Sonic Advance 2 decompilation

I think if you put a ton of effort into speedrunning, you could probably get way better at speedrunning Sonic Advance 2 now compared to when you were a child, especially if you learn how to do optimal routes. The level leaderboard on Speedrun.com and SonicCenter.org showcase a lot of the current best strats for beating levels. I also reccomend watching the TAS for Sonic and Knuckles by Dashjump. A lot of the strats with Sonic in his TAS is impossible to do irl, but most of the Knuckles strats in his TAS can be done with any character.





I also recommend checking out the The Sonic Speedrun Community Discord server. A lot of people in the #sonic-advance_series text channel are super helpful to anyone who wants to get better at speedrunning any of the Sonic Advance games.

Oh, I didn't know Sonic Advance 1 had a teamplay mode. I have never had the opportunity to try out its multiplayer.

 

Now that I think of it, I don't think my speedrun rutes ever differed much, if at all, from the SP Ring routes, at least not for the first act of the first 6 Zones and Egg Utopia 2(can't remember why, but it was always Egg Utopia 2 I used at attempts to get Emeral 7 when I used Act 1 for all the others... Makes me wonder if there's ever been an Any% versus 100% like categorization for single act times where any% has you beating the level as quickly as possible and 100% has you beating as quickly as possible while getting all of the SP Rings... Or a low% where the goal is to get the fastest time collecting none of the SP rings.

 

I've been replaying Advance 2 on my handheld in little post-work bites recently, and been really enjoying it. I remember the reception being generally negative when it first came out but it really is the best Advance game. I think we just didn't know how good we had it until all the actually bad Sonic games starting coming out after...

Anyway, all this to say I really appreciate the work you're doing and can't wait to see what comes of it. Some new levels (with more tuned up level design) would be such a treat to blast through.

 

Ironically, Advance 2 was always my least favorite, but I can see this becoming a foundation for so much cool shit. Good work, always love seeing the progress!

 

Just want to say that Advance 2 is my favorite Sonic game and I'm looking forward to this.
Actually, I love that game so much that I wish I could help in some way... I know that there's a Discord server for people who want to join the project, but my knownledge of assembly and decompiling are very limited, so I doubt I could be helpful. (I looked at some .c files in the github repository and it definitely looks too complex for me, on a first look at least).

Making custom levels for this game is one of my dreams since when the game came out, and there are some moves of the characters that I would like to tweak, so I would really like to learn how to mess with this decompilation at some point.

 

I had no idea there was a Discord server. Can I get a link? I love to speedrun Sonic Advance 2, so it would be fun to connect with other fans of the game.



I don't have the skillset to do some of the stuff required for the decompilation, but I'm open minded to learning new skills so I can help with the project.

 

The link to the Discord server is in the Github readme.

https://discord.gg/rckwpnYUXF

I spent the whole day configuring the wsl into PowerShell because I don't have a Linux system at the moment... but it works now, I can compile the rom... I hope to learn more as well.

I don't like to speedrun the game because for me the appeal is the great freedom of movement that the game offers, so I prefer to mess with the physics and do tricks instead of optimizing a playthrough; but yeah Advance 2 is great for speedrunners. Though, I learned the position of all the 98 special rings in the game and I like to get them every time. I think that there's some charm in the special stage access method in this game, all it needs is some quality of life changes to make it more forgiving and easier. I've seen an hack that reduced the amount of rings required, but I think that something like letting the player carry them between levels and lose only one instead of all on death might be more ideal for preserving the original feel, and allowing the crazy players like me to be able to get all of them in a single level (maybe twice in a zone) like in the original game.
EDIT: that or maybe add different ways to generate more special rings, like as a reward for keeping the boost mode for long enough, or with trick combos (chain tricks close to each other until you get one as a reward). I wouldn't change the number 7 anyway, they're 7 like the emeralds.

 

As I remember from my days speed running this game, I think at least half of my speed run routes actually netted all seven SP Rings. Though, it does make me wonder how level-by-level records compare for zero versus any versus all SP Rings, assuming such divisions exist in organized speed running for this gane.

 

This is really exciting. Between this and mainmemory's hacking tools we're gonna see a lot of cool content emerge from the Advance games. Hope that can inspire SEGA to finally rerelease them.

 

Decompiling assembler to C code is one thing, but there are no debug symbols available to name function arguments and local variables, are there?

 

I would assume unless a debug rom shows up at some point no.

Hey we could always hope if sega ever decides to re-release them they pull a *Gems collection* again and leave it hanging around.

 

With a little manual work, it is possible to use my tools to make edits to the decomp by copying binary files and possibly editing some C structures. At some point in the future the tools and decomp may be more directly compatible.