I can, but don't, because it's far too time consuming, and I get sick of MHZ after a while. I prefer to grab five in MHZ and then the last two in FBZ1 so I can still stand on the miniboss and then make myself a drink as he kills himself.
I get all 7 Super Emeralds in MHZ all the time, mainly because after that level I can't seem to find any rings until Lava Reef Zone, and don't even get me started on how much of a bitch it is to find most of the rings in Sandopolis Zone
I am, too, in the boat of can get all emeralds by EHZ act 2, HCZ act 2 and MHZ act 2. I've been doing that since I was a kid, and still do that all the time. The only exception was Sonic 3, because could only get all the Chaos Emeralds by CNZ when I was a kid, and only got to get them all at the second Big Ring of HCZ act 2 when I started playing Sonic 3 on emulators, years later. This is the main reason why I have to get everything before FBZ act 1. Ugh. I know the location of, what, two Big Rings in Sandopolis Zone act 1, and one of them requires Knuckles to get. I know the location of two in act 2, and one is in the very begining of the sandslider part, and the other is at the very end of the zone, right before the Boss. Too good I know the Special Stages layouts by heart, so I don't mess up them anymore, as I used to do when I was young, and thus losing my opportunity to get them asap.
Well I know where like 2 or 3 of them are but the problem is none of them lie in the path I usually take so it's hard to come across them. Besides I get all the Emeralds in MHZ so why does it matter
Ah ah ah! It's MVZ now. Mushroom VALLEY Zone. But anyway ... a suggestion and a bug report. Bug Report first ... if you have all the Super Emeralds and go to Bonus Stage 4, it brings you to Hidden Palace Zone's Emerald Shrine. You can't jump on any of the Emeralds because they're all activated, but if you step on the entrance gem, it transports you back to ... the entrance gem. Then my suggestion. I think the game could really benefit from a slight rearrangement of the Level Select screen. As it is, it's still a little confusing to have things like Lava Reef Zone listed twice, with Act 4 actually being Hidden Palace Zone, as well as the strange naming for Bonus Stages. Here's what I suggest for the right side of the screen: Code (Text): LAVA REEF ZONE 1 2 3 HIDDEN PALACE ZONE SKY SANCTUARY ZONE 1 2 DEATH EGG ZONE 1 2 3 DOOMSDAY ZONE As for how to rename Bonus Stages, I'm up for suggestions, but something to make it a little more apparent where you're going would be great.
Yeah, you're gonna have to Start/A to escape "Bonus 4"... I would've spent more time trying to make the exit work better but for a few reasons:<ol type='a'>[*]All the bonus stages exhibit the same problem of exiting back into themselves; [*]This behaviour is actually pretty sensible if you're using it to collect super emeralds, as you get to pick another stage immediately afterwards; [*]I don't want to accidentally end up breaking some edge case for the game itself in making the level select version better. [/LIST] How about this for the level select? The bonus stages still aren't fantastically clear but there's at least logic: (That's (G)umball, (M)agnet, (S)lot by the way.) If you didn't put any patches on at all, collecting emeralds will not expose you to either invincibility theme any more than usual. Here's my view on it: Sonic 3 invincibility music sucks if you're going to hear it repeated for too long. So does S&Ks, about equally (actually I hate it more, but that's probably because I couldn't avoid it with Knuckles in S3K, nor with Tails while actually making use of him; in S3 I could just avoid going super mostly.) Sonic 2's? A bit better, but it's still irritating, particularly since it's unavoidable. This is why there are several changes already in S3C to mitigate it: first we avoid using that music at all for super by default, then we let you avoid going super at all, then we let you turn back. Patch options take time to string together too, and adding more invincibility music options would in particular require more music slot manipulation, which also happens to conflict with other things I want to do. I added back the option to use the original invincibility music for super because I want to allow you to go back to how Sega released it, but I'd really rather not sink more time into super music options because I believe the best solution by far is already the default. The general rule with patch options is that I make them to reverse things I do that might be unpopular. That also keeps them from taking too much time if I build them while I add features. The exceptions to this are usually things that turn up while I'm doing something else that turn out to be fairly simple and that restore some behaviour from S3A or the S3C betas. For example, the bonus stage selection and ring count stuff all came about through work on something else that isn't done yet. Changing the point at which super emeralds become available is certainly beyond the scope of what I want to do; there are plenty of opportunities to find them already if you explore, and their introduction at Mushroom Non-Discriminatory Elevation Change Zone is assisted by deliberate level design and cutscenes which I don't want to move. And as mentioned by some others, you'd have about ten seconds of being able to use Super Sonic or Knuckles. It would be nice to do something about using the right sting at the end of the credits music. I want to sort it out, but I don't know when or really if it'll get done. Regarding the S&K layouts: some of them clearly are to fix glitches, such as the Launch Base first boss one found earlier, but I don't think this is necessarily true in the majority of cases. Obvious S3 deficiencies like the Carnival Night "reset traps" are caused by the level structure and collision rather than the object layout, and it's not additional objects that patch them up. If there are problems caused by using the S3 layouts, they'll have to be looked at as reported; as it is, I only know of that Launch Base one, so please do let me know if you find any others (verifying that it's broken in S3 and fixed in S3K would be helpful!) Don't forget, the unpatched game already partly does as you suggest, using a mixture of Sonic 3 and S&K layouts that I chose based on testing various combinations, and with changes made in a few cases to work around S3 layout issues. Where there's a problem I didn't see, let me know and I'll look at it. Yeah, I'll probably make a patch for that next time around. I'm sure I intended to do it ages ago and didn't get around do it.
4 minor oddities that I thought I would bring up to your attention that might be fixed (I had pictures but fucking Kega Fusion saves them in some strange ass TGA format that nothing wants to upload) Angel Island Act 1: Towards the beginning there is a section near the first Super ring with like 3 rings near a spring. For some reason it's actually 4 rings, the middle ring has one right over the other. Hydrocity Act 2: There is one part of the level with an underwater tunnel that leads to a ring box, but like the above error, it's actually a ring box over another ring box, unfortunately I forgot where that was specifically Marble Garden Act 1: At the beginning of the level on the first slope after you get the magnet shield there are two rings that are inside the wall that you can't get unless you have the magnet shield. Carnival Night Act 2: At the beginning of the act if you take the lift tunnel up to the higher part of the level, there are two retractable spikes. The second one though is too high, so even when it's down if you jump on it it will hurt you. That's all I know as far as errors are concerned though.
Looks great with that Level Select rearrangement. :D By the way ... anybody know if anyone from Sega's heard of S3C? I mean, here we are, bugtesting and "fixing" their game for them. It's really interesting when you think about it.
Well to be fair, this is just a side project. Sega had timetables and budgets when they were making this game, and for it to come out as good as it did, I'd say they did a pretty good job.
Options -> Set Config... -> Extras -> BMP unc / Raw The resulting bmp will be converted to png by imageshack on the fly if you upload it there. Alternatively you can get pngout, drag and drop, and upload the resulting png. Especially useful if you have a slow upload speed since it cuts down the upload size from 200+kB to usually ~10kB.
Boy, it's been a while. I ran across a bug while playing this hack some time after the last release, but I wasn't able to figure out at the time what caused it, or if it is present in the original game. Turns out, it isn't. In AIZ1, if you grab the speed shoes, then dart across the swinging vine pit and grab the invincibility before the shoes wear out, the shoes' effect will remain indefinitely, or at least until you dip in some water. I'm not immediately familiar with another set of shoes/invincibility so close to each other as to test it in another level, but I can only assume it's a game-wide issue. EDIT: Thanks, Zone: 0! Tested it in MGZ1 and it happens there, too. This throws out the idea that it might have anything to do with skipping the AIZ1 cutscene or something.
Could you confirm whether you're using 101222 or 101226? The version should be in the ROM header, and hence most likely the emulator title bar. 101226 was built especially to fix that issue, and I can't reproduce it on my current build, which hasn't really changed in that area since the last release. While I'm here, here are some boring development updates: I've converted everything to build from the new S3K disassembly, which makes life a bit easier - both the full and reduced build mode are working, but I may well use the reduced one from now on, if only because it seems daft to build Sonic 3 Complete without the "Sonic3_Complete" flag set. In the latest builds, all music tracks are now accessible in the sound test regardless of patch options - the Sonic 3 tracks take up their original music IDs and F0-F7 are used for alternative S&K versions. This will allow for some of the oft-requested options that involve using various versions of the same track for different purposes, although I haven't yet decided what options will be available - patch options do need work and I still don't want to put a lot in for marginal stuff. There's still quite a bit of work left to rework the original patch options to understand this setup. Regardless of which credits music you choose, the correct "sting" will be played as it finishes to match your preferred title music. This bit is held together with glue and bits of string, but it works, and it doesn't sound terrible, so I'll take that as a success. Tails now has a little intro in Angel Island like everyone else. At the moment I'm working on a workaround for the S3&K bug of the object manager going berserk when you debug out of the death animation and do a lot of travelling. Mostly because I've seen a lot of videos based on that lately, so it's caught my attention.
...oops Geez, sorry about that. I must've totally missed the bugfix release which, figures, was made for the entire purpose of fixing the very same bug, which got reported as far back as December. I swear I'm usually not this much of an idiot. But hey, looking forward to that Tails cutscene, I guess!
Not sure if this bug was mentioned yet, but I was just playing through again, and when I was fighting the Angel Island miniboss, the last hit was dealt while I was turning into Hyper Sonic. After that last hit, Sonic went back to normal, like he should, except he was walking in the air, like he does in Sonic 2 if you jump after the signpost.
I know how to get the 7 chaos emeralds just before Hydrocity Act 2's boss, but I swear I can never get the 7 super emeralds before Flying Battery, the earliest I've done it is just before the FBZ Act 1 miniboss. There are 2 giant rings hiding behind spike strips in Act 1 and 1 giant ring that I know of in Act 2 just before the laser miniboss. Which brings the question, if the Flying Battery was built by Robotnik, then why the hell are there Giant Rings in there? *EDIT* Good god necro quote, didn't notice the dates.. *EDIT*
Inherited from S3K, but in both cases you need to be extremely unlucky to time it so you get stuck (or extremely good at finding bugs!) I'll see if there's something I can do about that whole situation in the future.
