Really impressive, even liked some of the general changes made in the levels! And it was quite fun to clear those achievements just for a bit of variety. Anyway here's some oddities that I found while playing as Knuckles w/ Tails: Spoiler Spoiler: Tails CPU's still locked after beating Knuckles' exclusive bosses in MGZ2 and LBZ2 Spoiler: Gumball Machine at MHZ2's last Starpost, right after getting the last Super Emerald The spring's art failed to load once, which is REALLY an oddity to happen. Spoiler: Knuckles' Post-Good Ending Sequence By looking at Sonic's shoes, you can notice he's leading the sprite priority over Knuckles. I don't even remember if this happens in the original game too.
Is there any way to remap keyboard controls without third party software in this ideal version of Sonic 3?
^ You can edit the config.json file to do so. You can do so in something as simple as Notepad. There is no in-game remapping (at least not yet).
Oh man thank you. I was able to remap WSAD as d-pad, but unfortunately game does not like num keys. Upd: In new version numkeys and everything works. Just use "Numkey1" etc without space.
I've been playing this on and off since it initially released, and it's an incredible effort right up there with the mobile ports. Between this, Complete, and S&KC via Sega PC Reloaded, I'm really enjoying the variety of options I have to play S3K again. I have one bug to report as well as a suggestion: - On the moving square-pattern blocks in Hydrocity, I'm unable to spin-dash off them; my character simply stands still when I attempt it. I noticed this glitch in the initial release, so it's been there for a while. - Since there is now an achievement for getting 1 million points, I think it would make sense to allow scores to be saved between sessions (and reset to zero on a complete save file), much like the mobile ports. I was making progress toward this score and closed the game partway, not realizing that I had to do it in a single run without quitting.
I second this. It's a bit baffling to have your score reset whenever you quit, after playing Mania and the remasters. Having to get 1 million points in one go feels outdated. Another thing I like to request is either making it so that clear games save your Continues when you clear a zone (just like with lives), or whenever you gain a continue. That way you can still max out your continues after beating the game. As it stands, clear games only seem to save them when you lose all lives, which takes forever and makes it impossible to max out your continues in that save -- the highest you can reach is 98 (by getting the maximum number of continues, 99, and then losing all lives, and by extension 1 continue).
I'm all for hard challenges, but forcing players to get all points in one session without suspending doesn't make it harder, it only makes it more of a chore. It's fake difficulty at best. It doesn't make it more skill-based either, as the scoring system is extremely easy to exploit. You can get 1 million points in just one zone by grinding.
I can understand the argument for skill if it meant you couldn't use a completed save file to go back to older levels and get more points (which is exactly what CD/1/2/Mania do; they reset to zero after completing the game and afterwards every time you quit back to menu) but resetting the score between sessions feels like it's punishing me for taking a break. Anyway, what I did was choose an easy special stage to fail over and over by repeatedly getting the 50,000 perfect bonus until I got the quota by Carnival Night. I don't think my method was particularly skillful, but it was the easiest way for me to accomplish it in the shortest amount of time.
Man, it's even easier than that: 1) Go to Launch Base Zone 2) Find an alarm gate that summons a bird to attack you 3) Stand in the middle of it, start up a spindash, hold down your down button with tape or something 4) Return after lunch.
My opinion of the skill for achieving 1,000,000 or more is fine. I can certainly do that in one run of the game, and still be able to pause and take a break (so long as I don't close the application window), come back, and continue on. It would mainly involve getting perfect scores in the special stages. Not an easy task, but then again those achievements should be a challenge, not some handout.
Allowing your score to be saved between sessions on the way to unlocking the 1 million points achievement would be handy for less-skilled players, but in all honesty it's actually pretty easy to unlock and doesn't take that long in a normal playthrough. When I used to play 3K a lot more years ago, I would often finish a full playthrough with a score of approximately 2.5 million. Not just by achieving the perfect 50,000 bonus in the special stages, but also by achieving large ring totals - sometimes the max 999 rings limit - in zones thanks to the Glowing Spheres special stage where you can collect up to approximately 250+ rings each time you visit that bonus stage. So you can reach 1 million towards the end of Mushroom Hill zone. Should take less than two hours to unlock. Just want to say that the addition of the "blue sphere" to 3 AIR is very cool and the option of being able to do a full playthrough with random blue sphere stages replacing the normal one's is actually a good challenge, because they can be very tricky-especially if you're going for the "perfect" bonus.
There's a way to get that millionaire achievement before ice-cap zone, it's cheesing it for sure but if someone's desperate this method works, apologies for the quality.
So I'm a bit of an idiot when it comes to modding this, but I want to try to make a mod that replaces Sonic's sprites with Mighty's Mania sprites. Any advice? EDIT: ok a bit of clarification. I'm attempting to edit the sprites in photoshop, so if anyone has experience with sprite/palette editing there any advice would be appreciated. EDIT 2: Unrelated but I didn't want to make a new post just for this. 2 suggestions for the game if you're taking any. The 1st is that in Carnival Night Zone Act 1's boss, the screen is now just wide enough that if you stand in the middle of the arena you can see both the left and right walls. Maybe you could lock the camera for that fight in the middle so you can see what's going on on screen? The 2nd is in Doomsday, after beating the 1st phase boss it takes forever to die and you lose a lot of rings in the process. Maybe speed that up a bit?
These are great ideas that would fit well alongside the existing quality-of-life changes. In addition, shortening the time it takes the Lava Reef Zone Act 2 boss to self-defeat, or better yet, allowing Super/Hyper Forms to damage the boss for faster defeating, (giving the Emerald collecting even more incentives and rewards) would be cool to see. Eukaryot, you're doing fantastic work with Sonic 3 A.I.R.. Cheers a million for initiating this endeavour in the first place, and thanks a bunch for providing frequent updates and communication post-release!
Eh, never had any trouble with the Doomsday boss, I think it's fine as it is. It's the final boss, it's not supposed to be easy. Plus any change that makes it shorter (and by extension gives me less time to hear The Doomsday's amazing BGM in a regular playthrough) is a bad change in my book
I mean that's fair, that's why I had a split opinion on this. And agreed, it's not that hard. But it does take an awfully long time for that 1st boss to die, it seems like unnecessary padding (like no other boss in any Sonic game dies that slow, save for maybe SA1 Egg Viper but that has a reason). Honestly I'd trade less in level rings for that boss taking ages to die after it's been defeated.
Just for my own curiosity, I timed it. Approximately 15 seconds. It is pretty long, although it never bothered me.
On this note, lowering the hit points from 14 (Yes, that's right. Such a weird and arbitrary number) to 8 is not only easy to do, but means the fight ends at the same point in Phase 3 that it usually would in Phase 5. I actually did this in Sonic 3: D.A. Garden Edition, but I don't think many people noticed.