Sonic 1 Color Contrast

Technically, the Hubs are the Act 2's in the actual disassembly code. At first, the hub used the Act 2 Title Card, but having no Act label seemed more appropriate. However, if you have found any of the secret unlockable acts yet, you'll notice that I re-used the Act 2 title card there. I guess I intentionally left it that way as sort of an underhanded way to induce exploration. :v:

So to access the secret acts, you must fully restore both acts and the hub (for the hub restore to actually save, you have to leave and come back to it either through an act or another zone), then look around the hub and find the now activated Giant Ring. Since it seems like no one has found any of them, here are the locations:

Green Hill - In the underground area to the right where the Music Monitor is.

Marble - In the underground area all the way to the right, through the secret tunnel (past the C Monitor room).

Spring Yard - At the end of the bottom path to the right of the Act 3 entrance, in the same room as the C monitor.

 

Nice, really happy he decided to review this! This definitely motivates me to work on it further. Oddly enough, he stated it was finished, even though it technically isn't (Labyrinth currently has serious problems, and Star Light and Scrap Brain Acts 2/3 still needs new layouts, among many things).

The correlation with Sonic Paint is also an interesting topic as well; to be honest, when I first saw the the topic for Sonic Paint, I thought that Markey had went ahead and made a hack that would've made mine totally obsolete! It does make me curious though, if it is even possible to do such a thing (as in Sonic "painting" a new palette onto the screen continuously like that). One day I'll give that bit of speculation an honest attempt though.

 

New Update!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RwoxlPe2Ug

There was a pretty bad bug in the 'Not Quite Hyper Sonic' Transformation (which essentially crashed the game upon getting a game over, or getting to the ending after transforming at any point), and I fixed it recently. So I decided to release an update with the fixed transformation, and a few other minor fixes/edits as well.

Download

 

New Hi-Jump Shield Art and animation. (Arrow art created by VAdaPEGA)

I've also added a 'Classic Mode' level order option. It's working correctly, but I need to make an actual Start Menu to make it more easily accessible. 'Classic Mode' lacks the hubs as well as the unlockable acts, but does not require the hubs to be restored to get Final Zone Act 2 and the good ending. Since the other stage layouts are currently incomplete (SLZ, LZ, SBZ), it is only accessible through enabling debug mode for now (and will probably stay that way until the next contest).

 

You're not holding me up at all! Actually, I was having design issues myself with the zone. However, I currently can't work on the project (and won't be able to for a while), so take your time with it.

 

Updates:
 

 
Fully implemented Classic Mode; goes through each normal act in order, with no hubs. Since there are currently only 6 acts in this option (LZ, SLZ, and SBZ are still unfinished at the moment) players automatically access the extra act through this mode (this is until every zone in the game is eventually implemented).
 

 
Newly implemented 'Hint Arrows'. Next to each Color monitor, are arrows that point in the direction of another monitor (in one of 8 directions), with said monitor's icon. Hopefully, this would make game a bit more intuitive to play, and a bit less difficult.
 
 

Spoiler

 
Fixed art/bosses in FZ2.
 

 
New short underwater section in FZ2.

Even though I won't have the other zones complete, hopefully (by the time the contest deadline hits) I should be able to include a couple more little features that help make the hack more accessible.

 

Well, I didn't quite go with the idea in the video (which if I recall was the 'rotating shield arrow', right? I wish the video didn't get deleted in all that mess before; I don't quite remember), but that day you guys definitely got me thinking about making some way to drop hints, so I decided to add the arrows near the monitors. The shield thing though could be really difficult to do, because the shield would require 7 new frames, that would change depending Sonic's location in respect to specific monitor coordinates per act. One day, I'll give a more serious effort in making it happen, but I don't have much time before the contest, unfortunately.

Speaking of improvements, I updated the HUD:

The HUD now shows how many monitors you've collected out of the total for the level in place of the time. When you reach the end of the stage, it changes to display your time, and time bonus.

 

Added this yesterday. This option comes up at the very beginning of Classic Mode, but before starting each act in Adventure Mode. I felt conflicted about the difficulty a bit, but wasn't sure whether to add this as an option or not. When people commented on the hint arrows, it reminded me that there were people interested in the difficult game, so I decided to prioritize it and add the feature for the contest release.

 

http://youtu.be/IUwldG8IYuU

 

Anyone else tired of the Sonic 1 Special Stages?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5icQmDdR1g

New Special Stage gimmick. Collect Rings to gradually restore color to the Special Zone! Collect enough, and switches will direct you to the emerald. Fall short, and they kick you out of the stage. As this is a test layout, I do plan to make them a bit bigger (with platforming sections and what not), and with signage that tells you what to do.

Also added this to the Hint Menu, so people know that they can go back to the hub as they please in Adventure Mode without soft resetting:

 

Long Overdue Update:

As some of you may or may not know, last year I received a very important career opportunity that, while successful, essentially kept me from working on the hack for a long time, sapping away my time and passion for the project for a while. I planned on releasing a version that fixed some of the issues of the SHC 2014 Version, and to show off a bit of the new special stage, but life took over and I never got around to implementing what I wanted to for the next release (resulting in an almost two year long hiatus away from the project!). However, recently I've had some time off from grad school today, so with a burst of inspiration I decided to work in some fixes/updates!

This new build (5.9) features:

-No Special Stages at the moment (sorry Josh), until I can fix the Special Stage 'gamemode glitch' I keep encountering.

However, it is currently replaced with an "Emerald Lamppost" system; after 100%'ing a level, being near a lamppost will cause Sonic and the lamppost to flash. Hit it, and you get an emerald. For Classic Mode, simply 100% a stage, and grab the Giant Ring at the end to get the emerald.

-New Overworld for Adventure Mode, which takes place in Scrap Brain Zone. This small area contains teleporters which send you to each of the Zone Hubs, and a door to the Final Level(s), which are only accessible after either getting all emeralds, or 'passing' every stage (any%) and recoloring each of the hubs.

-Free, open world movement is now enabled. After seeing how many times the SHC media had to slog though Green Hill Zone variants in the past two years, I felt it was better for the flow of the game for the player to be able to go to whatever zone they wanted to, and tackle the game in however order they so choose (especially since Green Hill is ironically one of the more difficult Zones to complete).

-A bunch of 2-year old fixes that never actually made it to a public release.


Known Bugs/Problems:

-Rom is not 'Padded to the Power of 2' at the moment - I feel a little silly saying this, but I'm not sure how to do this in Sonic 1, as I didn't see an option for it near the top of the rom />/>/>/>

-Some of the visual problems of the menus still remain.

-For some reason, after completing Green Hill's Hub palette, I noticed that the first palette lines for Marble Hub and Spring Yard Hub, automatically restore themselves. I can't seem to pinpoint the issue, but since I can't work on it after today, it might have to remain a mystery until I can, unfortunately.

-Getting a Chaos Emerald in the hubs turn the music off, but the music monitor does turn it back on.

Please report any additional bugs you may encounter in this release; any feedback is very much appreciated! (Hopefully, this version isn't a broken mess haha)

Download

If things aren't too broken, I'll update the Wiki, First Post, and maybe even finally put it on Steam officially.

EDIT: Whoops, found some issues; link updated.

 

Thanks for your comments, I'm happy to finally get some feedback on that build!

However, there was a reason why I never uploaded that one to the wiki; as I stated in my last post, I needed to know if this build wasn't too buggy before putting it on the wiki yet. This release was quite experimental, and likely much less stable than the 2014 Hacking Contest version (there are many bug fixes, but some of the added features may have introduced new bugs here and there.).

Concerning your points,

1. At the moment, Labyrinth, Star Light, and Scrap Brain are very unfinished. These levels take a great deal of time to design (as there are more gimmicks and details to take into account)! Because of life reasons, I haven't worked on the hack in quite some time; I decided to lock those zones away from general gameplay simply because they were unfinished. One day, I'll get back to it, but not in any time soon.

2. As such, the 'LZ entrance' was always a temporary path to FZ, as Labyrinth and the like are not playable at the moment.

3. Not sure why this happens; I remember testing and correcting this, but again, this could be a new bug that surfaced similar to the Special Stage issue that came up. What emulator/hardware are you using? Did you collect any emeralds? Also, there is more to that level if you collect every emerald; this shouldn't lock up the game, as no game mode changes occur yet here.

4. I'm aware of this one, but I haven't gotten around to fixing it yet.

5. That's there just as something to play with in the HUB, so that players can see what the power up does, but again, it's another half-implemented feature. In a perfect world, I'd have an Erazor-styled tutorial stage, but not yet unfortunately.

6. I thought I had programmed this in, but this could be a bug/oversight that slipped through there.

I'm really thrilled to finally have feedback on this, so thanks for your comments!

However,given the issues in this build, I'd like the wiki page to stay the way it was (or at least feature the 2014 version more prominently as the main version). I'd change it back myself, but I'm currently moving, and I don't have access to a decent internet connection, or my files and disassemblies.

One day, I'll return to work on this to fix these issues and add the new content, but for now, I'm on an indefinite hiatus.