Sik and Tweaker have contacted the correct person to ask about all that, so we can hope to get some more answers.
And, how about some more research on Sonic 3 / & Knuckles? If they were so messy, they should have something interesting in them somewhere, no?
Well, Yasuhara was one of the main three people behind the original games, so I guess he'd know that kind of stuff, including why does the name Dust Hill lead to Mystic Cave in the prototypes.
Oh I thought you meant they contacted someone else as well. Actually I'm fine with what we know now. BTW screw you all, I'm calling the Desert level Dust Hill
... well... We've heard two different stories. One was that the Desert Level and the Winter level were actually one level that just changed pallets. In this case it'd also be Dust Hill... if it's a separate level though, no clue. okay really I need to stop refreshing this page waiting for replies >_>
I think it was... maybe Brenda who said it... But I'm pretty sure that idea was dropped because in a more recent interview with... whoever the hell it was they said it would be separate zones.
Yeah...I don't see how Desert suddenly transforming into Snow (or vice versa) would make sense. But then again, this is a game about a walking oversized blue hedgehog that can run really fast and talk and his partner is an oversized walking talking fox with 2 tails who has to beat an obese guy. So I guess it doesn't have to make sense.
Probably why they didn't use it =P Anyway: http://info.sonicretro.org/Brenda_Ross_int...(February_2001) It was Brenda who said that. BTW here's my theory on all this, yeah that's right I'm gonna go there >=) Okay so maybe after the Nick Arcade proto and the one Drx spoke of, they made a bunch of slots in what's now Simon's beta and gave them all names and included Dust Hill because at the time, it was fully intended to be put in. (does that make sense?) then either A. They had a choice between Mystic Cave, which at the time had no name, and Dust Hill. They chose nameless Mystic Cave and threw it into Dust Hill's slot. Or B. After making all the slots they realized Dust Hill wasn't going to be in the game for whatever reason so they threw nameless Mystic Cave in there. Any of that seem plausible you programming types?
Not at all, which is why it wasn't considered before. Now I'm starting to feel uncomfortable. That's not a theory, that's talking out of your ass. You shouldn't try and make technically-centric theories unless you know how things work internally. It's possible that the level select was a list of names intended to be in the game at the time the level select itself was put in—which could have been even before that post-NA proto with Mystic Cave in it, we honestly have no idea without seeing it—but we don't really know for sure. There are at least two or three level slots which are completely unoccupied by the time of the Wai proto. It's likely these were either planned for levels to occupy them, or they were occupied at one point and the data wiped from them. I'm more willing to bet the former—they reserved about $10 or so level slots with full intentions of filling them all up, but it didn't quite work out that way, as Yasuhara said; they had to get the game out by Christmas, and some levels needed to be canned. I know Hidden Palace was one they were really trying to keep, but pressure set in and they had to scrap that too. So, by all means, it's very possible those slots were never occupied in the first place, and that the slot assigned to Mystic Cave was always assigned to it. All the "Dust Hill" text acted as was a pointer, and apparently in no specific chronological order. The Dust Hill pointer eventually became the Mystic Cave pointer, likely for ease of access during the testing phase. It was more important to work on the levels themselves than a level select screen, after all, and testing builds were likely to be rampant. Aside from all this tired ranting, though, I really severely doubt that Dust Hill and Mystic Cave were ever in the same level slot, if Dust Hill was ever in the game at all. The level select pointer was used, but that seems to be as far as the connections lie. But having Mystic Cave in, putting the DHZ in, then putting MCZ back? That's just pushing it.
Does it really matter why MCZ was listed as Dust Hill? Sonic 2's development was so chaotic that that it's a wonder they weren't using the Sonic 1 level select until the eleventh hour.
I'm pretty sure this has been said a million times before, but did anyone notice how S3&K has a "winter" zone, a desert zone, a rock zone, and a zone called "Hidden Palace"? =P
Some time ago, I went through the object pointer lists in Sonic & Knuckles and posted about certain unused objects in this thread. There's probably more unused code/data lying around, particularly in Sonic 3 alone, but the games' size and the fact that there's no public disasm of Sonic 3 hinders research quite a bit.
Makes sense that all the concepts they didn't use in Sonic 2 would be reworked in some form into their next game, especially since they used the same engine and could work with the same assets. Remember Hidden Palace was originally planned for Sonic 1 :P
@shobiz: That's pretty interesting. But IMO the size of it means there should be -more- to research. It'd be harder, but I think it could pay off. @MK: I didn't know HP was planned for Sonic 1! Wow, that level must've stuck with them for a long time =P
Which is why I asked if it was plausible which it isn't, and that's fine but... That's... what I was trying to say O_o only I'm bad at explaining it. EDIT: OH wait you went on to say that Mystic Cave and Dust Hill were never in the same spot, I gotcha. It just ended up happening that Dust Hill pointed to Mystic Cave. That makes sense. But honestly the thing you said about the level select and slots... that's what I was trying to say =P
