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Sonic 2 sharing assets

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by Hez, May 29, 2019.

  1. Hez

    Hez

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    So I was casually looking through old concept sketches of sonic 2, until I came across this.

    [​IMG]

    Notice how Green Hill has a line, then Hill top is underneath it. They both share assets. We know Brenda Ross said that the desert level would have a pallete swapped ice level, which is also clearly show in this sketch. Death Egg, not shown, shares assets with Chemical Plant. What throws me off here is that "Secret Palace" has Oil Ocean zone under it. Was there more asset sharing planned? Seeing the odd floating triangles and what not in Oil Ocean does seem a bit odd. Was this zone actually a secondary zone pulled from Secret Palace?

    I'm trying to dig more into concept art to see if anything would even match. Seems very early in development, but interesting none the less.
     
  2. Blue Spikeball

    Blue Spikeball

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    Well, the artist who drew HPZ's level art stated that it was due to poor communication that he made the level look more like a cavern than a subterranean palace. And I would think this document predates the production of HPZ's level art, especially seeing how it calls it Secret Palace. So they probably had something different in mind for the look of HPZ and OOZ. Then when HPZ ended up looking like a cavern, they likely realized its art couldn't be used for OOZ, so they changed plans, opting to produce exclusive art for the latter.

    Perhaps the tubes in HPZ were a remnant of original HPZ concepts, and when reused in OOZ, they would be filled with oil? I'm also guessing that the rocky elements would only have been present in the background, to allow for reuse of the foreground art. Kind of like S&K's HPZ, which you wouldn't know was underground if it weren't for the background (well, and the starting area).
     
  3. biggestsonicfan

    biggestsonicfan

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    GHZ was also in the earliest S2 beta, just not accessible by normal means and had broken collision data.
     
  4. Hez

    Hez

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    I assumed GHZ was still referring to emerald hill. Sonic 1s green hill was left for testing I assumed?
     
  5. Sid Starkiller

    Sid Starkiller

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    I always assumed they just hadn't written over it yet.
     
  6. Flygon

    Flygon

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    I always felt there was some odd aesthetic similarities between Hidden Palace and Oil Ocean, but I never wanted to pipe up about it - blame my many years of the earlier era of these forums.

    It makes perfect sense their assets were suppose to be reused between each other. The colour schemes for the foreground are fairly close.
     
  7. McAleeCh

    McAleeCh

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    It's definitely there for testing of some sort - for starters, it's been converted to use 128x128 chunks rather than the old 256x256 standard, so it was probably used to test out the new chunk format. It's clear they weren't actively maintaining it by the time of the prototype we have, though, as like Hidden Palace the monitor assignments haven't been updated to account for the reordered monitor IDs (hence HPZ's infamous Tails 1-up), and it also hasn't had its collision redone to match the collision index in use at that point in development. If I recall correctly, the old Sonic 1 collision index is present separately within the ROM - repointing it to use that makes the stage pretty much fully functional, barring a few graphical glitches and (I think) a missing camera lock at the end of one of the Acts.

    Incidentally - the whole monitors-not-being-updated thing... I'm sure we probably discussed this back when the prototype surfaced, but that was a long time ago now so forgive me for forgetting. Hidden Palace's object layout surely reached its current state pretty early in development for it to still be using the Sonic 1 monitor definitions - do any of the other stages in that build (aside from EHZ, which was the cleaned-up 'public-facing' stage from the look of things) have any obviously wrong monitor assignments, or is it just HPZ? I find it bizarre that the stage was already in its most recognisable form at that early point and doesn't seem to have changed significantly since... yet "Beta 4" and the new CENSOR prototype contain updated debug lists for the stage adding the Stego badnik, and cleaned-up artwork for it to match? Especially as they bothered to make a level select icon for it much later in development, surely some work on the stage must have happened behind the scenes, even if it was never compiled into a working build of the game?
     
  8. Fred

    Fred

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    Pretty sure GHZ has 2P mode support, so I've always imagined it was something Naka did by himself before any of the Sonic 2 levels entered production.


    I think it was Naka who said that they really wanted to get it in the game, but they just ran out of time1 2. Wing Fortress still had a broken layout just days before they went gold, so it was really down to the wire.

    1 And storage space, but I'm intentionally overlooking that to make my point.
    2 EDIT: Naka quote.
     
  9. Hez

    Hez

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    I've also wondered about code management back in the day. Nowadays we have version control and code pushes, but back then it could have been all over the place. There could have been a separate build with changes that never made it. I wouldn't be surprised if there were branches off of other betas testing certain things, and then they kept going with a "master" or more common build, and kept building off of that. There very well could be a complete hidden palace out there in branched build, but that build might have not had Death Egg or Wing fortress in it, so that wouldn't have been the desirable branch to go with. This makes sense in my head...
     
  10. HEDGESMFG

    HEDGESMFG

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    I doubt Hidden Palace was ever developed beyond what we saw, despite the minor updates to the concept.

    It was likely dropped due to some complication in coding a gimmick related to it... I.E. Accessing it only after getting the emeralds, developing a cut-scene that shows the transformation, creating an ending part of the map that leads to this.

    Nowhere else in the game is any sort of cutscene code/function added, yet Naka's interview hints that this might have been the intention here. Programming this sort of function may have taken time they didn't necessarily have, especially as it would require extra story-boarding, and possibly specialized animation too. We already know from the CENSOR/Beta 4 ROMs how last second of an addition Super Sonic was.

    It also was a low priority most likely because it may not have ever been intended to be a full 2 act zone, so its own gimmicky nature may have just rendered it a low priority, and therefor easy to cut at the last second. Why go to all that trouble when you can just have Sonic jump up after grabbing 50 rings?
     
  11. RDNexus

    RDNexus

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    Excuse me for asking... Super Sonic was a last-minute addition? Could you tell me more about it?
     
  12. ICEknight

    ICEknight

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    I'm guessing that it's already been attempted to just swap the Hidden Palace and Oil Ocean palettes around, to see it their graphics fit somewhat?
     
  13. HEDGESMFG

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    Read up on his implementation through Beta 4 onward here.

    Given that even in the CENSOR prototype, most of the map layouts are complete, but Hidden Palace was removed and Super Sonic is 'not' yet complete... it becomes clear that much debate was had in the final months regarding his implementation mechanics, which we've been told were originally tied to Hidden Palace Zone. Remember, CENSOR/Beta 4 are likely from around September 1992, as little as 2 months before release date. By that stage in development, bug testing and putting together the final tweaks would be top priority before going gold.

    Hidden Palace was probably dropped first, then the decision was made to just implement Super Sonic and the Special Stages in a simplified Sonic 1 style to save on time/resources. Implementing Super Sonic at all was probably a low priority compared to building the main 12 stages, so when time ran low, it had to be simplified, even though the concept likely existed since early 1992.

     
  14. Am I stating the obvious in the Sonic Adventure snowboarding ice/dust swaps being a connection/reference to this?

    Don't they use the same bridge? The HPZ gems and the OOZ triangles always seemed reminiscent of each other to me.


    I mean the OOZ tubes are basically the transporters from S3k's HPZ/SSZ so... seeing more and more connections here.
     
  15. Overlord

    Overlord

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    It still does even in the final, don't forget the conveyor belt that doesn't move you.
     
  16. nineko

    nineko

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    [​IMG] [​IMG]

    Yeah, I think it's pretty safe to scratch that idea off.

    edit: by that, I mean the palette swap idea, I won't make the mistake to join the speculation game, kthx
     
  17. Black Squirrel

    Black Squirrel

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    I would say that Oil Ocean and Hidden Palace share design similarities... but they're meant to. It's called art direction.


    I get the impression sometimes that with the Mega Drive, there was a genuine effort amongst Sega's developers not to recycle background artwork if it was possible to do so. I was genuinely surprised to see Super Mario World go down this path - it works against this idea that it's a "next generation" 16-bit game.

    And it's the arcade mentality - if each stage offers something different, you feed the machine more money trying to see what's on offer.
     
  18. Hez

    Hez

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    I wasn't it supposed to also have a conveyor above that had hooks or something, like in FBZ?

    Theres the same number of greens as there are purples. I'm going to try some pallete location manipulation later. Although I'm wondering if it was a very early scrapped asset swap idea with "Secret Palace". Or Hidden Palace was just a level, and Secret Palace was the super sonic power giving stage? Maybe the true owner of sound track 10?

    EDIT: also might add, Creig Stitt did Hidden Palace, and also the foreground of Oil Ocean.

    "I should remember more about Oil Ocean, since this is one of the levels I worked on. All the forground art is mine, although the background is Yamaguchi's (no one liked my background, including me)"
     
  19. Dark Sonic

    Dark Sonic

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    I'm curious now what the original background art looked like.
     
  20. Well if you look at the original maps, Olympus is likely Hidden Palace set in the past, and it's ruined version was Oil Ocean. They probably have similarities to show they are the same place in different time zones in a more subtle way than Emerald Hill and Hill Top.

    http://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_the_Hedgehog_2_(16-bit)/Development