And here I was thinking the AIZ HUD would never be fixed in any hack ever! Keep up the great work! :D
Seeing Super Sonic with his own sprites in certain frames really makes me happy. This is excellent. Great job!
Under the normal circumstance I have made a tendancy to ignore and bypass this hack in general, simply due to the lack of new overall gameplay, this isn't a personal hit at your work, I just have a different interest, I bend towards brand new levels and whatnot, so forgive me for my ignorance as I haven't read the entire thread. The Super Sonic sprites are something that I do have an interest in though, seeing newly made sprites for positions that didn't exist before, the ones in the example screenshots are pretty decent, who sprited them? Also in relation to sprites, that balancing bug with Super Sonic, a sprite piece of his head that comes out of alignment, please tell me that's been fixed, if there's a type of bug that has irritates me the most, it's graphical offputs...
The Super sprites in the posted screenshots are all the work of Neo. Many others were put together by flamewing and touched up (so to speak) by That One Jig, but you can already see those in Sonic Classic Heroes, minus a colour or two, so I thought I'd show something new here. The Super balancing head shift has indeed been fixed. That One Jig has fixed many, many little graphical mishaps in all variants of the original player sprites in this and the currently available release, a lot of which I'd never even noticed at high speed, so he's the man to credit for this.
The Flying Battery thing is intriguing. Also odd reference time In Gradius parody Gokujou Parodius!/Fantastic Journey (and probably several other games), there is an optional bonus stage which if my memory serves me correctly, can turn up at any point in the game (after the first stage). Because of that element of randomness, it makes every playthrough ever-so-slightly different (although in Gokujou Parodius it's meaningless stage just there to reference the past, and as soon as you die you never see the thing again). Sonic 3 & Knuckles has quite a few instances where Sonic ends the stage in the sky: HCZ -> MGZ MGZ -> CNZ CNZ -> ICZ LBZ -> MHZ SSZ -> DEZ Theoretically you could move Flying Battery Zone to quite a few positions in the game... which makes me wonder... what if that stage was to turn up at random? Rather than going to the intended stage in one of the above transitions, Flying Battery makes an appearance and Sonic and Tails find themselves on a detour. It means every playthough of the game would be different, but the flow of the story isn't altered (because no matter where you put it, Flying Battery's existence is a bit strange - it's like a mini death egg with no purpose). Obviously it would be a challenge since you'd have to put in a truckload of transitions and checks to make sure the stage isn't visited more than once, (and obviously there's a strong case for putting it where you have - that's how it is in the Sonic 3 level select) but idk... could be an interesting idea.
+1 for this as an option if Tiddles can be bothered! Although it would be best if the level was really difficult, so players would crap themselves when they realised they were getting sent there. :v:
Sonic Team Commentary (from Sonic Jam Strategy Guide): There's really no "what if" situation here, we have both evidence in the final game and explicit confirmation straight from the horse's mouth. We (Tiddles) opted to recreate the alternate, prototype scenario, but that's about as far as it'll go -- managing saved games when you can switch it up at any time is already a pretty big hoop the original designers didn't have to consider, never mind making a veritable Schrodinger's Battery. Besides, there's a ton of stuff hanging on whichever option you pick: the ICZ and FBZ intros, the CNZ and FBZ outros, the time of day FBZ is set at, and the position of FBZ in the Data Select and level select. Having more than two choices would increase the necessary work tenfold. But primarily, it simply goes against the scope of the hack.
Sure, I don't think Black Squirrel was implying that random placement was ever intended, and I certainly wasn't; I just agreed that taking cues from some other game in this way could be interesting in the unlikely event that it was considered as an option. As you guys have it right now is great, so don't take wild suggestions too seriously. I'm already seriously looking forward to seeing it in action, not to mention all the other new things since the previous version. IOW, keep up the good work! To me, this is further evidence that team-based hacks have a lot of potential, and also that ‘revisionist’ approaches aren't always bad – two things that S3C shares with Sonic Classic Heroes. But this goes beyond that, I think, in the sheer scope for customisation and the degree of polish that's being applied (which is not to say that SCH isn't impressive technically).
Alright, so here's a bug that no one's ever bothered to mention. The HPZ (Sonic/Tails) background art doesn't initially load a chunk of art from each row in the parallax. The 'missing' chunks never load from the start except until you reach about this point in the tunnel prior to the teleporter. So when you walk back, everything is as it should be. I'm assuming this is a simple and quick fix judging from the fact that it's just art not loading properly. Sooooo yeah, I think it's something worth fixing.
Wow, never spotted that. Nice job on the Flying Battery door in Icecap btw. Not just because it's cool to think about, but because it's now probably the most cohesive zone transition in the whole game, as if the screen barely needed to fade to black. (Though as a snowboarder I look at that door now and imagine it must be way too heavy, but eh.) Also pretty awesome seeing those Sonic 1 and 2 blues making an appearance. I'm not even fussy about sprites but wow, what a neat little nostalgia kick those images created. They seem to be out of the project's scope to me, but I'm not complaining. The SuperSonic sprites; also just great, much more fitting.
Yeah, now that you mention it, it's surprising how different a feeling I get from seeing the prior games’ Sonic in this game's Zones. As for the lack of a need to fade between Zones, I see what you mean, and that might be a fun little bonus option for certain transitions! Hey, I was thinking about editing the article on the wiki, but I thought I should confirm first: Is this an ‘official’ team project yet? I figure Neo has done steady volumes of work for ages now. I'd have said the same for That One Jig, although it seems he's not been around much lately.
Yes. YES. YES! Thank you so much. Seriously. What I initially saw as an interesting hack is now gradually becoming something that I consider as the "ultimate version" of the game. All the little details that slightly bothered me, all those moments when you think something like "what if this were done differently", practically everything has been or is being corrected/adjusted in this hack. Keep up the wonderful job! I wait anxiously for the next version!
I don't know if this has been suggested, but it would be rather neat if the replacement music for the latter half of S3 in the S&K Collection for PC (both FM Synthesizer and General MIDI versions) was remixed for the Genesis and made available to use for S3C. Not sure about the rest of the soundtrack, though-they are re-arranged, but I don't know if some of the instruments for those songs would exist in the Genesis soundfont.
It's been talked about. IIRC, Tiddles said he'd throw 'em in there as options is someone put them into the Genesis soundfont.
Actually, I've still been around these forums a bit. All that time has been spent lurking around as opposed to posting, though...I've had nothing to say about much, really. I'm not exactly sure what others would consider a team project, but I've felt that work behind the scenes (at least on my end) is organized and handled in a semi-serious manner. Obviously the only one who could say if S3C is a team project or not is Tiddles, and I can't say for certain what he thinks. But I do know this: if Neo isn't considered to be part of this "Sonic 3 Complete Development Team", then there's no way I am, either. I think one could make an argument for old sprites. Well, at least the Sonic 2 sprites. Sonic 3 used S2 Sonic sprites up until later in development, as shown in prototype screenshots. Also, the surfboarding sprites left in the final game (S2 style) were already reduced to three shades of blue, and mahogany outlines had been brushed away. I don't think they would have been created if there was never any intention of keeping the same sprite style as the game before (and, arguably, S1/CD). Regardless of "scope" talk, I'm certain everyone will be more pleased with the updated sprites than the ones available in the current build. Seriously, so many changes have been made to the S1 sprites since then that the difference between them is night and day! I kind of feel bad that you all will still have to use the older versions until the next release. As for the S3 Super sprites, I'm just hoping that they will all seem authentic to you guys. I tried my best with my time with them to make them appear as natural progressions from their standard form (since then Neo spiffied up the rotating sprites to use a more properly-adapted S3 style...which is a plus). Great to see all the positive reception of the images Tiddles released, BTW! I'm looking forward to playing the zones in their original order, myself!
I haven't thought much about the team thing, I guess - the fact that I have a couple of close collaborators kind of crept up on me, as did the fact that there was someone else who was very important to the project who should've got more credit while he was around. Neo and That One Jig have both done a ton of work and given a ton of feedback, and while I still make the ultimate calls on what to put in, what to preview, etc., their input is important, their contributions vital, and if I fell under a bus tomorrow, I'd like them to own the thing and decide what to do with it - so I guess by any sensible definition, I suppose it's effectively a team project. Which is not to say they're the only key contributors, but nor is it to say that the other important contributors are "part of" the project in the same way, if you know what I mean. I have a hard time with credits! I always want to credit everybody who helped in some way (producing tools, disassembly contributions) but then people wonder how they got onto the credits, and I'm not sure that everyone wants to have their name to it! And at the same time, with the little box on the wiki page, it's hard to clarify who in that list did massive, bespoke graphics work and who produced a tool I used one time to do one thing. And even then, I still managed to miss off an important contributor. One thing that needs doing for next release is a proper project credits screen, separate from the ones in the games themselves - there's a menu slot for it in current builds but it doesn't do anything interesting yet. Edit: while we're mentioning the Wiki, I've been thinking for a while that that article is getting a bit unwieldy - it's good to have a comprehensive change list like that, but I'm wondering if it'd be better on a subpage, with the main page being a little more descriptive (and perhaps illustrative!) of the main points. If anyone feels like doing that I'd certainly have no objection.
I personally would adore being credited in the ultimate version of my favorite video game. even if all I did was rather indirectly help with the idea to use different title card symbols for each zone IT MAKES ME SMILE EVERY TIME I SEE IT DON'T LAUGH AT ME
Option to remove the control lock when you jump during a spinroll, as in Sonic CD. Pleeeeeeeeease. Also, would like to have mid air spin ala Triple Trouble and Megamix.
