New Sonic 1 boss info?

Solaris, send the still frames to me and I'll compile them with ImageReady. Email: [email protected] or any of the IMs is fine.

This is certainly interesting. The arguement that it may have been added just for the commercial isn't all that valid. Things from old versions have made it into the final products and advertisements before. Look at the title screen in the Sonic 2 manual or the screenshots on the box. That video was probably taken by Sonic Team during the games development for a magazine or something, and the advertising firm just used the resources available to them.

Here's MY theory: the ball in the final version was originally an object for Sonic to run on top of, right? It was obviously taken out at some point in development. Sonic Team intended for the ball to be as it was in this video, but technical issues forced them to change that. The old ball wasn't being used anymore, and the programming for it was already finished, so they put it there in the 3D one's place.

I checked the other scene with the fish jumping up to the bridge, and everything aligned perfectly with the final version.

 

Your old MSN is still added to my list. I also have the up and down frames but the diagonal frames I can't draw properly ><.

 

I think I might put this into a hack sometime this week.

 

Theory:

They could have edited the video for the purpose of making the advert more eye-catching - that's what adverts are for, after all. Sonic was Sega's flagship game, so even for those few seconds they would want it to stand out to the viewer as much as possible.

On an unrelated note, that Sonic 2 "infomercial" on the site's video page is the greatest advert ever created. Ever.

 

Yeah, Gamerguy, ICEknight, I kinda already mentioned the BG's being in allignment back on page 2. I'm glad someone else noticed it though.

And LOst, I do mean the boss' chain holder. The lights in the video are very clearly both blue and blue.

I'll get some comparison pics in a few minutes, but its blue/blue in the video and blue/red in the final.

 

Something I've been wondering since I remembered about this old commercial... Would it be possible to make a sprite only show up within the limits of another one? 'Cause that's what the "diamond" seems to be doing.

By the way, don't you guys think it kinda looks like a tomato?




EDIT: Here's a small animation to illustrate what I meant about the "sprite within a sprite". If it's indeed possible it would be a nice way to save VRAM space, since you'd only have to draw the 24x24 diamond in two or three different positions and let the programming do the rest.

 

I just finished re-compiling Solaris' sprites, but you beat me to it. =P


or vertically:

 

Print screen won't capture the video image and I don't know what program can do a direct screen cap, so you'll have to compare on your own. The left light is Blue as always in the vid and game, but in the video the right light is the same blue, but the final clearly shows a red.

So now it's a matter of why its been changed back and forth (as the pics I showed before had blue/red lights).

 

So this might sound a little farfetched, but the rotating apple in Castle of Illusion happens to almost fit in place of the wrecking ball, and there's a red in the first palette that matches the apple's red color exactly (R:120 G:0 B:0)... How odd, eh?


Here's another silly hoax.

 

I smell new Sonic 1 Hack material. Right alongside all the new Cyber Cities we'll be seeing.

 

Oh my god. That commercial was absolutely brilliant XD XD XD

And I'm willing to bet the wrecking ball was edited in for flashy effects. It certainly isn't unheard of and I wouldn't put it past the ad agencies.

 

lol

 

ICEknight, this is probably because of the compression. Why would they use yet another rotating graphics just for a little dark shade? You diamond looks best so far. No sprites can have clipping to make the diamond just disappear on pixel basis.

As Hivebrain said, it's complicated to add this. But I can't agree on anything unless I can see a better quality of this ad video.


EDIT: Still, how did they add the ball behind the rings counter? If it was added by the ad people?

 

I thought about that too. But why the hell would they need to animate that over?

 

From Charles MacDonald's VDP doc:

Code (Text):

1. Sprite masking, mode 1
2.  ----------------------
3.  
4.  If a sprite has an X coordinate of zero, and has a Y coordinate that
5.  is within range of the display, then all sprites of lower priority
6.  will not be displayed on the lines which the sprite takes up.
7.  
8.  The height of the sprite is determined by the vertical size bits in
9.  the sprite attributes; other factors like horizontal size, pattern data
10.  used, priority bit, and color palette have no effect.
11.  
12.  For instance, an 8x32 sprite at coordinates 0, 128, that was sprite #4
13.  in the list would stop all sprites onwards for lines zero to 31 from
14.  being shown. However, sprites #0 through #3 could still be displayed
15.  in this area.
16.  
17.  Sprite masking, mode 2
18.  ----------------------
19.  
20.  If a sprite has an X coordinate of one, the former rule is invalid. Low
21.  priority sprites will only be masked if a sprite with an X coordinate of
22.  zero _also_ has a sprite with an X coordinate of one on the _same_ line.
23.  
24.  This 'mode' is enabled when the VDP first parses a sprite with an X
25.  coordinate of one. It is reset at the end of the frame.
26.  
27.  To my knowledge, the only game which uses this masking mode is Galaxy
28.  Force II. Because of this, I cannot ensure my description is accurate for
29.  other games which may use it.
30.  
31.  Sprite Drawing Limitations
32.  --------------------------
33.  
34.  The VDP will stop drawing sprites under the following conditions:
35.  
36.  - The 80th sprite has been drawn in 40-cell mode.
37.  - The 64th sprite has been drawn in 32-cell mode.
38.  - Twenty sprites on the same scanline have been drawn in 40 cell mode.
39.  - Sixteen sprites on the same scanline have been drawn in 32 cell mode.
40.  - 320 pixels worth of sprite data has been drawn on the same scanline
41.  &nbsp; in 40 cell mode.
42.  - 256 pixels worth of sprite data has been drawn on the same scanline
43.  &nbsp; in 32 cell mode.
44.  - The currently drawn sprite has a link field of zero.
45.  
46.  Sprites that are outside of the physical display area are still taken
47.  into account.

I don't think that's so much help for this situation, but it's the only documentation I know of that details when sprites don't appear.

 

One theory could be that the ball sprites were in a build of the game at one point. It wouldn't have been that hard to erase all evidence of it, and it could have also been only one build it appeared in. Remember Naka when he mentioned the sound test with Sonic breakdancing? Other than the concept art for the band which would appear on that screen, NOTHING was said or shown about it, and I'm fairly sure nobody ever found any traces of it either.

 

Yeah, I agree. I mean, coming from someone who has some video experience, even with analog switchers it wouldn't be too hard to grab a freeze frame of the game screen, mask it off properly, key the rotating ball over the gameplay video, then key the masked HUD and platform over all of that. It certainly would explain the oddities with the platform and the cliffs right above. The hard part would be ensuring that the added ball exactly tracks the original ball, assuming that it was there to begin with. If you notice, it's only the static parts of the HUD that intersect with the ball, which would greatly simplify the work necessary.

If anyone ever finds an "original" analog copy of this spot, we need full-frame interlaced 720x576 25fps captures (which can be separated back out to individual fields then resized for the proper aspect). I'd offer to help capture, but I can't playback PAL video, only NTSC. As it stands now, we only have half of the game's output frames, and what's worse our video seems to have come from a standards-converted NTSC tape (it has PAL borders, but 30fps) so there is likely to be a loss of quality just from that.

 

Remember that this is a PAL capture from Sonic 1. Making pixel masks is almost impossible. Try doing it in Photoshop, and you have to make alpha masks, and still it will look wrong.




Time to do the Sonic math to see if this is possible. Imagine the diamond is always 16x16 pixels big, even when rotated. That means 4 cells per frame. 16 frames per rotation. 64 rotation states (90 degrees).

4 * 16 * 64 = 4096. That's 150% of VRAM. Remember that the level art takes 46.8% of VRAM, and SAT, HSCROLL, and SCROLL A/B must fit VRAM too.

Or let say this is animated pattern just like the big ring. Uncompressed pattern takes 32 bytes per cell. 32 * 4 * 16 * 64 = 131072 bytes or 131 kb. That's 26% of Sonic 1's ROM size.

You are welcome to correct my math if needed.


Here is a picture simulating all rotation states. Remember that it only shows 8 of 64 rotation states. Good luck adding that in your hack!