I'm a pretty strong proponent of the "extra lives are an unnecessary concept left over from the arcade era" thing and would like to be able to enable that without also enabling the "you don't get hurt" thing that casual mode is. do you think that could be added as an option in a future release?
I did have some ideas (not that all my ideas are a promise of turning into reality!) about folding parts of casual mode into the other difficulty options, so that Easy works in full casual mode, Normal works essentially as you describe, and Original is how things used to be, but then maybe you'd hate to have to combine it with the Jam layouts instead of the no hits at all thing? I suppose I could just make a multitier casual mode as a separate switch, but I do sometimes fret that the options menu is getting so big that it takes longer to get through it than the game itself.
Speaking of the options menu, I was thinking yesterday that it might be a good idea to allow someone to listen to the music while in the options menu so they know what songs they're switching around. Like you could press C to hear a sample of what the "Special" theme is for Super Sonic if you didn't know what exactly that meant. Basically, make the music options function like a sound test.
I am extremely against this, so if this is done, it should definitely be kept to an extra option. :v:
I think that, for the Classics, disabling the 'lives' concept would be perfect, specially if we disable the checkpoints. I mean, the zones are short and you'll get unlimited retries!
I think the levels should all be extended to take six times as long to complete by repeating the same setpieces and obstacles, but with only the same number of total checkpoints there already are. :specialed:
How would you get into the bonus stages? It wouldn't be Sonic 3 without the gumball machine. Anyway, I can't think of any additional features that could be added to Sonic 3 Complete that wouldn't be crazy ambitious. A hard mode, maybe? The only other thing I can think of has to do with the giant rings in the Sonic & Knuckles stages. When you enter the Sonic & Knuckles half of the game, every giant ring works like they do in the Sonic 3 half... except the giant rainbow ring that Knuckles hides in Mushroom Hill Zone. If you choose to jump into that giant ring, only then do all of giant rings in the Sonic & Knuckles half turn rainbow and lead to Hidden Palace. That way, you can keep Super Sonic and collect the giant rings for 50 rings, but you can't turn back once you skip that first giant rainbow ring. I don't remember what happens when you arrive at Mushroom Hill Zone without all of the Emeralds though. Do all of the giant rings turn rainbow regardless of your Emerald count, or do they stay golden like they are in the Sonic 3 half?
They stay golden until you've collected all the emeralds, except the first one in MHZ. Of course since you haven't gotten all 7 emeralds at once you don't get super sonic at the end of that.
You guys must think you're all really funny. The first ring in Mushroom Hill is always rainbow. If you go inside, all your current emeralds get turned into Super Emeralds, and as usual you get to pick an S&K Special Stage to tackle right away. If you don't have any emeralds, nothing really happens when you get there, but you're able to walk around and then touching the orb at the center brings you back to the stage. Regardless of how it plays out, after you get back from Hidden Palace, if you didn't convert all the emeralds into Supers, then the rings revert back to standard gold and take you to the S3 stages you missed. If then you clear all the S3 stages, but had already deposited some emeralds then you'll get the unique message "Now <player> can go to Hidden Palace" instead of the usual "Now <player> can be Super <player>". Once you've cleared all the S3 stages, all the rings in the S&K half of the game become rainbows and you can return to Hidden Palace through any of them.
Okay, I didn't know the first giant ring in Mushroom Hill was always rainbow and the rest of them were gold by default. I always finish the Sonic 3 half with the Chaos Emeralds and go into the first giant ring in Mushroom Hill right away. I still think all of the giant rings turn rainbow if you beat the Sonic 3 half with all of the Emeralds, but I'm not so sure now. I wonder what else I don't know about the giant rings. Maybe my suggestion is already in the game. I'll go see for myself.
You know, I would really love to see this implemented on Sonic 3 Complete. It would make a very epic addition to it.
Hey, thanks man! But aside from being "epic", what would the benefit be? Dedicated S3 and S&K pages? I suppose doing that would allow the icon-displaying emblem to return, preferably with the appropriate icons added. In fact, I'd planned to produce a modified guide with S3K compatibility (character toggle, etc), heck, even S1 because of that port by Esrael. I'll look into it.
Well, in fact, yes. It would be really nice to have levels organized for their games on a separate page, with their icons and all. As you know, the current level select is way too busy, doesn't have any proper padding or margins to look good, only functional.
What if... you could add a fade effect to go between pages? Let's get creative with this here. S3 Alone Level Select has its own background, and SK Level Select has its own... for S3 COMPLETE, Perhaps each page of levels has its respective background... and add a fade effect for jumping between the two.
I don't know if it really needs to be anything more than functional, I frankly like it how it is at the moment. It's not even really meant to be seen in normal play. Despite the cluttered appearance, it allows me to configure the character, enable other codes via sound-test and select the exact act I wish to play with no delay all on one screen. I'd prefer it not be slowed down or require more steps just for the sake of aesthetics for what was just a debug feature for the devs in the first place.
Then you might want to punch Sonic Team for making the S2 Level Select have a fade-in to begin with, while Sonic 1 did without. I'm not the one that's trying to shift the Level Select from 'really fast' to 'not an eyesore'; it's been like that since the near-beginning. Anyhow, if Kosinski's fast enough (or Comper, if it isn't), there mightn't need to be an additional fade at all; just do as I did with my hack and have the decompression happen all at once, and then change the mappings on command, instantly changing the background. I was going to recommend that in my first post! However... I didn't want take the idea too far without so much as Tiddles' acknowledgement. But, yeah, I've implemented the S3 save menu background into my hack's level select (Nemesis-compressed though), with good results, and from what I learnt from it, loading a new background and mappings along with the new page's mapping can certainly be done. I just hope the Kosinski decompressor is as much quicker than Nemesis as it's made out to be, as my Level Select now takes forever to load because of the Nemesis-compressed background art. I couldn't make use of the Kosinski compressed graphics because, while I have ported everything related to loading it in the save menu from the S3K disasm (KosArt_To_VDP and its call), the call is giving me some problems, namely this part: Code (ASM): lea (ArtKos_LevSelBG).l,a0 ; Source lea (Page2_RAM+$2000).l,a1 ; Destination movea.w #$20,a2 ; <--- Why bsr.s KosArt_To_VDP Looking at a save state though SonMapEd, the art definitely decompresses to RAM successfully, yet it doesn't make it to VRAM! I believe that third line is related to a VRAM address in some way, but I can't make heads or tails of it. In the context of QueueDMATransfer, something that KosArt_To_VDP later branches to, d2 (which a2 is moved to) is used for tiles_to_bytes data, but using that here doesn't seem to work. Unless Tiddles wants to use Nemesis background art, this function isn't going to happen. But I think we're getting too far ahead of ourselves here, let's slow down a bit. Erm, hey, love the hack! Wouldn't change anything! :v: