Hey, nice to see you again. I did the S1 signpost. I had a quick pop at bringing in the KiS2 one too, but the different shades available were a bit of a headache. I'm sure you have a better chance of making it work. As far as the bonus stage, I just feel like it's a "slippery slope" I suppose. I like the idea of these alternate character sprites, and the iconic original monitors, but I don't want to end up with alternate sprites for everything, so I wanted to keep it restricted from the start. Once you start changing bits of level art, there start to be all sorts of things you could argue for changing, and it's not a path I really want to follow here. If you want to take another stab at the Knuckles crescent, I'd certainly consider it again! Thank you so much for all your contributions to this version, both in the native sprite fixes and the classic ones. I'm glad you enjoy the end result.
Besides the Hydrocity Sonic, I can't think of anything else to change level art. Everything else is fine, I'm not asking for checker patterns in Angel Island zone. The bonus stage icons are similar to the signposts, it just adds consistency
I actually just message Tiddles about some of the specifics I was looking into. If by Hydrocity Sonic you mean the cylindrical rotation sprites, I'm having a second go on those. Here's what I've got so far: I initially modeled them off of the Sonic CD sprites. These ones go for a style that more properly mimics how characters look on them in S3K. The fist is the only thing I'm having troubles with. It's not because of the spriting, but rather an effect that is carried into Sonic's S3 sprites. Half the time it will show Sonic with the wrong fist raised because of the sprites simply being reflected. I tried to avoid this by only changing fist height on the front-and-back-facing sprites. Of course, you might mean a few other things by that. Do you mean 5-position vortex rotation animation? That's partly due to laziness consistency with the old games. Or do you mean the sprites of him hanging on the conveyor belts suspended in the zone?
How about restoring the end level glitch from Sonic 1 and 2 where if you jump at the right time offscreen you can keep moving during the score tally.
Wow. After all these years of playing this game, not once have I noticed that. I guess you learn something new every day! :v: I'll see what I can do about it. It poses an interesting question: Why are those statues there to begin with?
Is this meant to be S2 style? If so, shouldn't the sprites have the ugly-as-hell thin-razor type of spines from that game? I mean, I'd love for those to be consigned to the memory hole altogether, but you can't mix and match styles in any case.
Eh, I'd prefer to stay away from those, too. The Sonic 2 prototypes have two unused standing-rotating sprites that look as if they'd sort of fit that razor-thin bill. They also looked really ugly. But remember that Sonic 2 also wasn't consistent with spine thickness. In the special stages Sonic's spines were filled out like they should be. Technically S3K did this, too. Some of the rotating sprites in the original game actually used the S2 sprites, in their (almost) full razor-thin glory, as opposed to the filled-out spines everywhere else. You might notice them in areas like when Sonic ran up the hollow tree in AIZ1. You won't now in S3C, since I fixed that, but it was like that in the original game. Consistency and Sonic 3 never really seem to get along. If enough people have issues with it I guess I could think of something to do about it, but for now I don't see anyone losing any sleep over it.
Ok then. Since consistency seems to be a goal of S3C anyways, I'll see if I can't rectify these awkward sprites. I'm going to try and change all S2 sprites that have depth-less spines into something more preferable. Good thing the S3K sprites fixed this annoyance; I can base the new spines off of those proper ones!
Good point! Same again, and great that you already sorted it! Oh definitely, I'm not asking for more razor-thin sprites. :P This also came up in Sonic 2 Retro Remix; their new sprites use filled-out spines, but the older ones hadn't been changed. Perhaps they can borrow some of yours eventually!
I Btw it wouldn't hurt make S2-mode Sonic's victory animation have the same frames as Sonic 3, it feels a bit wierd just waggle the finger using just two, doesn't feel natural. Just a sugestion.
I've only just decided to try out this hack, and I love the idea of the customiser. As I don't want to go through 53 pages for the answer (if someone's said it already), can I request to have an option to be able to change the music of when you meet Knuckles between the Sonic 3 and S3K versions? I've never really liked the Sonic 3 'clapping' sound thing they did when meeting Knux, I just found it annoying. That'd be really cool *edit* ignore that; just found the settings in-game... *edit 2* IS there an option to do the above? Trying to figure out the difference between all the music options is rather confusing.
Okay, this is going to sound really strange, but I'm throwing it out there anyway. Could there be an option to delay the title card and music in Sky Sanctuary until after Knuckles opens the bridge for you to progress? It might for a nice bit of cinematic tension.
In the Music options (in-game), on "Knuckles" field if the S3 Option is selected for him, it will play his S3 theme when he appears and in his battle S3 Mini-Boss theme (which is based on his theme), if you select S&K it will play his S&K theme in all of his appearances. The mini-boss option don't affect this one. Myself I use the S&K Mini-Boss music but left the S3 option for Knuckles (all others also use use S3 themes), this gives him a unique battle theme for it, with the option that makes the Sonic 3 ending play in Hidden Palace it only helps it, since well.... his boss battle kinda sucks :D I also use the sub-games use original music, this makes S3 alone and S&K play their original "retail" themes.
I actually did have a third frame in Sonic's victory pose before. I just decided to remove it to keep it authentic to the original finger wag. You know, as a throwback to Sonic's finger wag during the bootup of Sega CD games. Plus removing that freed up a bit of room in the animation file to be used elsewhere, like with Sonic's old-school ledge balancing animations. I'm open to suggestions though, I could always change my mind on that.
So, where's our option to replace everyone with Blue Knuckles? Or just force Knuckles to always have that palette?
It seems like the boss glitch at the end of Mushroom Hill 1 has been patched up? That's cool if so; I tried triggering it and at the end of the act the signpost just disappeared off the screen completely, but MHZ2 and Knuckles loaded up just fine. Granted, between having to wait at least 10 minutes to continue through the game and not getting a signpost, I'll take the latter, but I figured you weren't aware of this glitch in the first place (and even then I'm not sure if this is me getting lucky or an actual modification to the game code).
I think you got lucky... I pointed this out a while back, and happened to bump into it again. (Wasn't trying to find it, just speedrunning) But, yes... its still there as far as I can tell.