I noticed I've been added to the credits on the wiki page, even though I don't remember contributing anything to this hack, is that a mistake? o.O
I've pretty much listed anyone who made anything I used in the tools section. I used your palette entry manipulation tool to help shifting AI Knuckles about.
Alright, I fixed all of my pointed out problems with Sonic's sprites, they should be here any moment. The new upwards corkscrew animations will definitely satisfy. Also, I really don't mean to one up you, Neo, but... I had already retouched these before I saw your post. What you see is the sprites in my fixed ROM. Most of your changes remain in these, but I also altered the spines. Plus, most of Sonic's parallel-to-screen sprites in S3K see him showing a bit of his mouth, hence the black dot.
Regarding the lives counter and HUD text issue, for the numbers you could use the first (Sonic's) palette line, since its grays never change. For the yellow text, you could change the shadow to use the last palette entry (darkest yellow), since that one never changes, either, as far as I know. Edit: About the sprites, shouldn't Sonic's shoe-soles be black?
But you did! And that's fine, you changed a lot of stuff for the better. It prompted me to change a lot of stuff in my sprites from earlier. Not going to change the old image for posterity's sake, but here's a revised version (bottom): Personally, I only wanted to add changes to the sprite that are visually identical to the original. This might seem nonsensical, but the point is that if nobody can tell the sprite is different then I've done a good job. My opinion is that in the case of the face, the fact that the old one doesn't match the rest of the sprites makes it stand out more than the fact that I've altered it from the original. I'm not sure if changing the the shoe color would be a dramatic enough change so that the first impression is that it looks "wrong", but that's always a possibility. Besides, there's probably a lot more inconsistency around the shoes all around, so I don't think it's worth losing sleep over it.
This is what happened when I cleared the Special Stage from the big ring on the top path of MHZ2 (second-to-last) and then went to the left. Have no idea what the circumstances were, why it happened, couldn't get it to happen again. Swear I wasn't cheating!
I'm pretty sure I've had that happen pretty often to me in the original S3K. Might be something carried over.
Hey, great job on this, using the S&K title screen as a transition between LBZ and MHZ was a neat addition. I have a suggestion however, would it be possible to "fix" the special stage using the ring loss sound instead of the extra life sound when getting 100 rings?
No, that's the middle shade. I'm talking about the darkest one, palette index $F. Granted, it does get replaced with dark (very dark, but not black) gray when Knuckles shows up, but I still think it'd be more consistent than with the way it is now. Fair enough. I just thought that since the complaint was about consistency this would be one step towards fixing that.
Interesting point on the S2-ish sprites (I doubt I'd ever have noticed that) and good edits to bring them up-to-date. :D
This hack is absolutely wonderful! Great job Tiddles, and thanks for the all the work! Would it be possible to have a "No change" Super and Hyper transformation music option?
This and this. ....And this. As much as I love the S3K invincibility music, (I heave at the S3 theme-ugh) hearing it constantly gives me Sonic 4 syndrome. So many interesting fixes; Tiddles, you should be proud of this.
There isn't a "no change at all" option, but there IS a patch to speed up the level music when hyper/super. You can find it in the customiser.
So I was messing around with Sonic in the newest release and in LBZ2 around the end of the level I stumbled upon another random bug. I don't know the circumstances that caused this but the little area here caught my eye when I was running down a pipe in Hyper form. So I hyper jumped up to it and to my surprise, this happened: I don't know if you do, but please look back at everything people have pointed out since the June 23rd Release. The more problems fixed, the better. I'm not rushing you, just saying.
Uhh...that's actually just a secret path. Following it will lead you to this hook: Riding it will allow you to grab these monitors you might've seen earlier: Good find, though. A lot of people miss that path en route to the boss. EDIT: I missed the point, wow I feel stupid. Oh well, at least people will get another chance to find out this secret path with this + - otherwise wasted post!
The sped up Super/Hyper music is actually the default. If you patch it back to invincibility music, that's your own lookout. I've considered "no change", but I don't think I want to go that far. I've minimised the pain of the transformation music quite a lot, but it should still be a bit noticable/annoying - there has to be some penalty for raping the game other than the minimal ring drain! I do keep a log of all the bugfixes and suggestions that are requested. Some of them I do soon after, some of them I do years later, some of them I don't do. (Look at the recently added music options, which were mostly suggested in 2009.) It does kinda depend on how I feel about it on the day. If I promise to do a lot of things that aren't very interesting to me, I get hung up on them and spend even less time on it. So I humbly ask players to be forgiving if their favoured fix doesn't end up making it. It sacrificed itself to keep things moving. As far as that LBZ tunnel goes, that's definitely not the only one where you can end up appearing in front of it incorrectly. I think it's just a bit too easy to get around the priority swappers on some of them. I'll probably investigate it at some point, but object layout work is tedious, so see above.
Oh, that's what he meant. Yeah, I can understand going through a wall into a secret tube, but Sonic should be behind it all. Kinda strange, I guess I didn't ever dwell on that fact. Sorry about that Knucklez!