Topic: those "transition" rooms

[crisis]

you know those little hallways that lead from one area to the next, mainly in metroivanias.  doors leading from 1 area to the next have been around since the beginning of the series. the purpose of it in Symphony was for loading times i believe, but after it became more of a tradition since loading times became nonexistant. i wonder why they chose to keep them?

Harmony of Dissonance didnt have any unfortunately, neither did CotM. but every metroidvania included a unique variation. did the programmers want it to be more like a "safe spot" where you can safely switch weapons/armor without worry attack? or is it cuz they just thought it was cool? who knows

whats your favorite variation? i love how some have more of an angel/holy aesthetic architexture, while others are more demonic & evil

[DoctaMario]

I always thought they kept them mainly because SoTN had them and they were trying to "remind" the gamer of Symphony.

[PFG9000]

My favorite is the SotN version, because of the little CD in the middle and the upside-down flippery.

My guess is the rooms were reinstated in Aria of Sorrow because the transitions between areas seemed really sudden in Harmony of Dissonance.  The transition rooms provide a nice little segue between areas and really make the areas feel more distinct, and the castle more personable.  And I suppose I didn't realize it til now, but Circle of the Moon didn't even have doors between some areas.  You move off one screen and Bam- you're right there in a new place.

[Mike Belmont]

I like that transitions between areas, because when I see the door, I know that I am going to enter a new and unkown area. The music fading helps a lot in that transition, I think.

[uzo]

Believe it or not they're still loading screens. They just "thread" the loading so it's not as apparent.

Threading is a way to 'do two things at once in a single program'. In this case, "Thread 1" is the gameplay program, and "Thread 2" is the loading of sprites, level data, etc. While you're in the transition room, Thread 1 plays the game, you jump/moving through the room etc, and Thread 2 loads the data for the next segment during that. This way gameplay is not interrupted in the process.

Not all consoles have this capability for the core game code. It's something that's fairly new.

Here's an extra trick you can do to reveal the hidden "load time" in the DS titles. Strap on as much speed increasing equipment and buffs as you can, and speed through the Transition Room at super speeds. When you reach the other exit of the room, the game will pause longer than usual before you're in the next room. This is because Thread 2 was not finished loading everything yet, and forces Thread 1 to pause and wait until the next room is finished setting up for you to enter.

Another tidbit of information is that the effect that threading gives you can be observed on older consoles too. Sound in a console game is handled by a different processor than what the game's main code runs on. This is why when a game has slowdown, the music and sound effects also don't exhibit any slowdown or distortion. The processor the game is running on may be slowing down due to whats happening in the game, but the music chip is it's own unit and will continue processing at it's normal speed regardless of what's going on in the game. This is indeed different than the game itself being able to run two threads at once though. Threading leads to multiple processes on the same chip, as opposed to different chips running their own single process.

[The Puritan]

Not a transition room in the usual sense, but my fave's that one Razor Bat and Succubus-filled corridor in Portrait of Ruin where you can only hear the wind. It does connect a few areas to each other, after all.

[Dracula9]

I thought Harmony did have them...or am I thinking of Aria? Whichever had the red background and white pillars. I hate not having my emulation work on this laptop, otherwise I'd check myself and spare the thread what basically amounts to a sage.

[beingthehero]

That's Aria's. HoD didn't have them.

[theplottwist]

Believe it or not they're still loading screens. They just "thread" the loading so it's not as apparent.

And here I honestly though it was an aestethical choice only.

[uzo]

It partially is. There are non 'area connecting' rooms that are also loading rooms in the DS games that I know of for sure. All of those no enemies, not platforming style rooms are usually loading rooms. You can kind of tell based on their emptiness, and very simplistic, no layers, background. This is because they need to contain the least amount of ram as possible to make the switch effectively.

[Shiroi Koumori]

Uhm, like the save rooms and portals?

[uzo]

Save rooms, no. Portals by default are load rooms since they do their little animation to take you to another area.

If someone can find me some game maps like this but for Order of Ecclesia or Portrait of Ruin, I could point out to you what the load rooms are. For the life of me I can't seem to find any.

[Flame]

its the reason megaman had shutters before the bosses in the NES days, and back in the SNES days as well i reckon. though nowadays its really just legacy

[theANdROId]

its the reason megaman had shutters before the bosses in the NES days, and back in the SNES days as well i reckon. though nowadays its really just legacy

Really?!!  It seems crazy to think the NES needed load time.  I guess they just disguised it really well!

[uzo]

Really?!!  It seems crazy to think the NES needed load time.  I guess they just disguised it really well!

It's not about load times there but finding a simple small area that they can overlap that room with the first room of the next map, so the transition goes unnoticed.