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Knuckles' Emerald Hunt

Discussion in 'Engineering & Reverse Engineering' started by MainMemory, Oct 19, 2015.

  1. Clownacy

    Clownacy

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    Since it's kinda obvious what that 'one hack [you] won't bother mentioning' is, I'd like to clarify a few things:

    I love this hack, but having contributed to it directly, I was disqualified from judging it. Were it up to me, I'd have voted it for the D.A. Garden Trophy, and maybe the Dust Hill one too. But you know what? Maybe that's because of bias. I honestly felt a little bad voting for Sonic Bash v2, knowing I'd been a playtester previously, and consider its maker, redhotsonic, a closer friend than many others in the scene. I can see why I was disqualified from voting on this hack (and why I probably should have been disqualified from voting on Sonic Bash), and as it turns out, I wasn't the only judge with this problem: KEH, being a project with so many contributors, is simply at greater risk of this problem occurring. Maybe this wouldn't have been too big a problem if we had more judges, but I don't think disqualification issues alone are what kept this hack from getting some trophies:

    The other issue with this hack is that it was entered two years in a row, the second time with few notable differences. Yes, there's two-player, yes there's a new menu, yes there's a sexy improved sound driver, yes there's more music, and yes there's a Special Surprise™, but... they're just so... minor that they barely count. Should a resubmission like this be judged as a whole new hack, or as an update? Could MarkeyJester resubmit The Next Level, year after year, and win the Hidden Palace Trophy time and time again, or should he be told to come back with something more? I think the answer's obvious. Yes, that goes in the face of what I said about giving this hack the Dust Hill trophy, but like I said, working on this hack has made me biased. Maybe this should've gotten an honourable mention for the Azure Lake Trophy, as 2-player is a great new feature, but again, I can't control that.
     
  2. MainMemory

    MainMemory

    Kate the Wolf Tech Member
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    I knew ahead of time that at least two judges wouldn't be able to vote for this hack (I was even joking in IRC that there wouldn't be anyone left able to judge it). It's not about the trophies for me, it's about showing people the work that I and others have been doing, and above all else, seeing people have fun playing Sonic games.

    I'll make a post about the updated version soon, but not right now.
     
  3. MainMemory

    MainMemory

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    Well here we are, SHC2016 is over, and now I've made some final touches so that I can say Knuckles' Emerald Hunt is completed. For those that weren't paying attention, the changes from the version in last year's contest are:
    • Redesigned level select.
    • Redesigned score tally.
    • Tikal added as a playable character.
    • Competition mode enabled, get three out of five emeralds before your opponent. Each player gets one radar box that detects the emerald closest to them, and the difficulty setting does affect it.
    • More music choices.
    • Sandwich mode unlocked by playing sound FA in the sound test.

    The main ROM can be downloaded here, for single player and local multiplayer. Those looking to netplay should get the netplay ROM for a more stable experience, as the normal ROM can desync very easily.

    Because music is such a large part of this hack, Valley Bell has also prepared a VGM pack with tags for titles and authors pulled right from the source code.

    Speaking of source code, a few months back I was thinking about how so many SADX mods are hosted on GitHub, so I figured why not release the source code to a MD hack? So I present to you, the source code to Knuckles' Emerald Hunt (modified slightly to remove music the authors weren't comfortable with sharing).
    In this archive, you will find:
    • Barely commented code
    • An implementation of an SA1-style emerald radar in Sonic 2
    • A modified object manager to support the emerald radar
    • S3K rings manager (MarkeyJester put way too many rings in HPZ for S2 to handle)
    • A port of Knuckles from KiS2 (basically what you get after following my guide)
    • Ports of various S1 levels/objects by Flamewing
    • Fancy scrolling level select
    • Fancy scrolling credits, with a tool to generate the data for said credits
    • A lot of custom music
    • A custom "radar ping" sound effect
    • Flamewing's Ultra DMA Queue
    • A modified Sonic 2 sound driver by Clownacy and Valley Bell:
      • Support for S3K PSG instruments by best-fit mapping, and extra frequencies required for e.g. sliding sound
      • S3K-style speedup (no more hardcoded speed shoes tempo table)
      • Support for multiple "SEGA" samples, with automatic bankswitching (no size restriction)
      • Support for multiple music and DAC sample banks
      • A tool that allows easy management of music and DAC samples by editing INI files, with support for SMPS2ASM and automatic Saxman compression
    • A partially implemented extra zone that I never got to finish based on the DOS game Hocus Pocus

    Once again, I'd like to thank everyone who helped me figure out why my code didn't work, contributed art or music, submitted records to the leaderboard so I could figure out how to set the ranks, livestreamed, reviewed, did a playthrough, or just enjoyed playing this hack.

    And now, I leave you with a video:
    http://youtu.be/Pq4Ao9W2Tc0

    Edit: Oh by the way, since someone may find it useful, here's a map of HPZ:
    [​IMG]
     
  4. Can we possibly see Rouge as a playable character?
     
  5. MainMemory

    MainMemory

    Kate the Wolf Tech Member
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    The hack is finished, there won't be any new content.
     
  6. What do you plan to do next on the Genesis? Put Gamma in a hack, maybe?
     
  7. MainMemory

    MainMemory

    Kate the Wolf Tech Member
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    I have no plans for the Megadrive currently. I'm currently focusing on Sonic Adventure DX (specifically custom missions), and considering trying "something" with Sonic & Knuckles Collection.
     
  8. Josh

    Josh

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    Just since the topic got bumped...

    [​IMG]

    I made a self-aggrandizing metadata screen for this hack on my RetroPie!
     
  9. MainMemory

    MainMemory

    Kate the Wolf Tech Member
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    Who made that picture anyway? I've seen it in a couple videos.
     
  10. Josh

    Josh

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    No clue, I just found it on Google Image Search.
     
  11. redhotsonic

    redhotsonic

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    Pretty sure Razor and Zenon did.


    EDIT: Pasted quote into the post due to page break.
     
  12. Clownacy

    Clownacy

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    Laddies and mentlegen, I present to you, KEH Adventure Edition!

    pls don't hurt me

    Spoiler in case you don't notice it:
    Get hurt
     
  13. redhotsonic

    redhotsonic

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    As soon as you said that, I immediately guessed what it was going to be...
     
  14. Clownacy

    Clownacy

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    I marked it spoiler for a reason :U
     
  15. MegaSuperab

    MegaSuperab

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    Nice game, I wish it was easier to upload save files from BizHawk though...
     
  16. MainMemory

    MainMemory

    Kate the Wolf Tech Member
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    Well then make a script or something if it bothers you that much. Everyone else gets by with doing it manually.
     
  17. MegaSuperab

    MegaSuperab

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    I wasn't trying to sound rude, unless you weren't trying to either...
     
  18. MainMemory

    MainMemory

    Kate the Wolf Tech Member
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  19. Snowbound

    Snowbound

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    Between this, The New Sonic XG previews and the Sonic Movie 2 Trailer... today’s been a good day for Sonic fans