So I'm just wondering, has anyone publicly released any fun hacks we can play with for Sonic 4 and Sonic Generations? I have both running on my PC now and I remember folks showing off all the crazy stuff they could do with the physics and stuff but I don't recall ever seeing any actual downloads.
I don't think anything was done for the intention of releasing and I sure it was done purely for fun.
Yeah, I'm surprised a hack of Sonic 4 with fixed physics (as far as possible) hasn't come out by now. Given the fuss it created here, you'd think we'd all have been on the case and it'd have come out the day after! Surely, at the very least, someone will make a hack with that and the models from Generations. I mean c'man guise
I think once Mercury has released his engine for the public to use (I'm really hoping he will and not change his mind in future) then I'm sure someone will put the effort into doing a fixed version of Sonic 4 but you've got to ask yourself, who the hell is prepared to put that much effort into doing something like that?
For the most part, the hackers that have been cracking formats in Sonic Generations probably only have time to just do that, and not actually create a hack until they're comfortable with how things work. As for Sonic 4, iirc the only person that hacked the game was Polygon Jim. So he probably lost interest in making a full hack. But didn't someone add classic Sonic to modern Sonic's levels and released a patch? Forgive me if I'm wrong, I usually skim over the modern game hacking threads because I'm not interested in hacking them nor do I have the tools to do so. :\
Ideas don't exactly help. Actually working on it does. Generations is having lots of contents ripped out and scripts being developed, and not too shabby given it hasn't reached the 2 month mark from release yet. Regarding Sonic 4, it might get more attention if it's released on PC, but it's not really something inspiring to fix, since the physics aren't the only problem... EDIT: That was me, but not exactly an original idea. I did work on the patcher though. I just did it for the lulz, and it helped me a lot on learning the level format of the game. Heck, the level editor is there, it just needs content ripping which I'll finally have time to do since I just got done with finals.
@Steve: Well, yeah, it's maybe not quite worth it at all, but even less so if one must port everything to an entirely different engine! I was meaning tweaking the existing code, which itself may well be both undoable and pointless. :P So a full port might be even more so. But, as pointed out above, any real judgment on the popularity and feasibility of hacking S4 will have to wait till the PC version comes out. Tangential: there used to be at least two different teams working on MD/32X remakes of it, so whatever happened to those?
I was actually working on a level hack for Sonic 4 Episode I but it's still currently being worked on. I'm kinda giving up on it though because Dimps already did it. (Remake of Green Hill zone) Didn't someone already release a Generations hack though? EDIT: Ninja'd.
If you think about it, adding art to a great Sonic engine is more likely to be easier and have better results than editing Sonic 4 crappy engine. It's more than just physics, it's even the way Sonic loses his rings and enemy behaviour that are just as important as Sonic's movements so it is the better of two evils.