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I do. The game is superb!

My idea for combining the vanilla and sequel maps was more just a side-thing than something for the sequel itself. If there's one thing I love, it's combining or otherwise compiling parts of different entries in a series together. For example, one of my projects is a map Hyrule and its neighboring kingdoms from the Legend of Zelda series that, while based primarily on Breath of the Wild and Adventure of Link, incorporates elements from plenty of the games. So combining Aquaria's original and sequel maps is more of a just for fun thing. It would be hard to make work plot-wise the way I envisioned (Aquaria Expanded as opposed to Aquaria 2) due to the time gap between the two games.

That said, I could see the original areas being implemented in a way akin to Pokemon Gold and Silver, where after beating the main game, you get to visit the first game's areas as a little bonus. I think it'd be nice if the first game's areas were all there, even if they don't serve a role in the story, but they're not necessary.

quick rundown: the 6 energy temple maps, 3 veil maps, mithalas + cathedral, top 2 open waters maps, the starting area things, Li's cave, one forest map

What forest map?

"Cold waters" sounds indeed interesting.

What about Warm Waters? Your open area is in the right place (near the Energy Temple, which if it weren't for being underwater would totally be the Fire Temple), and still doesn't have a name. Adding some "warm" elements would give the place more identity, but then again, if you're not gonna revisit old areas, and this is the new Open Waters, maybe that's not a good thing. Even then, though, a sequel shouldn't be a retread, so there's no harm in a slightly different atmosphere. The biggest issue would be figuring out what exactly the "warm" elements would be. The Veil and the area directly below it are already tropical, so you can't exactly do that. Maybe hydrothermal vents? As shown on my map, I was thinking of putting a volcano above Warm Waters as the logical extension of the "warm" aspect, and hydrothermal vents would tie in nicely to this. A warmer color palette would make sense. I tried doing a mockup with warmer colored rocks, but it just ended up as an ugly brown. Maybe changing the background gradient would be a better idea.

Aww. I was gonna try hook it up to the native mod to have the whole map with Sequel Mod areas. But I respect your decision.

You can do that, or whatever else works for you. There's a flag in the mod's XML file that prevents opening the editor, and in case someone gets past there scripts will do their best to prevent further editor use. One of the reasons why i put this is in is to prevent cheating.
(i know myself, if i've been through a map 5 times and there's any way of taking a shortcut, i'll take it. i feel like i've kinda ruined sacrifice mod for myself this way back then. So that measure forces me to go through a map as intended, and when i don't get bored when playtesting then it's good enough.)
There are more reasons but i will not tell you those.

Anyway, so you can move the maps somewhere you have access (any mod skeleton will do), but entities will be blank, nodes will have no function, and none of the map/mod special things will work. But just for looking at how it's made, why not.

About your map suggestion:

I didn't intend to keep most of the original maps. Some are there because they have to (home area, open waters, krotite temple), but some are either too long, bland, or too repetitive so it's imo better to replace them with something new. Right now 23 map XML files are original (more or less modified), and it's likely it'll stay that way. (quick rundown: the 6 energy temple maps, 3 veil maps, mithalas + cathedral, top 2 open waters maps, the starting area things, Li's cave, one forest map.)

What do you think? The forest maps are the least varied ones, so i'd like to redo them or get rid of them. I've made another couple of 2 different forest-style maps ages ago, but not quite sure yet where i'll put those or how much expansion they need.

EDIT: But i will think about your idea. "Cold waters" sounds indeed interesting.


One last thing, because i like to be open about things i do:

I've been way more busy with life (and most importantly, PhD work) than i had imagined, so projects left and right went on hiatus (there wasn't really anything else i could do), including this. I do read the forum's RSS feed and saw every new post, but had my mind elsewhere and forgot to reply.
I'm trying to get a somewhat stable schedule established (at least XX hours work on the mod per week), wish me luck. It's good to work on something creative once in a while, hard scientific coding gets very dull after a while.

Right now i'm poking at some graphics files (attempting to finish some leftovers from a long time ago) but i'm kinda lost how to do this

In any case, and that applies to everyone reading this, if you have an idea for an suitable (under-) water creature (enemy, neutral, scenery, background, whatever) and you feel confident with gfx, feel free to send a draft or even usable tiles. If i have body part tiles i can animate & script the thing and incorporate it. Or try to animate it yourself for some fun

Aww. I was gonna try hook it up to the native mod to have the whole map with Sequel Mod areas. But I respect your decision.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/146590762@N06/41983568324/in/dateposted-public/

Btw, here's a little something I cobbled together featuring ideas for potential new areas and where they'd go. I actually moved Warm Waters slightly upwards to match your unnamed open area. Cold Waters is an idea that came from wanting to fill the gap in the path from the Abbyss to the Ice Cave. Come to think of it, Cold Waters would probably work best between the Ice Cave and the Frozen Veil. Let me know if you guys like any of my ideas. I don't know how to code, but I could try my hand at graphics if you need help.

Done, thanks a lot for sharing!

Zip contents accessible here: http://fg.wzff.de/pub/aquaria/oldstuff/mods_by_user452/

How do you access this mod in the editor?

It's blocked. There are even safeguards in there that you can't just open the editor even if you manage to enable it somehow.
Sorry, but some things shall be kept secret for now

Yeah we're alive, just busyyy aaaaaaaaaaaa

Possible yes, official i can't possibly imagine.
But there's always homebrew... now that the switch is haxx0red
(That means if someone is to port Aquaria to the switch, i'll gladly accept patches/pull-requests)

I can help you out. Sorry but i've been sorta living under a rock the last couple of weeks and kept forgetting to reply. So in case you read this, drop me a PM to notify me you aren't dead, and we can work something out.

A first thing you can try is slap an update over your existing installation -- the update doesn't have a license check.

Huh, the latest released OSX binary is a fat build that should have both 32 and 64 bits inside. I've been planning a new update for quite some time now but was super busy and drained so that didn't happen yet. It's also not quite finished since i kept poking at stuff and it kept falling  apart.
Next release should be x32, x64, and PPC compatible if i get everything right.