I just found a bug in CNZ. If you get hit by spikes and fall into the cannon, your sprite will still be there and you can walk around.
Just one suggestion: When selecting music options in the menu, would it be possible to press a button to play the corresponding song while in the options menu? That way, for example, let's say I was wondering what the alternative Ice Cap music sounded like, I could just choose it in the options menu and press the A button to have the song play, rather than going all the way to the Sonic 3 title screen, activating level select, and then selecting Ice Cap. Besides that (and that's just a really minor thing, really), this is probably my favorite hack ever. I can't go back to vanilla S3&K after playing this. This hack is all I ever wanted from S3&K plus more. My jaw dropped from the sheer amount of options/customizations you've given us, and things like fixing NPC Knuckles's palette and numerous glitches, really make this great. Kudos to you, Tiddles. idk what else to say really, this hack is just too awesome. Better than the official game(s) by far.
I still shouldn't be able to activate the switch for Knuckles' area as Super Tails. I reported this bug a year back or so but it looks like you may have missed it. All you have to do to do this is stand on the little door thingy that normally blocks this area from Sonic and Tails on their route and be Super tails. The Super Flickies can actually touch the switch and open this location to tails. This is the exit to the first part Knuckles' Launch Base Zone 2 section in case you didn't already get that. There's a red switch here normally but one of Tails' Super Flickies... well I don't think I need to repeat myself here. Also, be sure to look over these videos if you haven't. Quite a few bugs worth noting in here. Maybe some you missed: http://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?showtopic=15172&st=0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kI5XiVUfA-4 Made a little demo video to show off some of the hack's features as well as a full playthrough of the game.
Yep, there's still a lot of original bugs present, both reported and not. If I tried to fix everything before releasing a new version, you would never see anything. I watched the legendary Glitches and Oversights videos back in the day (in fact, I began Sonic 3 Complete while they were still being produced, but didn't know anywhere near enough to even think about fixing them) but I haven't made any conscious effort to prioritise fixing those issues - though quite a few Tails-carrying-Sonic bugs got fixed at the eleventh hour this time as a result of Tails Assist making them ridiculously easy to trigger. Really nice idea, actually. I might not get to it for an interim release (of which there will be at least one more), but I will definitely try to put something like that in place in future. Ooh, but you broke my propellers at the end of Carnival Night. I've seen that before, and I thought I had all cases of it fixed up, but I guess not. If anyone finds a way to consistently reproduce that, I'd really like to know! I tried a bunch of times after I saw that and couldn't seem to recreate the problem. (I think you are all better at causing bugs than me! I can't even catch up with Knuckles in AIZ with the peelout.)
I would still like to do quite a bit of that, particularly save features, and the "Sonic3&K" mode since that's more or less analogous to a Jam feature we don't yet replicate. Unfortunately, Blue Sphere tends to end up on the bottom of the pile, somewhere near Competition.
I don't know if this has been mentioned but when you use the bubble shield slam on a enemy, it activates again by itself when you touch the ground.
Still got a ways to go (and I have to draw all of Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, but hey it's a start (This is gonna be a long project haha)
I've just tried the PC music option for the first time and... no offense, but the instrument selection could really use some work. Also, some of the instruments seem to have their volume set up too high and kind of ruin the feel of the original tracks. No offense please, the idea is really cool and I love it but, at the moment, I think they sound too different from the PC versions for achieving their purpose... =|
ValleyBell is probably better placed to comment on the instruments, given that it's his work, and my attachment to the PC music is fairly limited compared to some, but my thoughts are these: It seems to me a pretty impossible task to produce a PC set that will totally satisfy everyone. For a start, there were two source versions of each track, which weren't always entirely consistent with each other, and even when they were, how your FM/MIDI output device played them back could vary wildly. For instance, here's a bunch of versions of the same "theme", any of which could have come from S&KC on any given computer. Which is the "correct" one we should be mimicing? Even if there is a right answer to that, it would still upset people who were used to another. I say ValleyBell is better placed to comment, but part of my original brief was to create something that would not sound too out of place next to the existing SMPS Sonic 3 music (as far as that's possible, given their alien origin, but that's probably just as true of the tracks they replace) which had to be considered alongside raw authenticity. I never had the intention of providing more PC-sounding versions of all the other tracks, so to suddenly go all out and try to mimic GM or OPL3 on just these would seem strange to me, not to mention the physical difficulty of doing so with 5 FM channels, 2-3 PSG and an alternative DAC drumkit, and the added complication of the sound effects swatting some of the channels a lot of the time. It's true to say there were a couple of places, where the sound didn't match what I might have imagined in my head, but I found I got acquainted and happy with them after a fairly short period. It's up to ValleyBell if he wants to make further changes to these; I'll take any I'm offered, but I very much stand behind what we have in there now, as I'm very happy with the results - if you were to tell me when I started this project that I could include versions of the PC tracks that sound this good, I would have been surprised to say the least. And I would definitely prefer to stick to the overall goal of making them fit with the other tracks over pure accuracy. I think we all appreciate feedback though, so don't worry about causing offence. I'm more interested in whether I ever won you over to the updated super transformation control scheme personally.
I'm personally very satisfied with Valleybell's work. I grew up with the PC version and prefer those tracks (except I still like S3's miniboss as opposed to S&K's) and these renditions sound great. I found another bug, one specific to S3C and not just one lingering from the original. Set your control mode to SCD93, go to CNZ1 and get on the first spinning barrel. Keep pressing up and down, the camera will briefly shift left and right as you press up and down. EDIT: I've got a question about the layouts. Does setting it to Sonic 3 cause the S&K levels to use their prototype designs? What do the recommended layouts consist of?
Mmm, good spot. Sonic 3 was never designed with a camera that shifted around based on ground velocity, so there are some places where that particular variable is used... oddly. I'll try to see what can be done about it. EDIT: Recommended is a mixture of S3 and S&K stuff that mostly favours S3, but goes with S&K in a few particular cases where it makes more sense, and sometimes uses one version for Sonic and Tails and a different one for Knuckles where that doesn't look too inconsistent but gives Knuckles a less crippled experience. The particular ones I remember are MGZ2 always using the S&K version to keep the better version of Knuckles' final bit and keep the route split architecture consistent, and ICZ2 favouring S&K so you can use the pink bouncy thing near the beginning. It never changes the S&K layouts, since there is no useful data for them in Sonic 3 - they are all just a single ring, except FBZ, which has only its bosses placed (slightly in the wrong place for act 2 - looks like the rising floor didn't exist yet or worked differently) and MHZ, which has a sparse object layout consisting of little more than springs and monitors that are in places that no longer correspond to the chunk layout, which wouldn't really help anyone. If you use the customiser for 101226, from back in the dark ages, I seem to recall having the option back then to force the S&K layouts to use S3 data for the purposes of research and general interest; you could also have a look at Sonic 3 Delta, which loads the S3 object layouts throughout, as I recall.
Minor thing that would be cool, is if you could add the option for different boss tunes from Sonic 1 or 2. I preferred 2's for some reason.
I just played through with both Sonic and Knuckles on the hardware (North American Genesis model 2), and I have no noticeable bugs to report. Although, looking at other comments in this thread, I might just be terrible at finding them :v:. The game reset once on it's own (crashed?) the first time I loaded my saved game, but has only happened once and I haven't been able to duplicate it. I have to thank you so much for basically implementing everything I ever wanted to see with the game. However, there is just one remaining feature request I have that would be totally awesome if you could implement... Would it be possible for Zone order to have a 'pick by character' option, where Flying Battery would occur: Between Carnival Night and Ice Cap when playing as Sonic or Tails -- "original design" (nighttime level) Between Mushroom Valley and Sandopolis when playing as Knuckles -- "as released" (daytime level) This would add some nice variety IMO. Plus the teleports between CNZ and ICZ for Knuckles in the original game kinda hint that he was supposed to skip past the level at the point (versus having the cannon there for Sonic/Tails). Or possibly even add a "random Flying Battery" option, where the level would randomly occur at one spot or the other in any given playthrough. You know someone was going to ask for this eventually .
I swear I've seen that mentioned before, randomized flying battery, but...where did that come from? Was that in some early design docs or something? Didn't see it on the page.
Thanks, but I was already aware that S3 lacked any useful S&K data. I was referring to the post-S3 but pre-S&K protos we got from DRX. Assuming chunk layouts aren't different, could any design choice differences from those be incorporated into the strictly-Sonic 3 layout mode? Also, since there are no palette concerns, could there be a patch to restore Tails' darkest shade like how Sonic has 4 shades now? I'd be happy to do graphics work on Tails' S3 exclusive sprites, I'm certainly more capable at graphics editing than music editing. Yeah, this would be pretty nice since we can already select the miniboss theme, and we've got classic themes for everything else. Nevertheless, I'm very happy with how everything turned out.
Dang boy! This is a fine job! Props to everyone out there who helped make this version! Though I am here to report one bug: apparently one of the FM channels is muted in at least some of the tracks. This is especially glaring in Flying Battery and Mushroom Hill Zone themes... but on second thought, it gives me more motive to finish up my Deflemask covers because now I can hear the individual channels more clearly. =P This is probably not an emulator bug, as it is present in both Gens/GS and Kega, and they don't share a codebase. If you can check this out, I'll be very happy. EDIT 2: Never mind that was a broken speaker... serves me right for using someone else's laptop without checking! :v: And as always, Tiddles (and everyone else), thank you for making this hack. EDIT: It was discussed earlier in this thread, but was rejected, I believe... Now excuse me as I play the living daylights out of this hack
