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Sonic 3 A.I.R. Release Thread

Discussion in 'Fangaming Discussion' started by 360, Apr 7, 2019.

  1. T.Q.

    T.Q.

    The Sims 2, Tim Drake [Robin] Member
    Maybe there's a higher risk of getting on the radar towards legal trouble if the mod becomes open source and makes it possible to release the game on multiple platforms, therefore depriving SEGA of potential sales on other platforms should it choose to sell on other platforms?

    @Eukaryot.

    What is the difference between "Fullscreen" and "Exclusive Fullscreen" supposed to do?

    EDIT: Okay, so the "Fullscreen" option (to make it borderless) isn't working. It works the same as "Exclusive Fullscreen".
     
  2. Blastfrog

    Blastfrog

    See ya starside. Member
    If that's the case, then Retro itself is spitting in SEGA's face:

    [​IMG]

    SEGA pretty clearly has no intention of bothering with S3K anymore beyond ROM compilations, presumably due to legal issues with the music. They've also generally been okay with fan projects so long as they don't directly interfere with anything they're about to launch or have just launched.
     
  3. Endgame

    Endgame

    Formerly The Growler Member
    I thought I'd let you know, I'd never been one [bothered] for doing speedruns through levels, but this game has changed all that!

    I guess seeing as I've played S3&K so many times now, finding out an achievement is doing a speedrun for the first Zone has given me [and this game] a new lease of life in a sense - and a new way of playing it (for me that is; obviously for everyone else this is as old as the games themselves. I've always just enjoyed them for the 'experience' that it gave me); and I love how well done the speedrunning aspect of it is, so well done there, and thank you!
     
  4. Sappharad

    Sappharad

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    I asked about this one earlier in the thread because I wanted to port it to macOS. He wasn't hostile to the idea, it was just that he was actively working on it and didn't want to deal with hassle of other people right now. When you're open source you have to deal with other people pushing out new builds before you're ready to give them out.

    For what it's worth, I still plan to release the code for the unofficial Dreamcast port of Sonic CD mobile when that's finally done. (With macOS / Windows builds & code included) But that's not something to discuss here, especially since I posted the video in the E&RE forum 2 years ago and I've been hardly ever working on it for the last 7. I did promise someone I'd try to finish it this year though.
     
  5. Eukaryot

    Eukaryot

    Tech Member
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    Sonic 3 A.I.R.
    There's only subtle differences. Exclusive fullscreen can be more performant on some systems, while the borderless window fullscreen allows for switching to other windows while leaving the S3AIR window visible. Try for instance pressing the Windows key on both modes - the exclusive fullscreen should hide S3AIR, borderless fullscreen should not.

    That pretty much nails it.
    It might not look like that, but S3AIR is still heavily in development and undergoes frequent major changes to both the C++ code and the scripts. Sharing the code and having others make changes as well would really complicate things.
    But it's well possible that sooner or later, when things got more stable, at least parts of the project become open source.


    Last but not least, I've got a new update to announce.
    Or more precisely, a "preview version", as this is not something I'd want to make the official new update before I got a bit of beta testing. Everyone's invited to have a look at it. :)
    Here's the download link and the changelog.

    Edit 1: Updated the build with a crash fix in the options menu.
    Edit 2: And another update, this time to fix the broken graphics for LRZ 2 cylinders.
     
  6. T.Q.

    T.Q.

    The Sims 2, Tim Drake [Robin] Member
    So there's the SFX of a door opening near the end (about 85% near the end) of the level at the bottom, even those the player doesn't hit a button to open a door.

    I also spotted broken graphics in Lava Reef Zone 2 with the spinning turbines:

    [​IMG]
     
  7. Eukaryot

    Eukaryot

    Tech Member
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    Sonic 3 A.I.R.
    This last bug in Lava Reef is fixed already in yet another update (v19.05.12.2). :)
     
  8. T.Q.

    T.Q.

    The Sims 2, Tim Drake [Robin] Member
    Thanks for the update. Here's an image of the approximate area the SFX I'm hearing occurs. Unless there is a secret door that is triggered (and I never find it), this would be a glitch to fix:

    [​IMG]

    Perhaps some other things that can use fixing include an inaccessible room in Death Egg Zone 1, where there's two 10-Ring monitors, and an invincibility monitor (courtesy of Zone: 0)

    [​IMG]

    Also, in regards to Lava Reef Zone 1, add giant rings and make accessible the three unused cages in the level.

    Also, back to Death Egg Zone 1, can you give Tails the ability to join Sonic when elevating up through the tower (after defeating the Mid-Boss), rather than instantly dying from the bottom of the screen rising up quickly?
     
  9. Sid Starkiller

    Sid Starkiller

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    IMO it'd make more sense to disable 2P Tails in Death Egg Zone, like Sonic 2 did for Wing Fortress and its Death Egg Zone. How is he catching Sonic in the Tornado if he went into space with him?
     
  10. D.A. Garden

    D.A. Garden

    Sonic CD's Sound Test Member
    A couple of bugs to note since my last comment, as I've played some more of this:

    • The Sphere to Ring Algorithm seems to be different in that, sometimes, if I try and clear out a random shape of blue spheres in a large pattern, it will turn a number of them into rings, but without any logic as to why. It's a little hard to explain, but quite easy to see if you try it.
    • Knuckles doesn't climb up left walls properly. He appears to be 1 pixel away from the wall, and it's a little jarring. Seems fine with right walls, so maybe his art needs to be shifted by 1 pixel for left walls?
    • You can still get Knuckles into Sonic/Tails' Launch Base Zone 2 boss area, but due to the change in collision (invisible wall?), it's impossible to defeat the first boss. Worse still, as I hit the checkpoint before this, dying would never resolve the issue. Hard to restart Launch Base Zone entirely.
    • I had a strange occurrence with the water level in Launch Base Zone 2 on my second play through (after the above issue). I ran through the act with Super Knuckles pretty quickly, but once I got to Knuckles' last checkpoint before the boss area, water kept 'appearing' over the screen (palette and the effect) and it would then lower down to its correct level (from the top of the screen). It kept happening over and over just before the boss. Didn't manage to get a video/screenshot of it, but if it happens again, I'll be sure to get something.
    • The Mushroom Hill Zone 2 boss doesn't really appear to suited to the change in screen size. The pillars in the background keep on popping in, and once you defeat the boss, the row of spikes just disappears with no visual effect or anything.

    I'll give it another play through soon, and note any more bugs I encounter. Again, I want to thank you for creating this. It's a lot of fun, and I love how different the game feels now.
     
  11. Aerosol

    Aerosol

    Not here. Moderator
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    Sonic (?): Coming summer of 2055...?
    I might give this a whirl, if for no other reason than to confirm my suspicions that 2D classic Sonic suffers a little from a wide-screen format.
     
  12. Dark Sonic

    Dark Sonic

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    Personally I think Sonic was always meant for widescreen. You have more time to react to obstacles that are in front of you.
     
  13. IrnBru

    IrnBru

    Member
    Sorry, I've been really busy, here's 2 bin files of the MGZ2 boss glitch, one with hyper sonic, one with sonic electric shield and one where the glitch doesn't happen but the strategy is the same.

    https://mega.nz/#F!6hMgXIJD!TdYwDAkUG4fQaAzx0Fu70g
     
  14. Knucklez

    Knucklez

    I love 2B 'n' ass. Member
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    That may be, but that in turn makes you (or encourages you to be) less reactive and stunts you from improving your overall skill. The only true benefit to widescreen is the aesthetic of it, while other things you can argue are more detrimental to the player.

    Widescreen providing more reaction time = pseudo-easy mode. And that's certainly true when you take 4:3-native gameplay and make it 16:9-native. But if you want it to be easier, more power to ya.
     
  15. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

    no reverse gear Wiki Sysop
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    The sticky things in Mushroom Hill Zone - the ones you can only escape by spin dashing.

    I'm thinking the drop dash should work too? Certainly Hyper Sonic's double jump.
     
  16. Eukaryot

    Eukaryot

    Tech Member
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    Sonic 3 A.I.R.
    Hey guys,

    Investigating on the MGZ 2 boss bug that IrnBru reported right now - thanks for the game recordings, they were very helpful :) .
    I guess I found the circumstances under which this happens: You have to play with Sonic alone, go Hyper and then destroy a spiker badnik using the Hyper dash, before enetring the boss area. This way, it can be reproduced in S3&K on an emulator as well, here in Kega Fusion:
    [media]https://youtu.be/Y9ispgJSTKM[/media]
    Just wanted to ask, is this a known S3&K bug? I couldn't find information about it so far, but maybe just fed Google with the wrong keywords.

    By the way, for the next update I'll address some of the bugs you reported recently, including these:

    And the MGZ 2 boss bug, of course.
     
  17. IrnBru

    IrnBru

    Member
    Nice, I never knew about that glitch in the OG version since I've been playing Complete exclusively for years, I play the levels the same and I've never noticed this bug before.
     
  18. Aerosol

    Aerosol

    Not here. Moderator
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    Sonic (?): Coming summer of 2055...?
    This has been my niggle with it since wide-screen sonic fangames were a thing.
     
  19. Tribeam

    Tribeam

    I code Lua and Lua accessories Member
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    Did some research on that MGZ2 boss crash, my theory is, from what I can see, when you kill that Spiker with the hyper flash, it's writing over some of Tails' reserved object memory, so when Tails spawns it crashes the game.

    Here is a screenshot of the ram addresses of Tails' ram after the flash (normally its all 0 when going into the boss)
    [​IMG]

    Edit: Forcing 0xB04F (Tails' routine) to 0 before the boss fight prevents this glitch.
    Edit2: Not specific to that particular Spiker, all Spikers corrupt tails' memory when the hyper flash is used.
     
  20. Eukaryot

    Eukaryot

    Tech Member
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    Sonic 3 A.I.R.
    I came to a similar conclusion by now: 0xb04f gets overwritten in ROM address 0x088db4, after register a1 got set to 0xffffb04a - which seems weird in case that Tails is not even initialized.
    Going with a different solution, an additional check just before 0x088d5c whether the 4 bytes at RAM 0xb04a are zero, and return if so. I guess both solutions are fine.

    This and few other fixes are now in the updated preview version:
    - Added music options for the SSZ boss fights taken from Sonic 1 & 2
    - Fix for "frame eating" glitch with character dying at the start of MGZ 2 boss that can happen if using Hyper Sonic
    - Fixed that some sound test tracks kept playing when leaving the options menu
    - Allow Sonic to free himself from the MHZ sticky vines using drop dash
    - Fix for an door opening sound in LRZ 1 caused by an offscreen wall door