Bass Abyss 1.0 Beta 2 – Samus Aiming!

by IRA

By the time you read this Metroid Other M should be already on stores. To celebrate this, in this update of Bass Abyss I decided to give Samus a new set of moves. Specifically the ability to aim! Bass can shot in seven directions. Well, Samus now has the full eight directions set, and this applies to all her current weapons.

Aiming doesn’t work exactly like with Bass. Samus doesn’t get stuck while aiming, she’s pretty agile, she can run, duck, jump while aiming. I didn’t want to dumb her down so the only way to solve this was to add yet another keyboard key. I’m always weary about adding keys because the game it gets more complex for the player to play, but oh well, there’ll be always characters with simpler moves that you can use. We have to accept that Samus leans to the direction of more complete but more complex characters to play with. Although I personally find this entertaining, I don’t pretend to make levels were you absolutely need to aim to get through.

So, how do I aim with Samus?

On land or air press SPACE BAR to aim up.

On air you can hold SPACE BAR or DOWN to aim in any eight directions.

While running, if you hold SPACE BAR or DOWN, you’ll aim up forward or down forward respectively.

If you are standing or ducking, you have to hold Z to aim. By default she’ll aim up forward. Then you can switch by pressing DOWN or SPACE BAR. This essentially is the same control scheme she had in her Game Boy Advance games (Zero Mission and Fusion).

I’ll be honest, this Z key is the move that I find the most difficult to handle, but as usual you can map the keys to the layout of your preference. I really hope this to be the very last key I add.

The level editor has also been upgraded. On request I’ve added a good batch of enemies since the last time. I’m not going to spoil the full list but thanks to Scorpion there 4 new maps where you can check them all. The levels are very well designed and entertaining. To access them just go to the Custom Level section of the game’s main menu. They are the first four ones at the top of the list.

  • Factor 2 – Scavenger Hunt
  • Factor 3 – Floor S
  • Factor 4 – Sector 0
  • Factor 6 – Ground Zero

Here are some pics for Samus in one of the new custom levels!

Although I’m still more focused in code clean up and reorganization, the next update shouldn’t take this long. That FIFA World Cup sure was distracting.

Have fun!