At least the one about the colored heroes emblems was good, and discussion of removing lives might as well be had now. :v: Ring Monitors worth 1 ring please.
If you're going to remove lives, why would you make the game even easier by adding more rings? You'd be better off making them Eggman monitors.
Removing the lives system sounds like tricky business from a design standpoint, since not only does it make Score meaningless aside from bragging rights, it removes a useful secondary function of rings. What if instead, Lives themselves were given an alternate function? Perhaps if you're hit without rings, it subtracts one of your Lives instead? And if you die with less than 2 Lives, it's automagically bumped back up. Alternatively you could go ahead and trade the 1up monitors for ring monitors and then implement Game Gear rules for rings, where you can't lose more than X rings per hit. (50 sounds like a good bet.)
So, you have lives, you die and they got pumped up. Why and what for, then? I don't understand that part. To the idea, I'm sort of neutral about it. I mean, yes, they are sort of worthless, but removing lives in a videogame, I don't know, it sounds weird. It is a change that nobody will notice anyway since you end up hoarding them forever, so there is a lot of logic around wiping them away. Also, extra byte on RAM.
I probably won't be removing lives; the space saved will be minimal as I recently switched from a per-character lives icon to a generic 1-up icon, and most of of the "game over" graphics are also used by "time over" graphics (game+time over graphics = 34 tiles; game over-specific graphics = 8 tiles). The lives icon also stays on a place in VRAM where there is space only for the 4 tiles it uses — at the end of the sprite table. As mentioned, removing lives has the issue of making score completely pointless (and it becomes hard to justify not getting rid of it), as well as removing a secondary function of rings. And getting rid of score and lives makes you wonder: why stop there? Why not get rid of the time limit as well? Sure, it allows you to know how fast you were, sure, but you can't get gain points anymore (no score, remember) and you have infinite lives anyway, plus it is not likely people die due to time overs anymore (this isn't S3&K's CNZ2…).
tbh time over as a concept is pretty archaic, born from coin arcade setups (as are "lives" but thats a different issue), and only exists today as part of a level gimmick if EVER done right. Mario does this sometimes where you have to collect stopwatches to increase your play time. But a 10 minute time limit? On stages that can be finished in 2-4? There's really no need for it. That said, it is very much an element of its time, and removing old shit just because it's really unnecessary WOULD be nice, it would kind of de-age the game, and lose the "arcade" feel. I'm sure many would probably call that a good thing, myself included, but I guess it comes down to: why do you want those features still in the game? And do the benefits of them outweight the negatives?
So, we can get a different aproach on that. Is it possible to get level time tables, and therefore have tight time limits for each level?
Actually, I'd just keep at 10:00 since it would be nice to explore the levels. You might as well trash the attract mode, but then you have the risk of screen burn-in. You could argue that the slippery slope fallacy applies, but that fallacy might as well become true. Just keep lives. It allows you to attack the same level/level section in multiple runs. Yes, that's the advantage: checkpoints. Unless, of course, we could use the health system from Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric: the more rings you have, the longer you'll live, and you have infinite lives. Of course, we could get scrutiny for implementing something from that game into this one. I wouldn't mind if continues were restored for the no save mode, but you get infinite continues and the choice to go or leave. The screen could simply be a generic "10 seconds to continue" screen since you're given the choice. Oh man, mariotehplumber is gonna be pissed...
Hey guys let's get rid of all rings but one because that's all you need, rite? Lol Sonic games are so archaic.
Better yet, a Sonic hack where you start with 1 ring and have infinite lives and no time limit, and all ring boxes are removed. :v: Might actually be worth experimenting with but definitely not in this hack.
You would also need to change the ring physics so it collides with walls and ceilings, and make it check terrain collision every frame instead of every 8 frames. And make it interact with solid and platform objects, to make sure you won't lose it too easily. Might be a fun mini-hack.
gimme gimme moar questions What's the Doomsday music doing here? How come the S3 final boss music falls out of sync at a certain point much like Flying Battery Zone's music did in Sonic 3 alone? Any plans for tracks 01 (2P results), 03 (Mystic Cave 2P/Hidden Palace), 08 (Casino Night 2P), 0C (Emerald Hill 2P), 10 (Hidden/Proto Palace Zone) and 1C (continue screen)? Have you ever thought of redoing the ending medley to use both Sonic 1 and 2 tracks? This is what happens when curious autistic teenagers infiltrate Sonic Retro: too many questions.
