So I finally have some time to fix up these levels. Honestly, I don't think there's all that much that needs changing on And So It Begins or Final Void at the moment.

The biggest changes are being made in Sanctuary Fortress right now. In the original, after the midpoint you had to backtrack through a portion of the first part of level, but there was a whole area to the right of the correct path that held a few extras and a yoshi coin that I think many people skipped going to in favor of returning to the start of the level to progress. This time, I've made the midpoint drop you off in such a way that you backtrack through the whole area, taking optional paths for the yoshi coin and powerups.



I'm also going back and trying my best to optimize the level because there are a lot of tiles in it. Sublevel 1B0 is going to be a pain to optimize though thanks to the weaving web of tiles partway up it:



It looks really cool but it's unoptimized as hell. I'll figure something out. I'm also thinking of changing the background completely because when I did it originally I just wanted to make the tiles from the backgrounds in Metroid Prime 2, not really thinking of whether or not it looks good. I'm thinking maybe I'll import the mountain background from Demon's Crest. I've gotten it working in Super Metroid before with great success; I can get it working here again. I just need to request map16 for it.

This is the Demon's Crest BG I was talking about.

If I don't go with that BG we'll have to find something else. One way or another, I want to scrap the BG.

Sanctuary Fortress was one of the best levels from what I remember; glad to see you're making it even better. Also, that background is pretty awesome, but I assume you're going to change the palette? Can't wait to see more.

- BlackMageMario

^ Clearly you didn't read the bottom of his post. He said he's replacing it with the background from the screenshot (which looks great and would be absolutely awesome with some parallax scrolling).

I never even thought about parallax scrolling but if we can implement some subtle scrolling I'd be all for it.

Anyways here's a demo of sanctuary fortress to test. I tried making the boss easier and I think I've succeeded. Though the first fight with it could stand to have it bomb drop timer lengthened. As it stands the bombs feel like they drop a little fast.

http://bin.smwcentral.net/u/50/110v1.ips



Moving on to the Final Void, has it been decided yet whether or not it will be its own level? If it is, I'm thinking of going and adding an extra section or two to make it more of a fully featured level. If not, I don't want to because I don't want it to become too long and tedious on top of whatever level it is already attached to.

The second fight is being replaced anyway.

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Your layout has been removed.

Even better then.