Tiddles, I'm not the one to give suggestion on contents, your decisions should be respected since you are the hacker after all. But, I'm the kind of guy who want to say thank you very much for the hard work you've done so far. Playing this on the Mega Everdrive is a treat. Let me tell you that many of my friends enjoyed your version so much that it's now their definitive Sonic game on the Genesis. On a technical sidenote, have you seen the progress in DAC playing possibilities raised by vladikcomper and his Mega PCM driver for Sonic 1 (and Clownacy port to the Clone Driver in Sonic 2)? Is it some kind of improvement you'd be wiling to explore one day? Thanks again
Clownacy's post in his S2 clone driver topic is pretty much on the money in terms of why I'm not really pursuing it: as I understand it, Mega PCM requires pretty much exclusive use of the Z80 for sample playback, whereas S3 runs all sound code on the Z80 - so essentially I'd need to move to a version of SMPS 68K that supports all the S3&K music and SFX perfectly (plus existing S3C tweaks and improvements), doesn't slow the main game down by stealing 68K cycles, and uses next to zero RAM since there's very, very little to spare (or I'd have to make a lot of memory efficiency savings). So while I never like to say something is impossible, it would at least require a lot of complex R&D that I don't really have time to do (quite apart from not being much of a Z80 or SMPS expert). Even if they could coexist on the Z80, Z80 RAM is very close to capacity too with the current driver. Still, thanks for the compliment and suggestion.
Once again, great work all around. Love having Flying Battery back where it belongs. Couple more things I noticed, though: The Pointdexter enemies from Hydrocity don't draw correctly when inflating/deflating. This is the offending frame: As Tails in Launch Base 2, shortly after the first spinning drum thing is a tunnel with a big ring. As Sonic, nothing is unusual about it, but as Tails, well... This is the only tunnel I've noticed that has this problem. Also a suggestion regarding Lava Reef's Iwamodoki enemies. You removed the tag displaying it giving you points when it actually doesn't, but I don't think it should release a small animal when it explodes, either. They act like Asteron from Sonic 2's Metropolis Zone, more trap/bomb than enemy, and Asteron doesn't release a small animal when it explodes, so IMO Iwamodoki shouldn't either. EDIT: Forgot, I do hope you eventually put Knuckles' abilities in Competition Mode. I know you've said Competition Mode is not a priority; I just think it'd be neat.
Actually, IIRC Asteron DOES release animals. You'd never know by their placement in levels... but put one in via debug and check it out. On the point of Iwamodoki... I DO agree... it shouldn't give animals.
I disagree with you both. I'm pretty sure it works as intended. There is no possible way for the player to kill it before explosion, so the only way for it to die is to explode by itself. So that'd leave the player in a situation where he has no control over the situation, no matter what you do, that animal is gonna die. I think the original intent was to reward you with freed animal for standing nearby the badnik and exposing yourself to possibility of being hit by it's scattered pieces.
No. There IS how to kill it before explosion in regular gameplay. Looking at the code, the behavior is intentional: destroy badnik state, load flicky object; badnik explodes itself state, no flicky. But it is just a video game, who cares. Like the poor turtles from Sky Chase who fall for their deaths.
...Or safely back into the ocean. The game takes place on an island, you know? That one on the title screen, apparently. Not much later after SCZ, on the Death Egg (the transition between the two includes a rocket that goes straight vertical at one point) you can look below to the planet and see endless blue. Anyhow, how does one exception account for every other enemy you can't destroy? Your argument doesn't work. You look at the code, see the omission, and say it's intensional, so it's all well and good. Well what about the Iwamodoki? If you look at the code and see the inclusion, will a rift tear the world in two? It's not a mistake; they were correcting themselves. Now, whilst porting a few Sonic 1 enemies, I don't recall encountering animal-creating code, just the creation of the Explosion object. So, if I'm remembering this right, loading the animal is a part of a section of 'generic code', the explosion. I don't see any explosions coming out of our star-shaped friends without a spining blue blur to lend a hand. The Iwamodoki, on the other hand...
Oh, you are completely right, I completely forgot that they are turtles after all. Point taken. :specialed: Now, I was talking about Asteron especifically; never said anything about Iwamodoki. If they added the code to pop out a flicky when it explodes then good, this is the original, desired behavior in Sonic & Knuckles. But the thing is, again: who cares, it is just a video game. This is such a minimal thing that does not interfere on the gameplay, and nobody pays attention to (not nobody, it seens).
Um... have you ever fallen into water from a high height? You be dead. Unless that lil Koopa has a shell like a Blastoise, I'm pretty sure he's taking the big plunge to his demise too... AS I GET SMACKED FOR INCORPORATING LOGIC INTO SONIC
...Have you? Go to ARZ, use debug mode to go really high above water, turn back to Sonic. Or, better yet, hack debug mode to allow you to spawn animals. Repeat the previous steps, only spawning an animal instead of becoming Sonic, and view the animal as it survives the impact. ... I don't know what sarcasm is anymore Oh, come on, you know what thread you're saying this on, right? Where even Knuckles' shifting by a pixel forward when looking up is seen to. This disagreement began as a suggestion for something for this hack to "fix", so it's necessary to go this far to prove our points, or the hack will just contradict its own nature by containing these errors. It's bug verification.
I meant real life... that said back to the Iwamodoki point... yea, since they cannot be destroyed by Sonic, they should award no points or animal... makes no sense. Just like Asteron (if not killed by Sonic), the Bomb, and even the HCZ Jaws provided it hurts you.
Award? Points, yes, but having animals emerge from them is practically a plot point: Points are a reward, animals are a detail associated with Badniks. Would have been a real kicker if Gamma had exploded and his Flicky didn't survive. And I still push the point of these instances being developer oversights: The bomb (who I only know from S1) uses a nonstandard explosion the boss one, also shared by the Ton-ton's cannonballs, seeming simply for the sound effect. But the Jawz, those are destroyable! If all of the Asterons were destroyable (without debug mode), I might have agreed with the behaviour. But otherwise, they are not destroyable, and not having any chance of an animal surviving is mindless, as Sonic is supposed to be there to save them. The Asterons made sense until they were stuffed into the walls. I would probably argue that Jawz's behaviour is incorrect too, but I can't make heads or tails of its code. Looks like it's using a dedicated child sprite.
Some of my questions were never addressed. To reiterate: 1. Is "fixing" the stiff boss movement in Sky Sanctuary beyond the scope of this project? 2. Despite not being likely to be widely used, is a Knuckles yellow sock option considerable? Whether or not you ever implement these is another matter entirely, and I'm not requesting that they are, I know you're a busy man with higher project priorities and a life to live. Instead, I'm asking whether you're opposed or open to those listed features on principle.
Sorta trivial thing; playing in SCD2011 mode with Super transformation set to the "Multi-Button" option still makes it kinda hard not to use Tails Assist without turning Super, as the configuration for Sonic to transform is just to double jump. I was wondering if you could extend the "press a button you didn't jump with" configuration to the SCD2011 mode as well. (Then again, the SCD2011 mode is the only "classic" configuration where Tails can manually fly anyway so...maybe I'm just being pedantic. :v Perhaps an even more trivial thing (and really this is more of a "just curious" thing): messing around with the protos for the first time in a while got me thinking; have you considered implementing the 0517 Hyper Sonic "orbital" stars as an option rather than the look in S&K final? Looking forward to the next release! (Sidenote: Just wanted to say that I also quite like that alternate credits medley at sound 49. I like that it's sort of a combination between the Sonic 3C & S&K medleys; it would be nice if that got a standalone option.) UPDATE: OK, so here's an actual bug--playing in Sonic 1, 2, or CD mode will allow you to transform on the snowboard in Ice Cap. Might as well drop another bug I recently found in this post: if you play in Sonic 2 mode with Sonic and Tails, and Tails is left flying at the end of the first Act in a zone when Sonic does his victory animation, Tails won't follow Sonic or respawn until you clear the second Act, enter a Bonus/Special Stage, or die. (I remember this being possible in vanilla Sonic 3--memory's a little fuzzy regarding that, but I know S3 still had a few minor physics quirks (among other things) leftover from S2.) Haven't tested it, but I assume this would apply to the other control options that give you "Legacy Tails" as well. Additionally, with the Sonic 1 and 2 sprites, Sonic's head is miscolored on his Continue screen (there's a patch of green on his forehead).
Hello Tiddles, I've been through Sonic 3 again recently, and after reading the extensive bugfix list in the wiki, I'm not sure if those points have been fixed (again, I apologized if it's present): Hydrocity Zone: it is possible to skip the boss by running quickly through the area to the right. Hydrocity Zone: regular Sonic can access Knuckles path at the top of the level (with a Ligthing Shield and good timing). Any level: the camera bug-exploit when crounching down that allows you to teleport to another part of the level. Also, we recently talked about the possibility of using higher sample-rate DPCM samples. Is it still something you're interested in looking up? UPDATE: Indeed, one of them has been fixed:
I'm not Tiddles but regarding this: yes, it is fixed. As a general heads-up, any glitches that were in S3 alone but were fixed in S(3)&K are also fixed in Sonic 3 Complete because all of the games here, even "Sonic 3 (Part One)", run off of the Complete engine (I think this is also mentioned on the wiki page). (The only exception, as far as I know, is that one Zone Select music glitch, but that was by design; it doesn't happen on Sonic & Knuckles' Zone Select.)
