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Sonic 1 and 2

Discussion in 'Engineering & Reverse Engineering' started by ColinC10, Aug 30, 2010.

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  1. ColinC10

    ColinC10

    Tech Member
    I've always thought it would be really cool if someone ported the Sonic 1 zones to Sonic 2. So, for this year's hacking contest, I ported the Sonic 1 zones to Sonic 2. Any questions? :eng101:

    Here's the list of features:

    - A full game of Sonic 1 and 2 starts with Green Hill and ends with Death Egg.
    - The Sonic 1 special stages are available through end-of-level giant rings. Giant rings have been added to Sonic 2 levels where necessary.
    - You need all six Sonic 1 emeralds and all seven Sonic 2 emeralds to become Super Sonic.
    - Your progress is automatically saved to SRAM. You can enable/disable this or start a new game from the options menu.
    - Pause the game and press A to return to the title screen.
    - Hold A at the title screen for level select.

    You'll also notice a little extra called Arena Mode. I came up with this as a way to quickly jump in and play a few levels, so give it a look if you want to try the hack but don't feel like tackling an entire game. In the Arena, you attempt to increase your rank by completing time attack challenges. Higher ranks mean harder levels and shorter time limits. And no, I don't know why I always feel the need to grade people from F-S in every hack I do!

    One thing I should point out is that if both Sonic and Tails are on screen, and there are a large number of objects active, the framerate can drop a bit. This was just as true in the original Sonic 2 as in this hack - the difference is that Sonic 2's object placement was designed with the presence of Tails in mind, meaning this only happens in rare cases like when you lose all your rings. Sonic 1's layouts weren't designed for Tails so there are some sections in Marble, Labyrinth and Scrap Brain where things can get a bit laggy. It's not a huge issue, but I just wanted to point out the reason for it in case it bothers you. Remember you can exit to the title screen to switch characters mid-game.

    Time for some screenshots, I think:

    [​IMG]
    Look, I actually drew something this year! :specialed:


    [​IMG]
    I'm in ur marble zone, pressin ur buttonz


    [​IMG]
    There's a lot of trickery to get round palette limitations, so you may notice some slight differences.


    [​IMG]
    Sonic 1 special stage: now with added Tails. He won't follow Sonic in, though. (Probably for the best.)


    [​IMG]
    Ooh, shiny.


    [​IMG]
    Hi, I'm Super Sonic.


    [​IMG]
    Now that's what I call a level select screen.


    All comments are welcome!

    ++Download++


    P.S. If anyone feels like making a credits medley containing all of the level themes from Sonic 1 and Sonic 2, I'm sure I could find room for it in my hack somewhere...
     
  2. Polygon Jim

    Polygon Jim

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    I love you. I'm going to try and play through the whole thing right now, even though it's 6am. I love this idea, and always hoped someone would do it.
     
  3. PsychoSk8r

    PsychoSk8r

    PsychedelAnt | Tone Turner Oldbie
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    Downloading, I've been dying to play this. I'll leave any comments after.
     
  4. dsrb

    dsrb

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    I was looking forward to trying this out.

    I suppose it would have been too much to ask for each game to have (respectively) Super and Hyper Sonic, and Chaos and Super Emeralds? :P (Also, in before debate about contiuity of both game's Emeralds ;)) Still, I've never played a hack with Super Sonic in S1, so that'll be interesting. By any chance, did you add the double-jump requirement?

    I do want to see how that would work, haha.
     
  5. jasonchrist

    jasonchrist

    Give Us A Wank Banned
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    Colin, you beautiful, beautiful man!!

    I fucking LOVE your work and look forward to it every year. Firing it up now.
     
  6. ColinC10

    ColinC10

    Tech Member
    I briefly considered this, along with Knuckles, Hidden Palace, and 101 other things that would have been cool additions. I fully anticipate this topic to contain a very large number of "you know what would have been cool?" type posts. However, the point of this hack is to combine Sonic 1 and Sonic 2, not to make changes to them. In other words, with the exception of Arena Mode and SRAM support, if it's not in Sonic 1 or 2, it's not in Sonic 1 and 2.
     
  7. Namo

    Namo

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    Holy shiteating mother of monkey Jesus. No, wait, let me say that again.

    Holy shiteating mother of monkey Jesus.

    You've essentially turned Sonic 1 and 2 into Sonic 3&K. That kicks so much ass. Thank you for this. Hack of the year.

    + - Coming Soon: Sonic 1, 2, 3, and Knuckles? :v:  
     
  8. nineko

    nineko

    I am the Holy Cat Tech Member
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    Well, I wouldn't have minded to see Knuckles in here, but this is one of the greatest hacks ever nonetheless, as expected considering ColinC10's history of awesome things. This is basically a beefed up version of his <a href="http://info.sonicretro.org/Robotnik's Revenge" target="_blank" style="background: url(http://info.sonicretro.org/images/5/50/Reticon.png) right no-repeat; padding-right: 20px; border-bottom: 1px dotted #3366BB; color: #3366BB; cursor:pointer; text-decoration:none;" class="wiki">Robotnik's Revenge</a> which features all the zones instead of only the bosses :v:

    Seriously though, I've yet to give this a complete playthrough so I can't make a detailed post about what I like and what I don't like yet, but the feelings are definitely positive, and in the mean time I prepared a stub page on the wiki, Sonic 1 and 2.

    By the way, gotta love this:
    [​IMG]
     
  9. Ravenfreak

    Ravenfreak

    2 Edgy 4 U Tech Member
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    So far I love it, though Tails' CPU seems to be a bit off. Meaning when you jump most of the time, he doesn't jump. But sometimes randomly, he jumps in the special stage. :\ Also, when you jump in the special stage it behaves the same way it does in 2 player mode, meaning when Sonic jumps, Tails ends up in front of Sonic and Sonic won't be back in front until you jump again. Though, I love how most of the time Tails stays behind Sonic in the Special stage, that's the reason why I never really cared for Tails. (Damn fox always lagged behind and would get hit by the stupid bombs causing me to fail since he had some rings too. >.<) Or was Tails' CPU meant to be programmed this way?
     
  10. Polygon Jim

    Polygon Jim

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    None of that has happened to me. The Tails CPU out of the Special Stage acts exactly like he does in S2, and in the Special Stages he never jumps infront of me.


    Also, currently in Spring Yard 3 with 5 S1 Emerald, and 2 S2 Emeralds. I'm terrible at S2 Special Stages =\.
     
  11. ColinC10

    ColinC10

    Tech Member
    I haven't made any changes to Tails' programming, except for when Sonic enters a special stage ring (I made him run off the screen instead of stupidly trying to work out where Sonic went :v:). I think the novelty of having Tails following you in Sonic 1 levels might be causing you to notice his basic AI more than usual. When making the hack I came across a lot of "bugs" that actually turned out to be "features" of the original.
     
  12. D.A. Garden

    D.A. Garden

    Sonic CD's Sound Test Member
    I seem to die on Mystic Cave Zone 1 at the end of the level every time. I'll run past the signpost, then the screen will fall and I'll hear Sonic die off screen. It first happened in the Arena mode so I checked through level select and it did indeed kill me again. I can't complete the game because of this. Help?

    EDIT: If you run past the signpost, it won't kill you, but if you spindash or jump off screen after the signpost, you'll fall and die.
     
  13. McAleeCh

    McAleeCh

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    This is amazing. = ) Am loving this so far - part way through a first playthrough. Couple of suggestions that could make it even more awesome:

    - If you're going for as close to 100% accuracy as possible with the S1 Zones, is it possible to implement checks based on Zone ID to determine, for example, which invincibility music to use, which spring/shield art & animation cues to load, etc.? This way you could have the original Sonic 1 objects/music appearing in their respective Zones while keeping the correct Sonic 2 versions in the other Zones.

    - In GHZ, is there enough VRAM space to make a separate sprite for the Green Newtron's eye, so that it can be yellow as in the original? I can't imagine it'd take more than 2 or 3 8x8 tiles, though I suppose it'd mean it'd now have to use different mappings to the blue one. This one's the most inconsequential and pernickety of my suggestions, so ignore it if it can't be done. = )

    - Lots of slowdown in MZ2 and 3, particularly in areas with lots of moving platforms on screen. I'm guessing nothing can really be done about this, though.

    - There's a pink bumper and light just before the last one of those massive U-shaped drops in SYZ3; I'm assuming the palette changes to allow the pillars in the background to be purple. If that's the case, I'd suggest making them blue here anyway, since the wrong-coloured objects are more distracting than the wrong pillars being in the background.

    - In Labyrinth Zone's underwater palette, Tails' darkest orange is darker than the brown used for the even darker shading on him, resulting in his shading looking pretty out-of-sorts. Probably both his orange shades in the pallette need brightening up or redoing to fix this, since Sonic looks OK with the brown as-is. I'd suggest looking at how much the values for Sonic's palette colours change between his normal and underwater palette, and apply the same difference to Tails' oranges for the underwater palette.

    - Jaws is blue in Labyrith; I'm guessing there's no easy way of fixing this, since it can appear on-screen at the same time as Burrobot. Since the purple looked red underwater anyway in Sonic 1, are there reds in the same palette that the art can be redrawn to use?

    - Also, LZ has some epic slowdown in the vein of MZ, but again I'm guessing this isn't fixable. This mostly cleared up once Tails decided to drown as then he wasn't clogging up the place by breathing extra bubbles everywhere, haha. XD

    - Exiting the S1 Special Stage, after the fade-to-white on more than one occasion it gave me a frame of the Special Stage with the palette from the results screen for a second or so before cutting to the results. Not sure what would have caused this.

    - SLZ is perfect - I know you must have re-paletted some things here and there from your screenshot of Super Sonic and the Bomb-bots in the same frame with no palette issues on the badniks, but to my eye it looks pretty much exactly as it should. Side note; Tails makes this boss infinitely more frustrating than it should be. XP

    - In SBZ, when I hit a Caterkiller without destroying it, the bouncing body segments flickered blue just for one frame. Likewise, I noticed some purple flickering on a Buzz Bomber in GHZ that I forgot to note earlier.

    Haven't completed SBZ yet so my feedback ends there for now. = ) Overall, very enjoyable and quite a technical feat to avoid as many palette issues as you have while still keeping the S1 Zones and badniks looking pretty faithful. Keep up the good work!
     
  14. minichapman

    minichapman

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    What can I say about this game? Fantastic!

    Firstly I was compelled to try the Arena Mode! Arena mode is in a similar vein to S3K: The Challenges. The challenge is a race against time to complete the level in a set time limit! I'm glad that this mode was inserted and gives for more playability as the levels and times are certainly a challenge but not impossibly insane!

    The gameplay is how it should be in the Sonic Mega Drive/ Genesis era and enjoyable to say the least. a brilliant idea and concept and deserves much respect!

    EDIT: After I collected my second S2 emerald (I also had 1 S1 emerald) the purple text on appeared buggy but not affecting anything majorly)
    Slow down occured during Green Hill 3 at the section with the rotating spike platform but that was to be expected as things will always slow down in games (perhaps too much on the screen with tails?)


    Kudos.






    ...........Now then, Who's up for Sonic 1,2,3 and Knuckles? :rolleyes:
     
  15. Jimmy Hedgehog

    Jimmy Hedgehog

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    Marble 2, 3 S1 emeralds and 5 S2 ones. Absolutely loving this so far! And Arena Mode is great fun to play through too
     
  16. Polygon Jim

    Polygon Jim

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    Just finished the Sonic 1 half, too tired to play Sonic 2 right now. It was great though, minimal issues, the biggest thing that happened to me is randomly Sonic's tiles would glitch for some reason, but I didn't have any gameplay problems.
     
  17. Azu

    Azu

    I must be stupid. Member
    I would to see you do this all way through Sonic3k. This quite awesome.
     
  18. PsychoSk8r

    PsychoSk8r

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    I've just hit a slight bug, In ARZ, the boss music continued playing after being beaten.
     
  19. Spanner

    Spanner

    The Tool Member
    Looks like you have won your own trophy yet again!
    Out of interest, is there an option to play as Sonic or Tails alone? That would help playing through the game without slowdown.
     
  20. ColinC10

    ColinC10

    Tech Member
    Oops, you're right. This will be because I extended the level slightly to fit the special stage ring in. Looks like a candidate for revision 1.
     
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