Then, a compromise. How about a water effect that looks more energetic than the regular one? Perhaps one modeled after the intro scene splashes?
Actually, there might be, if you do the same thing the giant water spouts do and temporarily mug the space normally used by the enemies. You might end up with some weirdness if you're too fast, but then again that already happens in the aforementioned situation, so.
If anything, the surfing intro should be put as an internal option or as a patch, and should be exclusive to when playing as Sonic-only (not Sonic & Tails). Cause it wouldn't make sense to have Sonic surfing solo, stopping at the start-point of the level, then having Tails fly down vertically from fuckknowswhere?
I'm so glad to see that you guys took my suggestion to resurrect the unused S&K Collection theme and use it as a super theme. I knew it would fit very well. I'm also ecstatic to see S&K Collection music as an option as well. As thankful as I am to see the music implemented at all, I do have some suggestions to further improve upon S&K Collection themes. - For the super theme, I wonder how well a soundfont similar to the Sonic & Knuckles theme would work. It worked very well when Cinossu did the Sonic 4 invincibility theme with that soundfont, so I can only image how awesome the new super theme would be with it. - For the S&K Collection version of Launch Base, would the "GO!" sound from the original version of Launch Base work? If not Act 1, then maybe Act 2 since its music has a similar tempo to the original Launch Base Zone.
You could also argue that Tails came from "fuckknowswhere" in the standard game, as he probably wouldn't have had enough time to even park the Tornado, let alone appear right above Sonic in time to witness Knuckles taking the emeralds! The problem with including something like this is that it is highly indicative as something cut early in the game's production. Doing so would be treating it as if it was the opposite. It doesn't really add much of a level of customization, either...but it could still fall under that option. Updating the scene to have Knuckles show up and making new versions of the animation for the S1 and S3 Sonic sprite sets, and shading for the S2 Sonic sprite set, can be done reasonably enough. It's just something that wouldn't exactly be highly considered if it was at all.
Don't worry I'm well aware of how pointless it is altogether. But it's just a thought for the sake of immortalizing a scrapped concept. On another note, I noticed that when playing as Sonic & Tails, the transition (from CNZ to FBZ) at the start of FBZ only has Sonic being cannoned up, while Tails just spawns out of mid air and briefly flies up to stand behind him. Tails was shot out of the cannon tooooo :P
One big issue... Main menu settings don't save when I use ReGen. The game itself will save though. Menu settings save on every other emulator I've tried... even Gensoid. Only Regen has this issue.
Suggestion: I like the 50 ring requirement for signpost special stages, since it makes them feel a little more special, while being abit of a Sonic 2'ification. Howabout sonic 1'ing up the giant rings via customization patch as well? Is it even possible to add a 50 ring requirement option for the giant special stage rings to show up in their hidden locations? (With or without emeralds) it always feels super easy getting the emeralds in sonic 3, something like that would add a little bit to them to make it feel like an accomplishment like it was in sonic 1 & sonic 2, and it would add a little more balance to the game when you DO have super sonic, still needing to get rings yourself first. (With the exception of the first giant ring in mushroom valley zone, which is required to transform the emeralds, and you don't get enough rings by that point so it should still always show up)
I'd think something like that would be a little harder to implement than the starposts... but would be cool to see, albeit in a different hack. Perhaps instead of just 50, have different rings have different requirements (reading from an offset table) Retro Remix does something like this, but with layout changes instead of Giant Rings, and Emeralds instead of rings. EDIT: Found a big that exists in the original S3k... I don't think I've EVER seen it fixed BTW... When a level is finished and the player goes into a spin, JUST before the Score Tally card appears, Sonic will pop into his victory pose, but his y_position will not be readjusted (y_pos-5) as it should... This results in Sonic having his feet buried in the floor. The y_position is readjusted afterwards... and its nothing gamebreaking or anything... just something I've never seen fixed, yet it's 1 simple instruction put in the right place.
This is actually fixed in both of the Sonic CD modes, as I recall, but I didn't much care for the way you get un-spindashed if a floor collapses under you, which was a consequence of that fix. It's probably more correct, but it doesn't feel very Sonic 3. That said, I've thought of a way to (hopefully) allow things like that but fix this sort of problem, so I'll try that out. Sometimes Tails is too dumb to get in the cannon. It's not like you can ever make these things completely consistent, but I think flying in is a fair compromise - maybe he started flying after being fired by the cannon because he's scared of hurting his head, I dunno. Yeah, this is a known issue I call out in the Wiki. Regen won't seem to save more than 1KB of SRAM, so the normal save games still work but the menu options fall off the end. This isn't a hardware accuracy thing - it works OK on all flashcarts I've tried (as long as you remember to reset before turning off on the Mega Everdrive, which I usually don't!) Last I heard, Exodus doesn't support banked ROM-SRAM yet either, which even regular S3&K needs, so debugging menu stuff is a bit irritating all told! But if you "fix" his y_pos and he doesn't happen to be rolling, he'll end up in the air, so I'm not sure that it's one instruction - surely you need to check for rolling, and then if you're going to fix position, you should probably copy back the correct height and sort out some other stat flags too? Unless it's already doing all that other stuff and just missing the y_pos fix, which would be weird, but hey, Sonic 3. My general impression so far is that it's better to do locking like this over two frames. First frame, call Stop_Object, and lock controls. Second frame, do object locking and set the animation. This should ensure the normal character object has a chance to fix its own height before it gets object locked. That's what I changed on the MHZ2 Knuckles scene in 130602, just removed some too-early object locking and let the other stuff that locks again next frame take care of it.
I stand corrected, and now have an understanding of how to fix it myself. Thanks Tiddles! Also thanks for that note about the save issue.
I meant to respond to this one before but missed it: super cancel is effectively disabled by turning off the multiple button super controls setting, regardless of what the disabled menu option displays - the menu option says the flag for super cancel is turned on, but in reality it does nothing if you specify original super controls. If that's not the case in actual gameplay, that is a bug; please let me know which options you use that make this possible. While I'm talking about that stuff, here's something else to remember: if you're setting the object lock in $2E, you need to think about clearing Flying_carrying_Sonic_flag. Not doing so is the cause of probably most of the Tails carrying Sonic into an object bugs, including the fact that Sonic can walk around in the level results if Tails lands him. What happens is that the object being touched sets object control and a bunch of flags that, next frame, will cause Tails to realise he should no longer be carrying Sonic. When he gets around to doing so, he will not only clear the carry flag, but also Sonic's object lock, which had previously been set to keep him attached to Tails. So essentially he ends up undoing the real object lock. If you clear the carrying flag when you set your own object lock, this stops being a problem; Tails doesn't run his own stop-carrying-Sonic code because you already cleared the flag manually. Technically there are some other flags you should change too (find somewhere in the original code that clears the flag and see) but in practice, most objects that lock Sonic already manipulate all those flags separately anyway. One other caveat with this approach, though: you might fix a bug where Tails is carrying Sonic and Sonic hits an object, and create a bug where Tails is carrying Sonic and Tails hits the object. If it's Tails that hits the object, you absolutely do not want to clear the carrying flag, unless you also clear all the other relevant flags on Sonic, or Sonic will just irrevocably hang in space as if still being carried by an invisible friend. You can do a quick cmpa.w #$B000,a0 to check whether the flag should be cleared or not.
I've thought of that, because at the same time it is a very fun bug to use. In that case, preserving the spindash sprite itself when being bounced would be a great alternative. Does this mean you won't be going for super mode water waves?
Two bugs you should look into fixing with the Competition Mode: 1) Items will only spawn if you pass the lap marker while on the ground. If you do it airbourne, nothing spawns. Kind of annoying and a bit inconsistent! 2) Look at the following screenshot: The glitchy object next to the lap marker is a dropped ring (I hurt myself on the electrified ceiling of the sinking platform to lose the ring). It uses the lap marker graphics instead of the actual ring graphics, and doesn't even animate properly. I'm honestly surprised SEGA never caught this glaring bug! But then again, Sonic3K is extremely glitchy...
Not in the immediate future, though I haven't ruled out trying to do something about it. MainMemory is most likely to be correct in there not being enough VRAM to reproduce it fully, but there might be something more energetic that can be done; I don't consider it a priority though. For things I don't comment on, the default answer is normally "I'll think about it, I might try it, but I make no promises." Ugh. Competition mode. Ugh. Thanks for the reports - I will try to look at those come the day I bitterly and miserably go to work on it.
I cannot get over the S&K Collection unused super theme inclusion. Feels nice not hearing the much shorter invincibility music repeatedly. I noticed that one animation set for Super/Hyper Sonic is still a recolor of Sonic. Has a replacement not been made, has it yet to be implemented, or is there no way to implement it due to some hardware constraint?
It's just that nobody's ever drawn one. I didn't lose too much sleep over it, since it is seen for maybe three seconds of the entire game, but it would be nice to replace it eventually for the sake of completeness.
Have you thought about implementing a Tails assist mode similar to the one in Sonic 4 Episode 2? I'm not talking about that 69 rolling move, just the flying mode. I know it might be a bit complicated considering the new button layout for super transformations and secondary abilities, it's just a thought I had. I also think a Sonic Crackers gameplay mode would be kinda neat, sans the ring band. I just want to throw Tails around.
