don't click here

(GG) Sonic 2 Auto Demo Prototype (1991-12-05) - Info & Download

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by Orengefox, Aug 20, 2014.

  1. MarkeyJester

    MarkeyJester

    Original, No substitute Resident Jester
    2,243
    498
    63
    Japan
    OK, a few more notes, this time via savestates:

    00B8 - 38B8 appears to be VRAM of some rights (it's where the art is, let's put it that way.
    38B8 - 3FB7 is possibly chunks/blocks data for arranging the art (Might simply be plane mappings in VRAM thought VRAM 00B8 - 40B7?)
    40BC - 50BC (approx) is definately layout data.

    When I get back from work later tonight, I'll start writing some sort of extraction tool to read the savestate data, and dump out full bitmap images of the levels. Just so we have full clear maps of the levels.
     
  2. Diablohead

    Diablohead

    Indie dev Oldbie
    1,898
    88
    28
    Near London
    games
    Nice to see this finally in our hands, thank you everyone involved!
     
  3. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

    no reverse gear Wiki Sysop
    9,073
    2,903
    93
    Northumberland, UK
    steamboat wiki
    Collecting 99 rings doesn't seem to give you an extra life - it just resets the counter. Likewise there are no time overs.
     
  4. Spinksy

    Spinksy

    Member
    221
    0
    16
    UK
    This is all pretty exciting stuff, looking forward to seeing what other treasures surface.

    Keep up the great work!
     
  5. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

    no reverse gear Wiki Sysop
    9,073
    2,903
    93
    Northumberland, UK
    steamboat wiki
    You can also crash (or reset in this case) the game by holding right OR holding left at the start (see the effects quicker by using a fast forward feature).

    I would imagine it's something to do with Sonic going off-screen at the bottom, but the way he gets there is super bizarre. Holding left for example - Sonic runs off to the left and appears on the right a few times, but he also seems to go up imaginary hills and get stuck in imaginary walls, as if he's colliding with a level layout that isn't there. If it was a garbled mess of collision data you'd expect more erratic behaviour.
     
  6. Techokami

    Techokami

    For use only on NTSC Genesis systems Researcher
    1,374
    84
    28
    HoleNet!
    Sonic Worlds Next
    Bahahahaha, try going backwards through the loop in Green Hills Act 1. That probably explains why they were made to be one-way in the final game!
     
  7. Captain VG

    Captain VG

    Member
    1,048
    108
    43
    Heh. Push to youtube worked. So anyway, again, did a stream last night and we basically covered every level a few times in this. Its a bit long and messy. No commentary, but conversations in the IRC chat explain everything including which zone we're on etc etc



    EDIT: Ugh. Sorry for the quality. Didn't stream it in 720p so... :/ EDIT 2: huh... nvm youtube seems to have caught up with its. 720p is a go.
     
  8. ICEknight

    ICEknight

    Researcher Researcher
    Isn't his object warping to the other side of the map?

    Also, they ended up fixing that crashing bug when Sonic falls through the bottom of the level by... filling every single hole with spikes. Makes you think.


    EDIT: Hey, the skidding animation is less buggy here than in the final.
     
  9. ValleyBell

    ValleyBell

    Tech Member
    246
    25
    28
    researching PC-98/X68000 sound drivers
    I quickly disassembled the sound driver. It doesn't look very different from the one used in the final version of Sonic 2 SMS (I haven't disassembled S2 GG yet), except for one additional routine that seems to load SFX.
    There is only 1 song and the sound bank is pretty empty in general. Some of the PSG envelopes are different from the final. (btw: The song uses 03, 06 and 08, envelope 03 is different from Sonic 2 SMS/GG final.)
    One thing is interesting: In Sonic 2 final, SFX start at ID 9A. In the demo, they start at 90. I assume they didn't have any songs finished yet.

    You can download the disassemblies of the GG Demo and the SMS final here. (plain ASM files for now)
     
  10. You-Are-Pwned

    You-Are-Pwned

    Member
    76
    8
    8
    I dissassembled it too, there are only approximately 3 changes in total. I tried porting it to Sonic 2 SMS final, and here's what I got. It's compilable, but not working because I may have messed up some array pointers:
    http://share.cherrytree.at/showfile-16410/sound_driver.asm
     
  11. InvisibleUp

    InvisibleUp

    friendly internet ghost Member
    139
    13
    18
    This is really neat. Found a couple of weird things.

    First off, you can just walk through walls. No special trick, just keep walking in the direction of the wall until you break free to the other side of the collision. Useful for walking through GHZ2 and 3, for instance.

    Secondly, the game irrecoverably crashes if you go above or below the level boundaries. Not sure if that's been mentioned yet. There's a couple exceptions though. In Sky High Act 2 (or whichever one is just a rainy background and a cliff), you don't crash. It just kind of wraps around. Maybe the crash has something to do with the (obviously) buggy collision engine?

    In UGZ 1, there is lava at the very bottom of the level. It takes effort to get into, but it is there. The game behaves very erratically when you jump in it. Usually it just crashes. Other times, however, the screen turns blue and Sonic keeps falling until he decides to find land. Attempting to move at this point crahses. Once I even got it into a state where it looked crashed, but wiggling the joypad around caused to enter the blue void, followed by an immediate crash due to the fact that moving in the blue void crashes the game. I'm assuming this is because the game loads garbage data from RAM when out of bounds which causes the game to jump somewhere it shouldn't (badly programmed case-switch? Just guessing; wouldn't know where to start looking for that.) and executes random crap. Quite weird.

    Screenshots of the blue void:
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
     
  12. Xilla

    Xilla

    Member
    841
    180
    43
    I noticed that in the early version of the much-maligned GHZ Act 3, the act ends with the area shown in that (likely) mockup screenshot showing Sonic fighting the GMZ boss with Robotnik flying overhead. (Of course, no boss here, just invislble loops for Sonic to run around!) There's also a S-tunnel right before it.
     
  13. GoldeMan

    GoldeMan

    Member
    226
    186
    43
    Texas
    So far from what I've seen I think that originally there were going to be many more gimmicks in the game, the S-Tunnels being in many of the levels in this Autodemo. And from that video that Tanks posted I noticed that there was an area in UGZ that looks like it was going to either push in and out like a crusher or it was going to be a door that you had to find a switch for. Nothing really that new but I found it quite interesting, and I didn't really see anyone point that out.
    [​IMG]

    EDIT: Re-uploaded the picture to be smaller, I don't know what I was thinking with that size!
     
  14. emrabt

    emrabt

    Member
    147
    0
    16
    I've just realised aspect build the engine from the ground up, for some reason I'd always assumed they would have inherited it from ancient.

    I can't get over how quickly this was explored, I suppose tools, skills and understanding have come a long way since the Wai proto.
     
  15. Glitch

    Glitch

    Tech Member
    176
    13
    18
    I've started work on a split disassembly. The repository is here here. I plan to spend most of the weekend on it.
     
  16. doc eggfan

    doc eggfan

    Are you pondering what I'm pondering? Wiki Sysop
    9,733
    270
    63
    ACT
    GreatMegaLD, GreatSC3k, Great SG1k
    I want to have a go at tidying these layouts up and forward porting them to the final build (Sonic 2 delta 8-bit =P). Those S bends could be adapted to the scrambled egg pipe "collisions" easy enough. I'm just too busy at the moment to sit down and get stuck in. Someone else will probably beat me to it.
     
  17. MathUser

    MathUser

    3rd top wiki contributor Researcher
    2,151
    9
    18
    Maps. If people would make maps we could add them to the wiki.
     
  18. Hez

    Hez

    Oldbie
    Did I not hear mention of a functional boss?
     
  19. Captain VG

    Captain VG

    Member
    1,048
    108
    43
    I was confused by that as well. I believe they meant a semi-complete GHZ boss level. I don't believe there's any data for badniks or bosses of any kind in the autodemo... :/
     
  20. McAleeCh

    McAleeCh

    Oldbie
    1,536
    570
    93
    After playing round with this a bit last night I'd say there's barely a functional Sonic in there - I'd be surprised if there's any enemy/boss data as a result.

    Very interesting that this build seems to pre-date some of the early Sky High pictures from magazines. From looking at magazines, it looks like the Zone was adapted to use the larger checkered floors that Green Hills Zone uses in the AutoDemo, then was updated again to match Green Hills when it changed to its' final Emerald-Hill-esque look. Which makes me wonder - is it possible the smaller checkers we see on Sky High in the AutoDemo are remnants of an older look for both zones, and that only the Green Hills tileset was updated at the time this demo was compiled?

    Also, the Under Ground Zone Act with the forts has some seriously odd mine-cart track placement - I wonder if the mine-cart gimmick wasn't part of their initial plan for the Zone? The layout suddenly seems to make a lot more sense if you imagine all the rails replaced with bricks. Is it possible the layout was made before the mine-cart rails existed, and then the metatiles were updated when the gimmick was thought of to allow for the other Act layout shown off in the autodemo to be created?