My biggest hope as far as sprites go? Getting Super/Hyper sprites that are all "quills-up". I've seen it in hacks and fangames before, and there's some really good-looking stuff already out there.
I'd like to see a proper Sonic 1/2 sprite implement. I like what you did, but it still makes me wanting everything legit. I know that it would look weird, but making the green color the 4th blue for sonic would be fine by me. I personally love Sonic 1 sprites and damn would that make me a stiff son of a bitch to see the proper blues and greys in Sonic 3/k.
Can anyone tell me if there is any differences in Tails/Knuckles appearance in S1/S2 sprite mode compared to Sonic 3? I don't see it. Or if Sonic looks different in S1 mode than he does in S2 mode.
Tails is most definitely different. Same styles of animation, not as distinct as Sonic, but still different. I always thought he seemed younger and less confident in Sonic 2. Sonic 1's sprites have Sonic walk with his feet inward (like a real hedgehog!) along with a few other minor differences. I don't think there's any difference with Knux.
Good idea, I should probably look at that, especially since detransforms look fairly crappy underwater for those two because of it. Let me know if you come up with a good cycle before I do so I can steal it make it look... consistent. Oh my, yes, I'm very interested doing in this. Let's PM. Odd. Thanks for letting me know. By the way, do the option menu settings save to SRAM correctly in Genesis Plus? The code is FFFA81:0001. It only does anything in AIZ1, HCZ2 and LBZ2 IIRC. For LBZ2, you need to disable it until you reach the final platform, or it will crash on the way. (And it goes without saying that this only works on the original Sonic 3 ROM, not the Sonic 3 Complete rendition of it.) We discussed using an extra blue at the time, but the sprites That One Jig had already produced were designed for the three colours and we didn't want to start from scratch. I'm not opposed to moving towards that in the future if someone feels inclined to remaster the entire sheet that way, and can produce art/mappings/DPLC for it. It's not just as simple as converting the originals, as there's all the extra S3-only sprites to think about. The same applies if someone wanted to work on the eye style/shading from the S1 set - totally open to it, but totally uninterested in doing the work myself! Nah just trollin', those modes don't do anything. The most obvious differences for Sonic are the walking and skidding animations. For Tails, check out his flying and swimming for a start (though you can't see the latter if you use the oldschool gameplay patch too); there are also some subtle differences in tile priority when walking, and we brought back his bouncier walk animation. Knuckles never changes with any of these patches, apart from the previously noted projectile deflection changes that go with the shields/gameplay patches. By the way, you may have noticed that classic gameplay mode lets you turn super via double jump for Sonic and Tails, since there's nothing else you can do with a double jump anyway. You might not have also realised that combining the original super controls patch with the abilities patch gives you Sonic 2 style single-jump super. Again, Knuckles' behaviour is not affected in either case.
Yes. Thanks for the code by the way. Again, my apologies for the false alarm, but the game's working fine now.
Sorry for the double-post, but I felt that this deserved its own, even though it's not really an issue, nor is it that significant. Anyway, I was playing through some of the S&K stages in S3 mode, and I noticed a slightly different level progression: Mushroom Valley/Hill >> Sandopolis Flying Battery >> IceCap I'm guessing that's another easter egg? EDIT: Now I see this was posted already...I didn't bother to read the "Spoilers" :P Also, the issue behind whole Tails save thing was me foolishly naming the ROM file "Sonic 3C" (the name was shared with one of the S3 Prototype save files that I had), and when I re-downloaded the original ROM, I left the name unchanged as "Sonic3C" (which was the name of the save I had for the previous version of your hack). Long story short, I screwed up, and again apologize for the "issue" I reported. :v:
A few things: I probably should have pointed this out a long time ago, but "Pink Knuckes" and the S&K title screen don't quite get along completely. Since a couple things overlap, a couple parts of Knuckles (his chest and his leftmost quill) have a couple tiles that use Sonic's pallette line. It ends up looking bad due to the inconsistency. I was also disappointed to find that the Sonic 2 moves apply to Sonic and Tails together, meaning that the one reason to play as Tails in the first place is gone. Would love to be able to enable that for Sonic only. As for actual bugs, the platform at the bottom of Ice Cap 2 near the end of the level (underwater, just after the platforms/ice jets obstacles) has some bad graphical glitching. I'm guessing it's a sprite and not part of the level layout? EDIT: Maybe a bit more involved for Knuckles, but I'd love to see pressing a button on the "clear" option in S3K to go to the end-of-game sequences, starting from the end of DEZ/Doomsday/SSZ as appropriate. And to make it easier to distinguish Sonic 3K versus Sonic 3 Part One from the title screen, maybe get rid of the 2P mode in the latter? It's (presumably) exactly the same between the two versions, after all. Pretty minor issue in any case, as I can easily switch between the two and can tell from the data select.
muteKi's idea has me thinking... I agree with him about taking multiplayer out of Vanilla Sonic 3. It's redundant being in both. PLUS, I would suggest one of two things about the Save Game feature: Either implement one for Sonic & Knuckles alone, OR take it out of Sonic 3. Obviously Sonic 3 Complete would keep the feature... I just think that it's kinda silly that one would have it while the other wouldn't... Personally if I were doing this hack, neither standalone game would have a save feature, and Sonic 3 Alone would have a title screen consisting of only a character select screen, much in the fashion of Sonic & Knuckles' title screen. Obviously the options of: SONIC, TAILS, or SONIC & TAILS would be in this one. I think that would be the best way to distinguish the standalones from the complete version... PLUS you don't need to worry about carryover save files, which I imagine would make it easier to deal with as far as code??? I think it would look cool that way, AND it would make Multiplayer a part of why Sonic 3 COMPLETE stands out over the others. EDIT: I'm making a mockup of this. I hope you all like it (I originally asked if everyone wanted to see one, but decided to do one anyway...:v
I think you're all missing the point here. Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles modes are supposed to be Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles verbatim, without the need for extra ROMs. If you want custom content, then that's what Sonic 3C mode is for.
Well, better than that, technically. Since it runs on the S3K engine a lot of S3-specific bugs are gone.
We aren't looking at custom content... Sonic 3C is supposed to be what it would be if it were all one package. muteKi and I simply suggested something that would make Sonic 3A and S&K appear more standalone, I don't see this as being custom content, seeing as how the whole purpose of the hack is based around the suggestion that the game wasn't meant to be split in two parts to begin with... I'll post my mockup later this morning... I'm catchin some shuteye. Lookin forward to showin it off.
Since palettes are a topic of discussion, can we get Knuckles's (yes, two ss) crest changed to white like it should be? Someone mentioned it before, and now it seems like a glaring error.
OK, NOW I have a legitimate problem. In Marble Garden Act 2, if you die after touching the first Knuckles-exclusive checkpoint (right after the fork between Sonic/Tails & Knuckles' boss paths) then you will be unable to proceed, since the encounter with EggRobo won't load. I guess this is because of the checkpoint's location, because I've tried this in the original S3&K and with the S&K layouts on (where it is slightly shifted to the right) and the issue doesn't persist. When I did this, I was playing in Sonic 3C mode and had Sonic 3's layouts enabled, but I didn't disable Knuckles' workarounds. Would you consider moving the checkpoint over as part of one of those workarounds?
Yep, pretty much... making some of these developments under the 3A mode flag lets me mess around things "invisibly" while also making them visible for those with an interest. No worries. Glad it's working OK now. Yeah, I was aware of that, but I thought it was a small enough area that it wasn't too noticable. I'll probably change this title screen palette back in the future; it's never worked well, and the title screen palette differing from the level palette is nothing new. It's done this way for a few reasons: Things like projectile deflection affect all characters, and I didn't want to complicate that. Too many options to do the same thing spoil the broth: the credits music options are already confusing to the point that I've seen customised builds out there that make absolutely no logical sense. Check out AI Tails in this mode: his flight makes no sound and he can't swim. How much of that should belong to Sonic's patch and how much to Tails'? If you put it in Tails' patch, Sonic's patch does half a job as far as the Sonic & Tails option goes; if you put it in Sonic's but retain a separate Tails patch, AI and player Tails become quite inconsistent. Should player Tails have similar restrictions on his abilities and/or sound effects? These are not unanswerable questions, but it's quite a lot of effort to make these decisions and pull everything apart like that. If you want to play regular Tails, you can use a build without that customisation. I appreciate it's a pain to keep multiple builds floating around, but you really could consider the classic options as almost a totally separate hack, so I think it's fair in this case, particularly compared to the work involved in doing it differently. I'll forgive you this time, but I did spend a while scratching my head before it clicked that it's only there in Jam's Normal and Easy layouts. You're correct in your analysis, and sadly I doubt I can do much but remove it without getting into some heavy stuff. Try not to fall in there! There are a few issues like this in the Jam layouts, though that is by far the worst one I've seen. The Saturn version didn't suffer from the same sprite limits, so they went wild in a few places. I took the position that I'd rather include the options with visual issues in a few places than omit them or hack them about too much. I want to do this in the future, but as you surmised, I need to do some work to be able to do this for Knuckles. I started trying to look at this once before but didn't get very far. Eventually I'm sure I'll pick it up again. Not likely to change, other than that I might end up adding S3A-style save files to S&K at some point. I don't want to just hide Competition from 3A because a) it's only an indicator of which mode it is if you happen to know which one has it (I.e. it's coincidental and unintuitive) and b) if you do expect it to be there, it suggests that there is some reason for it only being in one mode, which there isn't. I'm certainly not going to throw out all the work I did patching the 3A save screen together, the import work and original Sonic 3 save compatibility! That's one of my favourite things. The correct plural form is Knucklesss's's, but I'll let it go. That One Jig had a go at this when he was doing all the other splendid spritework in the summer. I think we both agreed that it didn't end up looking nearly as good or correct as one would think, so we abandoned it. Good spot. I'll fix this for the next release. As a workaround, if you go right and collect the three rings before you proceed back to the left, the cutscene will appear correctly and everything will work as normal.
Ok here is my mockup... AND I am fully aware that Tiddles stated he would likely not change anything w/ Sonic 3A. But I at least hope you like my work, as I handdrew the Tails sprite (based on the Tails one from Sonic3C's Sonic 2 Tails Continue Icon) as well as handdrew ALL the new letters. F*** IT. Enjoy! EDIT: It's now an animated GIF.
In the Sonic 1 and 2 sprite mode, Knuckles sign post should be from Knuckles in Sonic 2, and the slot machine stage should have Casino night's icons in the machine. Also maybe for added fun you could throw in the Sonic 1 and 2 title screen and invincibility music as an option for next time... and maybe a Sonic 1 and 2 styled title screen to replace Sonic 3's Awesome job though, I love this hack to death. Great idea with all the fixes and what not.
Hey everyone! I'm just as happy to see this new release of Sonic 3C as all the rest of you are. Tiddles, it's amazing how much you've been able to squeeze into this hack! I'm enthralled to see you able to fully implement that main menu feature. It feels so clean, so appealing, so...right. Same for the S2 style gameplay changes. I also appreciate the subtle UI changes in the level select mode. And the Sonic Jam difficulty modes? Well, they'll certainly be interesting to look at, I never played the games in Jam. Truly great work, as always. Anyways, I actually wouldn't be opposed to doing a little bit more work to (subjectively) perfect these old-school sprites. A few things... These extra palettes will definitely help add to the feel of the S1/S2 sprites. The other main colors to change would be the grays, but doing so would make the sprites pop out oddly amongst the unique art style of S3(K). And great work on those zone act number icons, by the way. They really help make each separate zone have its own identity. I have two main concerns with adding back the fourth blue: the effect it would have on other objects in the game that also use Sonic's palette, and the difficulty of implementing similar changes to Sonic's super/hyper palettes. I could always add back that fourth blue to all the sprites, it'd just take some time (I partially modeled the custom S2 style sprites of S3K-exclusive poses from previously existing sprites). It would surely make Sonic stick out even more like a sore thumb, considering that Tails and Knuckles are both made of only three shades of yellow/red (pink). I think saying that the sprites would look "weird" would be an understatement. The sprites are from differents game with completely different artstyles. To me, it would be like directly porting character sprites from Super Mario Bros. 3 into the original Super Mario Bros. without also changing the level art, if that makes sense. It just doesn't feel right, so much so that it makes it harder to play the game without being even the slightest amount disgusted. I'm not trying to say that it's completely out of the question, but there are some things that one really needs to think about beforehand. Oh, and I definitely feel that my work on Sonic's S1 sprites in S3C are in need of some improvement. The eyes need changing as much as the palette. Looking at this repost of a posting in the Sonic 2/Classic Heroes thread is actually making me reconsidering this implementation: Look at Knuckles's sprite. When I was dabbling with changing the color of his crest, I was never able to get the colors to blend in as well as they do here. Maybe it has to do with the specific reds and grays in use here. If I could get the rest of his sprites to look as natural as this one here, then I'll definitely try again with this. Funny you mention the slot machine bonus stage. While I was working on the old-school sprites, I wondered about making other similar changes. One thing I brought up with Tiddles was that. He advised against it because it would get everyone hoping for major changes in zones for the sake of old-schoolness, or something. I have since deleted the changed files, so I'd need to work on these from scratch. Adding in Nakamura's music themes would be interesting, but the remaining spaces in the music bank is a major concern, along with the different instruments used between S1/2 and S3(K). The title screen would require the hand of a great artist on here, as making large custom 2D-perspective Sonic images is out of my range of skill. The sign post from Knuckles in Sonic 2 would be a simple implementation, it was just something I forgot about. Kind of how I forgot about the S1 signpost; thanks to whoever implemented that!
The title screen was just something that'd be interesting, but not important. But I just figured the bonus stage would be a simple change (Maybe change the hydrocity Sonic too). Oh and another thought, perhaps a Sonic 2 mode could be implemented that removes the midbosses and replaces the end of level with a simple run off the screen ala the first two games. Sorry I'm prob why Tiddles said fuck this noise but these are the only real changes I can think of. I just want the icons for the characters changed, not the art. It adds consistency.
