While suggesting sprites with examples is all well and good, you needn't worry. The sprite has been changed already. :P Just so you guys don't end up wasting more effort on it when you could be focusing on your own projects.
I'm... pretty sure someone said that the whole balloon gimmick was still WiP, and someone else pointed out that the place-holder Sonic sprite is actually a leftover unused prototype level-clear animation from Sonic 1 that just happened to be handy for testing... we didn't draw that one, we aren't keeping it, and the other characters don't have even remotely appropriate sprites for it because we just haven't gotten around to it yet There's some nice enthusiasm, but I think we'd all appreciate it if we didn't have content submitted that we didn't ask for; we've got people that can handle it, and the last thing we need is clashing concepts, and having to fight it out over credit for supposed contributors or whether or not we can actually do anything for ourselves I don't mean to sound harsh; thank you for the effort, but if you're going to participate in discussion, please try to keep up with what was already covered, and please let us do our own work unless we've explicitly asked for help
That was me, two pages ago: And then Markey right after me: I'm sorry guys, but when two of us say something is placeholder and that we're already working on replacing it, that's not asking for everyone to continue talking about it and drawing up several concepts. :x
In case people are wondering where their posts are to do with the suggested animation, they've been trashed. Read Stealth's post and Robjoe's post to find out why. Harsh? Yes. Something like this can go off-topic far, far too quickly. As already said, we appreciate that you guys want to help, but if we want it we'll ask. Talking about how good a sprite is that, quite frankly, isn't going to be used at all can be kept out of here. Post it in Creative Works if you think it's worth the discussion. :P
I don't know, but has the Save RAM name been changed? So, just in case if people (like me) want to play the beta just for kicks again. Because that would be indeed very bad, if the final release save file gets overwritten by the beta save. :P
What name? Aren't SRAM files just internally unnamed images whose files are given the same filename (sans extension) as the ROM? If so, just avoid giving the two versions of the ROM the same name, which wouldn't make sense anyway.
Mega CD has its own memory back-up method. It's essentially a filesystem, where data for multiple games can be stored. Remember, you couldn't put back-up RAM on a CD, so they had to provide it separately, and it better be possible to share among multiple games to be cost effective =P
In any case, attempting to share BRAM files between 4.0b and the eventual final release isn't going to fly, as the file's structure has been significantly overhauled. And no, we're not purposely trying to kill compatibility with old saves; it's a lot cleaner now and is prepared for many of the features we have implemented and hope to implement. Though ideally, the new BRAM structure won't be the only reason people start from a clean slate with the final release.
Aren't you redoing all levels from scratch anyways? That alone should merit making the saves incompatible with each other, they aren't even the same game... Though I think the question was if the filenames were going to be different or not. As in the Mega CD filenames (I.e. what the BIOS sees), not the emulator filenames.
Couldn't you do a conversion routine for old saves? Doesn't bother me as I don't HAVE any, but still.
Guess I'm going to have to make a correction here - Actually, regardless of the change in format, "compatibility" is being killed intentionally. There have been plans to overhaul the entire game for some time now; with so much of it changing, it doesn't make any sense to have a 4.0b save affect the upcoming version :P Due to the amount of data we want to keep track of, the saves are huge (4.0b reserves about 1/5 of the available space in BRAM), but if you want to keep data stored for both versions, they will work side-by-side
We're talking about practically a completely new game here, why would you want to do that? Like, how the hell would the conversion even work? Any reason why it's taking up so much space? o.o; That's around 1600 bytes, assuming you mean internal back-up RAM (if it's cartridge back-up RAM then what the fuck, man). You can always try storing multiple values in a single byte if needed (and I mean beyond bitfields), though no idea if the current format already does that (and to what extent).
I was talking about internal RAM, yeah, and that's the exact number (1600 of 8000 available bytes, or 25 of 125 available blocks). I'm not surprised that you're surprised by that, though. You might note that I said "reserves" instead of "uses"- it's actually holding space for a few features we hadn't implemented yet. If I remember correctly, though, and assuming that all of those things were in fact going to be implemented, there actually wasn't much room for improvement, if there was any at all Actually, that's probably a lie.. Come to think of it, I think the biggest offender for space is in that version; it's just incomplete and not accessible by "normal" means
I honestly can't think of many features requiring so much space, unless you have an inventory or something. Right now one thing that I know would likely eat up lots of space is a time attack feature. To store the time you need 16-bit to store a value between 0 and 35999 (and possibly a sentinel for non-beaten levels if you want to mark them up separately). And with 5 characters, that's 10 bytes per level. Now, let's say Megamix has 30 levels (I guess it has a bit less), that'd be 300 bytes... but this is for a space-hungry feature. Most features you could possibly implement in a Sonic game don't need more than a few bytes of space. EDIT: actually that assumes storing only one time per level. If you stored the best three that'd be like 900 bytes... Store five and you get 1500 bytes... Also this assumes special stages don't get their own time attacks. OK, guess that makes more sense.
I really love how it looks and in particular the innovation brought up by that new gimmick, requiring player's skills to be properly controlled instead of boring scripted events. Good job guys! Keep it up!
I know there are already 5 characters in the game... and it's probably not gonna happen... but I wonder if the team has considered adding any more characters??? I would consider either Amy Rose OR Metal Sonic. As noted. I know it most likely WILL NOT happen, just an idea... I think at least, Metal Sonic would be a perfect fit.
