-balance. Although typically that's just because they're aimed at either much more experienced players, godlike players or masochists, depending on the difficulty. Though usually they're balanced so the entire game is insanely hard, rather than just a few points, that's sort of the difference.

Quote from Cardweaver:

I cannot believe I let that open!

New patch is up, and I request that if any of you decide to make a TAS, you use the new version, as the the early pbs would pretty much ruin the rest of the game order after grapple.

Aw why hate on sequence breaks? =(

[quote="Acheron86"]
I always item farm before taking on bosses in any hack. Guess it's just me?[/quote]

There are some that do it and some that don't. It's much like grinding before bosses in RPGs. Some do it and some don't, but you shouldn't really be required to grind at set points or else the challenge is unbalanced. The game should flow and be structured in such a way that you pick up what you need naturally as you go. Otherwise it leads to the player going through a lot of managable if difficult rooms and then finding out that the boss basically physically requires around 3-4 more e-tanks than s/he has and being forced to backtrack back through all that stuff, find e-tanks and do it again. Although thanks to save states, that isn't really necessary. But then we just call it a "loadstate" fight.  :grinnew:

[quote="Acheron86"]Actually, my playtesters for Aegis are given no help in item hunting and they find about half of the available goods, and that's what I'm tuning the challenge for. That's about what the original SM did... if you found about half of the upgrades available, the bosses were generally tough but not brutal. Of course we're all so used to fighting those bosses now that we can beat them with miniscule upgrades, but that's why I'm avoiding recycling bosses for Aegis.[/quote]

Well in the original SM, when going through the game in most of the obviously intended routes, you'd typically end up with around 5-7 e-tanks by Ridley, which is more than enough to kill him without too much trouble. I use Ridley as an example simply because he's basically the only boss in SM that could be considered that hard. SM is probably tilted a bit in favor of the player as far as this goes which is why people perceive it as not too difficult a game. However, I'm sure while going through most hacks in that fashion, including this one, it'd probably be more off-balance. Although typically that's just because they're aimed at either much more experienced players, godlike players or masochists, depending on the difficulty. Though usually they're balanced so the entire game is insanely hard, rather than just a few points, that's sort of the difference.

[quote="Cardweaver"]
I cannot believe I let that open!

New patch is up, and I request that if any of you decide to make a TAS, you use the new version, as the the early pbs would pretty much ruin the rest of the game order after grapple.
[/quote]

Aw why hate on sequence breaks? =(

Acheron

2008-04-17 11:05:32 pm

Acclaimed Threshold

Constant Sorrows

Quote from Black Telomeres:

Aw why hate on sequence breaks? =(

Seconded. Part of what I love about watching a speedrun or TAS is that they totally break the game in the process.

Cardweaver

2008-04-17 11:26:11 pm

I normally fully endorse SB's, but this one is fairly serious. It would be the equivalent of getting Varia after Kraid in SM: Impossible.

The second reason why I'm hating on this one is that it wouldn't take TAS conditions to perform. IBJ is fairly simple once you get the hang of it. If it required a ridiculously short charge, or something else near impossible to pull off, I'd be fine with it.