[EXPANSION] Mega Man Powered Up [Release v1f]

[NemZ]

3) Oil Slide over water

...huh, that's one I didn't know about.  Interesting.

[Myroc]

PU is not a canon mega man game; the main focus of PU was a graphical update / revision of Mega Man 1. This expansion does not capture that  - mainly, the graphic update, instead just adding the other features of PU on at a whim. In order to actually capture the purpose of PU (the game) a new graphical style would be necessary. 3D models would be an example of a new graphical style. I am not referring to simply textures - the expansion is more "Mega Man 1 Deluxe" than Powered Up for this reason.

The original intent of the Powered Up rerelease of Mega Man 1 on the PSP was, which was retroactively changing MM1 to be more consistent with today's standard Mega Man game. This is not the intention of this expansion. This expansion exists to expand upon and improve the core gameplay, using the Powered Up weapons and items, as well as changing elements in the vanilla game that we feel could be improved. Surely you should be familiar with this since you're in the same situation with KY Classes vs YD Classes.

-Behavior of custom weapons. Super Bass Buster and Proto Strike are both simply edits of existing weapons; Proto Strike contains the same icon as Proto Buster and is incapable of being incorporated into DM weapon placement naturally. Both weapons are designed with the intent of being OP; or exist merely to distort Eddie's inventory. This leads to scenarios in which ONLY one person will have these weapons at a time - and usually be unstoppable.

Super Bass Buster is a gag item that is unable to be obtained in normal gameplay never will be. Proto Strike is nothing more than an easter egg that was never intended to be as stupidly powerful as it used to be.

-Multifunctional custom weapons. Stock weapons are usually one single attack, occasionally two different - such as Gyro Attack having a single gyro and a gyro split attack. Time Slow has 3, Oil Slider has 3. Oil Slider contains a double bar and consumes a generally superficial amount of ammo per use. (You could potentially argue that Burst Wrap has 3 attacks, but the two weapons above are more clear-cut in the attacks being different.) Time Slow, similar to the buster upgrades, gives an immediate advantage upon use (your opponent becomes a sloth) and the charge attack leaves enough ammo to be used again.

...so you're implying there's something wrong with weapons that possess multiple functions? There's nothing wrong with them being versatile, as long as they're not One Weapon To Rule Them All, which has never been observed in any form, whether it is in theory, personal testing, observation of real games and matches, or what have you. All the weapons do have disadvantages. Time Slow is despite the recent ammo buff still quite ammo consuming, and Oil Slider can be cumbersome to use and a good way of sending yourself into certain doom if you're not careful.

-Excessive skins. Mike has stated for alternate skins (in the core) that "one or two is fine".

I'll admit that not all of the decisions for Powered Up have been that wise in retrospect. The excessive amounts of extra skins were one of them and would be the first thing to go if I would remake this from scratch. With all due respect, however, few people have voiced discontent because of these.

-Presence of the Energy Balancer.

Energy Balancer was present in Powered Up, you were always equipped with it. I fail to see your point.

-Low quality custom textures. (Note that the MM7 textures are limited, but otherwise useable.) Certain areas of Time Man's stage, in particular the "wood" sections are not visually pleasing.

So you think the textures are ugly? Fine, that's your opinion. We have yet to see anyone agree with this, though.

-Presence of runes in multiple maps. Using runes (particularly ragerune) overly centralizes maps around it in a way that cannot be made up for.

We implemented the ragerune/hasterune gimmick into Time Man's stage as an experiment and found it to be an interesting and amusing feature. And there are several maps in the core that are overly centralized around a common gimmick as well, like, for example, Quick Man, Gravity Man, and MM7DW4. And as Mess said, this sounds more to be a personal opinion of yours.

There are probably other things that I haven't mentioned. I'm certain that the PU team is aware of all these changes and made them knowing it would be separate from the core. Galaxy brings up a good point in describing the expansion as well. Were it added to the core, PU would only add "bells and whistles" which are either designed outside of core standards or capable of going into the core by themselves.

We understand that not all of our decisions go hand to hand with what would work in the core. Our highest priority is enjoyable and interesting gameplay before core inclusion. If the latter would be possible it will just be an added bonus. I can see that one might not want everything from this expansion thrown directly into the core, there would most likely be some selective cutting.

[fortegigasgospel]

I would like to point out also, via the DM's bot apoc server, I've always seen at least one or two people on the server using some of the PU Roll skins. Hell any server I've been in that has a lot of people in it theres ussually 1 or 2 Rolls

[Hallan Parva]

I really don't see much of a problem adding this to "the core", really.

PU weapons are already greatly widespread and I don't think Mike would turn down a few new free toys to put in vanilla maps. The amount of skins is negligent compared to the amount of both stock AND custom skins already in existence, and they're "canon" skins to boot. Plus, a lot of the changes (like the "fixed" Flash Stopper and the addition of Energy Balancer) patch up or enhance things that are already there. The Flash Stopper exploit has been a KNOWN concern and the vanilla buster upgrades ALWAYS wasted any ammo pick-ups you found. At minimum the flash fix and the buster ammo fix could be used in the "core" if nothing else, and last time I checked nobody seems to frown at the idea of extra bosses and such.

Really, besides the "problems" of the joke weapons and "gimmicky" stages I don't see why this couldn't be put in.

[Hunter_orion]

I would like to point out also, via the DM's bot apoc server, I've always seen at least one or two people on the server using some of the PU Roll skins. Hell any server I've been in that has a lot of people in it theres ussually 1 or 2 Rolls

Because whether people want to admit it or not, Roll looks badass in most of her skins. Granted, I'm normally playing as a different custom skin while playing PU, but if I don't have that option (Not on Tomato's server), I pick Ninja Roll.

[Isaac940]

Coming from the DM server, I like the changes to Flash Stopper and Wind Storm. With old Flash stopper, you could still kinda see out of the sides while under its effect, but with the new one completely whiteouts the screen for a shorter time, which raises its effectiveness in my opinion. And Mess said that the changes to Wind Storm were to make it a better weapon on its own and it definitely does that. The lower throw height means it's easy to hit multiple times with one tornado and the throwing can really mess with the aim of the victim. It definitely seems like an improvement over the old one which seemed to only be good for using in conjunction with Gravity Hold or for delaying people with how high it threw them. And speaking of Gravity Hold, it seems it can still be effective when used with the new Wind Storm, but it just requires more/better aimed shots of Wind Storm for it to work well.

Also, the campaign is pretty good in my opinion. The hidden boss is interesting and I thought the final boss was great, especially once I figured out that you actually get the MM1 and PU weapons and discovered the trick behind using them.

[NemZ]

So you think the textures are ugly? Fine, that's your opinion. We have yet to see anyone agree with this, though.

I'll agree, most of Time Man's stage is ugly... but then again I think it's ugly in PU as well even with all that extra graphic horsepower, so what is there to do about it?  Making it look good would make it unrecognizable, and that defeats the point.

In general I'm not really a fan of the powered up graphic style (too many big flat blocks of color and incoherently jumbled textures to fill in areas) but that's what this expansion needs... and in any case it's still better than most of the astoundingly bad tiles in the original mm1.  If anything I think it's actually BETTER when converted to 8-bit because the color limitations force the chaos to get in line and make some kind sense.

[Galaxy Sisbro]

Actually, I get Roc's point of "Ugly" textures. Basically, Some of Time man's textures aren't that appealing, Especially the wood. As for Oilman, it is a complete different topic, since the number of colors in that stage and the poorly selection of these makes the stage looks fuzzy.

I'm pretty sure Nemz fixed the later. Not sure about Time man, though.

[NemZ]

I did some color correction on both and added more frames of animation here and there, but left the textures otherwise mostly alone.  Here, judge for yourself (and do realize that the current in-game FC tiles use non-NES colors and far too many palettes):

Time

(click to show/hide)

vs.

Oil

(click to show/hide)

vs.

Hmm... did you guys add new tiles to oilman's stage in the update?  Either that or I missed those green wall tiles when I pulled them out of the wad earlier.

[Awbawlisk]

Awesome Campaign I enjoyed it!  

But I was kinda expecting you to use the actual Powered Up tile sets that NemZ posted.... Still very good though, and I like the changes.

[Hallan Parva]

I was kinda expecting you to use the actual Powered Up tile sets that NemZ posted

SO MUCH THIS

[Magnet Dood]

Yeah, I'm a little suprised you didn't do that.

Considering, y'know, he actually MADE them for you.

[Kapus]

The tilesets made by Nemz will be used in this expansion. They will be in the next release.

[NemZ]

I just finished them like last week guys, and clearly there's been a lot of work to refine the stage layouts and weapon placements in the meantime to justify a new release.  Relax.

...I sure do miss the bombs up on the ledge in wily1 though, and think you could have simply not put any ammo or life up there to help balance out the advantages of the placement.  Oh well, guess I'll be sticking to my plan of cutter/guts/oil rampage in the long room.  

[MusashiAA]

Where can I see these PU-styled tiles? Are they the actual tiles used in the PSP game, or 8-bit renditions?