I did a bunch of hardware testing for flamewing trying different builds to mitigate the CRAM write dots last year, but we never got anywhere really. The S1 ending dots shouldn't have anything to do with whether you hit the boss or whether explosions appear. Every instance of this is caused by writing to CRAM to change the palette mid-screen: you can see it at the waterline in the original games too, but it's usually masked by some flashing waterline graphics. The save screen is particularly badly affected because it changes palette several times. Sonic 3 seems to have a way around this, but I don't know exactly how that works. The levels that use it (everything with water apart from HCZ) tend to stutter and occasionally glitch at the moment the waterline scrolls into view, which I assume is related.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vC0yurP3Z0w New version: v0.10 is now available. Changes: Enhancements over previous revision: Added Chaotix-style coop mode (based on idea given in unrelated context by Iceman404) where players are tied to one another by energy bands. In this mode, players 2 and 3 can activate signposts and starposts. Team Chaotix is now up, with graphics by E-122-Psi, some by Iceman404 and a lot of palette editing by me. Several performance improvements. Submerged lightning and fire shield monitors turn into bubble shield monitors. Hyper monitors in super dash mode now change music to Super Sonic. Started porting over S3&K's raw animation system; for now, only performance critical objects have been changed. If either P2 or P3 presses 'C' during pause, he commits suicide. Enhancements over original games: Performance improvements in LZ. Bugs fixed from previous revision: Fixed some collision issues in ARZ. Underwater palette cycles for LZ conveyors was wrong. Super das mode correctly reverts to level music instead of super music when reverting from drowning. A mistimed fire shield dash no longer breaks WFZ cutscene. Eliminated several ways of triggering slope glitch for offscreen characters. Anyone can trigger SBZ3 transition to FZ now. Fixed death bug in a specific region of LZ3 caused by a workaround inherited from S1&2 which seems to not be needed anymore. Fixed address error that could come as a result of LZ gargoyle's fireballs hitting walls. Not changing game type in options does not reset level select choice. Drowning countdown loads correct graphics when drowning in shallow water (e.g., LZ1 start). Wrong branch in Knuckles' balancing code means he didn't balance correctly on all edges. Bugs fixed from the original games: Deaths can wrap around to the top of the screen in vertically wrapping levels. Wrong collision with walls and ceilings while walking on them. This was pretty much a race against time to get done in time for the contest (all of which has been programmed and all art imported starting on July 19), so I expect lots of bugs. A big thanks goes to Iceman404 for playtesting it with me and giving lots of good ideas, and to MarkeyJester for SpritePlotter: without it, this would not have been possible.
My lord. Gonna take this for a whirl right now. Thank you so much. It's funny, I was gonna bump this thread today to let you know how much I appreciate this hack. Was playing it today with my two young nephews on the Genesis emulator for Wii and it was a blast. I'm sure this'll make it an even bigger hit.
Epic! This hack just keeps getting more and more impressive. You keep pushing this above and beyond what I ever thought was possible to stuff into a single Genesis rom. (Are other teams being considered? )
The A button might be a better choice, for consistency with SCD. Besides that, C is kind of the defacto 'main' button due to its similar placement to A on the NES controller. Not just pulling that out of my ass, that's how many games set their default controls up. I view A as kind of the equivalent of Select.
Well, the A button is already used to go back to the title screen (based on the start+A to go back to Sega screen from stage select code), so it was already taken (anyone can trigger this too). Edit: Yes.
Well other than the colour pallete being borked on the team choose sprites, the addition of the Chaotix seems to work well! This may just be because I'm playing on an android tablet [with a PS3 controller, no touch controls for me], but the Sonic 2 special stages are moving WAYY Fast, makes it really hard to collect the rings! XD Perhaps I'm just too used to those stages lagging just slightly when playing on other devices! :P
The colors in team select work on Regen, Fusion and on real hardware; so this is just a case of a bad emulator being bad. And the special stages are unchanged in terms of rendering speed from stock S2 (although I can make them faster -- check the concept demos I released in the randomhack thread).
Indeed I had thought that might be because of the emulator! Espio's wall running ability is fun to play with! ^_^
You have no idea how many bugs the original engine has that I had to deal with to get that wall- and ceiling-walking ability to work... including some that affect all games from S1 to S3&K (but which you can't notice in the originals due to how the maps are laid out).
Bug Report: Using Super Dash cheat... Team chaotix only glows... nothing else seemingly changes... most notably they are not invincibile.
Yeah, I partially disabled super dash for them; didn't try too hard, though, as I didn't have enough time to check for bugs. I suppose it does no harm to enable it, though, since I have coded their super forms since I had disabled it. By the way: I know that Espio and Vector disappear in the S2 to S2 transition; their looking back sprites still aren't ready, and I forgot to put in a workaround in time.
I found one game breaking bug in SYZ. I'll do a search for anymore I can find, and send a .RAR of savestates. These will be created with Gens/GS r7... unless you prefer something else.
This is wonderful, but consider changing the menus - the multi-button approach to changing options is really unintuitive.
The Chaotix are a lot of fun to play as. Great job squeezing them in. I briefly tried combi-mode and now I see why there weren't any loops in Knuckles Chaotix, haha. I really feel like this mode would benefit from a hold button like in that game, unless it's implemented in some way that I missed out on. Gonna try it out with my girlfriend tonight and hopefully it'll go better than playing with computer players.
Here are a few details from the Chaotix-style mode: looking up or down prevents you from being dragged; using double-jump abilities generally prevents you from being dragged in "unhelpful" directions ("helpful" directions are forward and up -- forward being "left or right, wherever you are traveling to"), but there are exceptions (such as Tails being tired allows dragging in any direction, Knuckles climbing prevents all dragging and so on). There are lots of details in deciding how and when a player pushes one another (and the push/pull can be asymmetrical), with the idea being to preserve mobility when the characters are close by but restrict them to be in close quarters. And yes, the loops can indeed be a challenge; it is one of the reasons for P2 and P3 being able to die using start+c. Anyway, playing with humans is MUCH better than playing with the AI; you will enjoy the new mode a lot more like that.
A question about the Chaotix, does Espio do anything? I remember him being able to stick to walls in Knuckles Chaotix, but I can't seem to trigger it. That, and he's unable to use shield abilites.
Jump, trigger a double-jump, keep holding the jump button and press the directional towards the wall or ceiling you want to stick to. I made some tweaks that will allow easier attaching to ceilings, but I haven't released the modified version yet; will wait for more bugs to be fixed.
