Sonic Generations Hacking (and More!)

I don't know, I'd really love to see Colors levels playable with Generations controls, as they're superior in every way. It was awesome to see Sweet Mountain put into Generations and I'd love to see more! But besides custom levels (which is really the main thing I want to see), I'd love to see Kingdom Valley and Jungle Joyride come before Colors levels.

EDIT: Also, something really stupid that I'd love to see is some Halo maps thrown in. I always thought it would be awesome to see Sonic running around those huge areas like Coagulation or campaign levels like the "Halo" level from the first game.

Why? No idea. Probably a waste of time, but I'd sure think it was neat.

 

While I agree that Colours is fine as it is, the answer to that last question would be to do it exactly the same way Colours itself did it. With Super Sonic mode on, you couldn't use wisps, so it had springs and other such things placed in order to get past areas without the use of Wisps. Guessing it has a different set of object position data (or however the heck it does it these days) for when Super Sonic mode is turned on. But yeah, to put it simply, the Super Sonic way is how.

Back to the main point, loving this progress on the Unleashed stages, really makes me wish I had a better system, although I to am curious as to how this would to be released, if at all (though I'd hope it would, but that's not up to me XD).

 

I think the stepping stone right now would be to start messing around with community-generated GIAs just to get a process that creates at least comparable atmosphere/look to existing Generations material. That way people have a baseline on how bland a level can look during the design stages and how far the Hedgehog Engine magic will take it.

In that sense, since they're 'already made', the Colors levels are probably the best testing ground for that purpose from a purely graphical (as opposed to playable levels) standpoint. It's recent, it's got at least similar geometric complexity as far as foreground/playable area goes, and similar platforming aesthetic.

 

I do miss that second jump though, it was really nice for exploring. I assume there's no way to have the homing attack spin 90 degrees upward and last for only a fraction of a second? I'd look into this myself, but I have to get my computer repaired, I can't run Generations on it anymore.

Anyway, sorry I'm getting totally off topic :P. You are all doing incredible work on this, I can't wait to get my hands on these tools to see what I can do :P.

 

Oh wow. This is fantastic. Awesome freaking job. I can't wait to give this a spin when you guys get to that point.

Though is it possible to start messing around with the Sonics in terms of their attributes? Like could we get to the point of a Modern Sonic minus the boost, some sort of spindash, and with an adventure like homing attack? I'm sure going full genesis physics is probably a lost cause, but I haven't kept in the loop of what is doable and what is not outside these fantastic stages, stage creation, and some character swaps with Sonic.

 

There are a LOT of tweaks that can be done to Sonic's Physics. Completely removing boost may not exactly be possible (yet?), but somehow reworking it as a spin-dash may be possible by replacing the boost animation as setting the boost start speed to fairly high, and setting the max speed and acceleration to 0 (Or something similar to that, you'd have to play around) It means there would be no charge up, but it may work somehow. (You'd have to do more than that to make it look nice, but I'm just giving you a basic idea)

 

While this would be a really difficult task, additional programming could be done to add the other Wisps. Trying to create the game in Generations' engine without adding the other six Wisps would be pointless IMO.

I mainly suggested the idea because someone on YouTube brought up the fact he'd like to see Sonic '06 remade with the Generations engine. That, and I would love to see a version of Sonic Colors made with the Hedgehog engine. Sonic Colors looks and controls nowhere near as nice as Sonic Generations and it would be awesome if the game had those enhancements. I think Sonic Colors is a great game, but it could have been an awesome game if it was made with a better engine.

 

You have no way of knowing that. From what I can tell, that's looking pretty impossible.

 

Oh really? o_O Damn.

 

I'd say the problems with classic sonic spin dash in 3D is the measuring stick as to how much we can mess around with movesets... for now*.

(* Worst case scenario wonderful things are possible with ASM injection)

 

I'm confused why it would be impossible to do these things. Forgive my lamency, but if someone else programmed it in another game, would imagine all it would take would be a competent programmer to decipher what is needed to make that particular event occur and recreate it within a modified Generations code. Why can this not happen?

 

Movesets are one thing, but all the things Guess Who are talking about very likely require changes to the fundamental framework of the game; probably even the level format.

 

This isn't quite the Jesus miracle Dario's been treating us to, but here's this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QpvlJZ4TzoU&feature=channel&list=UL

Someone finally figured out how to slow down Shadow's running animation.

 

I rarely dabbled in ASM and never touched an EXE, so don't really expect me to even attempt to code in anything like that. I've just been sticking to cracking the file formats and writing tools for them. It's kinda amazing though how much this game can do without any code tampering though, but it could be a bit better regarding object definitions.

Only EXE hacks I would like to see are:
- Load files directly instead of using the CPKs. I'm not sure if this is even built in already! There's a work folder that was used in Unleashed for overriding files with the DLC, and I've seen reports of people sometimes crashing when there's some weird shit in the disk folder apart from the 3 Main cpks. This would likely be the best modification because it would reduce testing time to 0 instead of 2-3 minutes each time you modify something. Would also be bitchin' for mod distribution.

- Level Slot injection. Given they seem to use internal IDs, I'd imagine there's just a switch/case statement somewhere that checks the StageID and appends the level string(ghz, cpz). With the right definitions in the Archive XMLs, this would allow to put more levels in than replace the current ones.

 

If the code does start getting messed around with soon, one thing I would like to see is a way to add new level slots without replacing current ones. would be nice to have Dario's mod right next to generations stages, but I'm happy were we are atm.

One thing thats really bugging me about this is why Shadows run animation doesn't change into his boost animation when he starts boosting. the others are just minor nitpicks like how hes still using some of sonic's animations. otherwise thats a great character mod, seems like these mods are finally starting to see some improvement.

 

So, now that animations are hack-able, will we be seeing Tails/Knuckles/Whoever becoming playable soon like Shadow?

 

Animations have always been hackable due to the havok engine I believe, just this time someone was arsed enough to fix the running animation to go at its proper speed. I imagine if someone wishes to take the time to do so other characters will be playable at some point

 

I honestly think that he should float like super sonic while boosting. He's shown that he's capable of doing this without the help of chaos emeralds so it'd fit him.