IT IS DONE I've been trying to make a half-decent Sonic 2 SMS since 2015, and I feel like I've made something half decent for once. :p Sonic 2 Zen Island is a level, palette, tile and music hack of Sonic 2 for the Sega Master System. Change list - Every act in Underground Zone, Sky High Zone, Aqua Lake Zone, Green Hills Zone, Gimmick Mountain Zone and Scrambled Egg Zone has a new tile and object layout. - UGZ2, UGZ3, SHZ3, ALZ3, GHZ1, GHZ2, GHZ3, GMZ2, GMZ3, SEZ2, and SEZ3 all have new palettes. - The signposts' Sonic and Eggman art has been swapped. In addition, the Sonic signpost has a different expression. - The Signpost background is now black instead of yellow. - Sonic's sprites have been edited to be more expressive. - The Question Mark monitor's art has been replaced with a spring. - The fonts for the titlecards and scorecards have been slightly changed to look rounder. - The title screen, titlecards and scorecards all have a black background instead of a blue one. - Green Hills Zone's left and right springs have been replaced with Boost Pads based on their Sonic Chaos incarnation. - Gimmick Mountain's Up and down springs have been replaced with bouncy floors (and ceilings) based on Wacky Workbench's bouncy floors. - Scrambled Egg Zone Act 2's tiles have been edited to create dangerous pools of water. - The boss theme, stage complete jingle and death jingle are all lower pitched. - Chaos Emeralds have been removed, thus making it impossible to reach Crystal Egg Zone without cheats. This has been done due to a crash-causing bug related to the Crystal Egg Zone boss (and I also didn't have time to finish Crystal Egg Zone's modified levels). Thanks to following people -Glitch (For making Aspect Edit) -Mikel (For making a guide on how to add dynamic palettes) -InvisibleUp (For making a post on explaining how to use Aspect Edit) -RavenFreak (For making a list of level sizes and tile off-sets at this page) -MrCat (For making Sonic 2 ReMastered, the hack that rejuvenated my interest in working on this hack) -SMK and MandalorianSuguri (For playtesting this hack) -Razor and Zenon (For giving me a reason to finish this hack besides this contest) Download Download the hack here Video [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pT37M4FaF7I[/media]
Hey, this looks really good! It's very awesome to see some 8 Bit hacks around. I liked the 8 bit games and in my opinion, they need some attention. Good job on doing this, keep working on it!
Sonic's loop motion data is hard coded, so that's why the loops don't work right. For music hacking, since Sonic 2 actually uses a almost identical sound driver that's found in most of the 16-bit games, music hacking won't be too difficult if you know what you're doing. (I however haven't mastered the art of music hacking... xD) It's always nice to see more 8-bit hacks. ^_^ I also like Sonic's sprites too, they look much better than his default sprites from the game.
I don't think you should cancel the hack because the final boss crashes, there's always a way around it. You should keep at it! Regardless though, I hope you actively enjoyed making it, and as others have said, we need more 8-bit hacks. I did notice in the comments you mentioned a Tails in Sonic 2 SMS hack? That would be stunning! Absolutely stunning! Please do~ ....please~
What a reason, huh? The reason: The last boss crashes. :v One more hack is between the dozen cancelled hacks in the community. As I already expected, sorry to be direct this way. :P Seriously... Sorry if I sound rude, but you don't think you shutdown the project too much easily? You can't just stop the project just because you found a problem you're not managing to fix, since there's even a lot of people in the community which may help you with this.
There has to be a reason why the final boss crashes. What else was changed besides layouts, music, slight art changes, and palettes? Either way, if you don't feel like working on the project that's fine. You shouldn't do something unless you're having fun. You should never feel pressured into completing a hack, even if people beg you to finish it. Rom hacking is a fun hobby, that can be tedious. Good luck with future projects!
I must admit, when I started my Master System hack I got fed up doing it at one point, mainly because there was so little information about ROM hacking for Master System games opposed to the Mega Drive ones, but I found that rather than give up on it completely, I just shelved it for a while, eventually I got back into it and I managed to fix some of the technical hurdles I had. So it's worth not giving up on it, but maybe return to it at a later stage, even if it's a few years down the line. I noticed some of the comments that people posted in that Razor & Zenon YouTube video where really dumb and people had no appreciation for the work you've put into this. (Then again it is the internet and people will be people)
In hindsight, cancelling the hack because the final boss kept crashing was a pretty silly reason to cancel this hack. Especially since Robotnik is only the final boss if you collect all the emeralds. If you don't collect them, Silver Sonic is the final boss. And he doesn't crash the game. So I guess I have a workaround (of sorts) Robotnik crashing the game: No chaos emeralds (Which is easy to do since they're just objects). Sure it cuts out an entire zone and forces the bad ending, but it'll suffice until I figure out what causes the crash (Which I'm fairly confident has to do with the lightning attack). So the hack isn't cancelled anymore. Also I felt awful for not finishing it since I put so much time into it already. Plus I highly doubt much more research will go into hacking these SMS games if nobody makes any SMS hacks using the tools and knowledge we have. Here's the latest version. Underground Zone's tile layouts have been made less unfair and ring heavy, plus that new CEZ2 layout. If anyone wants to help create new art and/or music for S2ZI just let me know.
Just so you know, someone posted about your hack on smspower, you might want to register an account there for two reasons. The second is that smspower is full of people who know how to deal with Z80 programming and whatnot, so you can ask for their help and I'm sure someone will be able to help you with your issue.
