MMX Recompiled 2.0: Zero, Co-op, and new Weapons (Preview)
A work-in-progress look at two-player co-op, playable X3 Zero, widescreen, and all sixteen X2/X3 boss weapons in Mega Man X Recompiled.
Playtest footage. Work in progress.
Since Mega Man X's first playable release in May, most of my time has gone into the fun parts: grafting new things onto a faithful recompile. Mega Man X has had more of that than anything else, so here's a check-in on where it stands.
The footage above is from a playtest session with a friend. It's a pretty honest picture: mostly working, a lot of fun, and we still hit a few bugs along the way.
As always, none of this touches the ROM or the recompiled output. Each feature is a separate mod package you switch on in the launcher.
Co-op
Co-op vs. Thunder Slimer
This is the one I've wanted the longest. Mega Man X was never built for two players. The recompiled player routine now runs once for each player's body, while enemies, stage scripts and audio still run once. Most of the work was in everything that assumes there's only one player: collisions, projectiles, effects, drawing, and who a boss is aiming at.
- X and Zero on screen together: P1 picks a character, and P2 plays the other.
- Separate health, weapons and weapon energy. Subtanks are shared, and the camera keeps both players in view.
- Works online too, through recomp-net's lobby and rollback, the same foundation as PSXRecomp's netplay. A full internet campaign hasn't been played start to finish yet.
Zero
ROM hacks have put Zero in X1 before, usually as a reskin over X's body. This is the actual X3 Zero, and nothing of him ships with the mod. The launcher extracts him from your own copy of X3.
- His original X3 art, animations and collision, plus his full charge combo: two buster shots, then the saber.
- Zero is taller than X, so when a dash ends in a gap built for X, he slides until he has room to stand.
- Play as Zero alone, or swap between X and Zero at any time with Select, Xtreme style. Each keeps his own health.
X2 + X3 weapons
Every X game has eight boss weapons. Without demaking X4 and beyond, that leaves X2 and X3: sixteen weapons, with their art and animation pulled from your own ROMs.
- All sixteen, including the charged versions (those still need X1's arm upgrade).
- L/R flips between the X1, X2 and X3 pages in the pause menu, which uses X1's font and each game's original icons.
- Damage is adapted to X1's enemies, and the X1 bosses picked up some extra weaknesses. Zero can use all of them too, a liberty I took so you can play the whole game as him.
Widescreen
Adaptive widescreen: the view grows to fit whatever window you give it
Widescreen is usually the first thing I add beyond faithful reproduction, and Mega Man X's is adaptive. It isn't locked to 16:9. Resize the window and the stage view grows to fit: 16:9, 21:9, 32:9, or something far stranger. There's no fixed upper limit.
- Adaptive to any aspect ratio, with fixed 16:9, 21:9 and 32:9 presets if you want them.
- A real stage view, not a stretch. Enemies in the margins stay alive and the original encounter timing holds.
- The HUD anchors to the screen edges, and the sprite limit is lifted so the extra width doesn't flicker.
- Adaptive isn't available in netplay yet. Online rooms use the fixed ratios for now.
Still in development
None of this is finished. Co-op, Zero, the new weapons and netplay all work well enough to show, but not yet well enough to call done. Every playtest turns up something new, and there's plenty left to fix before it's ready for players.