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Sonic 2 sharing assets

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by Hez, May 29, 2019.

  1. Sonic Hachelle-Bee

    Sonic Hachelle-Bee

    Taking a Sand Shower Tech Member
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    Sonic 2 Long Version
    I was thinking about the boss section of LZ3. The level wraps, and the water is constantly rising.
    Another alternative, you can easily remove the water mid-level in HPZ with some coding, and deal with the slope without any water present.
     
  2. rata

    rata

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    What? That part is a loop? Well that's new for me...
     
  3. LOst

    LOst

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    While I was doing research on level wrapping in general, I found out that Sonic 1 does wrapping in a very basic way. Not like the later games. Place a solid block (the owl head square block, number 17 in the debug list) at 0890 0070 (infinite slide area). Stand on top of it and jump and see Sonic get killed and the game to get stuck. You can do the same thing at 1BA0 0088 (around boss area). The red spring can also be used to send Sonic over the wrap point for an instant kill with the game waiting forever.
    SBZ2 has some places too where it is possible to get killed, but I was unable to locate them at this time.

    Wrapping is a complicated subject. Not even Sonic 3 does it in a good way (think speed running techniques). I have spent hours in New Super Mario Bros for DS and Wii and seen similar issues, that's with X wrapping (and those programmers basically invented platform games in the 80's).

    We also know from early advertisment that LZ3's foreground tiles couldn't update in time for the wrapping, see this video https://youtu.be/jR98zOj0yiw?t=7 (pause around 7 seconds). Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 update foreground tiles duing vblank (against common practice, to keep interrupts as short as possible), and water level can really affect drawing of those tiles at the top of the screen (place a lamppost/starpost so that the water level is around 16-32 pixels from the top of the screen, and die. On level load see what happens, which also happens on high scrolling speeds under water). Sonic 3 moved the heavy work outside vblank (actually, I believe a lot of work was optimized [not usually for the better, features removed, etc] even more so it is not just related to vblank being delayed). Sonic 3 has a high scroll speed water level called Hydrocity, and was probably the wakeup call for the programmers to redo the level drawing code.

    As a simplified point of view: Water + Y level Wrapping don't go hand in hand. In my opinion, deleting Hidden Palace Zone was the easiest solution to the problem.
     
  4. Hez

    Hez

    Oldbie
    I'm going to sound super ignorant, but couldn't they have just....removed the water? Gotten rid of it before the section required Y wrapping? Then had it come back after the fact?
     
  5. Blue Spikeball

    Blue Spikeball

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    I could be wrong, but I believe Sonic 2 Delta solved that problem by making it so that the level wraps around, but the Y coords don't. Going beyond the wraparound keeps increasing or decreasing the Y value (depending on whether you're going up or down). That way the water doesn't seemingly spawn everywhere at a point when going up the slope.
     
  6. Dark Sonic

    Dark Sonic

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    Hell they could have just removed that section all together. Did that elevator tunnel thing seemingly add anything to HPZ?
     
  7. LOst

    LOst

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    Removing the water doesn't fix the wrapping issues. Having a platform transporting the players over the wrapping point just makes things worse. *Looking at the map* Yes, the wrapping point is in the middle of the elevator area, and there is a funny slide at the very top. This part of the level looks more like a custom scene rather than a playable area. Maybe the level was scrapped because of too much work, like water filling up and activating the slide at the top (slide being palette animated when activated, but when not activated, tile animated to remeove water art?). I say it was too much work for a simple idea (Take/steal emerald, water rises, Indiana Jones escape sequence).

    Yes it could have been removed, I mean all of it, but what would that level really have been like without all the cool stuff? It doesn't have any interaction objects like for example Aquatic Ruin (arrows, swinging platforms, crazy loop sections).
     
  8. Flygon

    Flygon

    Member
    I always just assumed the idea was that you'd get Super Sonic, zoom up the slope, zoom off the water slide, and somehow warp back to a normal zone.
    But I've also been told that my idea is pretty dreadful so.