Sonic the Hedgehog: The Lost Land 2

If it's too big, tack it onto the end of the ROM and change the pointer.

 

I suppose I'm late in saying this, but this is a very nice hack- Good job, Shadowfire! Charcoal Cape 1's ending is a bit weird though, there was no sign in sight, and when the "Sonic Has Passed.." message shows up, it goes right though the indoor cave background.

 

I'm guessing it has something to do with foreground objects Sonic can pass through... I believe there are no endings in Sonic 2 which have this originally....

 

Esrael's program moves the data then changes the pointer(s). If you know where the pointer is in the original game, huzzah! You know where it is an a ROM screwed by ESE.

 

Nemesis' guide can help you with the start position. I don't believe that it actually counts as an object, and SonED 1 is just cool like that.

 

Ok, I loaded the ROM on my SMD. First of all, from a clean boot I went to Charcoal Cape 1. After the title card slid off-screen (but before the actual zone title disappeared) and before the HUD appeared, the game crashes (Z80 keeps going as is usual with Sonic 2). This occurred on every zone.

So I dug into the ROM, got the debug and all emeralds codes, and put them in. Debug worked normally, and also allowed the game to run normally. Here's what I noticed in each zone:

Overall: Results screen eats parts of the level layout, as mentioned before. If you use debug to scroll the blanked parts off screen and back on again, then it comes back, as expected.

Charcoal Cape: Garbage tiles everywhere. The HUD shows garbage tiles except for one tile right next to the debug coordinates, and all of the dynamic HUD values. The fish badniks are made up of title card tiles, rings are corrupted, parts of the monkeys are title card tiles, item boxes are invisible, lives counter is corrupted. All in all, quite broken.

Chilly Crest: Seems to work fine.

Tree Top: Seems to work fine, although there are collision glitches.

Dusty Desert: Seems to work fine.

Techno Towers: Seems to work fine.

Flying Fort: Seems to work fine.

Magma Mountain: Seems to work fine.

Crystal Caves: Same problem as before, garbage tiles everywhere.

Starlit Shrine: This one crashes on me anyway, even with debug enabled. The title card never leaves the screen.

Dark Docks: Same problems as the other zones with garbage tiles. Also, the blue pallet is way too saturated for a real Genesis, it just looks muddy.

Sunken Subway: Seems to work fine.

Pinball Plaza: Seems to work fine.

Toxic Town: Same problems as before. Garbage tiles.

Cosmic Colony: Seems to work alright, and no problem defeating Eggman.

Ancient Amazon: Same problem as before. Garbage everywhere.

Stormy Skies: Seems to work fine.

Aesthetic: As I said on SCARZ, the letters need a one-pixel outline or shadow. Also, the following item boxes need thicker graphics for the display: ring, shoes, shield.

Sometime tomorrow I'll "reenable" Super Sonic and play around (it's not hard to force the game to stuff $07 in the RAM address for emeralds every frame, just to be sure).

 

Hm, you've disabled SS another way, because stuffing RAM does nothing. I forced the rings to stay at 50, forced emeralds to 7, and even forced all of the special stages to be marked as clear, and I still can't access SS.

 

I think Super Sonic is supposed to be enabled only in certain zones, and the emerald count has nothing to do with it. That's what I remember from when I helped him fix a problem with SS, anyway.

 

Yeah, I seem to recall Starlit Shrine having something to do with SS in his hack. SF should correct me if I'm wrong, though.

 

That's probably got something to do with Starlit Shrine crashing on my Genesis then. I was at least able to train the ROM to give me most of the SS effects (I haven't took the time to get the actual Super Sonic acceleration and max speed variables). Interesting SS pallet (and he also has two different colored shoes =P).

Also, another note about the hack: If you leave the title screen up long enough (seems like 65536 frames), you get an EHZ 2p demo. If you let the demo cycle and then wait some more at the title screen, it goes on to another demo, and this time you get the same crash that I found before when your "reverse timer" code is active (which could be bypassed by holding A before the demo loads if you have debug enabled).

 

Is it just me, or is your HUD practically a spitting image of mine, down to the palette, shading and apostrophe?

Other than that, nice work.

 

Your working is greatly improving! Keep it up!

 

You remember how to do the collision, right? =P

Also, I just made a HUD that looks a bit like that. Coinicidence, at best. I did snag the orange/yellow palette colors though -- they look sweet.