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Sonic 3 A.I.R. Release Thread

Discussion in 'Fangaming Discussion' started by 360, Apr 7, 2019.

  1. Drex

    Drex

    Lazy perfectionist Member
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    Would it be possible (within reason) to give the Tails and Knuckles characters extra animation slots so can also have a "peelout" like max speed animation or even get uniqe super form sprites?
     
  2. Ch1pper

    Ch1pper

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    Any particular reason Sonic 3 AIR would be running at 30fps instead of 60 for me? It runs at normal speed, just looks a bit odd at half the framerate.
     
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  3. G Spindash

    G Spindash

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    Sonic 3 & Knuckles Remastered Soundtrack
     
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  4. McAleeCh

    McAleeCh

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    One quick question - in both the Sonic 3C prototypes and the earliest Sonic & Knuckles prototype (which is pre-locked-on with Sonic 3), after pushing the boulder into Sonic/Tails at the end of Lava Reef Act 2, Knuckles uses his laughing animation from Sonic 3. This seems only to have been taken out once all dependency on data from Sonic 3 had been removed, as it's gone in the first proper standalone Sonic & Knuckles proto. Would you potentially be interested in restoring this minor detail in future versions of Sonic 3 A.I.R.?
     
  5. Ch1pper

    Ch1pper

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    So I guess I fixed my 30fps problem... by doing a fresh install of Kega Fusion and enabling V-Sync, of all things! Sometimes in Windowed Mode, AIR works fine at 60, other times it runs at 30 but flips back to 60 when switching to Fullscreen. Yes, it's as baffling as it sounds. :V
     
  6. McAleeCh

    McAleeCh

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    Apologies for continually posting questions/suggestions - just had one more thought based on a post in one of the S3 Proto threads. One thing that's always bothered me in Sonic 3 & Knuckles is the lack of variety in the small animals compared to Sonic 2 - it's one of the only things which feels like a regression compared to the previous game. However, I was interested to read that apparently, in both the proto and the final game, the coding for Sonic 2's additional animals still exists - it's just the associated art that's missing.

    My question is - would you be interested in adding an option to give more variety among the animal friends by restoring the extra Sonic 2 critters? I know some stages rely on having only flying critters due to using the floating variant of the capsule, but even within that limitation I think the animals could still be distributed in a way that avoids too much repetition - for example:

    Angel Island - Flicky/Cucky (unchanged)
    Hydrocity - Tocky/Rocky
    Marble Garden - Cucky/Locky
    Carnival Night - Becky/Micky
    IceCap - Pecky/Rocky (unchanged)
    Launch Base - Flicky/Locky
    Mushroom Hill - Cucky/Ricky (unchanged)
    Flying Battery - Locky/Picky
    Sandopolis - Wocky/Micky
    Lava Reef - Flicky/Cucky (unchanged)
    Sky Sanctuary - Locky/Pocky
    Death Egg - Cucky/Picky

    (As a side note - the turtle, Tocky, would greatly benefit from Sonic 3's changes to the player palette, as it could actually use a shade of green for its shell!)

    Completely understand if you have no interest in doing this, as it'd probably be a fair bit of work for an option many may not bother using, but I thought it couldn't hurt to ask your thoughts on the idea.

    Either way, keep up the incredible work - it's amazing to have such a fully featured, widescreen port of Sonic 3 & Knuckles available to play! = )
     
    Last edited: Nov 30, 2019
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  7. RikohZX

    RikohZX

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    I've noticed that if you have Super Peel-Out enabled, it eats your inputs even in mid-air for if you try getting Tails to do the Mania flight grab as Sonic, so I can't consistently get Tails to help me regardless of Shield or no Shield. Also as a set of suggestions, if you're already replacing 1-Ups with Ring Boxes when Infinite Lives are on, it'd probably complete the effect to also make sure the 1-Up jingle doesn't play every 100 rings; it would be neat for visual consistency to be able to relocate the Lives counter to the upper-right counter for those who like the position in the Mobile ports of the prior games; and a S3 Complete option recreation for having stage songs not restart if you die would also be pretty dang neat.
     
  8. McAleeCh

    McAleeCh

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    One more query for me, this time re: a potential upgrade to one of the game's bosses:

    Quite a while ago, I remember reading somewhere (I thought the awesome Sonic 3 Unlocked blog, but I can't find it on there now that I look) that the reprise of the Green Hill Zone boss fought in Sky Sanctuary Zone is actually only a rough approximation of the original - it's been recoded from scratch, and the movements of the ship/wrecking ball are a lot more basic compared to the original. Comparing the two side-by-side, it seems that in Sonic 3 & Knuckles the Egg Mobile only bobs up and down when it's moving side-to-side (rather than having a constant bob independent of its horizontal movement like the original), and the wrecking ball doesn't slow to a stop as it reaches the top of each swing (which it does in the original, making the motion feel a lot more natural as a result).

    Would you be interested in updating this boss to use the original code from Sonic 1 rather than the remade Sonic 3 & Knuckles version? It would smooth out these little issues and give it greater accuracy to the original boss fight, which would be especially great in conjunction with your existing option to use the Sonic 1 boss theme for the encounter.

    I think I'm right in saying that it's only this one boss that suffers this - I don't remember reading any similar comments re: the Metropolis Zone boss reprise later in the same Zone, so I'm assuming that one is pretty much accurate to the original.
     
  9. Fred

    Fred

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    Yeah, the Metropolis boss is adapted from the S2 codebase -- so much so that they forgot to update a couple of SST variables, causing some glitchy behavior when player 2 attacks it.
     
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  10. Overlord

    Overlord

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    Yeah, I remember thinking even at the time that this boss felt far more clunky than the original - I don't know why they never re-used the existing code, surely they'd have still had it in 1994. Hell, they for sure did, they used it in Jam 3 years later!
     
  11. Tempest

    Tempest

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    A Sonic 3 & Knuckles level layout change
    This is a fantastic mod. I love the new routes, the higher quality music, the bevy of options available to modify the game to your liking, and the overall presentation. It's just amazing.

    I have one major concern though: input lag. I've been played this for the last two days with both a wired controller and a wireless keyboard and find the special stages far more difficult than they ever were prior to this. You have to press your input way before you would need to in the original for it to work correctly. And then sometimes the input time changes so it happens before I'm expecting it to happen, making these stages really frustrating to play and very difficult to complete. Also, like the Ultimate Mega Drive Collection on PS3, the Glowing Spheres is unplayable because of the input lag. Has anyone else experienced this?

    I also experienced a few collision detection problems:
    Going up the three loop-de-loops on Knuckles' Angel Island Act 2 path and he shoots out backwards of the second loop-de-loop.

    In Marble Garden Act 1 as Sonic & Tails, after the first loop-de-loop and the spring that sends you back towards the left above the lower path, I killed a Spiker, then somehow fell through the floor.

    Neither of these things happened to me in the original game.

    I'd love to be able to play Flying Battery at night after Carnival Night Zone as was originally planned. This, of course, would require a new transition from Mushroom Hill to Sandopolis, as per Sonic 3 Complete. I'd also love to have the option to listen to the PC music.

    Still, very impressive work here.
     
  12. McAleeCh

    McAleeCh

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    A first look at how DJ Spindash will be treating the proto tracks in the remastered soundtrack. From comments on Twitter, it seems the plan is to create a hybrid between the MD proto versions and their PC counterparts - currently this track is in the same key as the proto version but has the increased tempo of the PC version. DJ Spindash also mentioned that the key change may make it in in future, depending on if it's possible to manually edit the track in the proto ROM to match the PC track - I guess that makes sense, as the PC versions are the only ones which reflect versions of the tracks from a 'complete' release of the game. Either way, sounds good so far!
     
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  13. Rosiero

    Rosiero

    Mmph! Oldbie
    Oof, I actually liked the slower tempo of the proto track a lot more.
     
  14. Sally Rose

    Sally Rose

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    not shure if anyone asked this yet or not but are there plains to implament Sonic 3 complete features such as flying battery at night after carnival zone, and the death egg crashes cinematic into future updates? that would be awesome.
     
  15. Tempest

    Tempest

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    A Sonic 3 & Knuckles level layout change
    Ah, I wish I'd figured this out over the weekend, when I had planned to play through the game: if you experience input lag, try changing the filters in the display menu. I changed it from xBRz to HQ2x and the game plays perfectly now. I guess my laptop's not much of a gaming PC. :)

    Agreed: that transition cinematic between Launch Base and Mushroom Hill would be great. So would the intros for Tails and Knuckles from S3 Complete. And, of course, Flying Battery after Carnival Night. :)
     
  16. Quick idea, is it possible to make an optional change the presentation of the final boss? At the end of Death Egg Zone, could the player fight both Big Arm and Great Eggman Robo back-to-back?
     
  17. Endgame

    Endgame

    Formerly The Growler Member
    For some reason, I'm getting a very high power usage from this game, and I've got a pretty decent gaming rig as well (with 16GB RAM and quad core processor); it's been stuttering a bit at times while I'm playing.

    It doesn't happen very often, but it's noticeable when it does.
    [​IMG]
     
  18. Eukaryot

    Eukaryot

    Tech Member
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    Sonic 3 A.I.R.
    The latest news so far:
    At the moment, I'm busy making the last changes for the Christmas update of Sonic 3 A.I.R., and things are mostly finished by now. At least finished enough to make a public preview of the current state of progress.
    Here is the download. And the full changelog.

    Highlights include:
    • Knuckles got an intro in Angel Island Zone, similar to Sonic 3 Complete (when using S3 or S&K level layouts) or a completely new one (when using S3AIR level layouts).
    • Competition Mode is fully ported over. Yeah, I always told everyone I'd probably skip that completely, but at last it just felt wrong to leave out the last 5% of the game port.
    • The most important tracks from the Nov 3 '93 prototype are in the game now as well as options. More precisely, the music for CNZ, ICZ, LBZ and the Super Theme (a.k.a. unused music track).
    • As requested right here in this thread, the Classic Shield now made its way into Sonic 3 A.I.R. It's completely optional, of course.
    • Also, save slots now also include the current score.
    • Additionally, I took care of a performance issue that is possibly the source of what @Endgame describes above.
    As always, be aware that this is not yet the final stable build. Expect some new bugs, and make a backup of your game save data before trying out.
     
    Last edited: Dec 15, 2019
  19. TheOcelot

    TheOcelot

    Scooty Puff Jr sucks! Member
    Thanks so much for adding Competition mode and the beta music. I like the new Knuckles opening mini-route. Good level design and I like how it rejoins the normal high-up route in Angel Island.

     
  20. It seems like, somehow, the definitions of the emulated soundtrack and the remastered soundtrack got swapped in this latest update.