I absolutely agree with you! There's just a certain charm to these stages and their early 3D aesthetics with the flat polygons and the wireframes on secondary runs of the stages after obtaining all the Chaos Rings. It was an intermediary of what was to come with the Sega Saturn. It makes me want to see what a Retro Engine version of these would look like getting the same treatment as Sonic 2’s special stages. There’s this flash (R.I.P.) game called Run 3 that reminds me of these stages too. I’ve also been enamored with a certain piece of fan art that combines the special stages of all the Genesis trilogy games into one and uses the Chaotix stage as the centerpiece of it where Sonic is running. The art was made by Liris-san: Source: https://www.deviantart.com/liris-san/art/The-Frontier-World-Warps-of-Confusion-469026556 I played Chaotix a long time ago so I may or may not be correct in this but I recall that if you aren’t able to collect all the required amount of blue spheres it doesn’t actually kick you out in failure and will instead just lap over the stage again for the missing spheres. Just as long as you had enough rings you could keep going just like you said. I really do find that to be a great incentive to keep as many rings as possible by the end of an act. I found that to be a great way to handle it.
No problem! See attached. This contains the program itself, a small text file with a few palette addresses (some taken from a topic here ages ago, some collected by me while trawling through the ROM, but there are probably lots more that still need documented), and the folder which I believe contains the source. If that can be compiled, researching the prototypes will be greatly simplified. Also, while going through all the game's sprites, I remembered a little something that had me laughing when I noticed it. So we all know Mighty normal level sprites were hastily edited from Sonic's, but two of his Special Stage jump frames stuck out to me. Apologies if this has been mentioned before, but.... They match up perfectly with Sonic's frames from Sonic CD (add that to the long list of connections between CD and Chaotix). The basically just shaved off a couple pixels at the edges because Mighty's ball is slightly smaller that everyone else's, and then colored over all the details in red. You can still see a little bit of Sonic's quills on the top of the first one, and his eyes in the center of the second. But! What if I told you Knuckles, the supposed star of the game, had even less work put into his jump: Sonic's been in Chaotix this whole time, guys! All they really did was remove his ears and color his flesh yellow....
File:Chaoview.zip And may it never be lost again. Chaotix/Hidden content I got as far as wobbly Knuckles before noticing it wasn't handling Charmy's white bits properly. And now I'm delegating the task to someone else. We want everything unused accounted for. The source is a Visual Studio C# .NET project, and it migrates fine in VS 2019. I'll let the more technically minded try and get this working with prototypes or whatever. For the record, that Eggman intro sprite isn't listed here.
I've noticed the Charmy issue too. Seems it's interpreting his white as the transparent color for whatever reason. But, I'll have time to finish up those animations and spritesheets tonight, so don't worry about it. Also, I notice some of the entries on there are missing the actual sprites. Was it always like that?
Just posting this here to correct an incorrect statement about the unused throwing animations on Sonic Crackers/Hidden content, confirming that Tails CAN hold Sonic when playing a two-player game ("2P START"), but the way he holds Sonic is a little bit broken. Life still isn't easy for him: On top of that, there is a possibility of him holding Sonic in a single-player game when trying to make Sonic hold him, only Tails' reaction time is a bit more delayed. A good way to see this is to try having Sonic jump on Tails, or by trying to pick him up while bouncing wildly off a spring. As far as I'm aware, that is something that shouldn't happen in a single-player game of Chaotix.
"While partially used, some specific animation frames of Robotnik in the "bad ending" are unused, as well as this background. " There is no Robotnik in the bad ending. Oh. That bad ending. Ignorance strikes again - if you finish Chaotix with more than one chaos ring, but not all chaos rings, Eggman laughs at you. He doesn't show up if you've failed to get at least one... or if you access the credits through the stage select. Sure Chaotix gives you 21(?) chances to get a chaos ring but it's been years since I've played this game legitimately. The minimum effort required to trigger this is to play special stage 0 through the stage select, have the game go back to the title screen, then beat the final boss (World Entrance 2). This feature arrived pretty late. 0210 is the first build that lets you do the above trick. 0208 and 0209 crash after the final boss (in Kega Fusion anyway) while 0202 always grants a good ending. And the only difference is the background. So those unused animations were probably always unused.
Oh wow. I've seen the good ending, and the "some but not all Chaos Rings" ending, but I don't think I've ever not gotten any, and seen it just throw your straight into the credits. I wonder if they intended to make a different bad ending for no Chaos Rings, and it was just forgotten in the mad rush to get the game out the door. Interesting.
Something minor I forgot to mention: There are differences in the sound test lineup in most of the prototypes, but it would take an age to document them all, given many sound effects won't be heard in certain builds. But one thing I have noticed is that the highlighted keys don't match up between builds. Older prototypes play black keys when they should be playing white keys, and vice versa. I don't know if this applies to every channel and song. I assume the final game is the more correct one. This isn't my area of expertise.
The Spriter's Resource suggests there's plenty of graphics that aren't being used - more than we've got documented. Somebody knows more than they're letting on. The one that caught my eye is this massive... pan for Techno Tower, because that level isn't strange enough. The stage has chefs but only on level 3, and nothing else food related. This is territory for someone who knows what they're doing. I'm much better at pointing out bugs, and Techno Tower has one in its background(s). The bottom layer of parallax scrolling scrolls faster than the foreground, which breaks the illusion that the background is in the distance. Although at least it's not backwards.
Whoa. I'm not at my computer to thoroughly check right now, but I know I've seen that giant spring in-game before. I believe in Techno Tower, in one of the same builds that has those big pods all around. Animated like they are, and just as nonfunctional if I recall correctly.
Presumably this stuff was from the period of the level being planned as a resort hotel (hence large kitchen) and not just a big observation deck under construction
Okay, so after much searching, I finally tracked down one of those frying pan springs, first appearing in build 0119 (interestingly, the first build that doesn't feature those strange pods) (and I didn't notice until Black Squirrel pointed it out, but that is totally a pan handle on the back of it, hahaha). This is Techno Tower 5, coordinates X00800 Y01600 (decimal as usual because urrrrrgh): It's not aligned with the floor at all, nor is it animated yet, but it does bounce you. Interestingly, it even makes you pass through the solid ceiling above you. In the next build, 0202: It's been aligned properly, fully animated, and now launches you much higher. I kept checking this spot in each individual build, and it survives all the way to the very last one! So, in mild disbelief, I loaded up the final, and it's... still there. It was never actually unused to begin with. Just yet another bizarre level gimmick no one's ever noticed. But hey, at least it's less pointless than some of the objects in this game, I guess! Also, a small observation on Knuckles' Special Stage jump sprites I posted: It just dawned on me that it actually has extra shading detail not present in the CD version. This could be confirmation that Sonic's Special Stage sprites were given some detail work to take advantage of the wider color palette before he was removed (and possibly his and Tails' normal level sprites, as well). It's difficult to say how much work Sonic and Tails saw after the console transition, but I think it might be safe to say it was at least more than nothing!
The problem with the Chaotix "move anywhere debug mode" is it doesn't load objects straight away. It's in every prototype dating back to 1207. It doesn't become functional until 0111 - prior to that it just animates on the spot. Guess the question is, what other "unused" things can we find? https://i.imgur.com/lEWK63D.png I know those clock doors are used: ...why Botanic Base has clock doors I can't say, but it does!
Well you've got my attention, If you have Discord you should contact me, Varion#1458. I've been disassembling the Prototypes as well as I my game is built from the Chaotix framework. Would love to help you dive more into things.
I think the fear is that people have already dug into this once or twice, but information gets lost if it's not housed in a public place (e.g. the wiki, or at the very least this forum topic while I'm in the mood to copy things across to there) I'd rather have all the knowledge in one bit of the internet rather than spread out.
This isn't a crusade against Dolphman btw - it's just that sprite sheet is good starting point. These graphics are also used in Botanic Base for this special kind of "pity" door. The above is in level 3 but there's probably others. This is among the stupidest design decisions in the game, because this door will only open if the player has less than 0 rings. In this case, there is a Super Ring monitor, and should you break it, it's very possible that your ring count will go positive and you'll be trapped inside. This means you'll have to recall your partner and lose the ten rings you've just earned to get out. In other words, unless you're desperate to witness the non-event which is shrinking one of the characters, this is a completely pointless exercise. why did they program this
It kind of looks like it might have been an intentional troll move. A player without rings sees that innocent-looking ring monitor there and goes to break it, also breaking the shrink monitor in the process (as the ceiling is too low to jump over it). Then all of a sudden the door closes and traps the player, forcing them to discard the rings they just got. Gotcha! Now you have deal with being ring-less and shrunken.
