[The Sentinel]

Just dropping an idea, I thought it could be interesting:
When entering a Special Stage, why not select a random level from Blue Sphere? That'd add something new every time and make things harder to get the 14 emeralds.
Also, it'd give all those blue sphere levels some sort of sense.
I don't know how hard that would be to implement...

[Felik]

The Sentinel, on 13 January 2015 - 11:05 AM, said:

Just dropping an idea, I thought it could be interesting:
When entering a Special Stage, why not select a random level from Blue Sphere? That'd add something new every time and make things harder to get the 14 emeralds.
Also, it'd give all those blue sphere levels some sort of sense.
I don't know how hard that would be to implement...

Not a big fan of that idea due to a number of reasons BUT it'd be an interesting idea to make you enter a random special sage when you get all 7 emeralds before Mushroom Hill and after collecting all 14 emeralds. Not sure what prize would be good for finishing those extra special stages though.

[DigitalDuck]

Felik, on 13 January 2015 - 11:22 AM, said:

Not a big fan of that idea due to a number of reasons BUT it'd be an interesting idea to make you enter a random special sage when you get all 7 emeralds before Mushroom Hill and after collecting all 14 emeralds. Not sure what prize would be good for finishing those extra special stages though.

The standard solution in the past has been replacing the emerald with an extra life.

Dunno why you'd need an extra life in S3K, but whatever.

[KingofHarts]

DigitalDuck, on 13 January 2015 - 11:30 AM, said:

Felik, on 13 January 2015 - 11:22 AM, said:

Not a big fan of that idea due to a number of reasons BUT it'd be an interesting idea to make you enter a random special sage when you get all 7 emeralds before Mushroom Hill and after collecting all 14 emeralds. Not sure what prize would be good for finishing those extra special stages though.

The standard solution in the past has been replacing the emerald with an extra life.

Dunno why you'd need an extra life in S3K, but whatever.

Because you can never have enough...?

Well, at least that's what they were thinking back then, anyway. Why not have just a giant ring of some kind at the end and get a 50000 pt bonus (an extra life anyway)...
But then IDK who plays them for score besides me anyway. LOL

[DigitalDuck]

KingofHarts, on 13 January 2015 - 03:12 PM, said:

Well, at least that's what they were thinking back then, anyway. Why not have just a giant ring of some kind at the end and get a 50000 pt bonus (an extra life anyway)...
But then IDK who plays them for score besides me anyway. LOL

You get a 50000 pt bonus for a perfect, which already makes them like 2/3 of the points you score in a game.

Alternatively:

Normally collecting a giant ring with all the emeralds gives you 50 rings - why not just keep that, but make it the prize for beating the special stage?

[The Sentinel]

DigitalDuck, on 13 January 2015 - 03:54 PM, said:

KingofHarts, on 13 January 2015 - 03:12 PM, said:

Well, at least that's what they were thinking back then, anyway. Why not have just a giant ring of some kind at the end and get a 50000 pt bonus (an extra life anyway)...
But then IDK who plays them for score besides me anyway. LOL

You get a 50000 pt bonus for a perfect, which already makes them like 2/3 of the points you score in a game.

Alternatively:

Normally collecting a giant ring with all the emeralds gives you 50 rings - why not just keep that, but make it the prize for beating the special stage?

I was not aiming to change those elements, I am quite happy with keeping things simple />
I just intended to have an optionally random element on the game, so every time you play it the special stages are not known, and so you have to work it out to get the emeralds.
I mean, it'd be a new challenge to get all emeralds again. I guess it would add some thrill to the game.

[ICEknight]

Guys, those mechanics are not how Sonic 3 works. =P

[Selbi]

This thread is over five years old? God, I'm getting old...

Well, I've finally come around to play this game, more or less, in its entirety. Since I was already doing the hipster thing, I turned that up to 11 and played through the game with Zone 0's guide. There were so many things in S3K I didn't know about, even though I've been playing this game for well over eleven years by now (not to mention that there still are some things I probably missed). Thank you for making this experience even more awesome, Tiddles!

I've been hunting high and low for bugs, but there were simply none at all I could point out, at least if you talk about important ones. There was one minuscule oddity in Death Egg 2 where Tails was immune to a particular set of spikes, though I don't know whether that was the result of a glitch or me being a derp. I was able to reproduce it after I finished the game using Debug though:



Put that as low on your priority list as possible, cause it literally doesn't affect the game at all. I just didn't want to write a reply without some sort of contribution.


Now just the obligatory question, because I acted like a kid getting his Xbox on Christmas when I saw this:

Quote

Credits

Development Resources: Stealth, [...], Selbi, KingofHarts

How?!

This post has been edited by Selbi: 27 January 2015 - 04:52 PM

[Tiddles]

Yeah, five years, wow. I feel pretty old myself.

Quite uselessly, I've mostly lost track of who is credited for what and why in that section - I tried to be comprehensive and list everyone I could remember who'd worked on a tool or disassembly I used, or had written up any sort of guide I'd used parts of. Hopefully this means I don't miss anyone, but it does mean that a bunch of people end up in there without knowing why! Thinking about it though, I think I used a tool of yours to do some quick conversions between binary and assembly dc.x format at some point; I can't remember what I was doing, but it certainly saved a bunch of fiddling.

Glad you enjoyed it. I'll check those spikes sometime; they might be fake show spikes, which seem to show up here and there in DEZ...

[Mystical Ninja]

So, I've downloaded the latest version of the hack and learned that a Genesis rendition of the unused track from Sonic & Knuckles Collection was added as an alternate theme for the super forms. However, I had no luck in finding such an option when I went to the configuration settings. Incidentally, I looked through the list of patches and couldn't find it there, either. Is there something I'm missing, or is this song unlocked through other means?

[Tiddles]

Perhaps confusingly, it's nestled in Music Options -> Zone Music Options, after the CNZ/ICZ/LBZ music switches. You want Super Theme set to <Special Theme>. Since the default is to play zone music, I cheated on its menu location to even out the menu lengths.

[Felik]

Can you please make a tine explanation on what point of boot menu does what? I have hard time understanding what do some of the menu options do.

[Tiddles]

Yeah, it's become clear (and isn't a huge surprise) that not all of them are particularly understandable, so some kind of documentation is on the cards - but I plan to move a lot of things so I don't want to get too heavily into it yet. If there are any particular things that are confusing, I can try to explain them here.

Bear in mind, though, that I mostly chose the defaults for some reason or other. Clearly the options are there so that they can be changed, but in general, unless you think "Ah, I know what that is and I want it the other way," the default option is probably the right answer.

[Kharen]

I know that you want to keep the game as authentic as possible, but I've got to ask: Do you have any ideas how to fix the boss difficulty?

What I mean is, I was playing this yesterday, and got to where you fight Big Arms, then transition to the S&K part of the game. I'm certain that the sudden drop in difficulty wasn't originally planned, and was only so that people who played S&K alone wouldn't have to start at an insane difficulty for the opening levels. I was wondering, would it be a good idea to have an option available that makes Sonic fight the Knuckles version of the S&K bosses, to try and even the difficulty curve. I can imagine making precise jumps where Knuckles would glide during the Mushroom Hill/Valley boss fight after having to precisely aim your jumps during the Big Arms fight in the previous level. If not the straight Knuckles fights, maybe something a bit in-between? Harder than default, but not impossible.

[Blivsey]

Probably not a high priority, but would it be possible to balance monitor distribution for the S1/S2 options? Shield monitors in particular are everywhere in Sonic 3 since there are three separate kinds, but when there's only one, I feel like some would be better off as ring boxes. And then there's the bonus stages and their truckload of shields...