[TheInvisibleSun]

Sonic 1 Color Contrast
New Video Update: Some of the recent changes.



1-5-13 Update:

Spoiler

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=Q3oY7nSsoIc

Video of Special Stage palette changes:

Spoiler

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=F2_gD79IKtg

Current Version: Beta 2.3

Eggman has stolen almost all of the colors from South Island (and Sonic himself), and it is up to Sonic to return them to where they belong.

The object of this hack, is to track down/find the Color Monitors hidden in each stage. Upon finding them, the colors of the area will be returned and the player can proceed to the next stage.

The aforementioned Color Monitors include:

'S': Returns the normal colors to the stage.

'Sonic': Reverts Sonic's colors back to normal, and grants 1 extra life.

'Goggles': Returns all underwater colors to normal, including Sonic's.

'Music': Changes the background music back to normal.

'Cycle S': Returns all of the cycled colors to normal.

'Restart': Brings you back to the start of the stage.


Current Features

-All 5 of the designated 'Color' Monitors function properly in each relevant stage
-There is therefore a 'new' palette for each stage and Sonic

Planned Features (To-Do-List)

• New layouts, primarily for all of Labyrinth Zone. (Including actually hiding the monitors; they are not hidden in this current build, for testing purposes and such)
  
• New Special Stage Layouts
  
• A proper fade effect for the palette change.
  
• More detailed changes to SBZ 1&2's Palettes.

Screenshots (old):

Spoiler

Restart and Music Monitor Video:

Spoiler

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=VEkQvwA63LQ

Video (Labyrinth and SBZ 3):

Spoiler

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=AputIRMp_Qo

Original Palette Change Monitor Video:

Spoiler

http://youtu.be/b0KabjDnem8

Beta 2 Download:
Beta 2
Beta 2.1 Bugfix Build
Beta02.3 Music

Test/Beta Release 1 Download:
Download
LZ/SBZ Fix-Fixes Lamppost glitch, and LZ Underwater palette is changed.


Special Thanks to Cinossu (for some coding help in the beginning), GenesisFan64 (for his original PalLoad_Loop subroutine), Selbi (For his Basic Error Fixing Guide), redhotsonic (for his various guides), PsychoSk8tr, Mercury, KingofHarts (Sonic Triad author), and the all of the Wiki in general.

This post has been edited by TheInvisibleSun: 14 January 2013 - 06:59 PM

[ashthedragon]

This is a very nice idea! Well done! The restored palette green hill reminds me a lot of Sonic 1 for Master System. I love it, aah, nostalgia...

This post has been edited by ashthedragon: 31 August 2012 - 05:50 AM

[redhotsonic]

TheInvisibleSun, on 31 August 2012 - 02:22 AM, said:

• Create a system that would only allow the player to complete the level if the monitors are found.
  
• A 'Reset' monitor to bring the player to the beginning of the stage.

You mean something like I did in my old S2R?






Had a play, it's a good start. Now, I know it's only a test/beta but nonetheless, I will throw my views in. I did notice a weird bug.


In any Labyrinth acts, once you've passed a checkpoint, if you die or drown, you've had it. The game stays blank for ages and ages, and eventually, this message pops up:

Quote

ILLEGAL INSTRUCTION$00000002

Seeming as it only happens in all Labyrinth's, but also happens in Scrap Brain (act 3 only), it seems to be a water issue.

In Regen, when looking at the VDP debugger, you can see the art and palette fading, then it immediately appears again and starts fading, and repeats this cycle for ages, until that error comes up (the error message is when the game has truly crashed).



Speaking of checkpoints, when you die and restart the level, the palette has gone black and white again. You might want to make it remember the colour state when you die. Unless you're going to put more than 1 of each monitor about. The reason why, is for example, if you put the S monitor near the beginning on Marble act 1 and restore the colour, hit the 1st checkpoint, then die, you're not going to be able to get that S monitor ever again.


Anyway, Scrap Brain act 3 is yellow, and act 1 and 2 hasn't changed at all (talking about the foregrounds here). Any reason why they're not black and white? Or just not got round to it yet?





As for the black and white palettes, Sonic's palette needs improving. He doesn't look too bad in water, but out of it, he doesn't look too good. Also, Marble and Labyrinth's palette could do with an improvement, especially Labyrinth's underwater palette; it's almost pitch black in there!


Also, some colours are still present when in black and white. Like the purple on the Jaws badnik in labyrinth, and orbinaut in Star light. It also appears that all palette rotations are still in colour, no matter what mode.



Anyway, as for the idea and story, I like it. It's a new unique twist to the game, and look forward to seeing more in the future.

[dsrb]

redhotsonic, on 31 August 2012 - 12:24 PM, said:

TheInvisibleSun, on 31 August 2012 - 02:22 AM, said:

• Create a system that would only allow the player to complete the level if the monitors are found.

You mean something like I did in my old S2R?

Or however Mercury made it so that the signpost/Robotnik only appears if Sonic has The One Ring.

[redhotsonic]

dsrb, on 31 August 2012 - 01:13 PM, said:

Or however Mercury made it so that the signpost/Robotnik only appears if Sonic has The One Ring.

Psychosk8er had a monitor near the end with a breakable wall. If you hadn't got the emerald, you couldn't break the wall and the monitor would restart the level. There's many ways of doing it =P

[TheInvisibleSun]

redhotsonic, on 31 August 2012 - 12:24 PM, said:

TheInvisibleSun, on 31 August 2012 - 02:22 AM, said:

• Create a system that would only allow the player to complete the level if the monitors are found.
  
• A 'Reset' monitor to bring the player to the beginning of the stage.

You mean something like I did in my old S2R?

Yeah, something similar to that. I happened to come across the event (as in, stage resetting) by accident when playing around with the Level_LoadPal Routines, so I decided it would be nice to implement it at some point.

Quote

Had a play, it's a good start. Now, I know it's only a test/beta but nonetheless, I will throw my views in. I did notice a weird bug.


In any Labyrinth acts, once you've passed a checkpoint, if you die or drown, you've had it. The game stays blank for ages and ages, and eventually, this message pops up:

Quote

ILLEGAL INSTRUCTION$00000002

Seeming as it only happens in all Labyrinth's, but also happens in Scrap Brain (act 3 only), it seems to be a water issue.

In Regen, when looking at the VDP debugger, you can see the art and palette fading, then it immediately appears again and starts fading, and repeats this cycle for ages, until that error comes up (the error message is when the game has truly crashed).

Hmm, I wonder why this is happening...

Quote

Speaking of checkpoints, when you die and restart the level, the palette has gone black and white again. You might want to make it remember the colour state when you die. Unless you're going to put more than 1 of each monitor about. The reason why, is for example, if you put the S monitor near the beginning on Marble act 1 and restore the colour, hit the 1st checkpoint, then die, you're not going to be able to get that S monitor ever again.

Didn't notice that before; gotta figure out how to do that.

Quote

Anyway, Scrap Brain act 3 is yellow, and act 1 and 2 hasn't changed at all (talking about the foregrounds here). Any reason why they're not black and white? Or just not got round to it yet?

For Scrap Brain, I was toying with the idea that Robotnik's base would be flooded with color (as he stole it from everywhere else). That's why Act 3 is vibrantly shining like that (and why the water/waste is more polluted and darker than usual). Acts 1 and 2 are just unfinished/undecided right now.

Quote

As for the black and white palettes, Sonic's palette needs improving. He doesn't look too bad in water, but out of it, he doesn't look too good. Also, Marble and Labyrinth's palette could do with an improvement, especially Labyrinth's underwater palette; it's almost pitch black in there!

I'll see what I can do to fix those palettes. However, Labyrinth's Underwater was somewhat intentional, to add an element of difficulty/urgency.

Quote

Also, some colours are still present when in black and white. Like the purple on the Jaws badnik in labyrinth, and orbinaut in Star light. It also appears that all palette rotations are still in colour, no matter what mode.

Thanks for catching those stray colors (though I'm wondering how I missed them). As for the palette cycles, I haven't gotten to them yet; I fear that they will be a bit more complicated to deal with than the normal palettes were.

Quote

Anyway, as for the idea and story, I like it. It's a new unique twist to the game, and look forward to seeing more in the future.

Thanks for the great feedback! I'll try to get to those things you noted when I can.

[MarkeyJester]

Excellent start, I love a hack with original ideas, it's what seperates the good hacks from the boring ones.

Can I say though, would you consider having the colour change occur on individual colours rather than entire palettes? I feel that there would be more playability with more monitors to find, and more colours to restore, it'll make the gameplay more of a challenge, and with more monitors to find, it will increase the chances of the player finding at least one monitor, and feeling as if they're making progress enough to continue playing (replay value!).

Hell actually, that gives me an idea, what if you were to have "hint arrows", what I mean by this is that in the level there are multiple arrows pointing to where the monitors are hideen, but each arrow only displays using one colour in the palette, and obviously, you won't be able to see that arrow until the colour it's using has changed from black/white to colour, so the more monitors you hit, the more colours restore, the more hints are revealed, you could create complexe puzzels out of it.

I would love to see new layouts as the stock Sonic 1 layouts are no good for a potentially good idea such as this, but I see you've got that on your list already, so I am pleased all around. I hope you find more time to progress on this.

[TheInvisibleSun]

MarkeyJester, on 31 August 2012 - 02:41 PM, said:

Excellent start, I love a hack with original ideas, it's what seperates the good hacks from the boring ones.

Can I say though, would you consider having the colour change occur on individual colours rather than entire palettes? I feel that there would be more playability with more monitors to find, and more colours to restore, it'll make the gameplay more of a challenge, and with more monitors to find, it will increase the chances of the player finding at least one monitor, and feeling as if they're making progress enough to continue playing (replay value!).

This is a very interesting idea; a similar thought did cross my mind before, but it was in the earlier stages when I was still figuring out the code. I might do something like this further on.

Quote

Hell actually, that gives me an idea, what if you were to have "hint arrows", what I mean by this is that in the level there are multiple arrows pointing to where the monitors are hideen, but each arrow only displays using one colour in the palette, and obviously, you won't be able to see that arrow until the colour it's using has changed from black/white to colour, so the more monitors you hit, the more colours restore, the more hints are revealed, you could create complexe puzzels out of it.

This is another very cool idea. I like it!

Quote

I would love to see new layouts as the stock Sonic 1 layouts are no good for a potentially good idea such as this, but I see you've got that on your list already, so I am pleased all around. I hope you find more time to progress on this.

Thanks for your great ideas Markey. I really appreciate the feedback on this! I wish I had more time to implement the more complicated things sooner, but for now I'm gonna stick to fixing bugs and other minor fixes, so that my university courses can take higher priority.

Speaking of that:

For Labyrinth, I edited the underwater palette, but I'm not sure how dark it should be (as before the background was pitch black and very dark).

Does anyone prefer these instead?:
A)


B)

[redhotsonic]

TheInvisibleSun, on 31 August 2012 - 04:08 PM, said:

MarkeyJester, on 31 August 2012 - 02:41 PM, said:

Can I say though, would you consider having the colour change occur on individual colours rather than entire palettes? I feel that there would be more playability with more monitors to find, and more colours to restore, it'll make the gameplay more of a challenge, and with more monitors to find, it will increase the chances of the player finding at least one monitor, and feeling as if they're making progress enough to continue playing (replay value!).

This is a very interesting idea; a similar thought did cross my mind before, but it was in the earlier stages when I was still figuring out the code. I might do something like this further on.

If you're thinking of taking this idea on board, can I say to only make 4 monitors for each palette line? Making too many for too many different colour sets will just make the game tiring. Either that, or leave it as it is.

TheInvisibleSun, on 31 August 2012 - 04:08 PM, said:

A)

That looks better IMO.

[TheInvisibleSun]

TheInvisibleSun, on 31 August 2012 - 01:39 PM, said:

redhotsonic, on 31 August 2012 - 12:24 PM, said:

In any Labyrinth acts, once you've passed a checkpoint, if you die or drown, you've had it. The game stays blank for ages and ages, and eventually, this message pops up:

Quote

ILLEGAL INSTRUCTION$00000002

Seeming as it only happens in all Labyrinth's, but also happens in Scrap Brain (act 3 only), it seems to be a water issue.

In Regen, when looking at the VDP debugger, you can see the art and palette fading, then it immediately appears again and starts fading, and repeats this cycle for ages, until that error comes up (the error message is when the game has truly crashed).

Hmm, I wonder why this is happening...

Figured it out. I put a new set of subroutine in a location (right after Level_LoadPal) that messed with Level_LoadPal's lamppost functionality. I fixed this by moving all of those new subroutines there to underneath the actual Goggles monitor code space (and then subsequently jumping to instead of branching to the several PalLoad3_Water's, as they were then too far to branch to).

I'll be updating the link soon. New link is up.

This post has been edited by TheInvisibleSun: 31 August 2012 - 06:03 PM

[redhotsonic]

Muhahahahaha, I come with another problem to your hack! =P


Goggles monitor no longer seems to work in the latest build.

[TheInvisibleSun]

redhotsonic, on 01 September 2012 - 05:39 AM, said:

Muhahahahaha, I come with another problem to your hack! =P


Goggles monitor no longer seems to work in the latest build.

Yeah, I made a stupid mistake with it's code. Bug Fixed, Link Updated. (I have very limited internet availability, so it took me forever to get a connection and update it.)

*EDIT*

New Palette for Sonic:



Thoughts?

This post has been edited by TheInvisibleSun: 01 September 2012 - 06:10 PM

[redhotsonic]

He looks much better, although I still think he could be better. He just needs a bit more shading. Instead of all his shades of blue being black, just make more shades or dark grey. I know it's a challenge getting lots of shades of black/grey, but it might be worth looking into.

[KingofHarts]

I can generate accurate greyscale palettes with Triad. Should I do this and send them to you? Could save the trouble.

[TheInvisibleSun]

redhotsonic, on 02 September 2012 - 07:33 AM, said:

He looks much better, although I still think he could be better. He just needs a bit more shading. Instead of all his shades of blue being black, just make more shades or dark grey. I know it's a challenge getting lots of shades of black/grey, but it might be worth looking into.

I tried this, but it looked kind of strange; I guess I'll give it another try soon.

KingofHarts, on 02 September 2012 - 07:19 PM, said:

I can generate accurate greyscale palettes with Triad. Should I do this and send them to you? Could save the trouble.

Sounds interesting. Can you send me a screenshot of the results of some of the palettes they generate? (Preferably Marble Zone) Usually, I prefer to personally handle and tweak the colors, but this sounds like quite a useful function for a palette editor...

Come to think of it, can Triad edit real time? Sounds crazy, but that would certainly be helpful with the cycled palettes (HivePal can get annoying sometimes with this).