This is now a general Sonic Jam hacking thread! The Community Hacking Guide for Sonic Jam can be found here. This thread originally started as a model-swap project for Sonic and Tails, which is detailed below in the original post. -------------------------------------- Hey all, First non-verification post here! On-and-off for the last two years or so, I've been doing all sorts of digging around in Sonic World in the hopes of laying some groundwork, and maybe getting people interested in hacking the game. A little while ago, I managed to piece together how to swap models! Here's a video of Sonic's model having been replaced by Tails', running in Mednafen. Some textures are messed up, you might notice. I'm pretty sure this is due to the code that makes Sonic blink; I still need to dig into that. His proportions are also a bit off when sprinting or jumping, cause at recording time I was too lazy to go through and update his sprinting and jumping models' component positions. I originally did this via real-time memory editing, but I've since hex-edited an ISO to achieve the same thing. I've got a Google Drive full of notes on basically everything I've dug into, for anyone who'd be interested... See here. I want to go through and really clean them up at some point, but if ya just can't wait, they'll do fine for now. Though I apologize for any confusion in advance!
You could mirror any findings here if you wanted: https://info.sonicretro.org/SCHG:Sonic_Jam Of course since nothing is actually there you could use this as a guide if you were to do so: https://info.sonicretro.org/SCHG:Sonic_Community_Hacking_Guide Good job regardless. Always nice to see something out of the norm.
Nifty Of course, for the full effect you need to turn Tails into Sonic, and then you'll have reached the pinnacle of Sonic Jam hacking.
@JaxTH Alright, I'll get right on that. Thanks for the tip! @Black Squirrel I actually strongly considered doing that... Maybe for the next video when I've improved things a bit, lol
This is awesome! JAM finally getting some well-deserved attention, in Sonic World. I hope you manage to progress and reach a breakthrough for JAM's hacking. I also kinda wanted, for a long time, to see a 32-bit 3D version of a classic game. So... You thinking of hacking only JAM? Not wanting to pressure you, just curious. Can one expect something from 3D Blast Saturn's Special Stage models? Upon expanding the concept, and with the Proto (HQ) R models, a nice, great project could come to life.
Ooh I like this. Sonic World felt like a mechanic that just wasn't used nearly enough to its full potential so it'd be cool to see fan projects expanding it, maybe one day even making that full Sonic Saturn game we never got.
Thanks for the encouragement! I've always longed to see a proper 32-bit 3D Sonic platformer, that's the burning motivation that drove me to work on this. I wasn't planning on really hacking anything other than Jam. I considered digging a bit into 3D Blast to port Knuckles' model over to Jam later, but that was all I had in mind. Might change my mind later though, who knows?
Seriously even just an expansion of Sonic World with more characters or missions or levels would be an interesting endeavour. Even as just a hub world for the compilation, I can't imagine how much more noteworthy it would have been if it were a reasonable size. Sonic World is such an interesting concept but so laughably small (same for other Saturn works like Sonic R really). It's a shame they kept bothering to make a workable core for a 32 bit game and then just didn't expand it at all. We just got a whole era of brief tech demos.
Like others have said, it's very cool to see Sonic World being worked on after so much time! This is a great first step and hopefully it'll lead to great things! I've had the sneaking suspicion that the 3D Special Stage in 3D Blast and Sonic World were both parts of the same project, especially since Jon Burton said that the former was created by Sonic Team and they sent a drop-in file for the game. Models and animations are identical (minus some possible differences) and we do know that at the time they were working on what would later become Sonic Adventure. With that in mind, is it possible that the two are compatible in some way? It's probably quite a while yet to think about porting the special stage wholesale, but it might make transferring assets easier.
I'd bet they're compatible. They're far too similar not to be, and I feel like it'd be too much work to completely overhaul the engine between games. One of these days when I crave variety I might crack into it to verify, but there's more digging I want to do into Sonic World first. Or maybe someone can beat me to the punch...? *wink wink*
Yeah, as much as I respect the X-Treme team and their hard work, I think there's a legitimate chance had that game made it to market it would have been a dud. Sonic 06 a decade early. Sonic World on the other hand felt like the real deal, shame it was confined to essentially a tech demo in Sonic Jam. I know Sonic Team used it as the basis for Sonic Adventure, but I feel like SA1 is totally different from what we might have seen from them on Saturn.
While in some ways it probably would have been different based on the recent mockups Sega released, I think some things stayed very similar. I honestly think that Sonic World contains early remnants of what would become the beta Windy Valley based on those strange wind propellers and general aesthetic. Regardless, I think we derailed just a little bit. Sorry about that Starman.
Yeah, I realized that same thing after I made that last post. The Tails swap is really impressive and cool, and I can't wait to see what comes of it going forward!
Impressive. Saturn game modding has really picked up steam. Always nice to see another. Been wondering what kind of projects would come out of Sonic Jam. Maybe someone rips out the engine and uses it to port Mania? Or make the classics more Mania-esque? Just spitballin here.
Oh cool, this is the last game I expected to see hacked! Sonic World's look is one of the pinnacle of 32-bit 3D graphics, so it was especially disappointing there was never a full game made out of it. Modding this is the next best thing though.
As early as this is, it seems promising. I don't have a whole lot of knowledge on the matter, but it sure does seem long overdue that games on the Saturn are finally getting hacked. I really hope to see what else can come from this!
This is the first sonic thing I've seen, well, besides swapping out CD audio tracks in Sonic R. Some translations have been worked on for a while now, and quite a few are available such as Shining Force 3, Grandia, Linkle Liver Story and Castlevania to name a few. There has also been progress in patching games to run in different resolutions, and patching games to use the 4MB RAM cart to reduce load times. The Castlevania patch also includes a resolution hack, it no longer switches resolutions when you pause it, making for faster load times, and easier inventory management.
Sorry, I was actually talking about the classics, but thinking about it now, it might actually be possible to use the engine used in Sonic World to make a fully fledged adventure styled level, or two, or a game depending on how far someone want's to go with it.
