This will be a place where I'll (hopefully) be posting development updates for my current hack, Sonic Sundown. I'll probably make a different thread for the actual release, but that's a long time off from now. In any case, enjoy! Sonic Sundown is an advanced "whole game overhaul" type hack of Sonic 2 SMS themed around travelling across different planets. Currently implemented features include: New sprites and animations for Sonic (including an expanded frame count for existing animations and lots of completely new animations for style) New Spin Dash and Air Roll Shield and Save Point monitors One (as of now) new level with fully custom art, as well as custom palette cycling and dynamic tiles All badniks present are either custom or substantially modified New audio SFX and music No Game Overs or Time Overs, new HUD with the ring counter expanded to allow for 999 rings Sonic CD-like extended camera Lots of under the hood clean up [IN PROGRESS] Custom hub level [IN PROGRESS] Playable Tails Screenshot for the last two :3 Current credits: LaterSingTogether/gnid0chka: the vast majority of the character sprites, some object art; VAdaPEGA: originally created the Sonic Boom cover for my previous hack Sonic Eclipse, which has been repurposed here; pixelcat: everything else. Yes, this is a successor to the 2018 hack Sonic Eclipse, years later. Hopefully I'll get further than a 1 zone demo this time.
It's gorgeous, what else can be said? Well a lot but I simply love the vision on display here, you know exactly what you're doing and I'm way into it. Hope the rest of development goes smoothly, can't wait to play it.
I'm always excited to see more ROM hacks of the 8-bit Sonics, and this one quickly has my attention. Looking forward to more updates!
This is absolutely phenomenal looking! The levels feel much fuller than the original, and the extra animation frames are definitely doing the game wonders making it feel more like the Mega Drive titles! You guys have mastered the colours extremely well, not only do you have less palette space, you've got less grades too, but you made excellent use of it, the right colours together, excellent shading, you make it look like it belongs to a more advanced system. You've put the chunks together extremely well, they don't look repetetive, the whole layout feels unique, but also the background doesn't feel like it's restricted the foreground much either, that must have been a real challenge! I hope you guys are able to repeat this for the other levels You even dared to have some trees/plants infront of Sonic, it surprisingly hasn't disturbed the HUD as much as I were expecting. Also, 3 digit HUD? C'mon, people in this thread should be going insane. In my opinion this is a big and important change, there are so many ramifications and exciting uses for this! You said no Game Over or Time Over, I assume there's no lives system either. It's an interesting choice and I can't say I disagree with it, I think perhaps the lives system has run its course now that we're all grown up and no longer in the arcade days, if you can save resources (CPU time, sprites, VRAM) on this stuff to use better elsewhere, go for it~ Some things I'd love to see are; the platforms moving in a more sinusoidal way like the Mega Drive titles, I think this'd help the gameplay massively. It'd also be interesting to see if you guys can push the collision a little more, perhaps some smoother curves. Or at least for grass levels, more slope varients hidden by smooth looking grass curves. Loops are a must, if you guys can design and program one which is not automatic; that'd be just swell, and you'd earn yourselves the title of SMS masters in my opinion. I would love to see the spindash rev up with each button press though and different release speeds. I'm looking forward to a gorgeous looking title screen some day, I feel like you guys won't disappoint
I can barely believe this is running on the Master System - it almost looks too advanced! I'm just going to second everything Markey said - technically this is amazing, artistically this is amazing.
Truly impressive Pixelcat! I definitely looking forward to playing this whenever it's released! Always a treat to see what you can cook up especially in a Master System game where there's even more limitations than on a Genesis game.
There's really not much I can say that hasn't already. Absolutely beautiful for an 8-bit game. And as Markey put it the extra animations make it feel more in line with the 16-bit games. Really looking forward to trying this out myself. I could not even imagine the nightmare it is working with the SMS knowing it doesn't even support sprite flipping.
I'll keep it short and I'll just say that I second everything that has been said so far. Also, nice Frank Sinatra reference.
Thanks everyone for the kind words! It means a lot. That was indeed the main motivation behind these removals. One more thing I did remove was the score and score calculation logic. I feel like the score got a little overlooked even by Sonic 2's release, as the only time score is ever seen is the end-of-level tally. There isn't even a "total score" card like in Sonic 1, so I didn't feel bad axing it Freed up a surprising amount of space in Bank 0, actually... Some interesting suggestions there. I'll definitely look into changing the curved grass blocks to appear more natural as well as the spin dash behaviour, that sounds like it'd be pretty fun to implement. No promises on the loops though, for obvious reasons. I've been trying to make U-ramps function in a fluid way, and it's proven to be a little tricky. And I'd need to break that barrier before any kind of a non-automatic loop is attempted. _________________________________ As a little something extra... I'll probably make all Act 1s before moving on to Act 2s to have less development friction later on, so I've been planning out the next zone already. Because it's going to take place indoors, I thought it would be a great opportunity to weave in some horizontal parallax "windows" into a distant landscape for some oh-so-missed extra depth. No art yet, but here's just a little test of a very early version of effect in action.
This is amazing, and I look forward to seeing how this progresses. In terms of loops and u-ramps, I just posted a copy of my long dead sms hack Sonic 2 LD, which has some experiments using pieces of the scrambled egg tubes to replicate loops and ramps. It's very janky, and I don't have the same assembly skills as you, but you might find some inspiration maybe (although I think you've probably had similar thoughts, based on your use of those scrambled egg tubes for the hollowed out logs in your demo video)
This is incredible. This might be the best looking visuals Ive ever seen on master system. And the level design looks fantastic too.
I think it's safe to say you've mastered Master System graphics. I've never seen an 8-bit game look this colorful with such a small palette. The gameplay looks just as amazing as the graphics too. I wish everyone working on this luck.
I can't really say anything that hasn't been said previously - this hack looks incredible and I hope to see it succeed, especially due to the low amount of Master System Sonic hacks. However, if there's one thing I'd advise you to change, it's the name. I don't know where you're from, but the word "sundown" has pretty unflattering connotations in the United States. Obviously it's your choice in the end, but that name will almost certainly distract many people from the contents of the hack itself.
I'm aware of sundown towns, but that is quite a weird leap there, dude. There is no problem with the word "sundown" on its own... as it literally refers to the action of the sun appearing to go down in the sky. In fact, "sundown towns" isn't even a term I hear often at all, speaking as an American living in a red state.
I am indeed not from the US. I am aware of the existence of sundown towns, however I'm generally unsure if the word "sundown" itself has wide general negative connotations, given the following: Quite a few Americans have been following, testing, and now working on the hack; even the name itself was conceptualized in a conversation with a person from the US, and yet you're the first person who made that connection; I asked a few people from the US before making this post and they all have said that "sundown" just means "sunset" to them; I haven't managed to find a single web page, post, thread or comment recommending foreigners to avoid usage of the word, which you'd expect plenty of if it carried wide unexpected negative connotations; When searching "sundown" on Google, I had to scroll to page 4 to find the first page mentioning sundown towns; On the first page though, I was able to find a car audio company named Sundown Audio, which is based in the US. If it carried a strong enough connection to the history of racism in the US, it surely would've been bad enough branding for a business to not use it. Unless something comes up that changes things completely, I'm skeptical that it's worth renaming the hack as I can not find evidence of the word "sundown" having negative connotations by itself besides your testimony.
Oh yeah, I get where you're coming from. It's just that I have mainly seen the word be used in that context, but I guess that says more about me than you. Like I said, it's your hack, not mine, and you can name it whatever you please. I meant no offense with my comment, it was just an observation I made, and quite a poor one it seems.
To be fair, "Sundown Town" was also literally the first thing I thought of when I saw the name, so I don't think it is that extreme of a leap. I don't think that it's so bad that the name should change, but it is a valid point to at least mention, and I'm glad to see that you guys seem to be aware, and educated on it to some degree.
