Sonic The Hedgehog 1 for Sega/Mega-CD

I was actually looking for something like this the other day... glad to see this. I'll give it a go.

 

Why Two-Eight instead of Kraminator?

 

I wanna bump this because....

A. I feel this should be more relevant than it is.

B. I need more clarification on how to build this. I downloaded all of the .rar's and followed your instructions. Could you please offer more clarification for me, and possibly for anyone else who has similar difficulty with this?

 

First off, every time you change level or code inside the /Game folder, open up "buildallfiles.bat" which is also in the /Game folder. Then in the root folder open up "buildISO.bat". Then in /DiskImage there should be the built ISO. Also put the MP3s and the CUE in this folder. Hope I could help!

 

Unless you actually know what you can do with a Mega CD there really is no point to convert something to use it. Same applies with the 32X. If you are going to utilise the hardware features of those consoles then yes, convert your hack to using them. If you just want to play MP3s and that's it well what's the point? Just learn how to use SMPS.

 

This. I know that it is fun to play with MP3s, but after learning a good amount of SMPS myself, it really disturbs me when I see people saying that they're going to port their hack to the Sega CD and list MP3 support as a big thing *looks at Stardust Gear over at SSRG*

I don't want to seriously offend anyone, I was just saying that you shouldn't rely on this as your source for epic music in your hack. I know most of you know better than this, but people who are very new here might try something like that...

 

^^^ Admittedly I am still very new with regards to the peripheral hardware, so any advice you or Spanner or anyone have is worth hearing.

 

I'd say if you prefer a hack with CDDA support, go with it. Keep in mind that more stuff, even FMV is on the to-do list. This source code isn't even finished yet.

 

aside from CDDA, isn't the only other major advantage the SIZE of the game you could put together?

 

Man, if only there was ever a Neptune CD to easily make use of both addons in one machine. You could make the most badass cart games with it, mode 1 CD/32X would be pretty awesome for that. Really, you could do module music ala Sonic CD's past stages and make use of more sample channels with the 32X like Chaotix using the PVM channels for percussion. Palette indices could be freed up MD-side for the backgrounds while you don't have to worry about clashes with sprites, etc.

 

Yeah but the problem with 32X graphics is that they don't work like MD sprites, they can only be either in front or behind all of the MD's graphics, meaning if you want Sonic to appear between the foreground and background, like when he goes through a loop, you'd have to cover him up with sprites on the 32X side.

 

Wait a minute, could this be why they entirely removed the loops from Chaotix? :O

 

I'm still trying to decide on the best way to approach this in my port of Sonic to 32X. I don't think this is the reason loops were removed from Chaotix though, simply because I recall there are places in the game where the player appears between layers.

 

I've been watching a walkthrough of the game and the only places where the player sprites go behind a piece of foreground are the fake walls that turn "translucid", and the big entrances to the tubes, which are obviously sprite-based objects and sometimes move out of place depending on the scrolling, and also a couple of columns and doors in the hub area, which I guess are also sprites. The other place where the characters can go behind the foreground is when they get automatically transported to a different place in Marina Madness, but they go behind every single piece of background when that happens.

I can't believe the 32X couldn't handle such a simple thing and now I can't unsee how no foreground elements can overlap them (something that could be done since Kid Icarus on the NES, I think?)... However, since this was built from Sonic Crackers and that one did have overlapping foreground elements, I wonder if the levels in Chaotix do as well.

 

Didn't the 32X just grab the finalised Mega Drive image straight from the output port? I can't imagine how the 32X could do anything more in that case.

 

I know nothing about how the 32X draws sprites, whether tile or bitmap based, or if it's anything like Doom where transparency doesn't exist but rather you only have solid color info while defining the shape it sits in.

Is it possible to have a transparency mask to delete parts of the sprite? I don't see why there couldn't be a dedicated "this is what we actually show" part of the VRAM, copying the unmodified sprites there as-needed while overwriting select pixels as index 0. I assumed this is what was already happening in Chaotix, but I guess not.

 

IIRC there is a Sonc 1 to 32X port also... and he seems to handle loops fine there. I'll say this. Play Sonic Classic Heroes with at least 2 characters in Chaotix mode, and you'll see why they removed the loops. XD

 

And this is using a completely different and much less restrictive code for the energy bands than what is present in Chaotix.

More on topic: there is (was?) a project to use the 32x's twin SH-2 CPUs to make a software VDP for the 32x; it is called SuperVDP. Of course, it ends up being only 30fps, but with 256 colors; so it might be workable for a Sonic game.