(DC) Sonic Adventure Prototype (1998-10-16)

Or perhaps that was another feature of the old rolling physics.



EDIT: Forgot to say: Orengefox, you rule. Thanks for this awesome release.

 

I managed to get SALVL to export the two working test levels: http://mm.reimuhakurei.net/misc/sa1%20test%20levels.7z
The third one crashed SADX when I tried to play it.

 

Am I the only one who essentially feels like we (and by we, I mean Orenge, Dude, Darkspine35 and all the others and not me) found the shipwreck of the Titanic? Seriously, I'm so freaking pumped right now. Great job, guys!

 

I guess we'll just have to try getting it up and running with the best approximation of textures we can find. The cam and set files are there. I haven't touched sadx in awhile, but I guess this is worth it.

 

Is it me, or does that grass texture look familiar?

I think it may have been used in the Chao Races, but I'm most likely wrong.

 

Is there a chance that this could be a Chao race course instead? Those textures for some reason have always just made me think Chao.

 

I do think that this level's influence was a part of the chao race design, since there are some common textures but the layouts are pretty different. I'd imagine bits of this level got chopped up and re-arranged as part of the chao race level, but not much more than that.

 

I thought so. Those arrows on the sides of the path kind of lean towards that theory.

When you guys are able to open playable versions of these levels, might I recommend somehow making a Chao race out of it? Because it really does look like it could have been a nixed course. You've even got a climbing wall.

 

Any cool stuff from Sky Chase in there?

 

Goddamn, what an incredible find. I've been waiting for this since I was a kid. Major kudos to everyone involved.

 

I wonder if one of the reasons they made it smaller in the final version was a combination of having a level of this size working within the limitations of the engine/Dreamcast hardware at the time? The first act of the level at least. The SET file for the first act is actually one of the biggest I've seen used for Sonic Adventure (it's 57kb big, so that's a lot of objects). That and the fact that the game's player mechanics looked like they were heavily tweaked over time leaves me to believe that they had to drastically alter this level once they realized they couldn't get what they created to work correctly at the time. I'm probably wrong though. I remember the frame rate of the prerelease videos of the level being pretty slow. That might be just faulty memory.

Oddly enough while we've seen footage of E-102, Big, and Tails in these levels there aren't any special object set files for those characters. In fact this version is almost completely empty with object sets for Big/Amy/E-102 in any level. This version only has Windy Valley object sets for Sonic. Hopefully we can get the level up and running so we can find out why.

Still, this build being just a few months before the game went gold gives me the impression that this game must've been rushed. Not a big surprise though, but still, this version makes it pretty evident that they had to get this game out the door.

 

I guess one way to prove that might be get it working to scale and see if those paths in the background are shorter for chaos

 

This is why I joined Sonic Retro!

I'm eagerly anticipating any other finds you guys can come up with, as well as a working version of this Windy Valley.

We're assuming this game was rushed, but is it not entirely possible that this thing we're looking at was originally Windy Valley and then became a scrapped Chao Race? Think about it- this is quite near to release, and clearly they had to whip up a new Windy Valley which no matter how much you rush is going to take some time, so maybe this is a left over because they were going to convert it to a Chao Race course instead? Woulda saved them a lot of time if they were on a tight schedule.

Look at that odd wall stuck in the track, and those bright colours and that sorta pavement-track type with the arrows- that all screams Chao to me, and I've played Chao races to death.

Also, I can't recall, but where did we get that above image from!?

 

I can't find any of the textures used in the old Windy Valley in the Chao Racing map.

Everything seems to be long gone. I distinctively remember seeing some of these textures here and there, but I don't know for sure. The STG02.BIN file references all the texture names the levels use, but I can't find references in any other level. Maybe there are left overs in the files we still have? Another thing to worry about is that apparently Windy Valley once had it's own share of unique objects. I see references to the trampoline (while it's in the final somewhat, it's not referenced the same way as it is here), gates, pots, and even rafts of some kind (it even has it's own parameter settings in the debugger). But all of these files aren't present in this version anywhere.

Hopefully we get lucky some more.

 

Coincidentally, the early footage of Chao took place in an environment that gives that proto Windy Valley sort of vibe. Thinking about it, there's footage of Big chasing Froggy who is seemingly running on a preset path through the level. Maybe that was just a test for the Chao path? Now I REALLY wouldn't be surprised.

Also, that image was from one of the retail discs IIRC.

 

Welp, you've gone and found it. Congrats, I've been waiting to see the beta Windy Valley for so long!

I love SA1, the mysteries more so...

I'm thinking, also, that the level was designed early, before the engine was finalized. I mean, wasn't it said at one point that the Sonic World engine from Sonic Jam became the SA1 engine in the not-so distant future? Or is my brain pulling shit out of its cerebral cortex?

 

This thing is so *very* picky about which levels it will load. I think it will only load levels where a recording exists?

Also just a hypothesis but I think the KEY<levelcode>.BIN files are the recordings

EDIT: Confirmed. It won't load anything without a recording. At least, not until I find out how to get it out of demo mode.

 

Nah, I think Naka said that in an interview, or something to that effect. And the look of Beta Windy Valley certainly fits with the Sonic Jam map.

 

Another noticeable music difference: in "Mt. Red, A Symbol of Thrill" (22), the electric guitar bit at 0:55 was completely redone. It sounds a bit messier in the prototype.