Sonic Advance Trilogy Modding

I actually liked collecting the Special Rings in Vanilla Advance 2, but yeah, having to do it every time just to access the special stages and then said special stages being some of the most annoying and least fun in the franchise was kind of overkill... especially with how lousy the rewards for collecting the Emeralds with everyone are(Amy should have been unlocked just from clearing Sonic's story like the others, the Tiny Chao Garden and Sound Test should have been available from first boot, and Boss Attack should have, at worst, required beating XX Zone with every character or have been limited to bosses the selected character had beaten in the main game.

I would have preferred if the Special Rings had been more like the Dragon Coins in Super Mario World, KONG letters in Donkey Kong Country games, the Flowers in Yoshi's Island, the Star Coins in New Super Mario Bros., or the Chao Boxes and golden beetles in Sonic Adventure 2, where either they are completely optional and give you an extra life if you collect them all, increase your chance of accessing an optional mini-game, contribute to, but are not strictly necessary for reaching a target score, or if they are required for 100%, you only need to collect them once and they aren't the key to an extra, mandatory challenge that's arguably harder than just collecting the minor MacGuffins).

Anyways, so wish I could give these new Advance 2 hacks a go... Damn my useless eyeballs.

Though, I'm curious, does the Special Ring timer hitting 0 just lose the opportunity to get an Emerald on that run, or does it kill you and make you restart the level? If it just loses the Emerald, it's probably a decent challenge. If it kills you, that might be a bit too punishing to new players, especially if this change is ever implemented with new levels... Also, does reaching the goal with enough special rings in tow net you the emerald directly, or just get you te special stage? Because like I said earlier, it isn't collecting the rings alone that makes getting Chaos Emeralds a bitch in Vanilla Advance 2, but the special stages being both hard to get into than hard and unfun to beat.

 

That's my bad, I've released a fix here: https://github.com/MainMemory/AdvanceTools/releases/tag/1.11.2

 

Seems to have worked, Thanks!

 

Great to see some serious work being done on the Advance series - loving what's been shown so far. One thing I've always wanted to see was 8-bit levels runnning in the original Sonic Advance; the physics etc. in Aspect's 8-bit Sonic titles always bug me a little (though do seem to improve a little each game, and fare a little better in Triple Trouble which also embraces some of those quirks), and I always wonder how the layouts would feel in a game with more traditional Sonic-style physics. Sonic Advance fits the bill nicely, as speed caps aside it does a pretty good job of mimicking the original games on a smaller scale. Plus, the relative scale of the characters in relation to rings/springs etc. is pretty much the same as the 8-bit titles!

I know it'd take a lot of work even to get just the layouts over, not only because the 8-bit games use a different way of contsructing their level layouts, but also because things like rings and springs are often baked into the level blocks themselves. So there'd be a lot of work blanking out any tiles featuring those elements, then adding them back into the layout as actual stage objects.

Nevertheless, I'll be keeping my eye on all of this, as if modding for the first Advance game becomes more accessible I may just try and have a crack at actually doing it...! = )

 

The other thing you'll find is that the 8 bit layouts are rather small when you have Advance movement speed. Not saying don't do it, just might want to consider a Mania style expansion as a bonus project!

 

This is my VERY scuffed attempt at bringing Green Hill Zone Act 1 to SA2. Level is pretty buggy, especially the loop which took me forever to figure out how to implement (works like maybe 1/3 of the time) but hey, it can in fact be completed. It goes without saying that sonic advance modding is still in its infancy, so the tools required to make these levels work are obviously rough around the edges. That and I'm probably way in over my head trying to figure out how this stuff works with my limited knowledge. That said, working on this was fun and informative; I even attempted to give it that SA2 flair with some boost pads (I admittedly do like them, yes), ramps, and the boost hoop...things. Might wait for some more developments in the tools before I decide to revisit porting levels/making my own, but this is the best I could pull off for now.

 

Nice one!

It looks like it plays well for GHZ, I mean Sonic controls wise, which is surprising to me. I went in believing I'd see behaviour giving the impression of Advance series, I guess it really is the stage design after all.

 

Sure! Keep in mind I reaaally don’t like Advance 3 tho, so you should definitely look for a variety of feedback about it haha

 

I noticed this topic hadn't been updated in several months, and I just wanted to ask: is there a mod of Sonic Advance 3 that fixes Sonic's physics to not be as slippery when playing with the Sonic + Tails combo? I could've swore there was, but it seems extensive modding of these games is fairly new.

In general I'm looking forward to a full revision of Advance 3, if that's on the plans for anyone modding it. There are large swaths of time where I'm enjoying what I'm playing, and then suddenly a crushing block or bottomless pit ruins your day (and it only continues to increase in frequency as the game goes on).

EDIT: Also wanted to say I recently played Sonic Advance Double Take. Very good edits all around! I still think the enemy and spike placement is still a little cheap, but I think it makes sense to keep some of the original's "personality" still there at times lol. I also played Sonic Advance 2 SP and find that to also be good, though flawed in a bit of the same ways (keeping more of the cheap enemy placement and pits than I expected it to). Still good improvements, though!

 

Not that I'd be able to play it, but my biggest curiosity is if anyone has made a Cream in Advance 1 hack or started messing around with porting levels between games. The three games play radically differently from each other, so part of me is curious how say, Advance 2 levels would play with the slower pace of Advance 1 or vice versa or how Advance 3 levels would handle without the partner mechanic.

 

I have been able to do some rudimentary level ports, but Advance 2 greatly expanded the amount of pieces levels have to work with, so most levels from 2 and 3 cannot be ported back into 1 without major reworks. And that's not even getting into the objects, which would take a ton of extra work to port.

 

This truly is marvellous progress with how modding the Advance trilogy is going! As a kid, I was always incredibly frustrated that you couldn't turn Super Sonic in regular levels and it admittedly is the reason why I have some bias against the trilogy (as petty as it is) - I wonder how big of a scope such a task would be with what knowledge we have now currently.

 

I'm (almost) exactly one year late, though I tested the level.

Getting to the goal is fine, you have to be fast but the rings are always on your way, so as long as you run you will be able to complete the act (with about 4 or 5 sp rings indeed).
Getting to the special stage took me a few attempts, about 4, but still, I did it.

I like this concept but I'm not sure if it's suitable for base gameplay, it seems more fitting as an extra mode. Sometimes in Sonic games I just want to stop and mess with the level, attempt a trick in a specific place in order to reach an higher route, backtrack a bit or break the level in a way that the developers probably didn't expect. This timer prevents me from exploring and messing with the level, it incentivates the "hold right to win" type of approach to the game, and I admit, I'm not really a fan of this.

Sometimes the rings are on a precise jump trajectory and if you alter it you will miss the ring regardless of how good you are playing.

Also, it seems like some routes are easier than others when it comes to obtaining the sp rings, so at the end you will mostly focus on one single route and try to avoid the others. For example, each route that requires bouncing on blue springs or those wall bumper things will make you lose a lot of time unfairly, because those gimmick do require you to spend time, it's not your fault for playing bad, it's just the gimmick that's slow.

For some reason the input were a bit laggy the first time I played it... I reopened the emulator and played again, and it worked fine, so it probably has nothing to do with the rom hack and it's likely some Windows nonsense.

In conclusion, despite all the criticism, I enjoyed this a lot, it's a very good work and it's nice to do something new with the game in general, after decades of playing the same thing over and over. My idea is that it should be a separated mode, "SP Challenge" that should be in the game along with the traditional time attack... I'm not sure if it's possible to mod the game to such an extent yet, I'm not updated on the progress of the modding scene of this game, I've been away for a lot of time.

A suggestion for this concept as a main game mode is to keep the timer as it is, but reduce the rings each 10 seconds instead of 5; then instead of putting all the rings on your way, put half of them in visible but hard to reach places, so that if you want to take them you have to do some precision platforming (this might require a lot of tweaking of the level's layout, I'm aware that it could be annoying to do). Skipping all the "challenge rings" should be possible but it would make it harder to just complete the level because the amount of time left would be lower, while getting to the special stage would require getting at least some of them. There should be a cap after 7 rings (I don't know if there is one already), every additional ring collected would reset the ring countdown, increase the overall timer, but it wouldn't add any other ring to the collection. This change would aim at incentivating the interaction with the level over "hold right to win", and allow more personalization of the route taken and the approach to the gameplay (jump trajectories, tricks, etc).

Since it depends on the architecture of the level, it would probably be a hell to balance though, so I'm not sure if my suggestion is possible at all, but still I wanted to give my feedback.

An unrelated note, this concept reminded me of the Metal Virus from the IDW comics, for obvious reasons.