Sonic 3 Complete

I just don't really know most of MHZ's layout, so I can only get at most 4 or 5, there was this time I got 6 but it was several years ago and I already forgot the path I took.

 

Here are level maps showing my path through the level. Passing by all 8 possible special rings for Sonic.

 

So ... any idea when we'll see this awesomeness added in? :3

 

Good luck, I'm following this hack's progression closely, brilliant concept. It's nice to see hacking talent coming from my birthplace

 

Gotta love when you find small details. like the reverse gravity monitor code. I allocate any memory area of my brain to fill up information about S3 and S&K.

 

Reverse gravity monitor code? That's awesome

 

I think he means the inverted gravity code that's in the monitors when you place them upside-down. It's been recently discussed in the topic of other knowledge.



Yes, I had to look it up in there because I also thought a gravity monitor had been discovered after reading that reply. =P

 

Sorry. Mistake by me. I could have PM'd that message as it was more of a personal message.

 

Tiddles, since it was your personal preference to change "THE DOOMSDAY" in level select to the more sensible "DOOMSDAY", might I mention the fact that when playing the level in the current version (101226), the title at the start of the level is "THE DOOMSDAY ZONE". Could you remove the "THE" out of the picture? Quite possibly before your next updated release of S3C?

Also, since the "SOUND TEST" on the title screen (after activating the level select code) is more of a level select feature, then shouldn't the text be modified to read:

LEVEL TEST [OR] LEVEL SELECT

Edit: Here's another suggestion. You're most likely aware of the Sonic/Tails gameplay involving the NPC Knuckles having a different color palette than that of the Playable/Actual Knuckles. I'm not sure whether it was a mistake or due to technical issues at the hands of SEGA. However, it would be a reasonable thing to look into fixing.

 

The Knuckles Boss Palette issue is due to the fact that he normally shares his palette with Sonic, as I recall. This calls back to the old Blue Knuckles glitch, where the game loads Sonic's palette on Knuckles.

The game has to account for the possibility of Sonic, Tails and Knuckles being on screen at the same time, which means some concessions have to be made as to what palettes they load.

Regardless of whether or not I am talking out of my ass about this stuff, I do believe it is a hardware limitation either way. Feel free to smack me down if I'm wrong. :v:

 

In light of all the "Knuckles palette wtf" I did some research into this.

Using my palette editor I decided to go through the game and see if there is a reason for the slightly bluer NPC Knuckles...
From what I see, there is no reason for this, and here is a screen to prove it(all palettes taken straight from gameplay)



The top palette is the Player Knuckles' palette.
The rest are the cutscene palettes(in chronological order)

All but one are the same, that one is...

Hidden Palace Zone

This zone has one palette color different than the rest, this is because during all the cutscenes in the game, this is the only time that rings are ever visible while Knuckles is on screen.
This also turns Knuckles' shoe tips a darkish yellow color.

The only technical problem with the NPC palette is the HUD, which makes knuckles' socks yellow, everything else is a mistake.

My theory for the slight bluer color is that during development, knuckles originally had the slight bluer palette, but later down the road they made him a bit more red but forgot to change the NPC palette colors.


EDIT: Decide to change the NPC palette to the player palette, for shits and giggles

Omg is that a working perfect Knux palette?!



Nope.
What 2 simple colors can screw up...
HUD, Sonic Lives, and Rings
Also HPZ seems to force the second yellow color in, again screwing up his shoes


Again, knux looks great, the rest not so much

 

Doesn't Sonic have a green color in his palette for some reason? Would it be possible to use that green value for Knuckles? Also maybe you could try just fixing the red on Knuckles at the very least. His socks would still be strange but he'd be less pink.

 

There are no green colors that sonic uses and the cutscene knuckles uses the second palette line, not the first.

But even though I know absolutly nothing about ASM, I still managed to fix the palette issue



Technicals

Made a copy of the knuckles tiles.
Edited all tiles that involved NPC Knuckles and swapped the green and red colors to where the unused tails colors are(SonMapED made this really easy)
Edited the ASM so that NPC Knuckles points at the new edited tiles, instead of the normal player set.
Bam, no more 2 different Knuckles.

Rom
http://www.speedyshare.com/files/28472407/sk3KnuxFixed.bin

And my work here is done.

 

Super Sonic uses the green color for his eyes.

 

Doesn't Knuckles in Sonic 2 use the same exact sprites, but assigning the existing pixel colors to different palette entries, all in real time? Maybe something like that could be used to fix Knuckles' socks? Either way, pink Knuckles is just due to mismatching colors between the cutscene and gameplay palettes and could easily be fixed with little to no repercussions.

 

Isn't there some duplicate data that could be thrown out? I mean I get where you're coming from but if people wanted to play vanilla Sonic 3, they could just go play Sonic 3.

There must be some Knuckles in Sonic 2 data that could be disposed of right?

 

That's not even in the main Sonic & Knuckles ROM chip by the way. Knuckles in Sonic 2 triggers a different ROM chip usually labeled as "upmem" which contains everything you need to play the game, minus the sound driver and other static things which are loaded from the Sonic 2 ROM itself.

 

Oh ok I wasn't sure how that whole deal worked to be honest