What really was the Sound Test #10 in STH2 going to be used for?

This is getting a bit off-topic, but uh no. That happens because of legacy S1 code that was never properly updated for multiple boss tracks.

 

So it was set like that because the only boss you could drown fighting was in Labyrinth zone? And they tried to avoid fixing the code by having act 1 play act 2's boss music but ultimately it resumed the wrong music anyway?

Despite joining in an era where this community was a technical forum, I have no knowledge of coding or anything like that. I was always interested in learning, but I guess I was never destined to.

Would it break things if it was omitted from the sound test?

 

So, a little bit related to the topic. I saw this on Twitter about someone's teacher showing off unreleased Sonic 2 music. Or at least that's what he saying.

https://twitter.com/KSlackie/status/1123730407344758784?s=19

I guess I never considered that other people might've tried to pitch songs apart from Nakamura.

 

If it was done in a way that Sonic Adventure or Knuckles Chaotix did their sound tests using actual names of tracks instead of hexadecimal values, it be very easy to hide it from the sound test. The problem with the way Sonic 2's sound test is setup is that telling it to simply skip over number 10 ($90 internally) is that it would just as noticeable. Given Sonic 2's rushed development it was better to leave it alone than to try to hide the track, they had the rest of the game to debug and get ready to ship. At that point the game must have been feature complete very shortly after they removed the Hidden Palace that it was going through the beta or final testing phase.

 

What the heck. You can just replace the track with an empty one and recompile. Poof, track gone from the game in two seconds.

 

This. There's no difficulty in removing it from the sound test.

The more likely explanation is "they forgot".

 

Oh, about this:

No need to contact him about it, it seems that things are already going on behind the scenes.

 

So my knowledge of the history of the betas is kind of dogshit, but wasn't Hidden Palace removed from the betas around the time the amount of polish to the game started resembling more the final build?
That CENSOR proto seems to be the earliest known build where track #10 exists in the game but the stage is made inaccessible, and to my knowledge there still hasn't been a beta where a playable, clean-ish version of HPZ exists alongside track #10. Which begs the question:
Maybe since the stage was already set to be scrapped at one point, would that track have been planned for use in something completely unrelated to the Hidden Palace at the time of its inclusion before -that- hypothetical idea got scrapped as well?

 

In the end credits reprise medley, when they replay all the stage music, how much of the 2P music is in there? I know at least some of it is, but is all of it?

 

All three 2P only music tracks feature in the medley.

 

The only things missing from the End Credits Medley is Oil Ocean, Sky Chase, Wing Fortress, and Death Egg.

 

So why did they add the track when the game was almost completed and then assigned it to Hidden Palace?

 

A bit late with this, and it's purely conjecture on my part just for the heck of it, but this really would make a lot of sense. Since the tune ends instead of looping, it wouldn't be too far-fetched to imagine these hypothetical Special Stages would run on a timer.

To reiterate, I'm aware that I'm just throwing baseless speculation out here, but it's a fun thought.

 

That is super interesting that it was added in later in development. Was it in the CENSOR prototype? The special stages weren't added in until late either. I wonder if they did have another Sonic 1 type special stage that may have used this?

Edit: I sensored I miss spelled a sensor

 

The CENSOR proto is probably a step or two behind beta 4

 

Dunno if this was mentioned already in the thread.

I'm not very musically inclined, so I am probably laughably wrong, but is there any similarity between #10 in Sonic 2 and the Hidden Palace/Lava Reef Act 2 music from Sonic & Knuckles. It always felt to me as if there was a little bit of subtle a nod to #10 there, but like I said, I'm probably wrong.

 

Maybe in a thematic sense (because it's also the cooled down crystal/rock from the volcano

 

Have we considered that the beta timeline we have isn't a straight line, but probably forks that are complete in some aspects and not others? What I mean is, like how programming is done with large teams, builds have code for stuff people are working on in their department but hasn't been merged into other areas.

Just because the music was added in 'late' in the builds we have, doesn't mean it wasn't always around in a particular dev teams build. We've only got snapshots of working builds at different times, but those builds aren't just coming from one developer. Developers work on branches of code and their versions can be branched off earlier builds, until their work is done that code can be put back into the current build. For all we know we can have builds off branches from developers working on certain features that appear behind.

Basically what I'm saying is, you can't base a theory on when something is or isn't in a build. Because even if builds have dates, they come from different feature development branches. For anyone who disagrees because there's no proof, unless they were all cowboy coders with no organization, they should have been working in this manner...

 

Everything points towards them just adding every available track as soon as they were available.

Have any tracks been removed from any prototype compared with the previous one?

 

Only the Sonic 1 tracks and some duplicates as far as I'm aware.


For the record the "final" special stage music is in the Wai prototype whereas #10 is not. So I'm kinda doubting it was designed with the special stage in mind, but who knows.