Basic Questions & Answers thread

Although I never handled this sort of thing, I think you have to edit the level size, which I think is in a bin file in the /misc folder of your disassembly (although the folder might be different depending on which disassembly you use).

As far as I know, there isn't any programs that are specifically made to edit sprites from Sonic 3D (Also, no one hasn't really hacked Sonic 3D all that much). You can probably find a tile editing tool here, but it probably won't be as nice as SonMapEd.

 

Yeah, I already had a feeling it had something to do with that file. The only problem was that it was a .bin file and I had no idea how I could open it. But I just realised that I could open it with a hex editor, so I feel kind of dumb now. Nonetheless, it works now. So thanks for your help!

 

That's unfortunate. Does anyone know how to edit the sprites in Sonic 3D Blast? I'd love to do this kind of project in my free time but I have no idea where to start. If anyone is curious, here's what the SegaSonic arcade sprites would look like with Sonic 3D's Genesis Palette:

Spoiler

Not perfect, but IMO a lot better than what we ended up with. And if anyone is curious, this is not the complete sprite sheet, but what I would use as the base for the sprite replacements. Some creative liberties would be taken as not all the animations match but I think I could make it work... maybe.

 

Is Sonic Spinball's music not in an SMPS format? I haven't been able to find ANY info on it.
Granted, I was looking on the old SCHG music hacking guide, which may be out of date, but google hasn't exactly helped.

Does anyone here know anything about it?

 

IIRC it uses GEMS

Edit: yep! http://segaretro.org/GEMS

 

Here is a good reference of the sound drivers of most Mega Drive titles.

 

Okay, thanks. I guess I'm gonna have to find some other way to get the instruments I want.

 

Well, while porting songs from GEMS to SMPS isn't trivial at all (bordering on impossible), if all you're interested into are GEMS instruments then it might be actually doable: read 1 and 2 to get some inspiration, and good luck!

 

Thanks, I'll have to look into that in a bit more depth later, when I have the time.

Is there a way to view Sonic Cracker's sprites with the mappings and DPLC assembled, outside of just looking at them in-game? SonMapEd has an option for Cracker's format, but it doesn't load up.

 

It's possible to port from GEMS to SMPS by going GEMS -> MIDI -> SMPS, but that often requires you to move notes and do you channel management manually. (This is probably the best way to port songs, because GEMS is pretty much MIDI.)
I did it a few times in the past and it's not more tedious than porting the average VGMusic.com MIDI arrangement to SMPS. It also helped that gems2mid can convert the GEMS instrument files into GYB. (Well, the FM part at least.)

 

Yeah, that's what I meant, a direct GEMS to SMPS conversion would be hard if not impossible, but of course the MIDI step is possible thanks to your invaluable converters
I also seem to remember that GEMS does dynamic channel allocation and you once mentioned that some songs even try to use more than 6 channels at the same time, all thing which would make a perfect conversion even more impossible.

 

Smoke wrote his own converter a while back, but it wasn't released and he seems to be inactive....

 

I'm trying to follow the SCHG guide to porting Knuckles into Sonic 2 and was doing pretty well until I came to the 'Importing Knuckles' palettes' section. It mentions adding lines under Pal_UNK7 and PalPtr_UNK7, but neither of them exist. I estimated what I believed to be the areas it talked about and proceeded with the guide to the end of the palette section. Unfortunately, attempting to build the ROM results in this error:

...Which is from the 'Level_LoadPal:' bit it mentions. Here's the s2.asm file, if that helps.

 

Search up PalLoad2 in the asm file. You can see that the name is deprecated and commented out.

It's PalLoad_Now instead, in case you were wondering what happened to it.

 

With your help I was able to progress further, but now I'm stuck again. I've done all the steps up to 'CNZ slot machines' (except for 'Title Card background', that part seems to be outdated as I don't see the line it references) and it pops up with 11 errors. I've updated the link above with the current version. Below are my errors:

I've fixed all that stuff, but now I have a different issue:

Not really sure where to go from here since my programming knowledge, especially with ASM, is extremely limited. My current source code is at the same download link from before above.

 

So I want to add the SCD bumper sound with MegaPCM, but when I play the sound ingame it's garbled.
Does anyone recommend any WAV file compressors?

 

What? That's a waste of resources. Sonic CD SFX can be ported to S1 SFX; they both use SMPS drivers. You can find a rip of SCD's driver in here, at Drivers\Z80Drvs\FM\Type1\SCD Sound Effect Driver.asm. I'm not sure which SFX is the bumper one, but you can find a list of SFX at SFXPtrList. You'll have to figure out how to port the SFX to S1's format (or find a tool somewhere), but it's possible.

 

The download link there doesn't work for me because of Mediafire's ads or something like that constantly refreshing the page. Trust me, I tried. :v:/>
Besides, I already have a WAV file, I just can't compress it in Audacity.

 

The reason why Clowancy suggested using the SFX because a wav file can be multiple kilobytes and the sfx only tens of bytes. Now multiply that by something fun like 100, and you got a huge difference. Very notable one.

 

For people who hate Mediafire!

SMPS Research Pack part 1:
http://a.rfl.pw/v5IfB.7z
SMPS Research Pack part 2:
http://a.rfl.pw/TIeSR.7z