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Sonic Unleashed Wii / PS2: The Lost Levels (if you will) (credit to The Storm)

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by The Joebro64, May 26, 2024.

  1. The Joebro64

    The Joebro64

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    Expanding on a post I made in The Supreme Topic of 'Other' Knowledge I made a while back. I'll repeat what I wrote there before elaborating further.

    A YouTuber named The Storm did a deep dive into the Wii version of Sonic Unleashed's files and discovered that the game was most likely going to have two daytime acts per continent during development. Most of the second acts are used as missions, but the level files and unused geometry indicate they were intended to be full acts.

    Looks like Sonic Team/Dimps got Arid Sands and Dragon Road done and Rooftop Run and Jungle Joyride partially done, but made little to no progress on Cool Edge and Eggmanland. The assumption is that the developers ran out of time to finish the Act 2s and just chopped up what they did into missions.

    That's where the original post ended. Then he posted a follow-up:

    The Wii and PS2 version of Unleashed is infamous for its number of nighttime acts being hilariously disproportionate to the number of daytime ones. However, the game's files indicate that, much like the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 version, the nighttime levels in the Wii and PS2 version for each continent were designed as one MASSIVE level before getting split into several smaller ones. This isn't the first time we've discovered a Wii Sonic game doing this; SKmaric previously explored Sonic Colors doing the same thing with its "main" acts. The splits are relatively well-hidden in the earlier continents, but get increasingly obvious as the game progresses. You can see where the splits were made using cheats and Dolphin's freecam.

    Then came another follow-up!

    Many of the missions have tons of objects placed out of bounds... some of which provide us with earlier layouts from the game's development.

    As someone who grew up with this game, it's really cool to see it getting picked apart. Learning more about its development has been fascinating and I highly recommend that anyone with an interest in Sonic Unleashed give these videos a watch.
     
    Last edited: May 26, 2024
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  2. aria

    aria

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    Never played the Wii/PS2 version but this is really interesting. Honestly, seeing some gameplay of these second acts actually makes me interested in checking this version out. I think I might have been too harsh on it in the past.
     
  3. Cooljerk

    Cooljerk

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    Before the other boost games came out, after I'd beaten both campaigns of unleashed, my TV used to have an input for HDMI alongside composite, so I'd turn my Wii on with a wavebird, and my Xbox 360 on with the wireless controller. Then I'd go through the level select in each game and play each main act of both games back to back, switching inputs on my TV. Like Cool Edge HD version act 1, then switch to Cool Edge Wii version and play it's act 1. Felt like a proper two-act sonic game that way.

    Unrelated to this topic mainly but fun memories of doing that. After Unleashed I wanted more boost gameplay so badly.
     
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  4. Its a shame they didn't get to finish all the 2nd acts cuz some of them were really cool to play in those missions. I really liked how the SD version took the same level themes as the HD version but did its own spin on them, and the extra acts going even farther in that direction is really nice.
     
  5. Jaxer

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    Maybe this is beside the point, but does anyone know if "Crimson Carnival" being the name of Eggmanland's level is exclusive to Unwiished?

    All other levels in both versions have a separate name from the country that they take place in (Holoska's level is named Cool Edge, Empire City's level is named Skyscraper Scamper and so on), but I don't think that there's a single place in HD Unleashed where you can see the name of Eggmanland's level.
     
  6. Just looked it up and nope, its purely a fan made name. Eggmanland in all versions and all languages.
     
  7. Jaxer

    Jaxer

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    Oh wow, you're 100% right.

    It seems that my memory is just hazy. It's been well over 10 years since I last touched the SD version, and I guess that misattributed YouTube video names didn't exactly help.
     
  8. shilz

    shilz

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    A fanname as deeply ingrained as "Seedrian" and "Dark Super Sonic"
     
  9. The Joebro64

    The Joebro64

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    The Storm found these poking through the Wii version, I wonder if the PS2 version has anything else/different left over. I would assume no since to my understanding Unleashed SD was developed on the Wii and ported to the PS2 later, but it'd still be worth checking.
     
  10. Cooljerk

    Cooljerk

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    probably nothing left over, but I had the PS2 version *first* (my walmart broke the street date on the 360 and PS2 versions by about a week) so I played that before the wii version, and there are a bunch of small differences throughout the entire game. It's not a straight 1:1 port, they had to do some minor fedangling to get it running on the PS2.
     
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  11. TheStormUnleashed

    TheStormUnleashed

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    Hello, I am the creator of these videos, thanks for sharing them here. I remember when I played this game on the PS2 I came across the Dragon Road unscathed mission, and from there also came across more missions that seemed to take place on a different map. For a long time I thought each mission had its own map, however over time I became suspicious that the stages may have been all on one map (per zone), it wasn't until I found out dolphin has a freecam, and I used it to look behind the start/after the end of each mission and I saw terrain from other missions present. Once I got hold of a moonjump code that was when I finally confirmed the entire map is still there, albeit devoid of objects. I also was able to extract the files from the game and find the stage files, which also was when I found all the night acts are in the same folder.

    I always did wonder if the night stages were meant to be one, it seems the split must've been quite early as the terrain for the next/previous map doesn't appear to load if I use a moonjump cheat to fly to where they could be, and collision is absent.

    As for missions, it seems quite common in many sonic games that out of the bounds of them seems to be an early object layout/unused objects, this is also the case with the HD version, the "mission" acts of Colours, and also generations.

    Here's a diagram of how I believe the old layouts remain outside of mission bounds:
    [​IMG]

    Also I did find one interesting thing about the SD version is that in the Dark Gaia running stage texture folder, I found some textures starting with "nyc", could this mean Empire City may have been planned to be added to this version? Or are these just place holders? Also Adabat "Act 2" has some textures from Chun-nan, interesting.
    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: May 28, 2024
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  12. Mr. Cornholio

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    It's sort of a shame this particular 'brand' of boost was never really explored again in any other titles. I did find HD Unleashed's Daytime stages to be consistently more enjoyable, but I wonder if there are a couple of other ideas from the SD version that would be worth revisiting. Boosting did feel considerably more 'strategic' in where you had to use it compared to the other Boost titles which I found to be an interesting spin on the gameplay (most other games basically always encourage usage of it provided you're not doing any precision platforming).

    These are all super neat finds! I'd love to see the unused Daytime Act 2s that were done/partially done polished up a bit and somehow inserted back into the main game, but I imagine interest is low in modifying the Wii version to such an extent or it's just simply not known how to modify them back in.

    The biggest thing I recall is that Sonic's model was pretty significantly downgraded in the PS2 port of the game. They kinda got rid of the 'fake fur' effect so Sonic looks a little more plastic-y on a higher resolution display. Are there more documented/known changes? Outside of obvious dialog/text differences for the tutorials, I'm not familiar with any others.

    Semi-related, but I also swore a PSP port based on the PS2 port was also planned at some point, yet I'm having difficulty finding any official/'semi-official' source that actually confirmed it was going to happen outside of a Wikia stating it was planned (and said Wikia doesn't seem to have any citations/images of a listing for a PSP port).
     
  13. MH MD

    MH MD

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    Maybe you are thinking of Generations? that has a more known supposed existence of a PSP version that got scrapped, but i don't believe i have ever heard of an Unleashed PSP version despite following the game closely before release at the time
     
  14. Chimes

    Chimes

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    Can't say I recall there being a PSP version announced. Only thing we got was a shitty piddly diddly daddly doodly J2ME version by Gameloft that models itself after Rush. That one got poked with quite recently since apparently the code to that mobile version got leaked.

    But either way the levels being structured like this explains a toooon about why whenever I played Unleashed on the Wii it felt oddly closed in with areas just stopping.
     
  15. The Joebro64

    The Joebro64

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    Empire City is internally referred to as "nycity" in the 360/PS3 version, so I think it's likely these are Empire City remnants. Huge find if that's the case!
     
  16. shilz

    shilz

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    I can't find anywhere I mentioned this specifically here but there's a few leftover human NPC models with skinning test animations sitting around in some files I poked around in a long time ago. Some Spagonia and Shamar ones basically. Can't say off the top of my head where they would've been in the files and it's not clear what the intent was.
     
  17. Kilo

    Kilo

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    Interestingly, the J2ME version has the inverse, sort of, in that Chun-Nan assets are labelled as jungle
    upload_2024-5-29_8-34-18.png

    And it's not a case of that just being a name they chose because the music properly refers to it as china
    upload_2024-5-29_8-35-16.png
    So it seems like at one point J2ME was going adapt Adabat, instead of Chun-Nan, and vice versa for SD.
    Edit; Chun-Nan is in SD, nevermind just had to shove in J2ME somewhere :V
     
    Last edited: May 29, 2024
  18. TheStormUnleashed

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    In the same stage folder ("stage075") there's also ptr textures, which I thought were shamar, but this version uses "pet" for that stage. There's also files starting with "fnl" which seem to be all the gaia colossus running section textures, and a couple starting with "tpl" which also look like they're from shamar.

    Also one other interesting thing about the unused 1up in this game, every day stage in the game seems to have copies of all the enemies and gimmick in their own folder (with the models and textures), and each night stage however has copies in each area folder.

    (to recap the day stages are split into several "areas", each area appears on the results screen with their own time, however the night acts are a full area of their own stage folder, so act 1 is Area A, act 3 would be C ect....)

    Only Area A of Windmill isle Night (Which is Act 1) has a copy of the extra life, no other areas that i looked at seemed to have it. It is the 67th line in puyo tools in the in Stage111/gimmick_Stage111_A folder.
    [​IMG]

    Speaking of Chun nan, the third Chun nan day folder has more textures than the act 1 folder (stage 043, it has no terrain, collision, or set file data, but belongs to Chun nan)

    Act 1: 71 textures, "Act 3": 73 textures, seems that "act 3" is missing some from act 1 but has some of its own, and seem to be unfinished with bright green areas:

    [​IMG]

    (these also appear in the "Act 2" folder)

    "Act 2" (The one where some missions take place) also has 71 textures but some being different from act 1, most notably textures for the dragon you run on.

    Edit: To add on (Not sure if double posting is allowed here)

    I went through the mission numbers and what set files they modify and this is what I believe each one is;

    Day Stage Missions:

    Windmill Isle Act 1: (011)
    001 - Jump Tutorial
    002 - Drift Tutorial
    003 - Homing Attack Tutorial
    004 - Sonic Boost Tutorial
    006 - Slide Tutorial

    Windmill Isle Act 2: (012)
    008 - Ring Attack 1
    009 - Unscathed
    010 - Ring Attack 2
    011 - Time Attack
    043 - Quick Step Tutorial (?)

    Cool Edge Act 1: (021)
    026 - Stomp Tutorial
    028 - Ring Attack 1
    029 - Don't Break Anything
    030 - Time Attack 1
    031 - Time Attack 2
    032 - Ring Attack 2

    Rooftop run Act 1: (031)
    044 - Wall Jump Tutorial
    046 - Ring Attack
    047 - Unscathed

    Rooftop run "Act 2": (032)
    048 - Time Attack

    Rooftop run "Act 3": (033)
    049 - Ring Attack

    Dragon Road Act 1: (041)
    051 - Ring Attack 1
    054 - Don't Break Anything
    055 - Time Attack

    Dragon Road "Act 2": (042)
    052 - Unscathed
    053 - Ring Attack
    056 - Time Attack

    Arid Sands Act 1: (051)
    062 - Light Speed Dash Tutorial
    064 - Ring Attack
    065 - Don't Break Anything

    Arid Sands "Act 2": (052)
    066 - Ring Attack 1
    067 - Ring Attack 2
    068 - Time Attack

    Jungle Joyride Act 1: (061)
    082 - Ring Attack 1
    084 - Ring Attack 2
    085 - Time Attack
    086 - Don't Break Anything

    Jungle Joyride Act 2: (062)
    083 - Time Attack
    087 - Ring Attack
    088 - Unscathed

    Eggmanland Act 1: (071)
    090 - Ring Attack
    091 - Unscathed
    092 - Time Attack

    Night Missions:

    Windmill Isle Night: (111)
    012 - Dash and Jump Tutorial
    013 - Swing and Climb Tutorial
    014 - Rack up Combo
    015 - Grab then Throw Tutorial
    016 - Werehammer Tutorial
    020 - Beat Down Tutorial
    021 - Were Claw Tutorial
    022 - Were Wallop Tutorial
    023 - Earthshaker Tutorial
    024 - Unleashed Tutorial
    025 - Bigger Combo Tutorial

    Cool Edge Night: (121)
    ??? - Battle Royale
    ??? - Don't Break Anything

    Rooftop Run Night: (131)
    036 - Find the Treasure
    037 - Don't Break anything

    Dragon Road Night: (141)
    ??? - Don't get Hit
    ??? - Battle Royale

    Arid Sands Night: (151)
    ??? - Find the treasure
    ??? - Don't Break Anything

    Jungle Joyride Night: (161)
    ??? - Battle Royale
    ??? - Don't get Hit

    Eggmanland Night: (171)
    ??? - Find the treasure
    ??? - Don't get Hit
    ??? - Battle Royale

    Puyo tools was unable to open many night stage fodlers where the mission set data is sadly, but notice that there are no missions in the 70s range, and a lot of numbers are missing.
     
    Last edited: May 30, 2024
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