Sonic and Metal in Sonic 1 AND Sonic and Metal in Sonic for 32X

My server is back online! This means you can use the normal download link again! I'm keeping the other download link in case things fuck up again.

I'm posting this on my birthday! Go me! It's my birthday present to myself! Additionally, the rest of you get to enjoy it!

Crap pictures that do the hack no justice whatsoever.






Crap youtube videos!
Part 1 shows Metal taking the mostly finished bottom route of my still-being-redesigned GHZ1. Note that at the beginning, you can hear the end of my REALLY CRAPPY level select music. Did I mention that it was one of my earliest ports?
Part 2 shows Metal taking the mostly unfinished upper route of my still-being-edited GHZ1. Note that you can see firsthand both metal's braking animations and his balancing on ledge animations. You can also see that when Metal collects a special stage ring, he gets a 1-up instead of entering the special stage, exactly as promised.
Part 3 this is Sonic in GHZ1. As you can tell, Sonic can enter the special stage. So there.


My Youtube channel has my videos.


Copy/pasted from my own personal website:

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Story:
Dr. Robotnik, in an attempt to destroy his nemesis Sonic the Hedgehog, has created his most powerful robot to date - Metal Sonic 4.0 - and has sent it into the past with the order "You are to seek out and destroy Sonic the Hedghog!"
Unfortunatley for the doc, his orders were damaged in time travel. Upon arrival in the past and his activation, Metal Sonic's memory damaged memory banks left him with the instruction "You are .. .... ... ..... Sonic the Hedgehog!"

Take control over Metal, who is convinced that he really is Sonic the Hedgehog, and put a stop to the evil Dr. Robotnik's schemes before they even start!
Or, take control over Sonic in classic Sonic gameplay and try to collect all six Chaos emeralds and stop Robotnik's evil plot!

Items:
Along the way you will encounter several items. They are:
Speed shoes: temporarly boost your maximum speed and acceleration! All right!
Invincibility: protects you from all damage! (But not from being crushed or drowning)
Shield: protects you from one hit! (But not from drowning or being crushed)
Rings: collect these for bonus points at the end of level tally. Additionally, if you get hit and have at least one ring, all your rings scatter. If you get hit without any rings, you die. I wonder if they have any other purpose.
"S" Monitor: Acts one and two of every level, except for Scrap Brain, have one of these monitors. You need to break it before the big ring will appear at the end of the level.
Big Ring: This appears at the end of acts one and two of every level except Scrap Brain, but only if you've broken the "S" monitor AND are holding at least 50 rings! If you collect this as Sonic, you enter the Special Stage.

Characters:
Metal Sonic: Metal Sonic is a robot clone of Sonic the Hedgehog. Being a robot, he does not need to breathe. As such, he cannot drown in the dreaded Labyrinth Zone. However, since he is not the real Sonic, he cannot use the Big Rings to enter the Special Stage. As such, you cannot collect the emeralds if you play as Metal Sonic. Instead, you get an extra life for collecting the big ring.
Sonic the Hedgehog: Sonic's game is very much like Metal's game, except Sonic has to breathe. Thus, while you CAN drown as Sonic, you can also enter the Special Stages to try and collect the Chaos Emeralds. To play as Sonic, press the "B" button once on the title screen.


Features:

• Spindash.
• Spike bug fixed.
• Speed cap removed.
• Some custom musics!
• New GHZ 1 layout.
• "S" Monitor
• Play as Metal or as Sonic.
• Metal does not drown.
• Only Sonic can enter Special Stages, Metal just gets an extra life.

Note that since Metal cannot earn continues (because he cannot enter the Special Stage), he receives an extra life to help compensate for it.
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Planned features:

• New level layouts
• New level art!
• Better music!
• Character selection menu!

My thanks goes out to the following people for the following reasons:

• Nineko: XM3SMPS. I'm learning the tool slowly and fully intend to use it for custom music.
• Hivebrain: 2005 Sonic 1 Disassembly, from which I am working.
• Lightning: Spindash in Sonic 1 guide.
• Tweaker: Guide for removing ground speed cap from Sonic 1.
• Puto: Part two to Spindash in Sonic 1 guide, also guide for removing air speed cap from Sonic 1.
• FraGag: Spike bug fix guide.
• Sonic65: Extra characters guide.
• Stealth: For making SonEd2.
• Xenowhirl: SonMapEd.
• Metalkirby, Superjay, sssonic88, killer, Boinciel, Cybersonik, Calamus Blade, Gussprint, and bluegirl123: Names in the credits section of sprite sheet from which I shamelessly stole the Metal Sonic sprites.

And also to anybody else I might have forgotten.

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tl;dr
Download the most recent (and awesome) version of my hack here
BACKUP DOWNLOAD LINK IN CASE SERVER DIES AGAIN
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One thing I will note, I have started to slightly edit Metal's top speed and acceleration. As it is, I've increased one and decreased the other (can you guess which?) ever so slightly from whatever Sonic's is. I fully intend to find a happy spot wherein the two are different enough to be noticed, but not wildly so.

I will note that only Green Hill Zone act 1 has received a layout edit, because the person I've conned into doing who volunteered to do my layouts is on vacation/hasn't got back to me with those layouts. Also, there will be art edits, but they aren't quite top on my list because my art friends all have their own projects at the moment.

 

That, along with the level-select music was one of my earlier ports (I've actually done a few, I just kept accidentally restoring from backup instead of making a new backup and losing all my work. But that a different story). I actually had to go look up which one you were talking about (I used it in Labyrinth Zone 3). To be honest, most of the tracker files I have and are working from actually come from my friends far-too-large-to-be-healthy collection - he sends me the ones he thinks would work best, then, of those, I pick the ones I like most and porting those (he suggested that one for Labyrinth Zone 3, so I put it there, though I'm not sold 100% on it fitting). To be honest, I need to redo that one some time - I can probably do better now that I have a little more practice.

 

I thought the sprites were pretty good, but that may just be because I was so desperate to find a Metal Sonic sprite sheet that had enough frames of animation. But yeah, if you have the time, I wouldn't mind having a better set of sprites.

Similar? How so? Did you have any creative ideas that I might sneakily theft? =P

The issue isn't that I don't know how to use xm3smps. The issue is that I suck at picking out voices. And that is something I'll have to figure out for myself.

 

Yes, all those are true. Everything that is above the "Planned Features" section is completed and implemented in-game.

And yes, I know Metal Sonic uses fleshy Sonic's pushing sprites. There weren't really any sprites on the sheet that I could conceivably shoehorn into pushing sprites that would look even half decent as pushing sprites.

Also, yeah, I myself could never figure out why Metal Sonic would possibly fight Robotnik. So I made up some technobabble bullshit story about time travel and called it a day. Came across the genius realization that Metal Sonic knows that Sonic fights Robotnik, and that if Metal Sonic were somehow convinced that he really was Sonic, well, he'd be obligated to fight Robotnik because that's what Sonic does. Yeah.

Actually, once I get in the swing of being able to make layouts and shit that don't suck, intend for the levels to be geared in such a way that Sonic and Metal explore different areas with different goals. Like, Metal will be geared for people who want to blast through the levels, and Sonic will be more Sonic CD-style exploration. Because the only benefit to finding the "S" monitors as Metal is extra lives, whereas you can get the emeralds and good ending if you find the "S" monitors as Sonic.

Speaking of monitors, that's the next little thing I need to change - make it a more generic 1-up icon. But that is for later.

Also, youtube videos are up. They only cover GHZ1 (the only level that has received any layout change so far), and they are crappy youtube quality, but they show some of what I'm working on. Going to have to finish up a lot of stuff though.

And yeah, it didn't make sense for Metal to be able to drown, so there you go. Once I figured out how to check if Metal had been selected, it was easy enough to make it so the entire routine for the underwater timer never ran. Then I just had to make sure he never collected bubbles, and that was one less animation I had to worry about finding a metal sprite for.

 

Alright, server is back online, so you can download the hack again. Backup link is also provided "just in case"

 

Because there is no Eggman in my classic Sonic! =P

Seriously though, the only reason I went through the effort to put Metal Sonic in IN THE FIRST PLACE was because - and this is the entire reason - my friend and I had the following conversation:
"Hey, Metal Sonic is cool."
"Yup. Shame the only Metal Sonic hack kinda sucks because they messed up the colors some and only bothered changing the walk/run frames."
"Hey, you should put Metal Sonic in your hack."
"K."

And so I did and it was... actually kinda crappy. So then I made it so you could choose between Metal and Sonic, but they were just sprite swaps.

So then I just modified Metal's stats EVER SO SLIGHTLY and gave him a slightly higher top speed and a slightly suckier acceleration than Sonic. But even still the two weren't different enough. So then I made it so Metal doesn't have to breathe and cannot enter the special stages. And then I decided that'd be a good point to release what I had on the off chance that I accidentally wiped my drive.

The entire story that I made up to rationalize metal sonic fighting Robotnik/Eggman/WHOEVER represents, literally, thirty seconds of brainstorming and however long it took me to type up the post, I kid you not.

And then I got a new laptop and have spent forever moving everything over to it.
And now I just need to figure out what nifty things I'm going to do while I wait for my level layout person to finish some damn layouts already. God, I'd do them but I kinda suck.

I dunno. Perhaps I'll toy around with XM3SMPS, I've got what I think will make the perfect invincibility song.

Just assuming I can ever not-suck at picking voices.