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Sonic 3 & Knuckles - Battle Race

Discussion in 'Engineering & Reverse Engineering' started by MarkeyJester, Nov 10, 2018.

  1. MarkeyJester

    MarkeyJester

    Original, No substitute Resident Jester
    2,192
    406
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    Japan
    [​IMG]
    Good evening ladies and gentlemen,

    Some years ago, ColinC10 released a wonderful hack called Sonic 2 - Battle Race and while me and Natsumi were playing it, we couldn't help notice the series of bugs and problems with the hack. Now, this is by no means an indictment on Colin, as programmers ourselves we understood that the hack was not built to be flawless and if anything was merely a proof of concept, and probably made for just a bit of fun. We are sure that if he had continued it, he would most definitely have made it flawless.

    Regardless, we wanted a version of the hack that was fixed, with improved routing and winning direction detection, and perhaps some minor things added here or there, so one day Natsumi said:

    [​IMG]

    ...and so it began.

    We carefully plotted out how we would handle such a thing, looked at the good things and bad, and Colin's hack supplied us the perfect insight and lessons learned to clean it up. We came up with a box system, and it seems to work pretty well, not perfectly, but pretty well. Of course, there were a heap of bugs to fix with the original Sonic 3 title, these took quite a lot of time to hunt down and fix, and because of the time it took, we ended up adding more to this hack than we had originally planned and even now we still have more we want to add. Likewise, bugs will no doubt still be present, though, compared to the bugs that were in place originally which Natsumi has spent countless hours hunting and fixing, it's not too shabby if you ask me.

    We did have plans for some extra game modes, gimmicks, options/museum, and a brand new level, and a slew of other things, but these will have to wait until the next release which we hope will be sometime early next year. We are actually getting a little fed-up of working on the project as it is taking up time we really don't have, so I doubt a few months will turn into a year (even though I have been wrong before).

    Anyway, if you are not familiar with ColinC10's Sonic 2 - Battle Race, then we suggest you head over to SonicRetro's wiki page, download it, and give it a play yourself first, don't worry, our version can wait, we simply cannot thank Colin enough as our hack would simply not exist if his didn't.

    For a download link, credits and more info, please see Natsumi's post below mine:
     
  2. AURORA☆FIELDS

    AURORA☆FIELDS

    The cute one here Tech Member
    216
    24
    18
    Finland
    AMPS
    Credits:
    • redhotsonic: Bounce Technology™ (from Sonic Bash) and testing the hack.
    • FoxConED: Helping create the music for this hack.
    • Vladicomper, Ozaleto, qiuu, djohe, LazloPsylus, Clownacy, VAdaPEGA, & Jorge: Testing the hack.
    • MainMemory & Neo: For their amazing work to make Sonic 3 & Knuckles easily editable. It has and will help us and many more for years to come.
    • Cinossu & flamewing: Few inspirational ideas we've "borrowed" (without asking of course d=) so to speak.
    A few notes about the hack:
    • This hack is a 2-player only hack. This does mean, that you must play with your friends.
    • KEGA Fusion is recommended if you wish to play with someone over the internet. There are probably other emulators that can do it as well.
    • This hack does not work on Gens, or any Gens-derivative emulators. Unfortunately, we were not able to work around these limitations, and you should use another emulator, or real hardware.
    • This hack is going to see updates in the future. As it is not complete, there will be missing features and there may be some unforseen bugs. Please be patient while we create the final version.

    DOWNLOAD ON THE WEBPAGE
    (mirror)

    If you find any bugs, please report to my PM's or Discord~
     
  3. God I hope those level tiles for the scrapped extra level end up in this or something else, those are waaay too good to be thrown out.
     
  4. null1024

    null1024

    Member
    161
    0
    16
    This is really great. Played a few rounds with a buddy yesterday, and the only thing that seemed to be a major issue while we were playing were some platforms in Launch Base not respawining without both players having to agree to go back for it to respawn (and then since we were still trying to rush ahead, we'd probably fall off and be in the same situation as before).

    Also, those transitions in the stage select are absurdly cool.
     
  5. This is epic. I liked the style of the menus and pictures, and the minigames were fun. Definately not a bad project, nowhere close to it, its so damn good to be called a hack. Outstanding job.
     
  6. neonsynth

    neonsynth

    Previously 'SonicVaan' Member
    394
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    Germany, Stammbach
    gaming and music production
    Damn, just seen this on YouTube and it's been a while I talked to you guys. This art looks gorgeous! Good work you both - looking forward to the final thing! <3