Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board: iojnekns - Viewing Profile - Sonic and Sega Retro Message Board

Congratulations, Stealth. You've achieved the holy grail of Sonic hacking! More impressive than any technical wizardy or innovation ...you've found a way to monetize it (albeit by proxy.)

Most of these responders, on some level, have a pang of bitterness/jealousy that they didn't do it themselves. I don't think you're the first person to wish they could be paid for doing their hobby, instead of trying to squeeze it in around a job and a life. Lots of them have long term projects too, and I'm sure can actually relate to that feeling pretty well...
[to be concluded]

*Unfortunately, due to work commitments, I was not able to complete this comment. If you want to read the rest of my comment, please donate to my Patreon. Everything you donate will help me support myself so I can get on with writing the second half!

BetaTwizzler, on 01 December 2011 - 11:13 PM, said:

If you're struggling with pathswappers, the absolute best thing you can do is to download Thorn's object definitions for SonED2 (thread), which will significantly demystify them. With the definitions installed, a sure fire way to test your collision and planes is to use the W and E keys to toggle between viewing Path 0 and Path 1 of collision and the Y and U keys to toggle the High and Low Planes. It is a pretty simple case of tracing along the level with your finger and toggling the view when you hit a pathswapper to confirm the correct change is being made.

Some examples -

00 will force Sonic into Path 0 and Below High plane no matter which way you pass through it
01 will change Sonic from Path 0 to Path 1 from left to right, but will force him into Below High no matter which way you pass through it
10 will change Sonic from Path 1 to Path 0 from left to right, but will force him into Below High no matter which way you pass through it
00 will force Sonic into Path 0 no matter which way he passes through it but will change Sonic from Below High to Above High from left to right
01 will change Sonic from Path 0 to Path 1 from left to right, and will move him from Above High to Below High from left to right.
11 will force Sonic into Path 1 and Above High plane no matter which way you pass through it
And so on...

As you can see it is fairly intuitive. Using the definitions you can see the size, orientation amd characteristics of a pathswapper at a glance. There are some other nuances to bear in mind - the list restarts at 03 80 00, but require sonic to be on the ground to activate them - ie: running, walking or rolling. More advanced tricks can be used too. If I recall correctly, mirroring the pathswapper causes it to act solely as a planeswapper and disables the path swapping aspect.

There is a more exhaustive reference guide which uses the proper object numbers can be found here.

I've been holding off from responding to this topic for a couple of days. Partly because I am only permitted out of the salt mines for 6 seconds each day to draw nourishment from the sunlight (which does not leave much time for writing provocative messages to people on the internet,) but mainly to allow the levels of snark in my blood reach levels which are safe for human exposure.

As far as I'm concerned, that someone could think that Sonic hacking is "dying" is faintly preposterous. I don't understand how exactly one could follow the subject and reach that conclusion.

The release and revision of Sonic hacks has always moved at a ponderous pace (with the exception perhaps, of MarkeyJester's brain). In that respect, I see no difference. Things have changed though. The proliferation of tools, tutorials and split disassemblies have lead to more advanced modifications. This, in turn, raises the bar in terms of what can be achieved by and what is expected of, hacking projects. More ambitious hacking projects take longer to come to fruition. Combine this with a preference among some hackers of the occasional big release over frequent public updates, and the forums can seem quite slow.

As for these contests mentioned, I have witnessed similar events occur on IRC (notably the 3 hour boss competition held by qiuu, snkenjoi and Destructiox.) Such events are good fun and act as a great catalyst for further work.

On the topic of those people who wish for other people to personally teach them to do what is already documented at length, I choose to say nothing.

If I'm wrong, feel free to correct me, but classic mode is a tacked on afterthought. The game proper centred around adventure mode and the level designed entirely with the adventure and exploration gameplay in mind. As I recall, Classic mode was tacked on to please the braying, mooing mob who praised the innovation of a Mario 64 style mission system, but couldn't be fucked actually, you know, playing it. Further proof perhaps, that trying to please everyone, leaves you pleasing no-one. They weren't designed to be whipped through in a race to the finish like a classic sonic game.

I feel that a lot of your criticism is vague and can be explained more by your expectations and your ability as a player, than it can by the level design, which does it's job of housing the scores of missions and challenges superbly.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion of course, and I doubt you'd have put so much effort into adding a response if you didn't think you had a point. If I may, though, I'd suggest that you actually play the game how it was intended before passing judgement. Judging all of RR by Classic mode is like judging all of Sonic 3 by its 2 player mode.

Can you clarify something?



I would hardly call a single session of SonED2 "months of hard work".

The only way I can understand the loss of "months of hard work" is if the crash caused damage to your only copy of the disassembly. Which would imply, as implasuible as it is, that you have no backups, no version control, no archive of previous builds...

Sometimes it takes a hard lesson to make people learn. Download this.



Spoken like someone with vast and extensive experience with the tool. Moron.