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Sonic Mania Plus SPOILER THREAD with UNMARKED spoilers!

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by Harmony Friends, Apr 25, 2018.

  1. SuperSnoopy

    SuperSnoopy

    I like Sonic Advance Member
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    Slice of life visual novel, coming soon...?
    Yeah, I'm not gonna very original here, but godamn do I want a S3K remaster in the style of mania :( seeing angel island zone like that was both painful and very satisfying.
     
  2. McAleeCh

    McAleeCh

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    Remember that Mania uses two layers for the foreground art - presumably one of them is mistakenly turned off until the background corrects itself, as you can see a foreground waterfall pop into existence at the same time.

    Mighty and Ray being copies of Sonic seems to screw up the cutscene a little here - presumably the player normally has the chance to walk to either Mighty/Ray to choose them as a partner (with the other then turning out to be fake), but since "Mighty" has jumped forward while doing Sonic's victory animation he's already touching Sonic and so ends up automatically selected. Incidentally, I love that the little jingle from Chaotix plays when the partner is selected!

    Interesting that the unused "Sweep" badnik from Mania's Chemical Plant Zone is present alongside the Zone's badniks in the debug list - I wonder if it's finally used in this Zone? We don't really see more than a glimpse of the area with the water in this footage, but considering the enemy's fully programmed it'd make sense to actually use it somewhere! On a related note, I'm actually kind of surprised Catakiller, Jr. shows up in this Zone - since it's already used in Chemical Plant Zone I just sort of assumed it'd be omitted here. Would that make it the only badnik which is used across multiple Zones in the whole of Mania, or am I forgetting something?

    Speculation time - some of the Japanese articles have mentioned switching between all five characters in Encore Mode, but so far we've only seen Sonic/Mighty and Sonic/Ray as pairs. Since it seems the partner who isn't chosen turns out to be the Heavy Magician in disguise, I wonder if we'll be rescuing the real version of them later on in the game? Maybe the capsules at the end of certain Zones will be replaced with these Chaotix-style versions, each containing one of the remaining three characters. That would mean you'd unlock Tails/Knuckles and the partner you didn't choose at the start as you progress through Encore Mode, which would then fit with what's been said about being able to swtich between the five characters.
     
  3. Harmony Friends

    Harmony Friends

    it's the whole gang Oldbie
    I think it's more likely that, since this was accessed with Debug Mode, it doesn't know to put the right characters there. This is not being interpreted as an Encore Mode game, but as a Mania Mode game with Sonic as the selected character.

    (This is also supported by the fact that it then proceeds to regular GHZ.)

    Also, I'm now thinking it's possible that, since you choose Mighty or Ray as your partner right there, that Encore Mode may eschew a typical character select at all, instead leaving you to find character swap monitors in the stages. Would certainly be an interesting gameplay wrinkle if true.

    EDIT: Love that the level layout makes you either use Hammer Drop or Ray's flight to proceed (and also that picking one character or the other is a small alternate path as a result).
     
  4. McAleeCh

    McAleeCh

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    Also, since placing the end sign in the cutscene version of AIZ has activated it, I wonder if the only reason this Zone's made it into the update patch rather than the DLC itself is because the Zone's files are counted as "Act 2" of the existing Angel Island cutscene map? Since there are assets which are identical between the cutscene and the actual level, it'd make sense to keep it all wrapped together in the game's internal structure rather than duplicating art, palettes etc.
     
  5. Harmony Friends

    Harmony Friends

    it's the whole gang Oldbie
    Mania's internal structure is not so rigid; a quarter of the zones have a third scene - Knux MSZ1, LRZ2/TMZ2 boss areas - and there wasn't placeholder space for a second AIZ scene that didn't exist.

    That said, obviously, it does make sense to keep like assets together, and as such this scene was inserted into the list between the cutscene and GHZ1, which is why this debug mode trick works.
     
  6. McAleeCh

    McAleeCh

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    Thanks for the clarification, Hinchy - much appreciated.

    Couple of other interesting things to note:

    • The Zone appears to have been worked on further since the Famitsu screenshots - Mighty's Hammer Drop path now begins with a block of 'proper' breakable ground, rather than a rock wedged into a pipe as seen in Famitsu scans. Rings are now visible beneth the block to make it more obvious to the player that there's an accessible route down there.
    • Although many things are glitched out in this footage due to Debug shenanigans and the fact the stage is being accessed in Mania Mode, it's interesting that once the area with Mighty/Ray is reached the background fails to load correctly. If it were simply switching back to the intro's clouds/water background as seen in screenshots I'd expect it to load properly, as the game seems to have no trouble displaying that background earlier in the available footage. Could it be that there's now a separate background for this area, which isn't loading properly for some reason? Or could this just be another example of things glitching out due to Debug/Mania Mode shenanigans?
     
  7. Lapper

    Lapper

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    Sonic Studio, Sonic Physics Guide, Kyle & Lucy, Freedom Planet 2
    About the BG -A wider gradient and subtle colour change might have been nice.
    [​IMG]

    But I personally don't think it's too bad as is.
     
  8. McAleeCh

    McAleeCh

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    The colour could probably benefit from a little tweaking, yes - however, the expanded gradient wouldn't be possible without editing the actual artwork, which as far as we've seen the Encore Mode stages don't touch - hence slight oddities like the colour separation towards the back of the lake in Green Hill Zone, which is hidden in Mania Mode where the colours for both sections are the same, but obvious in Encore Mode where the colours differ from each other.
     
  9. Cinossu

    Cinossu

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    Sonic the Hedgehog Extended Edition
    I wonder if anyone is able to backup the data.rsdk in this version at the moment; it'd be interesting to compare and contrast to the final release.
     
  10. McAleeCh

    McAleeCh

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    That's a pretty good point - what we have here is technically a prototype version of the update patch, so it'd be good to be able to investigate what's different once the final version releases.
     
  11. Exactly what I was thinking, nice work.
     
  12. HEDGESMFG

    HEDGESMFG

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    So, it seems obvious now that Encore Mode is really the s3&K Knuckles playthrough of Mania, taking place after the first (Sonic) mode, and expanding the gameplay in both story, at least some paths, and replayability.

    We've got a completely different story into via Angel Island, the heavy magician's shenanigans, the return of the Ruby, ect. All likely leading to a second ending and possibly even a new final boss.

    I don't know if the different pathways will be as diverse and Knuckles paths were in s3&K, but it's good to see them expanding on both the experience and story as well.

    Although the return of the Ruby makes one wonder... does this take place before Forces, after, or skip it altogether?
     
  13. CollectiveWater

    CollectiveWater

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    I posted about why I think it's unlikely we'll ever see a 1:1 faithful 3K remaster and how I think "Mania" essentially is a greatly evolved, expanded upon version of it in the thread leading up to the announcement of "Plus." (Figured I'd just link to it instead of repeating the same info.)


    So, don't see any star posts in that video of Angel Island in the leaked 1.04 PS4 patch, but you're in debug mode so you can place one--really seems like someone should do so and check if it takes you to the new pinball stage instead of blue sphere. (I don't live in the region where the patch leaked and don't have it so I can't check myself, unfortunately.) Also you should be able to place yourself under the Mighty breakable barrier path at the end and see what's down there, right? Seems like there's potentially more interesting stuff to find in just Angel Island itself, if that's indeed the only Encore data that exists in the 1.04 PS4 patch. Hopefully someone is able to check those two things and just explore the zone in total and upload the footage of it.
     
  14. Harmony Friends

    Harmony Friends

    it's the whole gang Oldbie
    considering it still goes to Mania Mode GHZ, I think it's highly unlikely that a star post would not take you to Blue Sphere.
    (worth checking, of course.)
     
  15. CollectiveWater

    CollectiveWater

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    Yeah, highly likely it's just blue sphere. But someone should definitely still check because holy shit what if it goes to a version of the new one.

    Might be worth doing the debug cutscene glitch for every cutscene it's possible for in the game (don't know if it's every one; never done it myself) and placing/going through a goal post just to see if anything else crops up. (Again, unlikely, but ya never know.)
     
  16. Sparks

    Sparks

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    A lot of stuff in that video is so unpolished that I'd take it with a grain of salt.
     
  17. LukyHRE

    LukyHRE

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    Bitching and complaining about my country -.-'
    Does anybody here, or in SSRG, have the patch? Also, do you need a modded PS4 to grab the file?

    I honestly thought the same, but the AIZ full song is TOO DAMN GOOD to be false. Hell, if it's revealed to be a hoax, I want to know who the fuck made that track and pay him to make a full S3 remastered OST, I don't care.
     
  18. Harmony Friends

    Harmony Friends

    it's the whole gang Oldbie
    I assume he means "take it with a grain of salt" as in "it's so unfinished in this patch that it could well completely change before release" and not "it's fake". It's clearly not fake.
    Though, considering Famitsu's screenshots were clearly based off an EARLIER version of this and yet looked less messed up, I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that this is actually more glitchy because it's being glitched into in Mania Mode and less because of how not-done it is.
     
  19. Fadaway

    Fadaway

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    Perfect!
     
  20. CollectiveWater

    CollectiveWater

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    According to Tracker sounds like *everything* from Encore is in that leaked 1.04 PS4 patch. He didn't describe how to access it, but someone somewhere likely has. Man that person at Sony really really done goofed up accidentally pushing that patch.

    (I guess the silver lining is thank god it was only in one specific region for a handful of hours on one platform. Probably only a couple thousand people have it, at most. Would be more of a catastrophe if it'd been pushed to *all* PS4 users that have the game.)