I found something very interesting that you could fix in your hack, if it hasn't already: It seems that in Sonic Jam they improve the intro bit of Sonic slamming the Sega Logo out of the way, making the animation seamless.
I always thought that wonky title screen animation was due to Genesis struggling to quickly load and display huge sprite animation.
Yes, it's a bit slow and bumpy because it's decompressing these huge art files on the go since there's no room to load it all at once. It even brings the music down with it a bit. The good news is that Tiddles recently switched the title to blazingly-fast-decompression Comper format and performance has gone way, way up.
I remember once accidentally making a glitched up version of glide and climb for Knuckles in Competition Mode when trying to insert Amy, though never quite figured out how it worked or how to fix it and lost it when I refined the coding. Maybe I could look into it again at some point and hand Tiddles the results for a simple copy and paste if successful. I'm wondering, this is more a fantasy wish list now, but do any MIDIs or programable tracks exist of the 'full versions' of the S+K tracks? It could maybe add onto the customisable soundtrack by having remixes of them available. Sort of like this I guess, but without the melody errors (watch 1:25 onwards): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTrIezedUXs As said though, this is a rather extravagant suggestion so ignore otherwise. I just love those added riffs.
If by "fixed", you mean "just doesn't happen to Super Knuckles", then couldn't it possibly mean that Knuckles is just individually unaffected by it? (Unless there is a hack/test somewhere of an S3K version of Sonic vs. Big Arms fight that confirms this). If true, (though I doubt it is) then it would be cool to see that kind of depth in the game design, as it would fit Knuckles as a character for his Super form to have that sort of buff.
E-122-Psi, that would be cool. I had to say something because after all, you brought me up after a couple of months of inactivity lest I make another useless or stupid statement. For what it's worth + - sorry Neo , it seems Tiddles simply edited the behavior to reflect how Sonic and Tails fought the boss and did not restore what I'll call the Super Slam. I'm honestly interested if it affects monitor-granted invincibility and how it affects the post-hit flash cycle.
Well, if you make Super/Hyper Sonic or Super Tails fight Big Arms through various means in S3K (you can spawn it through debug glitching, and there's a patch code somewhere that re-enables it), they bounce out of it in the same way as Knuckles does.
Just finished playing through Sonic 3 Complete again, it truly is the definitive way to play what is pretty much my favourite game of all time. I'm probably sure you've gotten this request/suggestion before, but I was wondering if it would be possible to impliment a flight deactivation control for Tails? Something like down+jump that would release him from the flight if he hasn't become exhausted already? It's something that's always bugged me, even if it released him into the walking animation to prevent abuse. Dropping down while in flight is just so slow. >_<
Is there a way to fix the lagging frames at the main menu when Sonic is rolling toward the screen? Is it a processing issue due to the MegaDrive? Cause I know it was perfectly smooth in S&K collection. I'm certain this has been discussed but I can't recall much about it.
Im not sure how SKC does it but another way of fixing it would be to load the art dynamically which would save time and free some VRAM space but Comper works just as good.
Ralakimus: yes, that is how even the stock, unmodified game works. It had kosinski-compressed art for each frame, which was decompressed and uploaded to VRAM. S3C first changed to my faster Kos decompressor, then moved to Comper for more speed at the cost of bigger art files in ROM.
Curious. Any plans for a Sonic Mania sprite mode once that game is released? (I know those sprites have more colors than this game could deal with but maybe with some modifications it could work).
The palette isn't even the problem. Annoying and some color reduction is definitely necessary, but not really a dealbreaker. It's the sprites themselves that are troublesome, for three disparate reasons. One, there's probably a bunch of poses that S3 needs and Mania doesn't, so someone would have to draw some more colorful mice (no thanks). Two, and this is related to three as well, Sonic Mania has a lot of extra sets of animation, like the walk/run poses are now at least 3 or 4 different cycles, there's a version of the walk cycle used exclusively while falling and probably more stuff I haven't noticed. Worst case, these would just be simplified and omitted where not really necessary. Reason three however is the devastating blow. Not only does Mania add a lot more cycles, but it adds a lot of distinct frames to each cycle, and we're already up to the 250-ish frame limit of the S3 animation system. We would have to do a signficant overhaul to the code and data structures to add all the extra smoothness, and even then you're still running up against missing S3 poses, a poor color palette, and hey now you just filled half the ROM with uncompressed character sprites. Might as well stick to the mantra of "if it didn't happen before 1994, it didn't happen". (except for mobile remakes ok) That said, if you can expect anything, then definitely expect some nods to Mania, in perhaps more meaningful ways; I at least will certainly get more inspiration once I've played it. Thanks for showing interest in the sprite options though, it's an occasionally reviled feature that we (I) have to maintain, so it's good to know some people care about them. I've been toying with some old sprite ideas which have now become tangentially related to Sonic Mania, so feel free to be curious and excited about whatever that means.
Hey, yeah, I too really appreciate all the sprite options! My favorite of all are still the new Super/Hyper sprites, and I hope we see a Sonic 2-style variant eventually! If you're implying what I _think_ you might be implying, then yes, getting the Drop Dash as an option would be really fun! I couldn't really care less about Mania-style sprites, though. I'm not really a fan of how aqua blue Sonic is there anyway, and there's no real reason to recode S3's structure just for smoother frames.
Oh I love the sprite options. Sonic 2 sprite mode is like the only version I play. It's a nice bonus on top of an already lovely package. I didn't volunteer to make the Japanese box art for nothing And I knew Sonic Mania had more sprites, I was just thinking some would be scrapped if not needed (like some inbetween frames would be scrapped). Mostly I was just hoping the spirit of the sprites were brought over, like end of act poses, the look up pose, Knuckles' new face (as those sprites work better with the Sonic 1/2 set than his Sonic 3 sprites do), Tails new flying sprites, those sorts of things, and then the rest could just use modified Sonic 1/2/3 animations. Hmm maybe I could even do that once the game comes out.
Nah, they just forgot to add a check. In S&K, there's a check to see if you are invincible before the "movea.l" line, which just jumps to loc_7468C if you meet that requirement. Here's the routine in Sonic 3 by itself:
Had some thoughts on possible minor tweaks: 1 - In Sonic 2's Sonic & Tails mode, Tails leaves for plot reasons near the end, leaving Sonic by himself for Wing Fortress and Death Egg. Should something similar be implemented here? Maybe after beating Mecha Sonic, Tails stays behind to prep the Tornado while Sonic traverses the Death Egg? 2 - I cannot for the life of me remember where I heard this: SOME Sonic fansite states (or used to) that in Hidden Palace, standing on an empty Emerald shrine will take you to the corresponding Sonic 3 special stage, and upon winning gives a grayed-out Super Emerald instead of that Chaos Emerald. I've tested, and it doesn't, but should it?
