[ICEknight]

Something I've been wondering since I remembered about this old commercial... Would it be possible to make a sprite only show up within the limits of another one? 'Cause that's what the "diamond" seems to be doing.

By the way, don't you guys think it kinda looks like a tomato?




EDIT: Here's a small animation to illustrate what I meant about the "sprite within a sprite". If it's indeed possible it would be a nice way to save VRAM space, since you'd only have to draw the 24x24 diamond in two or three different positions and let the programming do the rest.

Attached File(s)

•  redball_anim.gif (2.05K)
  Number of downloads: 1

This post has been edited by ICEknight: 18 December 2005 - 01:51 PM

[Gamerguy]

I just finished re-compiling Solaris' sprites, but you beat me to it. =P


or vertically:

Attached File(s)

•  vert.gif (745bytes)
  Number of downloads: 1

[Spindash54]

Print screen won't capture the video image and I don't know what program can do a direct screen cap, so you'll have to compare on your own. The left light is Blue as always in the vid and game, but in the video the right light is the same blue, but the final clearly shows a red.

So now it's a matter of why its been changed back and forth (as the pics I showed before had blue/red lights).

[ICEknight]

So this might sound a little farfetched, but the rotating apple in Castle of Illusion happens to almost fit in place of the wrecking ball, and there's a red in the first palette that matches the apple's red color exactly (R:120 G:0 B:0)... How odd, eh?


Here's another silly hoax.

Attached File(s)

•  redball_apple.gif (13.93K)
  Number of downloads: 1

This post has been edited by ICEknight: 18 December 2005 - 02:26 PM

[Shade]

I smell new Sonic 1 Hack material. Right alongside all the new Cyber Cities we'll be seeing.

[jman2050]

Psydan, on Dec 18 2005, 10:31 AM, said:

On an unrelated note, that Sonic 2 "infomercial" on the site's video page is the greatest advert ever created. Ever.

Oh my god. That commercial was absolutely brilliant XD XD XD

And I'm willing to bet the wrecking ball was edited in for flashy effects. It certainly isn't unheard of and I wouldn't put it past the ad agencies.

[Heran Bago]

EXOGGEDDEN said:

Has the Sonic Secrets community lost its purpose?

lol

[Hivebrain]

I think the red ball was added to the ad. It's too complicated to be part of the game.

[LOst]

ICEknight, on Dec 18 2005, 08:31 PM, said:

Take a close look at the place where the ball is chained. It looks like it has a darker red part with horizontal and diagonal frames.

ICEknight, this is probably because of the compression. Why would they use yet another rotating graphics just for a little dark shade? You diamond looks best so far. No sprites can have clipping to make the diamond just disappear on pixel basis.

As Hivebrain said, it's complicated to add this. But I can't agree on anything unless I can see a better quality of this ad video.


EDIT: Still, how did they add the ball behind the rings counter? If it was added by the ad people?

This post has been edited by LOst: 18 December 2005 - 11:36 PM

[Heran Bago]

Hivebrain, on Dec 18 2005, 11:13 PM, said:

I think the red ball was added to the ad. It's too complicated to be part of the game.

I thought about that too. But why the hell would they need to animate that over?

[LocalH]

From Charles MacDonald's VDP doc:

Sprite masking, mode 1
 ----------------------

 If a sprite has an X coordinate of zero, and has a Y coordinate that
 is within range of the display, then all sprites of lower priority
 will not be displayed on the lines which the sprite takes up.

 The height of the sprite is determined by the vertical size bits in
 the sprite attributes; other factors like horizontal size, pattern data
 used, priority bit, and color palette have no effect.

 For instance, an 8x32 sprite at coordinates 0, 128, that was sprite #4
 in the list would stop all sprites onwards for lines zero to 31 from
 being shown. However, sprites #0 through #3 could still be displayed
 in this area.

 Sprite masking, mode 2
 ----------------------

 If a sprite has an X coordinate of one, the former rule is invalid. Low
 priority sprites will only be masked if a sprite with an X coordinate of
 zero _also_ has a sprite with an X coordinate of one on the _same_ line.

 This 'mode' is enabled when the VDP first parses a sprite with an X
 coordinate of one. It is reset at the end of the frame.

 To my knowledge, the only game which uses this masking mode is Galaxy
 Force II. Because of this, I cannot ensure my description is accurate for
 other games which may use it.

 Sprite Drawing Limitations
 --------------------------

 The VDP will stop drawing sprites under the following conditions:

 - The 80th sprite has been drawn in 40-cell mode.
 - The 64th sprite has been drawn in 32-cell mode.
 - Twenty sprites on the same scanline have been drawn in 40 cell mode.
 - Sixteen sprites on the same scanline have been drawn in 32 cell mode.
 - 320 pixels worth of sprite data has been drawn on the same scanline
   in 40 cell mode.
 - 256 pixels worth of sprite data has been drawn on the same scanline
   in 32 cell mode.
 - The currently drawn sprite has a link field of zero.

 Sprites that are outside of the physical display area are still taken
 into account.

I don't think that's so much help for this situation, but it's the only documentation I know of that details when sprites don't appear.

[Muffin man]

One theory could be that the ball sprites were in a build of the game at one point. It wouldn't have been that hard to erase all evidence of it, and it could have also been only one build it appeared in. Remember Naka when he mentioned the sound test with Sonic breakdancing? Other than the concept art for the band which would appear on that screen, NOTHING was said or shown about it, and I'm fairly sure nobody ever found any traces of it either.

[Hivebrain]

LOst, on Dec 19 2005, 04:19 AM, said:

EDIT: Still, how did they add the ball behind the rings counter? If it was added by the ad people?

The ad people could have added a second rings counter, on top of the ball and existing rings counter.

We do need a higher quality video, if we want to be sure whether or not it's real.

[LocalH]

Yeah, I agree. I mean, coming from someone who has some video experience, even with analog switchers it wouldn't be too hard to grab a freeze frame of the game screen, mask it off properly, key the rotating ball over the gameplay video, then key the masked HUD and platform over all of that. It certainly would explain the oddities with the platform and the cliffs right above. The hard part would be ensuring that the added ball exactly tracks the original ball, assuming that it was there to begin with. If you notice, it's only the static parts of the HUD that intersect with the ball, which would greatly simplify the work necessary.

If anyone ever finds an "original" analog copy of this spot, we need full-frame interlaced 720x576 25fps captures (which can be separated back out to individual fields then resized for the proper aspect). I'd offer to help capture, but I can't playback PAL video, only NTSC. As it stands now, we only have half of the game's output frames, and what's worse our video seems to have come from a standards-converted NTSC tape (it has PAL borders, but 30fps) so there is likely to be a loss of quality just from that.

This post has been edited by LocalH: 19 December 2005 - 12:22 AM

[LOst]

Hivebrain, on Dec 19 2005, 08:11 AM, said:

LOst, on Dec 19 2005, 04:19 AM, said:

EDIT: Still, how did they add the ball behind the rings counter? If it was added by the ad people?

The ad people could have added a second rings counter, on top of the ball and existing rings counter.

We do need a higher quality video, if we want to be sure whether or not it's real.

Remember that this is a PAL capture from Sonic 1. Making pixel masks is almost impossible. Try doing it in Photoshop, and you have to make alpha masks, and still it will look wrong.




Time to do the Sonic math to see if this is possible. Imagine the diamond is always 16x16 pixels big, even when rotated. That means 4 cells per frame. 16 frames per rotation. 64 rotation states (90 degrees).

4 * 16 * 64 = 4096. That's 150% of VRAM. Remember that the level art takes 46.8% of VRAM, and SAT, HSCROLL, and SCROLL A/B must fit VRAM too.

Or let say this is animated pattern just like the big ring. Uncompressed pattern takes 32 bytes per cell. 32 * 4 * 16 * 64 = 131072 bytes or 131 kb. That's 26% of Sonic 1's ROM size.

You are welcome to correct my math if needed.


Here is a picture simulating all rotation states. Remember that it only shows 8 of 64 rotation states. Good luck adding that in your hack!

Attached File(s)

•  ball8of64.gif (13.99K)
  Number of downloads: 1