A Master System-based Sonic game containing up to 256 levels, possibly with Spin-Dash included? Port the loops from the later handheld games, and I'm very intrigued. (I know that functionally, the loops aren't essential, but I rather like them.) Suddenly, I have the thought of a single game containing all the GG/MS levels together. It'd be something like Marathon Sonic.
I don't know what it is about you guys and "ALL THE LEVELS! AND SPINDASH!" but you're very easy (and predictable) to please. That said, I just want the hacking tools to be easy so I can treat it like MSPaint + level editor = derp, I dun maed gaem.
What's not to be surprised about the find? I mean, yeah, many of us had suspected they were originally gonna do all the MD levels, but were never sure. This concrete evidence shows that this absolutely was their intention. And to bring up the speed change again, does anyone agree with me that it could have just been that Sonic's acceleration, but not top speed, was slowed down?
Certainly feels like Sonic has better acceleration in the 8-bit version. You could be onto something there, yes.
Screenshots should hopefully make that apparent: http://camendesign.com/_stuff/MaSS1VE_d.png http://camendesign.com/_stuff/MaSS1VE_e.png I'm taking a slow, methodical approach with this. I could bash out a crappy editor quickly but it would be unusable outside of other hackers. I've spent two months on UI alone, including borderless windows, new widget set, proper installer and an automatic updater. If you're willing to accept a per-alpha piece of work that does very little right now, I could share a build.
Or perhaps they just cut that one level, we can't really tell their original intentions from this find... EDIT: Holy crap, that editor looks really nice.
Hm, good point. I guess I shouldn't jump to absolute conclusions like that. What I should have said is that it makes it much more likely that it was their intention.
I have to wonder why exactly you spent two months trying to clone the terrible Windows 8 UI, especially in VB6. VB6 in particular is missing a ton of functionality present in better languages like C++, including proper inheritance, better byte manipulation capabilities, and full Unicode support. I would highly recommend switching over to C++ with something like the Qt framework sometime. You get the advantage of having newer compilers that generate faster code than VB6 could ever hope to catch up with, plus Qt has a very nice UI designer and signals-and-slots system.
Because VB6 is fun to code with. Nobody is paying me, so I'll use whatever tools I enjoy using. I'm releasing source code, format specs, ROM documentation -- everything anyone would need to write their editor if they prefer a different system. I'm not keeping a single thing close to my chest since I want to preserve knowledge of this game long into the future. You wouldn't even have known it was VB6 just by looking without me having been open about the fact The borderless window can be disabled too if you prefer traditional window borders. VB6 knowledge in 2013 is much better than most people's experiences of VB6 in the 90's. My friend has a photo editor written in VB6 which routinely outperforms Paint.net / GIMP.
Out of curiosity would we be able to add/replace music and graphics using the editor? If not that is totally cool, I'd have a good time just creating new stage layouts.
Sorry for the n00bishness, but could you explain what the "split" in split disassembly means? I wonder if I'm missing something hugely important in doing my disassembly.
"Split" means that some of the game's data, such as the level layouts and art, are separate binary files rather than a series of dc.X/dX statements in the ASM. It makes writing editors much easier.
Editor looks nice enough. Will there be support for custom/imported graphics? Better still, being able to paint them in the editor? Loved that about SonEd, tricky though it was.
This is probably pointless, but the GG proto and final still have the song in the ROM heh just took me few seconds to copy-paste the pointer to find out.
Ah, yes. Since I will be using the disassembly with my editor, that will need to be the case, but to begin with I am including a lot of the data so as to help understand the code and will move to a cleaner split in the future. At this early stage no, but it is planned. The disassembly is being done because certain aspects of the code need to be understood to be able to create a level "from scratch". Planned, once I have the usual floor/object layout editing done. I would like -- eventually -- MaSS1VE to be a comprehensive editing suite capable as the one-tool to make a whole game effectively from scratch.
You have no idea how nice it is to see someone making a hacking utility that actually cares about UI design.