[flamewing]

LOst, on 12 March 2012 - 01:43 AM, said:

On another note, I decided to clean up the CES 1991 Sonic 1 prototypes videos so that you can (almost) see pixel movements and (almost) all frames:
http://www.logotypes..._speed_720p.avi

Very interesting: changing monitors! Notice how the monitor changes from being an Eggman monitor to being a life monitor then, at the last few frames of the monitor being on-screen, into a 10-ring monitor.

Edit: and the second monitor comes from being a static monitor into being an Eggman monitor.

This post has been edited by flamewing: 12 March 2012 - 10:04 AM

[LOst]

flamewing, on 12 March 2012 - 10:02 AM, said:

LOst, on 12 March 2012 - 01:43 AM, said:

On another note, I decided to clean up the CES 1991 Sonic 1 prototypes videos so that you can (almost) see pixel movements and (almost) all frames:
http://www.logotypes..._speed_720p.avi

Very interesting: changing monitors! Notice how the monitor changes from being an Eggman monitor to being a life monitor then, at the last few frames of the monitor being on-screen, into a 10-ring monitor.

Edit: and the second monitor comes from being a static monitor into being an Eggman monitor.

The icons are just the the order of how their frames are stored in the sprite tables. Then it is just a matter of making a simple animation script to cycle through all of them. All with the purpose for the artists to see their art ingame. A placeholder before the monitors are used/working.

Sorry but the CES 1991 Sonic topic got so old it was auto locked. So most of the info has already been discussed before.

[Sonicandtails]

LOst, what's going on with the clock? It's probably well-known information, but exactly why is it flipping around like crazy?

[The Taxman]

Sonicandtails, on 12 March 2012 - 11:49 AM, said:

LOst, what's going on with the clock? It's probably well-known information, but exactly why is it flipping around like crazy?

In Debug Mode, the clock displays how many sprites are on the screen instead of the time.

[SpeedStarTMQ]

It looks like that perhaps at one point Dr Robotnik may have had a different suit to wear. In all of the original monitors his body is a dark blue, whereas his head is the same. Robotnik boxes don't even show up in Sonic The Hedgehog at all, only in garbled forms. It seems odd that they would put a random colour of blue in such a place beneath Robotnik's head in the monitors. Perhaps at that stage they hadn't finalized his design, as he went through many.

Brilliant video, it really shows the image quite clearly, and it's obvious the game would have been vastly different. Things really were changed right up until the game was released.

[ICEknight]

...Here's the old topic LOst mentioned, since you guys seem to have missed it for some reason (perhaps it should have been archived).

Some illustrated info I gathered back then:

ICEknight, on 13 September 2009 - 05:26 PM, said:

This version looks more similar to the illustration in the Japanese manual, both in shape and colors.

EDIT: Also, the images those monitors are slowly cycling are:

First monitor:
-Robotnik
-Sonic
-Ring.

Second monitor:
-Static frame.
-Another static frame.
-Robotnik.

So those objects are just cycling all the possible frames they had programmed in. I doubt they ever intended to animate those static frames like that, so I'd rule out the possibility of a "roulette monitor".


EDIT 2:
Since nobody seemed to notice, there's a Pink Newtron (chameleon) badnik that behaves like the final blue one (he appears, then drops by).
In the final version, it was the ball-shooting chameleon who used the second palette (later changed to green).

Original link for the videos, here.

This post has been edited by ICEknight: 12 March 2012 - 03:30 PM

[Mercury]

Rika Chou, on 12 March 2012 - 12:49 AM, said:

So I noticed that in this shot that we have had for years, look at the clouds. They are overlapping tree. Just like the new shot with the japanese text. Also, if you look at all four shots we have, you will never see clouds behind tress.

Whether or not the clouds being in the foreground is a mistake, it gives it the zone more of a "high in the mountains" feeling like Sky High Zone where the clouds are passing right by you. It's kind of cool.

Lanzer, on 12 March 2012 - 12:54 AM, said:

Is it me? or does the run sprite look alittle different too?

Well, it looks to me like it's flat-shaded with fewer colours of blue, more like a cartoon than the 3D look from the final.

...Also, I just noticed the palm trees are different, too.

[saxman]

ICEknight, on 12 March 2012 - 03:29 PM, said:

Original link for the videos, here.

I never watched the entire video, just the Sonic-specific clips from this. However, I noticed something VERY interesting! Remember how Green Hill Zone music starts out differently on that Sonic 1 & 2 soundtrack that was recently released? Go to 20:00 in that video and listen! =)

EDIT: Okay, it doesn't sound exactly the same, but listening to it many times over, it doesn't sound edited at all. It's definately different though.

This post has been edited by saxman: 12 March 2012 - 04:20 PM

[Uberham]

LOst, on 12 March 2012 - 01:43 AM, said:

Rika Chou, on 12 March 2012 - 12:49 AM, said:

So I noticed that in this shot that we have had for years, look at the clouds. They are overlapping tree. Just like the new shot with the japanese text. Also, if you look at all four shots we have, you will never see clouds behind tress.




So I now believe that the Japanese text was in the ROM and for some reason all the clouds were in th foreground like the rocks and trees.

Yes, you are absolutely right! That's a discovery!

Hmm, we must count for the sprite limit of the Genesis VDP hardware. It is obvious the Japanese text is not sprites, so it is probably a 256x256 meta block that scrolls with the level. The bottom palmtrees and rocks are too many horizontally stacked, so if those were sprites a few sprites would disappear, so they must be scroll A. Scroll B is then used for the floor that Sonic's running on, and low priority for the background. That means that the background is moving the same speed as the "floor" foreground (both sharing Scroll B). That makes the red text scroll with the level layout and background at the same time.
The clouds might be part of Scroll A, or sprites (as long as there are no more than two at the screen at once, and the size is not too great, but I can't be sure about that fact!).

With the fact that the clouds are overlapping the palmtrees, it is very difficult to imagine that demo looking any good in action
7 scroll layers might have been possible if there weren't any sprite limits or order restrictions between Scroll B and Scroll A High and Low plane. I wish we could get more infor about this demo from Naka himself.

EDIT: I forgot you can still use scroll RAM or the H-int to split BGs into scroll stripes. That means the bottom clouds that overlap the palmtrees are of Scroll A but scrolling at a different speed than the Scroll A front palmtrees and the stone. Because the top clouds are being overlapped by the bottom clouds, they must belong to Scroll B but of course scrolling at a different speed than the palmtrees that are behind Sonic. Sonic is between Scroll B's low (back palmtrees) and high (grass) planes. BUT I can't explain the red text overlapping the back palmtrees, unless the red text and the palmtrees of that same plane is just art, like drawn together.



============

On another note, I decided to clean up the CES 1991 Sonic 1 prototypes videos so that you can (almost) see pixel movements and (almost) all frames:
http://www.logotypes..._speed_720p.avi

Youtube can't keep the same quality, but here it is (watch as 720p full screen):


The early build (the debug coordinates) must have come from Sega, as video media! That video might still be around, and might have more coverage!
It has water color the same as sky color and backdrop border color. And Sonic is not fully developed "Naka-certificated", as the frame he jumps, his bounding box Y offset change happens one frame before the jump animation kicks in. But that is not all. The bridge translates Sonic wrong. How it is wrong, I can only guess, and I guess it is one frame lag. This build is so interesting because it would really show how much trouble naka went through to order Sonic's bounding box changes, and how he first developed the interactions that became the foundation of his Sonic games. He has stated that this development time was his best times as a programmer because it was so difficult to tune everything in. That build would testify the difficulties of creating Sonic from scratch and really show how much of a geneious Naka was.

However, just because the HUD says RING instead of RINGS doesn't mean it is just one build of Sonic 1. The playable build of Sonic 1 that was available at CES 1991 is not the same build, as the backdrop border color is now light blue (the same as the water color), to cover up the nasty water scroll tile update bug. It is still a "RING" HUD prototype, and still has the purple sunflowers palette, but this build is possibly a much later one!

Um, hate to shit on a theory, but to the left of the palmtree in the second shot is a waterfall not present in the first.

even accounting for scrolling, it's doubtful the background moved THAT much.

[Trunks]

I'm still far from convinced that the Japanese text is actually rendered in the game. I still think that it's magazine artists doing what they do best, sprucing up images. I think the text was pasted in and they cut out areas to make it look like it was behind the objects in the game. Here's two poor exhibits of why I think they're not in the game.



I think that the text's curves are far too clean and accurate for them to be sprites in game. Specifically the one on the top, it has a smooth gradual curve that seems to me like it'd use a lot more pixels to render than the system could reasonably handle.


If you look closely, the top of the bottom bit of the cloud is as dark as the sky, but is layered on top of the red text. I think that was an oversight of the person who was cutting out the text, not something that was in the original sprite.

My arguments don't have enough technical basis to validate them, but hopefully this points out something to someone who can explain it better.

[SpeedStarTMQ]

saxman, on 12 March 2012 - 04:10 PM, said:

ICEknight, on 12 March 2012 - 03:29 PM, said:

Original link for the videos, here.

I never watched the entire video, just the Sonic-specific clips from this. However, I noticed something VERY interesting! Remember how Green Hill Zone music starts out differently on that Sonic 1 & 2 soundtrack that was recently released? Go to 20:00 in that video and listen! =)

EDIT: Okay, it doesn't sound exactly the same, but listening to it many times over, it doesn't sound edited at all. It's definately different though.

You're absolutely right. I spent 5 minutes going back and forth and doing my best to hear over the sound effect, and it appears that the music seems to have the intro before the music starts as it does normally. Also after comparing the pitch of this little audio clip beforehand to the demo I can confirm that this little bit is the same pitch too, so I think we may have found that the original GHZ music had the extended opening.

This post has been edited by SpeedStarTMQ: 13 March 2012 - 04:19 AM

[ICEknight]

Trunks, on 12 March 2012 - 11:03 PM, said:

I'm still far from convinced that the Japanese text is actually rendered in the game. I still think that it's magazine artists doing what they do best, sprucing up images. I think the text was pasted in and they cut out areas to make it look like it was behind the objects in the game.

Why would they do such a thing, only in that small screenshot from the whole magazine.

[flamewing]

Trunks, on 12 March 2012 - 11:03 PM, said:

I'm still far from convinced that the Japanese text is actually rendered in the game. I still think that it's magazine artists doing what they do best, sprucing up images. I think the text was pasted in and they cut out areas to make it look like it was behind the objects in the game. Here's two poor exhibits of why I think they're not in the game.
[snip]

Let me see: the original pictures were small images at the bottom of the page that have been scanned and enlarged. There are dozens of scanning and enlarging artifacts clearly visible, and the guy clearly states, and I quote,

Quote

I've edited the colour of the scans ever so slightly, bringing the levels in and adding a slight unsharp mask, however, there are areas of the scans out of focus.

(source) And despite that you want to do a blow-up analysis and expect any meaningful results?

This post has been edited by flamewing: 13 March 2012 - 06:40 PM

[Trunks]

An unsharp mask wouldn't create the darker pixelated areas above the cloud that's overlapping the letter. I just really find it hard to understand why they'd take the time to sprite and program in these words for this one screenshot.

ICEknight, on 13 March 2012 - 01:56 PM, said:

Why would they do such a thing, only in that small screenshot from the whole magazine.

I don't have a good answer for that, but absence of evidence doesn't necessitate fact. I'm just placing my bets on post production.

[Rika Chou]

Look what happens when you overlap a ghz tree with a cloud:


(using specual stage clouds/palette)


(using final ghz clouds/palette)

The darker area is just part of the cloud art so it blends into the background.

This post has been edited by Rika Chou: 13 March 2012 - 10:42 PM