Sonic Mania Plus (Consoles Physical; PC Digital) - Non-Leaks Thread

Question,

Spoiler

was it mentioned if the original metal sonic boss fight is going to be completely replaced in such a way as that we would never be able to play it again ? Or will there be options to play? Cause it would be kind of sad to see it vanish completely.

 

Spoiler

Just watched a clip including the HCZ to MSZ transition. Not impressed, I was hoping it would involve Sonic and Tails meeting Knuckles and catching the Tornado together.

 

Spoiler

Considering that this cutscene in particular is unskippable (But the other cutscenes are skippable.), as well as the fact that the cutscene feels unfinished, points towards the transition not being complete in this build of the update.

 

Spoiler

That's probably because it isn't finished / completed yet. Remember this is a leak, and in an ideal world, wouldn't have been seen by any of us until it was all ready.

EDIT: On a completely off-topic question; any reason these spoiler tags aren't working for me? As in, I can't "un-spoiler" them so I'm having to click quote and read each post individually. x_x

 

Got javascript enabled?

I've had it disabled around Sonic Retro because of their April Fools pranks in the past. Maybe you've disabled it.

 

It's happened to me a couple times before. If you clear any Retro cookies from your browser it should fix it.

 

Has anyone noticed if there are any extra paths in the levels that could be for mighty and ray?

 

Spoiler

Not sure if it's for Mighty and Ray, but one of the playthroughs showed signs of an exit to this previously inaccessible area in Lava Reef Zone Act 1:

 

I haven't seen anyone recap the latest Sonic stream yet, so here goes:
The leaked content (1.04) is confirmed to bee a free update launching on the same day as Sonic Mania Plus. The "Plus" DLC will not be free.
A Sonic Mania Plus trailer with a concrete release date will be coming relatively soon.

Regarding bugs, if anyone here has the leaked update and is interested enough to test some things, I'd like to know if the duplicate rings in GHZ2 have been fixed, as well as anything else in my list

 

Spoiler

Yes, it's from 1:31:03 in my playthrough of the new version.
The route is more complete compared to the original version. However, you still have to use debug-mode to gain access. You then rejoin the normal route at 1:31:45.

Maybe Mighty will be given an ability to mash through rocks downwards, like a stomp move, maybe?

 

It occurred to me earlier that my earlier posts in this thread have been rather critical, and so to address the balance in case Taxman et al are reading this I would just like to announce HOT DAMN I LOVE THIS GAME.

I'm so glad that Mania exists. It makes me feel like I did at 7 years old playing Sonic for the first time. They really have done a spectacular job.

 

Does Hidden Palace feature other changes?

 

Nope. HP is still the same layout as the original version. Knuckles transition cutscene at the end of HP also hasn't changed.

 

Oh cool! unless ray has some kinda stomp, I think this is a mighty-exclusive path. I assume that mighty will have his wall jump from chaotix, so maybe he could wall jump and then stomp.

 

Does the bubble shield work on that route?

 

oops it's another large post sorry

Spoiler

Except I'm willing to bet that not a single person in the thread repeating the opinion that speedrunning is cheating even knew about any of the bugs before I mentioned them or saw them at a GDQ or would have any chance of doing them by accident in their own game. It doesn't effect you in the slightest so the "more solid game" thing is kind of a non-starter. It doesn't actually help anyone.

Furthermore, there's a difference between a bug that's completely degenerate and bugs that produce positive effects. Not being able to differentiate the two or even consider it is incredibly shortsighted. A lot of these produced interesting or creative gameplay, not being able to think on these terms results in a game that's sterile as fuck. A sterile game is boring and eventually dies. And also has no effect on your own experience unless you're somehow some sort of Mr. Bean video game player who hits frame-perfect jumps and launches themselves by accident, and I'm not convinced this type of player exists. Removing it actively harms some players experience, leaving it in harms no-ones. That's the dichotomy.

The devs are also clearly attempting to provide something for the runner crowd considering there was clearly a high degree of effort put into the Time Attack mode in the first place, not all of its ideas work super well, but there's clearly been an attempt. Sonic games in general kind of do this thing where there's some attempt at supporting that style of play but it always consistently misses the mark in one way or another and one sort of hopes that since Mania seems to be made by a more down-to-earth group that it could be different, but probably not. Which is ultimately just a waste.

This opinion possesses about as much merit as the type of person who would say that throwing too many fireballs in a row in a game of Street Fighter is "cheap" with roughly similar levels of having no idea what they're on about. Seriously, this one is so laughed at that it's on the level of community meme. Don't be a meme.

Because movement tech that's more complicated than just rolling downhill gives the game a bit of extra depth in how you can move around the stages, which allows creative movement options and raises the skillcap. It's not perfect in it's current form, definitely, but it's the kind of bug that I think with a bit of polish and contextualization could evolve into a very healthy new movement mechanic instead. One befitting a game with a simple control scheme and relatively few options. You feel me? Removing it entirely is kind of lame and misses potential for emergent gameplay.

But yeah it's not perfect, you get stuck if you're in ball form, you can get out of ball form by jumping, so you have to jump twice to get off the slope and not be holding down. I think. I mainly play Tails, I might be getting this wrong. That's kind of weird in its current state but it's a decent starting point.

And I don't understand why people who don't speedrun feel the need to tell people who do how they should do it, but nevertheless here we are.

On a serious note, because people put hundreds of hours and months of their free time into experimenting and practicing these things enough to discover them in the first place and then execute them consistently. Having this degree of dedication and persistence rewarded with your efforts being removed to please nobody (because people who hate skips don't do them and the demographic of people who have that mentality who would play the game long-term ins non-existent because the logic is incompatible with the competitive nature of the practice) is pretty discouraging.

This is a good point because I entirely forgot replays were coming. But I think it goes either way, because I've played many games with built-in leaderboards that didn't especially care about glitch-use and they got on perfectly fine. They're also counter-intuitively not actually that useful to dedicated speedrunners because they all get hacked to fuck and back super quickly. Happened to Mania, happened to Forces, has happened to literally every game I've seen that has them. It just happens. But yeah, I can buy that's one of the things they're thinking about. Sort of. Some of the patched skips don't actually work in Time Attack or concern bosses (that do not exist in Time Attack which is its own whole kettle of goddamn fish but w/e) so ehhhh still doesn't really jive.

honestly in-game leaderboards in general are one of those attractive sounding features that don't generally serve their purpose super well but that's kind of orthogonal

 

This is an important post that's getting overlooked. So this confirms the upgrade to the base game is happening for everyone - which is awesome news. And the primary content update will be the "Plus" DLC which is launching on the same day. Sound strategy from Sega here. Looking forward to that upcoming trailer then. I'd freak out if they teased a new zone. Might be an outside chance but hope they do.

 

Yes, fireball spam is cheap but that isn't breaking the game. Nice job with the false equivalency.

Just because you hang with a community that thinks cheating is okay, doesn't stop it from being cheating for the rest of us. It's like how Melee fans wonder why Nintendo doesn't hold tournaments for them despite how preposterous that would be. Put a bunch of like minded people together and they turn into an echo chamber. Now run back to that little chamber so they can tell you the meanie on the internet is wrong/a troll.

 

The definition of cheating is such a grey area that there's certain acceptable things while others are shunned upon. I think the best way to view it in speedrunning is while it can technically present an unfair advantage, there's only so much you can do that's allowed within the game's limit that eventually it boils down to less skill and just a "who can finish within x amount of frames" compared to figuring out ways to make speedrunning enjoyable and pushing more optimization out that way, extending the life of that speedrunning. And even then, cheating is usually defined by someone having an advantage over someone else that the other person cannot achieve though normal means. (Modifying Data, etc)

In that sense, it just boils down to what's considered fair game. I also don't think a lot of games people speedrun (including myself back in the day) would have been as enjoyable to perform if it wasn't for the fact of said exploits and tricks existing while being fair game. :v:

So even in normal play, I think anything within the game's limit is considered fair game. Like picking Metal Sonic in Sonic Adventure 2 multiplayer.

 

I was gonna ask if speedrunning with Debug mode is cheating but looks like it ain't.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ue9sKxl7JHE

Down the rabbit hole as the old saying goes.