Definitely interesting to see the official terminology used. Why did I think "the Sonic 2 patent" was for the Aquatic Ruin Zone loop that also has a path through it? Bad memory? Sillier note, I'm sure you're supposed to pronounce "sloop" as s-loop (it's even "S. loop" in the flow chart), but I can't help but read it as if it were a sound effect. Sloop!
I personally concluded to "action number" when I saw that the file that contained the code for updating objects in Sonic CD Gems Collection was called "ACTION.C", with the main function that iterates through each object and calls their code "action()".
Based on the linker data which has been described in earlier posts, I've put together a version of the Sonic 2 disassembly that splits the game's code up in a rough recreation of the original source code. Notably, most of the Special Stage objects were seemingly stored in the same file, as were a huge number of regular level objects.
I personally don't really think the functions for handling solid/platform objects were included in Sonic's file.
This has since been corrected; thankfully, the prototypes have linker data that is missing in the final.
I'm trying to come up with what would be the official-sounding, or representative, type names for some of the data structures of Sonic CD, so here's some thoughts: From the patent text, we have "sprite status table". I thought a "table" in assembler is what's called an "array" in C, but it seems to refer to any collection of data, even what's called a "struct" in C. But if that's true, then every data structure is a table, so it's kind of redundant. In light of this, I'd call the data type "sprite status". Each sprite status has a pointer to what's called a "pattern table". In the C code, this data structure is little more than a wrapper around an array, as the data members consist of a counter and an array. Curiously, the array itself is defined as an anonymous union of an array with 20 elements and an array of unknown size. The names of the arrays are spra and spr, respectively, suggesting that this is not a pattern table, but a sprite table. As for the data structure contained in the array, it doesn't seem to be the pattern itself, but data associated to it. It consists of four numbers called xoff, yoff, etc and index. I'm guessing this is what the community calls a "mapping"? The collection of which is used to make one sprite. Which would mean that the data structure holding them together can't be a sprite table (as it's not a collection of sprites), but is indeed a pattern table. But calling the data structure "pattern table" sounds too generic. "sprite patterns", maybe? Or "sprite pattern table"? When it comes to naming the data structure that has pattern data, there are no hints at all. As far as I know, "mapping" is a term not based on any information related to the source code. If I had to choose something, though, "pattern mapping" seems to fit. Thoughts?
It is worth noting that Sonic CD's PC and Gems ports use a completely different sprite format than the original MCD version (which used the same formats as Sonic 1).
