New Sonic 2 development lore drop - Genocide/Cyber City palette and art!

And I'll just reiterate my earlier point that, likewise, the chunks as we know them don't make sense based on the values alone (at least the ones that can be clearly read). It really suggests to me that it is quite different from any version of MZ3 that we know of currently.

I am hopeful that we can get those scanned. And when we do, we'll be able to make further determinations about some of these things. But it's fascinating to say the least.

 

I'm not sure about you, but when I look at the drawn chunk table, it seems to match pretty well.

 

I've been deep into these chunks for a while. You're both kind of right. The chunks laid out on the paper table scanned are 100 percent different if you look at it purely by value. But sifting through them and attempting to do a 1:1 using the laid out chunks on paper, I noticed and was able to copy almost 1:1 from Metropolis in certain areas. But, they weren’t in the same slots (if that makes sense). You’d have long stretches of chunks that would match exceedingly well, but they’d be shifted a few chunks down. Which makes me think that the chunks on paper provided were using an old chunk layout of MZ. The very lightly drawn in parts on the chunk map (I THINK) are chunks that would be intirely unique to Cyber City or vice versa. Similar to how a few chunks are corrupt if you load Hill Top into Emerald Hill zone.

EDIT: If it helps, here is my original attempt before all of this came to light. It was 1:1 per paper. (Yeah I thought the zone was a crappy brown color at the time)

 

May not be accurate to what we've found out, but I do really like that art.

 

Yeah, that's good stuff. Once we get better scans and can make more accurate versions, we can build a playable 1 level stage from that easily, especially if we get a hypothetical early Cyber City Map.

 

@Hez Impressive layout, I like I can actually see reference to both the Machine and B-Bomb level art as well. With the palette and assets added, this could potentially be not far off the original art.

I still wonder what that green shading is meant to represent in the concept art of the layout. I wonder if it's possibly the path the fans propell you or something. Does Wing Fortress have anything similar?

 

The Wing Fortress fans only shoot you up.

To be honest, they're more like propellers than fans

 

No I'm talking about the sequence where you're propelled forward and have to gling onto frames on the wall.

 

Yeah it totally isn't now that we've found more info and it was dissapointingly more of a Hill Top art swap type of deal. I did throw the chunk layout into the beta version of act 3, and there were spots that kind of worked. I think it was complete coincidence however, but it was interesting.

 

Looks like Metallic Madness bad future

 

I just want to say, in spite of the palette, this looks really good. The colour cycling animation in the tiles is excellent.

 

The concept notes at least very much imply that more graphics would have been overwrote of Metropolis than Hill Top, with only core parts like possibly the floor and small tiles remaining.

I love how much the Machine background actually looks like a mainstream Sonic graphic there.

 

Well it's nice to see all of this going on I feel the need to give my idea's from most of my research. The prototype Level order in comparison to the ways the ID's are setup have always been questioned but I set it up to the best of my ability with all the facts that I know.


00: Green Hill | Green Hill/Emerald Hill
01: Ocean Wind | BLANK (plays Emerald Hill BGM)
02: Woods | Wood
03: Sand Shower | BLANK (plays Oil Ocean BGM)
04: Metropolis | Metropolis
05: Tropical Plant | Metropolis Act 3
06: Blue Lake | BLANK (plays 2P Emerald Hill BGM) (Wing Fortress in final)
07: Hill Top | Hill Top
08: Hidden Palace (plays 2P Mystic Cave BGM)
09: Rock World (Present) | BLANK (plays Sky Chase BGM)
0A: Oil Ocean | Oil Ocean (plays 2P Casino Night BGM)
0B: Dust Hill | Dust Hill/Mystic Cave
0C: Casino Night | Casino Night
0D: Chemical Plant | Chemical Plant
0E: Genocide City | Genocide City (plays Chemical Plant BGM) (Death Egg in final)
0F: Genocide City 2/Neo Death Egg | Aquatic Ruin
10: Death Egg | Death Egg (no music) (Sky Chase in final)

Now As we know Hill Top and Wing Fortress [Zone ID 07 and 06 Respectively] Have 'ArtTags' as I call them which is the overwriting of art to generate the proper level. Something I thought for the longest time was that DEZ was supposed to have one as there is unused tagging code that checks for DEZ and even sets the VRAM address, but does not load art or anything, DEZ is ID 0E. I was puzzled for awhile then I look a my ID list above and with the information I became aware of from the GCZ concepts, It makes PERFECT sense since GCZ is initially in ID 0E, That it was leftover from when it was in at one point. The fact we have the VRAM address should ALSO give us a primary headstart with what art was to be changed.

Code (Text):

1. seg000:00004EC8 HTZTag8:
2. seg000:00004EC8                 cmpi.b  #7,($FFFE10).w
3. seg000:00004ECE                 bne.s   WFZTag8
4. seg000:00004ED0                 lea     (HTZ_8).l,a0
5. seg000:00004ED6                 lea     ($FF3F80).l,a1
6. seg000:00004EDC                 bsr.w   KosinskiDec
7. seg000:00004EE0                 move.w  #$6FC0,d3
8. seg000:00004EE4
9. seg000:00004EE4 WFZTag8:                                ; CODE XREF: MainLevelLoadBlock+36↑j
10. seg000:00004EE4                 cmpi.b  #6,($FFFE10).w
11. seg000:00004EEA                 bne.s   DEZTag8
12. seg000:00004EEC                 lea     (WFZ_8).l,a0
13. seg000:00004EF2                 lea     ($FF60E0).l,a1
14. seg000:00004EF8                 bsr.w   KosinskiDec
15. seg000:00004EFC                 move.w  #$6F20,d3
16. seg000:00004F00
17. seg000:00004F00 DEZTag8:                                ; CODE XREF: MainLevelLoadBlock+52↑j
18. seg000:00004F00                 cmpi.b  #$E,($FFFE10).w
19. seg000:00004F06                 bne.s   loc_4F0C
20. seg000:00004F08                 move.w  #$64C0,d3
21.  

Basically the excerpt from my old S2 disassembly showing what I mean. Tile ID $326 is where the art should start overwriting the Tile Map. I don't have a tilemap rip on me right now but I bet that it still has to use the Prototype Act 3 design in reference to it being overwritten. Personally I recommend checking both tilemaps to be sure, The 16x16 Block loading does not have a Tag for ID 0E. So it makes me wonder if the way it was designed it only needed to generally change just the tilemap and the blocks would already coincide with the way GCZ is supposed to be.

Now that handles my theory and what I effectively know about GCZ Zone 1.

GCZ Zone 2 I personally think, Thanks to Hez for showing the two designs they made, It got me thinking, Compare Wing Fortress to The Machine, In terms of how the primary ground/ship body is designed. It looks almost just like the Machine in terms of things, but the Palette from Wing Fortress also closely resembles the palette seen on the 'GCZ Chunk concepts' we have. That coupled with a lot of the designs that were repurposed into WFZ, I feel that they basically just shifted GCZ2 to WFZ to go with the new direction of the game when the Time Travel mechanic was removed.

I really hope we get proper scans of all of those papers, I feel that as a community we have come so far from the old days back when we didn't think we'd know anything at all about a lot of the original core concepts of Sonic 2. I'm proud to still be a part of this community. Keep up the good work everybody and I hope my theories with my research helps somewhat.

Edit: Something I forgot to note, It makes me wonder if GCZ1 was changed to 'Cyber City' at some point in development while 'GCZ2' remained 'Genocide City'. It feels like that's the case to me, but I just figured to not forget about that theory :P

 

*strokes Everdrive cartridge*

Soon, my precious. Soon.

Edit: edited, by popular demand!

 

Corrected it for you xD
(It felt like a wasted chance for a funny reference )

 

I'm finally glad someone else feels this way. Wing Fortress reuses CCZ assets that may have been touched up and I will die on that hill.

 

There's no history of artwork in Sonic levels moving between zones. All evidence we've aquired over the years suggests that artists "owned" a zone. Tom Payne would work on Metropolis, someone else would do Wing Fortress.

Yes it would make sense to recycle art but I can't think of any cases where it actually happened. We only have cases like Emerald Hill and Hill Top where they were designed to use the same tileset. That joined-up thinking... didn't exist.


I think if I was tasked to produce Wing Fortress Zone, I'd be tempted to start from scratch, because it would be a faff to retro-fit old assets, and I'd probably end up going over them again anyway. If Genocide City was axed because it didn't look very good, there's even less of a reason to recycle it.


And personally, Wing Fortress does look as if it was created very quickly. At least compared to Flying Battery Zone in Sonic 3&K.

 

I always imagined Wing Fortress looked like it was made quickly because it was still under construction and Eggman wanted to flee as soon as possible

 

I think he means the development was rushed. WFZ was made very late in development, after all.

 

Hidden Palace and Sky Sanctuary in S3k would like to have a word with you.

I'd agree with you for the most part considering the strictness they were held to according to interviews, but Wing Fortress Zone is kind of a wild card due to it's last minute nature. It's really hard to tell what standards they stuck to attempting to cram something like that in last minute. At the very least, I could see an artist grabbing leftovers and at least redrawing them akin to how it appeared a lot of the American artwork seemed to be "touched up" or redrawn near the end by other Japenese artists.

EDIT: Here are tiles from the beta, and then the final.





I used the last palette line since it fits a majority of the tiles.