Even in the original it would upset his shoes, but it's further complicated by the fact that there's one less orange in the AI Knuckles palette now, and one of the remaining two has moved position - but the big ring entry and results screen version of HPZ still has the original arrangement. I think I'd rather keep Knuckles looking right at the expense of changing the colour, since the orange is at least consistent within the game itself (more so than some of the other emeralds at least!) but in future versions, I might look at lining up the different HPZ palettes again so it's a bit easier to hack the hack for those that want to.
True, but I really apreciante the "few nice things" you made :D Yes, it feels more natural now. At first felt wierd, I confess, I was not used to see him like this, but in the end just felt, so right. And a very nice one, I must say, but not sure about the emeralds part, maybe it should be just Knuckles hiting him, grin, and run away. it was not really necessary, but makes sense, with the other one being from Sonic 3 However in a cleared save, "clear" is not centered, it feels kinda sloopy, I hope it's fixable. This one wasn't obvious when I used the web costumizer, scared me a bit at first, maybe you should do a description there I sure did, it was mostly little things, but little things count as much as the big ones, imo. Thanks (once again) for sharing your work with us. - Oh and another thing, when playing knux's intro in full, he still is too much on the left side of the screen, maybe make him walk to his original position? make the cutsceen a bit more at the right and center the screen when the game starts? just some sugestions.
Don't know if it's been mentioned yet but will you be fixing the HUD? IIRC the palette changes ever so slightly throughout the game. But it's particularly noticable in Angel Island Zone.
The old text had that problem too, but it is indeed a little more noticable now due to the narrower characters and the fact that their tiny little bit of extra spacing is on the left of the character box. I might be able to improve this a little in a later release, I might not. Funny thing is, this is his original start position (more or less) - it's just that I've locked the camera further to the right. I don't want to explain exactly why that is because then you're more liable to notice a minor bug, most of which is masked by that change, but there is a reason for it . If I moved him further right, into the middle of the screen as it's locked now, it'd be too easy to reach the first enemy while it's still made of title card (which is already just about possible, but you can already do it to the same degree from Sonic's intro, so it's close enough for me). I've fixed that in post-burning AIZ, so it's only the very beginning where it looks silly. The problem with doing it in AIZ1 is that those grey rocks make use of that colour. I take a look at that every so often in the hope I'll think of some clever way to fix it without either making the rocks look awful or rearranging the entire palette for both acts, but nothing's come to me yet.
The crescent on Knuckles' chest always bothered me for as long as I can remember. It's white and it's supposed to be white, however in the game it's peachy, the same color as his face. When Knuckles is on the spinning tubes in HCZ, the barrels in CNZ, and any other point you see his sprites from the front, the crescent is obviously the wrong color. I'm assuming Sega didn't pay much attention to this as it was a minor detail and it surprisingly hasn't been pointed out by anyone. It would be nice if you would fix this, but it's all up to you. Just a suggestion. ---------------------Original/Default------------------------------------------------Modified/White---------------------- On a side note, while playing around with Knuckles in this new version (110623), I died about a dozen times at random while gliding through breakable objects like the 2-Block walls in HCZ and while gliding under a CNZ barrel that was moving side-to-side. I kept getting killed by crap that couldn't or isn't supposed to hurt me in any way. I went back and tried to replicate it, which failed, but theres obviously some bug involved in this since I keep getting killed out of nowhere. I've only played through the first four levels and I was randomly screwed over in each.
It seems like you've had a very unlucky playthrough there. I haven't touched anything in that area, but I've seen this sort of thing before in the vanilla game - for a while I used to consistently manage to die in MGZ1 under one of the early spike crushers for no satisfactory reason. Given that, and that my primary tester and I have raced through as Knuckles quite a few times lately, I'm thinking this is just the original game's sometimes-buggy collision - as long as this doesn't seem to be happening more frequently across the board.
This is most likely due to the invisible objects (Object 6B and it's variations) being triggered unintentionally. When Knuckles hit's the floor after gliding, he is actually lower into the ground than normal and can touch the object, unlike normal (This can also occur with rolling, especially in Marble Garden with the spiked crushers). Funnily enough, the 6B object isn't even needed under the spiked crushers in MGZ but they are still present under almost every one. Hydrocity 2 has the same problem with the wall-chasing sequence. If you glide and slide across the top of a platform with a 6B object underneath, you will on occasion die and it looks like nothing has caused it.
I've occasionally encountered bugs where the game resets itself rather than trigger the "S&K Title Screen" transition between LBZ and MHZ [MVZ]. I'm not sure what the cause is however, as it's especially erratic in its triggering, but it happened when I played through with Tails. Another issue I have, although minor, is that if I play as Sonic or Tails without the arm boss, after beating the 3-tiered one and the death egg falls from the sky, there's no sound at all to go with it. Some sort of falling or breaking or blowing up sound would be cool (espcially since one plays during the S&K screen transition). But that's a minor quibble. Another thing, and this is a very minor feature request, is that I've always felt that the Sonic 3 Credits BGM works very well as Hidden Palace Zone's. I'd love an option in the customizer to toggle it (which would be a very small patch, just changing a couple 14s to 26s -- although I think there's one such trigger in the Knuckles boss object code, though I'm pretty sure you already know where it is). Rather than go hunting for it in frhed or something, it'd probably be easier if it was done on your end. But as I'm probably the only one who'd even want such a feature and I'm able to change it myself, it's a very minor request and easily ignorable.
Makes sense. I'm wondering if globally lowering those things a few pixels might help avoid this, without defeating their original purpose - any experience in that regard? Interesting; first report I've had of that, as far as I recall. Did this happen in 101222/101226 too or is it new to this release? Any patch options applied? Yeah, bit flat, isn't it. The solution is not to disable the best feature. Funnily enough, I've thought about that myself recently, and I'd be interested to hear others' thoughts on it. If you want to try it in this version, you can use the following four GG codes: E3SA-BWE2 E3SA-BRE4 E28T-NAEW E28T-NAFG (If you've applied the patch for Knuckles' music to continue through the second part of HPZ, apply only the first two. Also note that these will only work for 110623 and not any previous or probably future releases.) The main mark against it, from having had a go, is that it gets quite noticable channel knockout from the gameplay sound effects.
The playthrough with Knuckles was flawless, despite what I mentioned before which actually turned out to be normal. The "CLEAR" text looks offcentered but is in fact centered with the black outline and not with the yellow outline or any of the icons below it. Otherwise, great additions to this version, even if they were few. Thanks for making the best Sonic game even better. Just another suggestion. I was also wondering if taking away the scanline-like "glowing" effect the Chaos Emeralds have when you see them on the Special Stage results screen and the Super Emeralds when in Hidden Palace would really ruin any concept of the game. You never see them in their full color unless you pause the game, which could also result in them missing off the screen (Chaos Emeralds) or being pitch dark gray (Super Emeralds). It is of course due to the Emeralds having 2 'sprites' in the glow effect, White/Color (Chaos Emerald) and Gray/Color (Super Emerald), but you already knew that. If there is a way, would adding a patch or completely taking away the unnecessary glow be in your interest? The emeralds are obviously less visible/colorful with the glowing effect. The idea is that the Emeralds should be visible like this at all times: Hidden Palace - Special Stage Screen - Save Menu
I've had the issue with resetting happen a few times on the other versions; I only played through this new release once, as Tails, but in the past it had happened while I was playing as Sonic as well. I honestly have no idea what could be causing the problem, though.
I'll see if I can get it to happen, but I'm not very hopeful since I've been through that bit a lot of times during testing. On the flashing emeralds: yeah, maybe I'll make an option at some point, if only because of stupid YouTube and its stupid 30Hz limit making all the flashing stuff look absurd.
Yeah, wish I had a better idea on how to trigger it. I might try to stress-test that bit at some point and see what I come up with. On the other hand I figure that it probably is more reliable with the arm boss enabled anyway.
Well with the Z from Zone, one space before where the C from Clear is, I find it hard to belive. If it's hard to centrer it, maybe making "Clear" start from the place where "Zone" start may help the weirdness. I tried the code you posted, it's not a bad idea, HP lacks a theme of it's own. However, I wouldn't put by default.
Being able to allow S&K music to be played exclusively for the S&K mode is a spectacular feature. Makes the mode feel more natural. Tails' new intro is great too, but he lands a bit too close to the bottom of the screen in my opinion, and I've noticed the screen jittered once he landed.
Ha... I noticed another change you didn't list. Playing as Sonic, now Eggman doesn't drop the Master Emerald after DEZ boss, and his bad ending was also changed. Now the transition to Doomsday fits well. Another nice touch.
Here's a small list of things you can modify for a later update: (At your own discretion of course, it's your hack) - Change the color of Knuckles' chest crescent to the color white. - Fix Sonic's underwater Super/Hyper transformation in which for a slight moment he is visibly black and red like Shadow. Note: When going Super, it is clearly visible for at least half a second. When Hyper however, it is probably to a tenth of second if not less, I was lucky to screenshot it. ----------------------------Super----------------------------------------------------------Hyper---------------------------- - Remove the glowing/flashing effect on all Chaos and Super Emeralds (Hidden Palace, Special Stage Results Screen, Data Select/Save Menu). - In LBZ1, while playing as Sonic/Tails, after Knuckles bombs and collapses the tower (before the Twin Hammer Mini-Boss). The corkscrew spinning platform in which Sonic/Tails sit in while Knuckles throws the bomb remains in mid-air even after the tower collapses, as well as the collapsible edges of the doorway if they aren't touched. So my idea is, have the objects disappear with the collapse of the tower, as opposed to remaining there. They are all visible if you fly and/or jump high enough. I Hyper jumped up and onto a collapsible edge. I took a screenshot before it would collapse: - In LBZ1, again in the tower, in the small upper-right corner to the right of the platform moving diagonally, there's a spacial gap that should be patched up with the yellow block art. --------------------------Problem--------------------------------------------------------Solution-------------------------- Note: The two LBZ1 issues are present in the original S3K and previous versions of this hack. To all you eagle-eyed people who might question as to why my Score in the pictures is 0, I used Debug mode to race through the level to the tower, as opposed to consuming time by playing through it. These problems are not a result of Debug Mode, they are present in regular gameplay.
Pause and frame-advance are your pals! On the topic of palettes, what about Knuckles’ skin-coloured crescent, as mentioned earlier by MastaSys?
I did mention some palett weirdness on this topic (that in fact was corrected after I pointed out), but Knuckles crescent was not one of them, it was another poster. However, I'm also interested.
Honestly what bothers me most in terms of palettes is the master emerald flashing not being right during either ending sequence. It's fine in DEZ2 and Doomsday, but right before the credits and in SSZ2 it's awful.
