Sonic 2 SMTP

Wow... Just as I ported hyper forms into S2, this comes out... Nice work SMTP. =D

 

Nice Work. I could play it only for a few minutes, but here is some bug report:
-Blue springs are using a rotating palette in Green Greens Zone (as already said);
-Select the same character you're already using in the Options Zone and he won't make a cloud, but if you select Sonic when you first get into Options Zone, he'll make the cloud anyway even if you're already Sonic;
-Some "cave" tiles are misplaced in Green Greens, leading to abrupt sky-black borders. I have a screenshot of this, but I'm at work now.

I'll make sure to test this more during the weekend, you know I'm a real bastard when it comes to hacks I like :P

Also, what happened to the blocky zone you imported with my tool? Is it in?

 

Man, I hate bed. =P
Doesn't help I threw up today (even though I said I would on IRC), but it's awesome!

=D

EDIT: Knuckles on Master Emerald is awesome

 

Great work! I've really enjoyed playing this. (:

Only 2 bugs I found;

- Sonic's animations when he's flying the tornado are screwed up.
- If you collect a bubble sheild whilst on the drowning countdown, you still drown. l:

Keep up the good work! ^^

 

I can't even get this hack to run under Regen 0.8.5 :P

I should probably download Kega or something, but going by the comments so far, this hack sounds like it is something really good.

 

Hi,

The game is generating an address error exception so it won't run on real hardware too .

Back to the topic. Nice work SMTP.

stay safe,

AamirM

 

<!--quoteo(post=194192:date=May 9 2008, 01:35 PM:name=SMTP)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (SMTP @ May 9 2008, 01:35 PM)
Just letting you know.

Anyway, great work on v5, perhaps for the next release add debug support for Tails & Knuckles?

 

Ok, on the previous life I fell through the bottom of here (near the end of the stage)

Although that's prolly the engine rather than the level design.

Close to the boss this happened:


and knuckles got glitchy in water somehow, although death fixed this

 

Actually, the character selected by default is Sonic & Tails, not Sonic alone, so that's why the cloud appears. However, I'm not sure if it should appear if the main character doesn't change...

 

Is this a joke? Throughout most of the game, I couldn't move forward for more than 4 seconds at a time without bumping into one obstacle or another. I was literally exasperated by the time I had finished ARZ, which was the worst offender of the bunch- between all the spikes, arrow pillars, bottomless pits sparingly, yet strategically placed with the sole intent of spiting the player, and excessively long and excruciatingly slow water segments loaded with slopes and all of the aforementioned traps with nary an opportunity to get back on dry land (ARZ's main draw was the fact that a skilled player could run through the entire stage without touching the water once), the whole stage was an experience akin to sucking air through a coffee straw. CPZ was just as bad. It might've been worse.

So basically, not much has changed since the last release. The layouts aren't necessarily bad, as they manage to subvert many of the tropes I'd generally associate with the level designs of complete amateurs (The bottomless pits, while still ruefully present, are notably less abundant, which at least renders Green Greens somewhat tolerable), but they possess some of the worst flow I've ever seen in a Sonic hack, and they certainly aren't fun, sorry to say. The additional bells and whistles are novel at best, but at the game's core, I'm really not seeing anything worthwhile to distinguish this version from the last, aside from the single act of ICZ, which isn't too bad, albeit bland.

Note: I noticed the level select code immediately after typing this. Your Oil Ocean is better than everything else you've shown here, even despite it's incomplete state.

 

Game freezed on the game over screen...
Getting a bubble shield while drowning doesn't restore the music, and neither does coming out of the water afterwards.

 

Getting an air bubble while invincible restarts the invincibility music.

 

I actually enjoyed the level layouts a lot. They were probably one of my favorite things about this hack, most hacks have very linear and short level layouts. I don't like it when I play a hack and I get passed all the levels without loosing a single life. You can tell that he spent a lot of time working on them with all the little details, especially when looking for the S rings.


I haven't noticed any bugs yet, but I'm playing it with Gens so that's not saying a lot. :P

 

A major bug I noticed, and I don't have any idea how you could recreate this:
I was playing as knuckles and tails and just beat the first act of the ice zone, and after I beat it it brought me back to green greens act 1. Seemed to have pushed me backwards.

Some minor bugs I noticed (sorry I didn't take screens but they just sort of happened and I didn't get a chance to):

-in the second zone just before the boss, the arrow the statue shoots had messed up tiles
-there were some rings in toxic factory act 2 at the top of the loop at the top of the stage I couldn't pick up (or maybe they didn't disappear after I grabbed them)
-after the first act of the ice zone, I jumped and the hidden points art had messed up tiles

This hack is really fun, awesome job.

 

Shameless plug

Though it's pretty surprising Sonic 2 doesn't limit the number of sprites that can be drawn within BuildSprites itself. Sonic 3k's version limits the number internally, in case you need any reference code the Sonic 3k version of BuildSprites is at $1AD20 in Stealth's IDB.

EDIT: Forgot to mention, awesome stuff. Some minor bugs, but they don't really affect gameplay too much. Though why does Hyper Sonic use Super Sonic's rotating palette? D:

 

Good hack so far, but with some minor issues.

.There was some bugs in GGZ where you could go through some of the tiles. This went to one of the death pits
half way through the stage, and the little platforms (I think it was the 1st or the 2nd act)

.Super Sonic's sprites can go weird if you break the bustable walls at high speed. (only seen it on the Sonic 2 version of SS)

.Knuckles has the wrong sock colour. It's red instead of green, and turns pink when Super, but doesn't glow.

.Playing sound 17 in the sound test area on level select buggers up and freezes the game with weird tiles above with the note illegal instruction.

More to come soon.

 

I got hit underwater as knuckles by one of those robot fish with teeth and the colors god messed up:


Knuckles gets covered in a green goo.

I went in the big ring at the end of zone 2 of the ice zone while playing as knucks/tails and I ended up in the special stage like this:


I seemed to be playing as both sonic and tailes together, they were fuzed together completely. Although playing as sonic with tails' tails was completely awesome, I don't think this is what you wanted. Oh and I guess I should point out that the ring counter is in a weird place as seen in the pic.

 

The colors mess up due to the location of the underwater palette cache in RAM in contrast to the location of the SST. When too many sprites are loaded on screen, they spill into the underwater palette cache, which is then immediately moved to CRAM on the next frame. This causes the palette issues underwater that have occurred.

The only way I can think of fixing this is by changing where the underwater palette cache is stored. This is admittedly the fault of my guide for not properly addressing, but I do believe it is possible to relocate the cache without interfering with anything else in-game.