Sonic CD's Mysterious Cut R2 Level Discussion - Post Origins Edition

Are you able to locate a quote for this? I had not heard this before.

 

http://info.sonicretro.org/Jim_Tretheway_interview_by_RyogaMasaki_(September_2000)

Since most of the R2 materials we got are from the early/mid 92 there's a good chance it was cut around the time v.0.02 was built.
There are leftovers from Collision Chaos and Wacky Workbench in CD V0.02, not a single R2 asset other than a camera lock.

 

Where are the sources for all these comments and why aren't they on the wiki

Sonic the Hedgehog CD/Development

Come on lads.


EDIT: and then he noticed the post above

 

Well, it makes a lot of sense. If they were dissatisfied with R2, the creator of the stage could even get fired. No wonder they are so secretive about it.

Even if the statue was a leftover, nobody would want to reopen old wounds, maybe?

Althought, this makes me wonder - how much of R2 was actually finished, before scrapping it entirely. Maybe the problem was, that the level was so unfinished by the time they wanted to implement it in the game, so they decided to scrap it?

 

Thinking on the quote, I think I have heard that actually. My brain is trying to push out a lot of this to make way for new knowledge.

I've never worked for a company or seen a situation in a company where they couldn't talk about something because someone did a bad job, or even that the person involved was no longer on the team. So unless there's a cultural component that I don't understand, I don't see that as plausible.

Honestly, the secrecy sounds more in line with an NDA. But why? Japanese developers have talked about other unused concepts in various games before.

Maybe Mr. R2 Guy got booted, then proceeded to *sue* them, and then that's why they avoid discussing R2 specifically. It'd be interesting to find out who this guy was. They might still know, though he may also be unable to talk about it.

 

I'm having a hard time grasping the Sonic CD workflow from what you're all taking about. So Oshima issued eight different briefings for eight different teams (or just... guys?) with a footnote like "bring me a complete level along these lines in x months" in each of them? Like a hackathon or a gymkhana?

 

The CD team's refusal to talk about anything R2-related is certainly bizarre, given that STI members (including Naka and Yasuhara) have discussed Sonic 2's scrapped levels pretty openly. It adds way more to the mystery in an almost infuriating way.

 

I'm almost beginning to suspect that the reason might be simpler than we think; there isn't much -to- talk about, especially with the evidence of how early it was canned. It's possible that R2 is comparable to Sonic 2's Rock World Zone and Winter Zone.

 

It's likey the same reason they don't explisitly talk about the Michael Jackson stuff in Sonic 3. A lot of red tape involved from a legal team for their own protections. A lot of times there are a lot of precautionary measures put into place to avoid getting sued. One of those may be to not discuss the works of a terminated employee. It's more common than you think. I'm just not sure how it works with the gaming industry.

 

At this point, it wouldn't surprise me if Sega were intentionally keeping some things secret so they could use them to hype up older fans like us. Every retrospective collection comes with a gallery where there are always new treasures to gawk at. Taxman got some R2 nuggets out of Sega back in 2011, and Origins had that one nugget. I don't think there's a mountain of assets that they're sitting on, but maybe they put the word out to the old CD devs to keep a tight lip about R2.

 

This honestly sounds the most plausible; so much of the other stuff in this thread is just guesswork then taking that guesswork as if it's something to build on and it's just dumb. Let's stick with what we have evidence for instead of "maybe the person who made it did a bad job and got fired and then sued and then..." nonsense.

 

Sticking to the facts, we do know that the Round entered active development enough for enemy/boss artwork to start being drawn - however if it's anything like Sonic 2 development-wise it's possible these were handled separately from the stage artwork itself, so this doesn't tell us anything re: whether in-game art was started for it in any significant manner. We can observe that it seems to have been cancelled early enough for the boss art to remain incomplete, though.

Moving back into speculation a bit, I'm pretty certain the antlion enemy was never actually programmed in working form, as since the art sheet shows they planned to reuse it in Metallic Madness I can't imagine they wouldn't have if the enemy was in working form before R2 was canned. On a side note - since the ending animation related to R2 shows the antlion emerging from the bottom of a semicircular pit, I couldn't help noticing that in at least one prototype we have access to, Metallic Madness contains many semicircular pits with a single set of spikes in the middle of each, with doors above which open to drop Sonic in. Since the spikes only damage from above this ends up pretty ineffectual, since unless he drops in dead centre the spikes won't actually get him. However, if the spikes were replaced with a badnik (which usually damage Sonic on touch from any direction when not spinning), the trap would become far more effective by damaging Sonic regardless of where he falls in. I reckon it's possible these frankly rubbish traps were an attempt to salvage level design originally planned around the idea the stage would reuse R2's antlion badnik, before they realised it wasn't working and redesigned the stage layouts to eliminate these areas instead. The semicircular shaped pits do match up with what's depicted in the R2 animation (albeit in a way consistent with the limitations of how Sonic CD's stages are constructed) and the idea of dropping into a pit inhabited by the badnik would suit its antlion design.

 

Gonna derail real quick to make a point. I was digging through v0.02 and there's a function that SPECIFICALLY checks for zone ID 2, and if that condition is met, it runs a function that checks for block specific collision. A little bit of the function is documented on TCRF, but what's really going on in that is that an R1 file is being loaded with zone ID 2 set (no level files outside of R1 exist in the build), hence enabling the behavior.

Code (Text):

1. ROM:00203826 ObjSonic_SpecBlockCollide:              ; CODE XREF: ObjSonic_Main+52p
2. ROM:00203826                 cmpi.b  #2,($FF1210).l
3. ROM:0020382E                 beq.s   loc_203832
4. ROM:00203830                 rts
5. ROM:00203832 ; ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
6. ROM:00203832
7. ROM:00203832 loc_203832:

The code for handling the shattering glass orbs indeed exists, among other things, and checks for specific block IDs. This function is nearly identical to the final version's and even uses the same block IDs. On top of that, the routine for updating the camera boundaries exists for CCZ as well (R2's entry unfortunately only points to R1's).

Code (Text):

1. ROM:0020309A off_20309A:     dc.w LevEvents_PPZ-off_20309A ; CODE XREF: RunLevelEvents+12p
2. ROM:0020309A                                         ; DATA XREF: RunLevelEvents+Er ...
3. ROM:0020309C                 dc.w LevEvents_PPZ-off_20309A
4. ROM:0020309E                 dc.w LevEvents_CCZ-off_20309A

Code (Text):

1. ROM:002030CA LevEvents_CCZ:                          ; DATA XREF: ROM:0020309Eo
2. ROM:002030CA                 moveq   #0,d0
3. ROM:002030CC                 move.b  ($FF1211).l,d0
4. ROM:002030D2                 add.w   d0,d0
5. ROM:002030D4                 move.w  off_2030DC(pc,d0.w),d0
6. ROM:002030D8                 jmp     off_2030DC(pc,d0.w)
7. ROM:002030D8 ; ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
8. ROM:002030DC off_2030DC:     dc.w LevEvents_CCZ123-off_2030DC ; CODE XREF: ROM:002030D8j
9. ROM:002030DC                                         ; DATA XREF: ROM:002030D4r ...
10. ROM:002030DE                 dc.w LevEvents_CCZ123-off_2030DC
11. ROM:002030E0                 dc.w LevEvents_CCZ123-off_2030DC
12. ROM:002030E2 ; ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
13. ROM:002030E2
14. ROM:002030E2 LevEvents_CCZ123:                       ; DATA XREF: ROM:off_2030DCo
15. ROM:002030E2                                         ; ROM:002030DEo ...
16. ROM:002030E2                 move.w  #$510,($FFFFF726).w
17. ROM:002030E8                 rts

Sonic's object also has checks for handling the flipper objects in Sonic's object, as well.

IMO this shows that the build was indeed stripped back some and that Collision Chaos did indeed exist in late 1992, and was pretty well developed in.

EDIT: Ignore this bit, it's more than likely just a Sonic 1 leftover, because Star Light Zone is assigned to ID 3.

If you want some more interesting stuff related to v0.02, then I'll also note that the function for handling loops, spin tunnels, or other special chunks specifically checks for zone ID 3, which would be Tidal Tempest in this build. All it does is enable the functionality of checking for loops and spin tunnels.

Code (Text):

1. ROM:00204E18 ObjSonic_SpecialChunks:
2. ROM:00204E18                 cmpi.b  #3,($FF1210).l
3. ROM:00204E20                 beq.s   loc_204E2C
4. ROM:00204E22                 tst.b   ($FF1210).l
5. ROM:00204E28                 bne.w   locret_204EE2
6. ROM:00204E2C
7. ROM:00204E2C loc_204E2C:

Also the working implemenation of "chibi" Sonic. The art for every animal type also exists in v0.02, including Tidal Tempest's fish, as well.

 

A bit off topic and super speculative, but has anyone thought about the area above R4 where it shows marble zone like platforms that move up and down.
I wonder if R4 was originally meant to have more than just the underground water section. or perhaps there were more levels than what are labeled here beyond R8. Perhaps the planet image was way earlier than we think, the labels look like they were added digitally before printing it out, there could have been other labels at an earlier point in time on another print out. The R2 section we see in this image may very well have been 2 zones as well if R4 section was meant to be 2 zones when the image was first drawn. bah maybe I’m just being crazy… but yeah having R4 include the marble zone like area as an above water area might be more plausible theory than splitting it into 2 zones.
But yeah if R4 was always meant to have just the tiny lil volcanic section at the opening, than perhaps R2’s above ground section also could have been intended to be similar with most of the level being underground and having the small above ground opener transition area only at its start.

im betting since there is a huge ass fan pictured in the R2 section, duh. Perhaps it had an air like theme, with big fans that pushed Sonic upwards in places much like Flying Battery/ Winged Fortress zone’s massive fans. Or perhaps there was just 1 big fan and Perhaps it was placed at the bottom of the level and it was annoying similar to Wacky Workbench where they turned on and off all the time.. and sonic would float up and than fall down. In the image we see spikes on the ceiling and floor in places where you might have to time the floating up and falling down to perfectly navigate Sonic between the spikes.

 

Seeing that image again, it's interesting that while the drawing seems to be a printed copy with the annotations drawn on later, the forest in the R2 section also seems to have been drawn on afterwards in the same manner, suggesting the concept may have evolved slightly after the initial image was drafted.

Something smaller also seems to have been drawn on around the middle of R5 (Quartz Quadrant), but seems indistinct as if they changed their mind and attempted to erase it.

 

plus, it also wouldn't surprise me if, like the rest of Sega's communication, they just didn't talk to Toei after contracting them for the animations, and everything got produced as-is. For instance, that the ending shots are based only on the present aesthetics even if it makes no sense (the Metal Sonic race) implies that maybe the present level concepts were the ones made first, and were fired off to Toei extremely early.

 

About R4 and its volcanoes... hmm...



Notice the backgrounds. One is all about rock formations and the other is more structural and indoors-y.

 

I wonder that if that hidden Wacky Workbench past statue could have come from Tidal Tempest’s potential above ground area?
The tiles are similar to some of the tiles in TT, or perhaps they were an earlier version from TT. The level does have plenty of Columns of its own even if they are a different art style.

Has anyone looked threw any of the prototype builds for TT to see if there are any objects that spit rings or drop spike balls if breaking an object?

 

Semi-unrelated, but this reminds me... Have people ever asked the devs what's the meaning (if any) of the III to the right of this game's level title cards?