[CANCELLED] Sonic Panic - a hack of Sonic 1

So I gave it a go, and I'm perplexed after completing Secret Forest Zone Act 1.

Firstly, the idea that you wanted to base your hack on a 32x source code is confusing. However, I thought you put some effort into bringing in the 32x's capabilities but instead showed little to nothing and made your hack useless to many people who use different emulators. You haven't told us what you're planning to do to bring in the technicalities of the 32x. Also, that isn't the CD spindash, and it's S2 Nick Arcade's spindash with the rolling animation.

Secondly, the level design is a mixed bag. I can list all the issues, from misaligned object placements to a mishmash of chunks that don't flow well. Then halfway through the level, I'm back to GHZ. I also stepped across this:



This seems to be an invalid chunk or object. There is a bit of collision, but that's all I can say about this.

Thirdly, let's talk about music. The Green Hills port is mediocre at best. Not all notes play, and there aren't drums... or so to say. I heard FM drums, but it was very messy, and they're misaligned. Also, the instruments sound like the ones from the default mid2smps instrument pack (you can get unique ones by ripping them from VGMs), and it sounds bland overall. Good attempt, just not quite there yet. You also changed the boss theme to the Final Fight theme from 3D Blast, which is an average port, the PSGs sound average, but the noise PSGs need the right voice envelope. When many people port the theme, one of the channels isn't in the correct pitch. Fortunately, you can fix it by changing the pitch of FM1's channel to $F4 (or -$0C).

To sum it up, unless you're willing to use the 32x's hardware, you may as well make a Mega Drive ROM instead. Then, try to clear the level design you just had, start from scratch, and see where you went wrong. Making level design needs a lot of time to make it fluent and perfect, so take your time, play around and see what you get, and hopefully, you'll make it!

 

Conversely, if you're struggling to think of reasons why this should be on 32X, it probably shouldn't be. No need to make things more complicated for yourself.

 

I always feel the 32X needs more love, so I'm glad you're tackling this. That said, there's a heavy learning curve from my experience with it. So if you're looking to leverage the 32X hardware, you'll have your work cut out for you.

Chilly Willy has an excellent 32X C/C++ toolkit which I have used, but unfortunately I don't think it will help you much here.

When I did the Sonic Boom Engine, I added some 32X support (don't think it actually worked in real hardware though). At the time, my knowledge of the 32X hardware was much more limited. That said, I did manage to give it one job to do: decompress Kosinski data. I don't recall how much of Sonic 1 uses Kosinski, but you could always use my code to have it do the decompression faster. That said, I'm not sure that one job is exactly in high demand, so it may not be worth your time.

As has been suggested, you could also have the 32X draw the HUD to its frame buffers, though that is quite a tricky area of the hardware to master. Pixel through-put is pretty horrible, although having to only draw the HUD shouldn't stress the hardware too badly.

It's fairly powerful hardware, but it's a bit handicapped. So all I can say is start reading technical documents, ask plenty of questions, and don't get discouraged when things aren't shaping up the way you want in the beginning.

Above all, good luck!

 

I figured you'd just copy over the little bit of 32X code I had to what you were working with. But whatever you want to use is fine.

You mentioned level editing tools... I'd have to review what I have. I had tried to get proper support added to SonLVL, but it ultimately didn't pan out. But there are tools I developed to do conversions on the level formats. I don't recall what limitations you may face not having a proper level editor to support the SB enhancements though.

I also have a version of Sonic Boom that incorporates both Sonic 1 and 2 assets under one hood. I don't believe that was ever uploaded (or finished), because I stopped working on it pretty much cold-turkey. If I can locate it, I can make that available if it peaks your interest.

As for learning SH2, there are manuals out there for this stuff. I am actually not home as I type this, so I apologize for not being very resourceful right now. But I would just suggest searching for them through a search engine, unless someone wants to provide some links otherwise.

 

If you're asking for a tutorial that will hand-hold you through SuperH assembly then I think you'll be hard pressed to find one. It's a dead architecture, outside of deeply embedded & automotive stuff, these days. If you're already familiar with other forms of RISC assembly then you should be able to grab the SH-1/SH2 Programming Manual and go from there. That has everything you need to know but it's not very newbie friendly.

If you're completely new to RISC in general then you'll find a *lot* more material that covers ARM and MIPS. There are plenty of hand-holdy tutorials for those architectures, particularly for MIPS as it is (was?) used in quite a few Comp Sci courses. An older MIPS design is conceptually close to an SH-2 anyway (similar pipelines, you'll learn about delay slots, etc). You can learn the basics from there and then hop across to SH, using a reference like this excellent one to look up the equivalent SH instructions.

 

@makotoyuki you should use deflemask tracker for music composing. For it you can use midi2dmf converter, and after all- just convert output .vgm file to .bin, using a VGM2SMPS. Good luck
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TP_bBhytfnWU8jJPuwZ53vklz12a0H3U/view?usp=drivesdk

 

FYI, it can, as long as the 68000 is given access to the Super VDP. This is controlled via the "FM" flag.







Even the Z80 can access it via the 68000 bank area, apparently.