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Sonic Classic Heroes

Discussion in 'Engineering & Reverse Engineering' started by flamewing, Nov 2, 2010.

  1. Zeoinx

    Zeoinx

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    This isnt exactly a speed run, but more I am not playing like I normally do, which means gather as many rings as possible... but speed run skill it is not.
    (All 7 Chaos Emeralds)

    Emerald Hill Zone Act 1 : 00:31:93
    Emerald Hill Zone Act 2 : 00:59:00 *HA! FASTER THEN A MINUTE!...... I feel slow.

    Chemical Plant Zone Act 1 : 00:51:58
    Chemical Plant Zone Act 2 : 01:51:55 (I went after the 1 up at the start, and accidentally dropped down the 2nd pit after it by miss jumping.....im sad, I also didnt take a huge shortcut because I kinda like the level music)

    Aquatic Ruin Zone Act 1 : 00:36:73 (Oh finally, I brought it back down to a 30 something second run!)
    Aquatic Ruin Zone Act 2 : 01:11:02 (back to being slow! Wooo)

    Casino Night Zone Act 1 : 01:42:63 (This level is sooo bouncy....and slow...)
    Casino Night Zone Act 2 : 01:21:20

    Hill Top Zone Act 1 : 01:18:92
    Hill Top Zone Act 2 : 01:36:65

    Mystic Cave Zone Act 1 : 01:02:70
    Mystic Cave Zone Act 2 : 01:42:23

    Oil Ocean Zone Act 01 : 02:32:03
    Oil Ocean Zone Act 02 : 02:45:55 (I choked at the boss fight, I missed the last hit because one of the other characters hit em so then I got hit, and it ducked under oil)

    Metropolis Zone Act 1 : 02:03:28
    Metropolis Zone Act 2 : Will finish later...
    Metropolis Zone Act 3 : Will Finish later....

    ok break time.... my bad for leaving it undone... but at least now you have some examples of some of the times


    -I'm stupid-
     
  2. PKstarship

    PKstarship

    Super-Sonic Racer
    I have encountered something a bit odd a few times, it doesn't really seem to affect much, but I figured I would post about it. It seems every once in a while, when Sonic or Espio gets off-screen, instead of jumping back into the level, they just... fall from the top of the screen, to the bottom, and do that at least a few times before dying and properly respawning. I guess it can be annoying because it can put Sonic or Espio out of commission for longer than normal, which can be inconvenient, to say the least. I will say that I am not quite sure how to trigger this glitch, it just... happens sometimes.
     
  3. flamewing

    flamewing

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    Sonic Classic Heroes; Sonic 2 Special Stage Editor; Sonic 3&K Heroes (on hold)
    This one has been fixed locally.

    Hm, I need to make a bugfix release.
     
  4. Brainulator

    Brainulator

    Regular garden-variety member Member
    Would that include characters being stuck in spin mode when curled next to a ceiling and a wall? Speaking of which, I can't be the only person who noticed that you can double-jump upon as much as being in the air, unlike in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, where you had to jump to double-jump. Imagine playing the gumball bonus stage with those physics.

    Not to mention how wrong the continue screen is for Team Sonic, both in story and in the color palettes... unless being in a black void means Knuckles is sky blue.
     
  5. Clownacy

    Clownacy

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    That thing about double-jumping in the air without jumping beforehand is a feature, not a bug.
     
  6. flamewing

    flamewing

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    Sonic Classic Heroes; Sonic 2 Special Stage Editor; Sonic 3&K Heroes (on hold)
    I know I am awesome; but nevertheless, I am neither psychic* nor omniscient**. So care to elaborate on wtf you are talking about? Your description is very poor, and you clearly have an idea in mind on how to trigger the bug: by not stating it outright, you leave me to randomly guess at what the bug might be and how to trigger it. I have better things to do with my time than to waste it like that.

    Lets assume for the moment you are Tails. You can fly — as long as you jump first. But should you walk off a ledge above a bottomless pit, you are dead. Does this seem at all plausible?

    Also, how in the world did you reach the conclusion that this might be a bug? Things like this don't happen by accident.

    This one has been permanently fixed by the expedient of getting rid of continues; so no more continue screen.

    And can I please ask you to refrain from posting bugs by whining about them, and assuming I know wtf you are going on about? Both are aggravating, and neither help. Simply describing the bug and how to reproduce it is much more useful and productive.

    * because psychic powers do not exist, and "psychics" are con artists
    ** because omniscience is a logically contradictory ability
     
  7. Brainulator

    Brainulator

    Regular garden-variety member Member
    I know that you trashed continues. I should have said that; sorry. And the double-jump thing? I was wondering about that, and I can understand why you did it. I thought it was an oversight by how Sonic 2 would not have foreseen the possibility of double-jump abilities... but looking at it, falling of ledge would cause transformation by that logic in Sonic 2. That was just stupid of me. :-P

    And here's what I'm talking about:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp38qOHJjJs

    Sorry for the confusion. I would have responded to Clownacy's comment earlier, but my 20 trial posts are almost up and I didn't want to waste them just to repeat myself.
     
  8. flamewing

    flamewing

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    Those are due to some physics fixes I made, which revealed some deep physics issues no the engine. I have work-arounds for those (so they no longer happen), and I am trying to fix the underlying issue.
     
  9. Brainulator

    Brainulator

    Regular garden-variety member Member
    Well, thanks. I honestly am unaware of what exactly causes this glitch: I know that this location (along with where there are some monitors to the right, 2 ring and 1 lightning shield) can be used to replicate this glitch. Maybe it involves spinning down a slope into an area where a wall and a floor intersect, maybe in conjunction with moving against a moving wall?
     
  10. Liliam

    Liliam

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    That bug also happens in Sonic 3, and generally they just patch it by placing invisible collision objects over the offending floors. They missed a few though, like after the 3D ramp in LRZ2 as seen in ORKAL's glitch showcase.
     
  11. flamewing

    flamewing

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    Sonic Classic Heroes; Sonic 2 Special Stage Editor; Sonic 3&K Heroes (on hold)
    That is one of the workarounds I am using; another is to have an object that detaches you from the ground on some cases, more-or-less similarly to what happened in stock S1/S2.

    What causes the actual glitch is that zipping mechanic is generally disabled when you are not moving mostly horizontally. S&K (and SCH) have some code to activate zipping mechanic when you are moving straight up and straight down, but both shy away of killing inertia in these cases. Both behaviors (disabling zipping when not moving mostly horizontally, as well as not killing inertia except in these cases) are meant to prevent fast movement from suddenly stopping you on your tracks on sloped terrain; a good example is Chemical Plant 2: the long slope at the start can give you enough speed to cause zipping mechanic to stop you at the curve at the bottom. Also, loops can become annoying with enough speed.

    Not killing inertia means you keep moving in these cases; and since you are moving down, you keep on accelerating, gathering speed. At some point, the speed makes you go through the floor, and you lose contact with the wall.

    I am working on a proper fix for this, which should enable me to activate zipping mechanic everywhere and kill inertia on all cases, but I have had little success so far.

    In S1 and S2, the above behavior is generally hidden: there is a glitch present in all of S1, S2, S3, S&K and SCD that was exploited in S1 and S2 to cover up those cases. Specifically, you can only stand on walls and ceilings if they are top-solid. I became aware of this glitch due to Espio (which needs to be able to walk everywhere), but it can be seen in action in S3&K by using anti-gravity in most levels: you can land in non-top-solid ceilings, but then you immediately fall through it. This glitch is caused because wall and ceiling collisions check the wrong bit when you are not on air; a consequence is that loops, as well as walls and ceilings you are supposed to stand on, are full-solid in all those games.

    Sonic Team knew this glitch, and exploited it in S1 and S2 to make you detach from some walls and ceilings: most notably in Spring Yard (S1) and Metropolis (S2). Neither S3&K nor SCD use this glitch for this purpose, and S3&K goes out of this way to make sure it does not matter (especially in Death Egg).

    When I fixed it in SCH, those places stopped detaching you from the wall or ceiling, and you end up being able to run down some walls you ought not to. Since S3&K just does not exploit this glitch to make you lose contact with terrain, you could (theoretically) see it in action in there too — except they generally used invisible solids to cover them up.
     
  12. Brainulator

    Brainulator

    Regular garden-variety member Member
    Well, that explains a lot. Thanks for that: I guess it's been settled!
     
  13. lordexodus

    lordexodus

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    This is my favorite of all the other games! Looking forward to the updated version where Sonic 3 Complete is added alongside with options & additional character teams...
     
  14. Wait, where did flamewing say he'd add sonic 3 complete? :/
     
  15. flamewing

    flamewing

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    The closest I ever got to that was when I added "Sonic 3&K Heroes" to my "projects" list. But you are right, I never said I was going to add S3&K heroes to SCH, much less S3C.
     
  16. rata

    rata

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    Too bad that Kega doesn't work with >4MB roms, otherwise compiling SK3 after S2 would be insane.

    Are you interested in manufactering bankswitching cartdiges? //forums.sonicretro.org/public/style_emoticons/default/v.png
     
  17. Brainulator

    Brainulator

    Regular garden-variety member Member
    I think putting merging Sonic 3 Complete and Sonic Classic Heroes is something that's so epic, the Genesis limited game sizes on purpose to avoid awesome overload.
     
  18. rata

    rata

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    Trying to be useful somehow.
    http://emu-docs.org/...es/image002.gif

    Well, there is that memory zone that it's 'prohibited', maybe if stuff were arranged different it could take more than 4MB. The flaws on the MD were not intentional, they had just too much to think about. Some guy in here posted an interview with the head designer, quite intesresting reading even for someone who doesn't understand a crap like me.
     
  19. flamewing

    flamewing

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    Sonic Classic Heroes; Sonic 2 Special Stage Editor; Sonic 3&K Heroes (on hold)
    It is possible to have cartridges up to 10MB on the MD, as long as you have neither an SCD nor a 32x connected and the cartridge is special enough to supply /DTACK for the upper 6MB. There is also a cartridge with special circuitry that allows using that 'prohibited' region. Moreover, one could just use the SSF2 mapper and mapping data in/out as needed. Emulators would be limited to the latter option, with Kega being able to reach up to 6MB, Regen 5MG, Gens depending on the flavor, Exodus none at all (it can't run SCH as is), and I have no idea about GPGX. Even Everdrives and other flashcarts have dumb limits on the SSF2 mapper (which would reach up to 32MB on real hardware).

    There is still the matter of (A) having to complete the sprite sheets of all characters for S3&K, (B) editing all level palettes to accommodate the palette needs of each team, (C) free up enough RAM for all character data (specifically, at least $200 bytes for a third character), (D) free up enough VRAM on all levels for a third character, and last but not least, (E) edit all objects in the entire game to (1) port it to my custom object manager and (2) work with 3 characters. Considering the current state of the S3&K disassembly, I REALLY don't want to do the latter two items.

    Moreover, even if I were to put S3&K on SCH, here is something to understand: it would not be S3C. None of the many customization options of S3C would be present. There would be one version, a bugfixed S3&K, and that would be it. About the only things that would be changed is the way that the multiple paths work, who steals Super Sonic's emeralds at the start of AIZ1 and keeps popping up along the way to antagonize the team. Or maybe just remove that facet and have the teams move around similar to Knuckles.

    In all likelihood, the hypothetical S3KH would be a separate hack, initially only with Team Sonic, unless a lot of spriters pull together and work to complete the sprite sheets of the other teams. And it would still not be S3C.
     
  20. Jeffery Mewtamer

    Jeffery Mewtamer

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    Too bad Genesis mods can't be made modular the way PC mods can, and while a mod loader for the mobile ports of S1, S2, and SCD would probably be cool, the results wouldn't be as impressive since hackers would then be working with practically unlimited resources compared to trying to make the Genesis do things that conventional knowledge says are impossible.