Alright, don’t take this as some know-it-all jackass trying to make you look bad. Don’t see it as me complaining about the work you’re doing. Just see it as a set of reminders - many of which have already been said throughout other threads.
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Mother Brain was on Zebes. She was blown up. Twice. There isn’t even a Zebes any more, and the fragmented chunks left certainly wouldn’t be suitable as ‘miniature planets.’ Everyone and everything on Zebes is gone.
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Ridley is probably dead. He was crippled in the first game, turned into some weird cloaking cyborg (Edit: I just say cyborg because of the sound, I really have no idea if there’s anything different about him)thing in Super Metroid (I am ignoring the 3D games, more on that in a bit), and then was killed again. His frozen corpse was put on a research satellite, taken over by a parasite, and then annihilated.
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They pretty much gave up on trying to interweave the Prime series with the 2D games. The whole story in the 2D series is that there’s a lack of Metroids, and you’re trying to kill them off or find some way to make them less of a threat. In the Prime series, there’s an abundance of Metroids, and they’re just kind of annoying. The Pirates look different, you go to different places, etc. There are a few mentions here and there in Prime, but aside from those (which look to have been added in solely to give some sort of connection), just about everything’s different. Prime 2 has almost no relation to any of the 2D games - they kind of gave up on that relationship around that point. To Clairify, Metroid Prime was originally the title given to a Metroid game which revolved around a metroid known as Metroid Prime. The game loosely (loosely) followed the 2D series. Later, they decided that Metroid Prime would be the series. Even though Metroid Prime 2: Echoes had no Metroid Prime in it, it was part of the series. Yes, Metroid Prime is supposed to take place in the same scheme, but it follows a different storyline. In the 2D games, Samus must try to (a) kill off all the Metroids then (b) solve the mystery behind their sudden appearance on BSL. In Metroid Prime and 2, the whole story is about following the Space Pirates with their Phazon fetish and now finding out what Dark Samus is up to.
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The games themselvs, as one person pointed out, should be original. Calling your game Super Metroid Prime Fusion Hunters 2 Zero Mission Echoes, The Return of Samus [First Hunt] is not original. The names in each of the games was there for a reason, so give your game a name that pertains to what you’re game is about. Metroid Redemption is a good example of this. The game is about redemption. Aside form P2D and possibly a few others that are actually recreating or expressing the same story revolving around Metroid Prime (the Metroid itself), the games shouldn’t have the title ‘Prime.’
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Again, this was already pointed out by another user. Don’t dream too big. If you do, your game will come out bad. Think about the story, build an engine, and then slowly start to put together your game. Your game will suck if you don’t think it through. Come up with a good system like P2D has. I admit that I’m not entirely fond of it at the moment, but what you see here is only a demo of what they’re going to have. Take out the bugs, and you have a very good control system. If your game’s players can’t control the height of the jump, the rate of fire, or even the coordination of their own movements, you have a bad game. I’m sorry, but you have to admit it - if all the Metroid games thus far had controls like what I just mentioned, no one would have bought them. Also, no midi. Midi is bad. If you have to use midi, just don’t have any music. You need an example? Listen to this (direct link to MP3) and then these.
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You suck at pixel art? Well, that’s too bad. So do a lot of people. Just have someone give you a bit of help! There are people out there who define fun as creating pixel art. The same goes for enemies and maps. One guy can have a good and original ([b]original[/b], enemies from the previous games are great, but come up with something new) idea for an enemy or map, another guy can have the skill to draw it, and a third guy can have the time to turn it into useable material for your game. All you have to do is ask them.
b: I just noticed this. There are a few minor problems with it, but this is exactly what I mean when I say ‘good control system.’ This is incredible compared to a lot of what I’ve seen. It’s almost as good as Metroid Fusion or Metroid: Zero Mission - it can be just as good with a little tweaking.
I’ve played Metroid Legends, and I’ll honestly say that I didn’t like it. Why? It felt like it was thrown together. The same goes for Metroid Redemption and Metroid Legends 2, but to a lesser extent. Last Escape, however, has a very intuitive control system that well imiates first-party Metroid games.
I mean no offense to the creators of Metroid Redemption and Metroid Legends (2), but I have to be honest about my opinion.
(Edited): When I say originality, I don’t expect you to come up with a completely new storyline. Just get some new enemies enemies and a good flow. For example this is an enemy that you’ve probably never seen before. The tileset, not including the background, is modified to some extent. Rather than just getting the sprites, I even edited a few of them so that they all appear to be lighted from the same source, though I forgot to add the lights themselves as seen here. Just pretend that there are actually lights in that picture.
This picture is another example where the lighting all matches pretty well. All the ‘surface’ art is lit, but anything beyond is dark, suggesting a low level of atmosphere. This picture however, isn’t so good (same guy?). The lighting of the room itself suggests an ambient cool, white light. However, the monitors suggest a more radiant hot light coming from either up or down depending on which one you look at. The monitor tiles/sprites are 16bit as well, so they don’t even really fit well with the other tiles. This can be fixed with a nice retooling, but whatever.
If you look back at that picture that I made, you’ll notice that huge thing taking up most of the screen. I did not make that. I spent around five minutes editing a completely irrelevant sprite to make it fit generally with the art style of Metroid. It came originally from a Sonic game. Another ten minutes and I, despite having relatively little skill in spriting, could have made it look ten times better.
Using 16bit Kraid, a 32bit Ridley, 32bit Samus, and a melange of 16bit and 32bit tiles that everyone here has seen before doesn’t create a good game. Giant hulking robots, however, do.
(Edited): Also, make the language fitting and rid your game of grammatical errors and incoherence. If you say “well i liek that idea lol” here, no one cares. However, you don’t see that too often in games. Why? They’re trying to create a realistic atmosphere for you to escape to. I played one game here, and it said that Earth was orbiting around the Milky Way (or something along those lines). Being as it was a demo, this is fine. Just don’t let errors like that get into the final game. Beside that, make sure you use words properly. Don’t call something a “meteor” when it’s a “meteorite.”
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I have another quick picture. This title screen isn’t very good. In fact, it’s just bad. But at least it looks better than Super Metroid Prime Fusion… [First Hunt].
Also, use imageshack. They’re just better than whoever else you have.
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In conclusion, I’ll make an example. I have created (Edit: Not really, just as an example) a game based off of Metroid. I’m not good with names, so I’ll give that job to the people on this board. I’m also pretty bad with pixel art, so I’ll send off for people to make a spritesheet that has what I’m looking for. I naturally prefer to do this rather than copying everything from the other games. I’m kind of new at coding, in fact I can barely do any coding. Rather than trying to do it all on my own, I ask for help or wait for something that I can use (such as seen at Metroid Classic or Super Metroid Classic) to make my game. I can’t write a story worth crap, so I tell someone what I’m trying to convey and they craft it into a coherent tale. See? I can’t do anything at all, yet I just went well on my way to creating a Metroid game.
However, this doesn’t mean that you should actually be that lazy. You need to have some real contribution in your own game. If you come and tell everyone you have this great concept, that’s not going to cut it. You need to be willing to work on it. If you say “Wouldn’t it be cool if we had a game where Kraid and Ridley combined and you had to fight them?” you can’t expect much. That’s not even a very good idea, no matter how ‘cool’ one person thinks it sounds. If you instead come by with all the basic artwork, music, sound-effects, story, and such done, you’ll get somewhere. If you can come up with all that, finding a team to code it won’t be a hard thing to do.
One last time, just about everything here has been said by other members on the board. I just consolidated it. And remember, if you find that your game looks like this, it’s time to start re-thinking your strategy.