So I got inspired by DarkspinesSonic, Werster, Trihex, and SuperAliceInWonderland doing a 24 hour Get Blues Spheres stream to make a "quick" ROM hack. Something someone posted in one of their stream chats inspired this. I won't be posting screenshots because that ruins the fun of everything, but let's see who can work out what's been changed the quickest. http://www.hapisan.com/getBlueSpheres.bin Enjoy. I spent bits and pieces of my work day doing this. :v: (psst, pls2b spoilering what happens if you post about it) Spoiler So apparently there's an issue with perfect ring counts; I'll work on it at home
I thoroughly implore you to try the hack before opening the below tag! Spoiler This is evil, in a genius way. Every Get Blue Spheres instinct I had was screaming at me the whole time of playing; I really had to force myself to run through the red spheres. The beauty of this hack is that only people that have played the shit out of the original will truly appreciate it. Good show.
I went into this thinking it was another Sonic.exe hack. I was pleasantly surprised to be proven wrong. + - When you play as Knuckles, you have to get the RED spheres and avoid the blue ones. Clever man.
It might not have actually crashed, but simply be processing the spheres. If you wait a while it suddenly continues playing, until you hit the next sphere (better hope it's not a bumper or blue sphere). I have also had issues where areas that seem like they should be turning into rings don't. Bugs aside, I'd like to see a mode where you can play the 16 S3K stages like in Blue Sphere Plus.
Yeah, the sphere-to-ring code is known to be highly inefficient, there have been a few posts about it on this forum once. I remember I faced that problem when I wrote the Special Stage editor for Sonic 3 (& Knuckles), because certain layouts would cause the engine to misbehave. Of course they didn't use such layouts in the official levels, but I couldn't know that when I created a Special Stage from scratch. Likewise, certain layouts here are very likely to cause problems, and I doubt that would be fixable without a complete rewrite of the engine (though I can't imagine how). edit: added link to old topic, why not
A genius hack... [inlinespoiler]I recall the first time I EVER played S3K I thought I had to get Red Spheres with Knuckles[/inlinespoiler]. Nicely done. EDIT - My apologies for not thinking to cover that spoiler.
Spoiler So, Sonic plays normally, but Knuckles has the colors of spheres to be collected and spheres to be avoided swapped? Do Knuckles levels actually swap the colors of the spheres or does Knuckles have to collect the red spheres from Sonic's levels? For completion's sake, part of me says you should have to collect Yellow spheres as Tails(with blue spheres acting as springs and red staying as gameover). Wish I could play it(damn this vision loss), and I would second the ability to play on the S3K levels if I could play it.
Spoiler In this hack, all of the red spheres, which would normally cause a game over in Sonic's game, must be collected by Knuckles.
This is wonderful, but it's ruined a bit by slowdown, presumably as it struggles to process things. I can foresee cheap deaths.
I tried that. I just goofed around a bit. Suddenly, I clear the stage. I'm guessing it was because the game reversed some weird perimeter I did, and instead of catching what was inside, caught the outside.
Spoiler Amazingly, some levels have no red spheres. In this particular one, you can get a perfect, but you can't win.
...oh god, this embodies perfectly what I originally thought the Special Stages were meant to play as when playing with good ol' rock fists. =P Cinossu, I tip my hat to you, even though I don't have one. Also, this should be titled "(Don't) Get Blue Spheres" because why not. Also^2, are we gonna see Tails in this?
I'm now imagining a "Get Yellow Spheres" in which Tails must find and collect the small amount of Yellow Spheres, with limited special stage flight ability.