[pacguy]

When I first learned of Sonic hacking, and all the tutorials out there for making said hacks, I decided I'd make one myself! I'm eager for play-testers, and any and all criticism is appreciated! All custom music beyond Lazy Field and Pollutant Plant Zone's themes are from the amazing Nineko, taken from the SSRG repository.

Story:
Robotnik was getting frantic. Every plan he made seemed to be thwarted effortlessly by the blue hedgehog, and his ideas were getting stupider and stupider by the week. Utterly confused and enraged, he looked back on some of his old files, and realized that his previous ideas were much better than his current schemes! They'd given Sonic a run for his money, and he had just barely escaped Robotnik's seemingly fool-proof plan. Perhaps, if he lured Sonic back to South Island, he could get his old lairs back in working order. Of course, most of the ruins had been torn apart by the test of time and Dr. Eggman's "Modifications". Green Hill Zone was protected by the lingering chaos emerald magic, and spring yard zone had to be replaced entirely. He got lucky, though. Scrap brain zone was in working order, and he worked hard to make it as cruel and soul crushing as Sonic could ever imagine...

Features:
New music, palettes, names, and layouts for various zones.
Completely different level order
A reimagining of Hidden Palace Zone added the way that Sega intended, through a 7th special stage entrance (currently, it's just a shortcut to Scrapped Ruin Zone).
Alterations to the boss arenas
Various bonuses for collecting all six chaos emeralds (start with 10 rings, orbinauts spawn with no spikes, S monitors give 50 rings, etc.)
New special stage layouts
A new zone at the SBZ2 twist
And of course, a badly ported spindash







The level select code is unchanged for a reason. please check out all the other levels!

Download
Old Version:
Download

This post has been edited by pacguy: 01 August 2014 - 09:58 PM

[LordOfSquad]

pacguy, on 29 July 2014 - 12:25 PM, said:

And of course, a badly ported spindash

It's like the cherry on top.

It's cool that you've decided to get into hacking, just don't get too upset when these guys tear you a new one. Some jackass will probably come in here and get way too mad about it being a beginner's hack. I'll give it a shot tonight probably to give you some feedback on your new layouts.

[Xeta]

Cool, I actually think it's neat where you're trying to go with this! Sure, there are some things here and there that need a bit of work, but I'd be happy to provide some criticism, advice, and help.

The level art is pretty interesting (especially for Lazy Field, though you may need to change the art for the waterfall), the layout isn't half bad, and the music you're using is nice. I just hope that people are respectful to the fact that this IS a beginner's hack and isn't yet done (isn't it?), as I'd hate for this to be the Into the Void topic all over again. Keep it up, and seeing improvements in the future would be nice!

(This is my last trial post here; I hope I was good enough!)

[winterhell]

I don't understand why people always like to put the game 'story' in the introductory post. Stories are dime a dozen, can make up a random one on the spot as I'm writing. Does anyone ever read those, especially on novice fangames/hacks?
Anything other than screenshots, download link, youtube video or the main highlights of the hack(in order of importance) would probably be skipped over. That would include the game story and the story of your life/love to Sonic.

[Tanks]

Hack of the year. Deserves retro stream by staff. If not, I'm streaming it as soon as I get the chance.

This post has been edited by Tanks: 29 July 2014 - 01:53 PM

[pacguy]

The story does justify some things in the functioning game, like the Spin dash being included in a Sonic 1 hack and Scrap Brain Zone's graphics and music being unchanged. Your right, though, the story is generally the most ignorable part of a hack (unless it's coded in to the hack, but that's another story).

As for Xeta's post, this is anything but complete. Lazy Field Zone's new palette does make all the waterfalls green, and some of the later zones (like Pollutant Plant and Scrapped Ruin) have very incomplete artwork, and in some cases, very glitchy or confusing collision. Also, I plan to swap out some of the music tracks, once I find/create better fitting ones (especially for Technopolis zone). This is a very early WIP, so a lot of design choices are still waiting to be found. Again, suggestions and criticism really help there :3

Update:
Tank posted while I was writing this. Also, I can't tell if he's being sarcastic or not...

This post has been edited by pacguy: 29 July 2014 - 01:59 PM

[Super Egg]

Two words. Sprite limit.

There is this part in Lazy Fields that has so many enemies that my game slowed to a damn near halt.

[JojHeywood]

I couldn't help but see the title of the hack and assume someone had created a sequel of sorts to Robotnik's Revenge. =(

This post has been edited by JojHeywood: 29 July 2014 - 02:29 PM

[GerbilSoft]

Super Egg, on 29 July 2014 - 02:26 PM, said:

Two words. Sprite limit.

There is this part in Lazy Fields that has so many enemies that my game slowed to a damn near halt.

The game slowing down has nothing to do with the VDP sprite limit.

[MathUser]

Marble Zone reminds me of Rastan for some reason.

[Clownacy]

Hi there! it begins

I shouldn't need to explain that the cause of that wasn't that it was just a beginner's hack. There's nothing wrong with beginner's hacks, it's bad beginner's hacks.
Anyways, I suppose I should just focus on the layouts, since that seems to be the focus of the hack. Onto the actual feedback: There's the usual negative stuff, Lazy Field's bottom paths having an abundance of bottomless pits, some areas where 'edge chunks' should have been used but aren't, leading to some cliffs looking 'cut off', but I've had fun overall with the first three zones. I haven't gotten any further than that.

LFZ Act 1 alone had me pretty hooked: I failed during a section with floating platforms, fell and was expecting death, only to land on solid ground, I head left and find a collection of monitors. There was even a part where a red spring chain lead me to an extra life monitor high in the sky. The variety's great! GHZ breakable walls in the wind tunnels, collapsing cliffs at the tops of ramps, you're making some creative use of your objects. Seriously, until now, I never understood the importance of scenery objects, the objects I prioritise are badniks and monitors.

I can't say much about Construction Zone, since I still don't know what makes a good SLZ level, but I think I caught some oversights: It sounds like Construction Zone's theme is using a missing DAC, so it plays static, and I got an invincibility monitor and when it wore off... Construction Zone's theme didn't come back, it was some other song.

Moving onto Pollutant Plant Zone, act 1's 'push block' and 'buzzbomber fleet' focus, makes it feel very reminiscent of Sky Chase Zone, I'm not sure if that's a good thing. Pollutant Plant has potential: A technological underground and a polluted surface, it makes for an interesting change of scenery. I really like the theme, it's like a sewer level. I don't think I've seen many of those around. If only you could port S2 Beta's Gator badnik to continue the trope :P. The presence of parts of Sonic 1's layouts make judging this zone's layouts difficult. The most I can say is that act 1 can easily be cheated by abusing invulnerability frames, though I really wouldn't know how you'd go about fixing that... The boss got a laugh out of me, why did you put spikes over the toxic waste? Did you want the insta-kill factor? The collision on the left platform is wonky also. I keep clipping into the floor. It seems like you allocated the wrong collision mask to one of the tiles, it should be an easy fix.

[pacguy]

I've tried to fix some of the Lazy Field Zone issues you found, but I couldn't find too many. Maybe some specific examples would help? Construction Zone is rather incomplete (Act 2 is mostly leftover Star light Zone, and act 3 is copied verbatim with the exception of the boss). Also, the actual third zone is Technopolis Zone, Pollutant Plant is positioned before Scrap Brain XD. I can't fix any technical music issues, though, as I'm not very experienced on those matters beyond the Construction Zone oversight (especially with nineko's music). Glad to see your having fun with it though!

This post has been edited by pacguy: 29 July 2014 - 04:22 PM

[Clownacy]

Oh, whoops. I got a game over on Construction Zone's boss, so I had to use level select. I thought I had selected the third zone.

Whoops again, it looks like there's something I've never noticed about GHZ: The left edge of the ground has lighter shading, while the right side has darker. It seems that Lazy Field likes to mix them up, tricking me into thinking that they abruptly ended, when I was expecting a darker shade. Look here:


Mad MS Paint skills, I know.

[Xeta]

In order to fix the song, you could check out the MegaPCM DAC driver... that should allow you to add the missing sample to the game. Of course, if you don't think you're up to it, you could download this version of the song that has the sample changed.

[pacguy]

Thanks for the Fixed song file! It sounds much better :3 But should I credit you on the fix, or did nineko fix it himself?