Sonic 3 Complete

Just need to jot these down before I forget: S3&K has two small animation errors, when Knuckles is blasted away at the end of LBZ2, he alternates between his hurt frame and sliding frame (which would work for Sonic, but Knuckles's are visually different), and when Tails is knocked down by the boulder in LRZ2, he uses his MGZ pulley frame rather than the hurt frame.

 

Re: the super/hyper music, for what it's worth, I like the S&K invincibility music so I change the patches to use it all the times (like in regular S3&K).

Only if you play as Tails alone:

 

Someone mentioned using the songs from S&K collection instead of the original Sonic 3 songs. Here, I've started on that.
Included are XMs of CNZ1&2, and Knuckles' theme, along with appropriate voices to use when importing (in .tfi format because TFM's the easiest creator of FM voices, for me at least).

http://www.box.net/shared/pl4dst0o59oeqt4303oc

Now, when I sequenced them I used a soundfont based on the OPL MIDI format, so I have a few demo mp3s designed to give an idea of how they'd sound (or close to how they were expected to sound in the game they came with, at the very least). Mind you, it's not going to sound 100% the same (in fact the .tfi voices may end up being easier on the ears), but I tried to keep things close. Also, all the drums are just what I had nearby and not rips of all the Sonic 3 percussion; I was too lazy to look for it anywhere.

http://www.box.net/shared/pl4dst0o59oeqt4303oc CNZ1
http://www.box.net/shared/l9kne2yfetr1m1b6bex3 CNZ2
http://www.box.net/shared/lx24fkllnrzjx1c7353o Knuckles

I also ever-so-slightly modified the arrangements from the originals, in hopes it'd make them sound a bit better or take advantage of unused FM channels. All cymbal work I've done under the expectation that the PSG chip will handle it (I know there's a cymbal crash sound somewhere in the game). This may need to be changed.

Finally, there is a small chance you might need to transpose some parts down an octave to keep voices from becoming too shrill, since the Import MOD feature in TFM pushes everything down an octave during importing. (Yes, you could drop the "MULT" value of each of the operators in the voice by half but that's maybe not as easy to do.)

Hopefully you can find some sort of use for these files, but I'll probably still do the other songs regardless.

EDIT: Oh, and there's also no panning, just as a heads-up, except on the voices themselves in Knuckles' theme.

 

Your CNZ1 and your CNZ2 seem to be missing several notes, even in the lead o.O
Your Knuckles' theme uses two different instruments for the lead, which is wrong, even though it's a common mistake: the lead in that song uses only one instrument, but Microsoft's default soundfount uses two different samples for that instrument, and the separation point incidentally makes it that the first verse and the second verse use entirely different samples, even though that's just a side effect.
You didn't use the melodic PSG channels at all in any of these.

I don't like to sound rude when we talk about music, but... yeah. I think these are subpar works, sorry.

EDIT: for what it's worth, here you can find the XM files I obtained by importing the actual midi data from the S&K collection, which I used to convert <a href="http://digilander.iol.it/projectchaos/DATA_65(2).vgz" target="_blank">CNZ2</a> and <a href="http://digilander.iol.it/projectchaos/DATA_71(2).vgz" target="_blank">LBZ2</a>. These might not be perfect, and some channel assignments might be questionable, but in all honesty I think they're better than yours, and not because I made them, I think I am being objective. If someone wants to use those XMs as a starting point for better conversions, be my guest.

 

Are you going off the MIDI or FM versions? I was basing on the FM versions. (I dunno if I prefer one over the other necessarily, but the FM synth versions tend to have arrangements more accurate to the versions from the Genesis, so that's why I went with them.)

And FWIW I left the PSG channels there mainly because I just never bothered to get rid of them, and I think it's a teensy bit easier to read this way. Since very few songs in S3K use the PSG as a lead (and a few don't use it at all) anyway, I was only going to put stuff there if I couldn't fit parts elsewhere. Since I fit everything in FM channels they ended up being unused.

 

Fair enough, your points make sense. I used the GM versions, by the way, because they usually use richer arrangements.
Music is one of those many things where it's hard to be "wrong", but it's easy to have a preference. The fact that I don't like your versions doesn't mean that they're bad or that you're a bad composer, and I might be naturally biased in favour of myself.
So yeah, I apologise if I've been a bit rude.

 

S'quite all right. Of course if you already have XMs out there it might be easier than me trying to convert them all by hand. Even so, I might do it myself anyway to kill time.

 

No, I didn't make XM files for the other songs, not with the "perfect" midi rips. I have an LBZ1 and an ICZ2 which were based off the wrong old fan-made midi files, but I'm not going to share them for obvious reason (they're inaccurate as hell).

 

Fair enough then. And another reason I think that the songs might sound inaccurate is that there are balance issues in the mp3s. The OPL soundfont I used is a bit cruder than I might like.

I might try using XM2SMPS on these and see if the voices I'm using solve that issue on my side, but I don't think the output from that is as compatible with S3K as I'd want for that purpose.


EDIT: Well, XM4SMPS, but I've done that. Some of the voices have been edited accordingly, and the .zip file from before has been updated to include the .bin and .asm files of each song for those who might be curious. (As I was lazy I just converted them to be used in Oerg's SMPS player with the default samples included in it, so keep that in mind)

 

So you're all making MD versions of S&KC tunes. I also love the S&KC exclusive tunes, so I'll make some vgms, too.
Today I was converting all the Windows FM instruments from OPL2 to OPN/YM2612 and made some Carnival Night 1 of it. (for a reference how the original sounds, listen to this video I've found)

 

Just thought I'd post one more problem I noticed while playing S3K and any version of S3C that I haven't seen mentioned yet (forgive me if it has):





Having both Super Sonic and Tails moving on screen at the same time must be too much for the game to handle or something. At least one of Tails's tiles gets replaced with one of Super's (in this case, part of his fist), and vice versa. It's much more noticeable in motion, especially when walking up slopes. Is this from some sort of RAM limitation? Or is it a problem with how the game handles player sprites? Super Sonic doesn't experience this problem when playing without Tails.

 

That is a problem in the original games: some frames of animation for Super Sonic (diagonal ones, mainly) use more than 32 tiles, and overwrite the first few tiles from Tails' VRAM.

 

Does unfixing fixed bugs qualify as Sonic 3-ifying the game?

edit: correct link this time.

 

I think the goal is more to create a version of Sonic 3 like the prototype "Sonic 3C" versions -- rather than put the S&K levels into the Sonic 3 engine, just make things a bit more seamless an d use as much of the original Sonic 3 content (music, layouts, etc.) as possible while using the S&K engine (which the "Sonic 3C" protos were in some sense based on).

 

I don't know if it was noted... quite frankly Im too lazy to do a search through the topic... But I killed the Mushroom Valley mini-boss with Hyper Sonic during the scrolling section, before it ever got to it's tree. The game bugged out on me, No Knuckles behind the door later, and I was stuck for eternity (Eternity being 9:59.99)

I don't know how that section of the game even works, but I wonder if there is a way to fix this... Also, the well known glitches with the Flying Battery Act 2 sub boss need to go, but I'm sure you've been told this.

 

That first glitch you mentioned occurs in the original version of the game as well, of course. But it's my understanding that it's similar to the MGZ act 1 boss glitch from Sonic 3, where beating the boss while it's offscreen screws up the act transition. I wonder if it could be fixed in the same way, that is, forced scrolling to the point where the wood-chopping occurs?

 

Moved to this topic since the Other Knowledge topic definitely isn't for fan stuff and since it was already nudged in this general direction.



Some of them are definitely better than some of the others, but it's actually a royal pain to pick out easily recognizable set pieces which are suitable for the small-sized, floating-in-the-middle-of-nowhere sprite, which are found in BOTH acts, aren't too similar to each other AND aren't just generic icons like a fireball or a drop of water. Which is why I cheated with the Death Egg icon, since that logo doesn't see nearly enough use.

I'm wide open to better suggestions, so fire away.

 

Those are wonderful! And the Robotnik's E G logo from Sonic 2 (an non-original from this game) fits there nicely btw.
The only one that is hard to understand is the Flying Battery one, maybe a propeller on it's place it's better?

More of in topic now.
On my vacations I killed some time with this game and I found some glitches (I think most of these are also from S3&K)

- Hyper Sonic "Almost falling" animation is glitched.

- In Launch Base after Knux blow up the tower and the player jump from it, and then use some sort of higher jump (like a shield or super transformation, maybe tails I didn't try with him) there are
still some objects visible that shouldn't be there.

-Minor one, in F. Battery act one in the pre-boss battle, the one with the laser, sometimes if you spindash from the middle as a example toward the Doc/Eggrobo, you see a portion of the sky with the wrong tiles loaded, because of the boss I suppose.

Just these I think, that's all I can remember.

 

I remember I only got that one after several tries back in 1996, while attempting to bug the game out on purpose for satisfaction and curiosity.

It is just luck if the game didn't hang. The act stream loading demands that the screen position is at a certain point, and is guaranteed to hang if less than that point. However, Mushroom Hill bosses do use some form of hardcoded X wrapping, which complicates most things including trying to do bugfixes.

Hyper Sonic and Tails in S&K is just buggy. There are many tiny things that got rushed in the end of development, and they seemed to forget, not having a good test team, or were running out of time.

EDIT: Awesome act icons!