The Supreme Topic of 'Other' Knowledge.

Hi nineko. I haven't heard from you in a while.

The Knuckles areas in the Sonic 3 levels are complete structurally, but the object placement was clearly still being worked on. There are some interesting changes between Sonic 3 alone and Sonic 3 and Knuckles in what got put where. I'd show every image I have on this, but I think the image count is over 100, so I'll just point out the more interesting stuff.

I'm sure this has been brought up before, but I've looked around and I haven't found any detailed documentation on it. If anyone has a link to a site with this information on it, I'd love to have it.

Pictures from Sonic 3 are on the left, S3&K on the right.


Angel Island Zone
--------------------

Yeah, very temporary object placement. Obviously in the final game they wouldn't put a lamp post in the middle of two breakable pillars, and they certainly wouldn't put one about two fucking seconds into act 2. Oh, and the spikes are gone in S3&K.

This is also the only lamp post in Knuckles' area in Sonic 3.

Hydrocity Zone
-----------------
*No rings or lamp post in Knuckles' section of Hydrocity Act 2.

Marble Garden Zone
-----------------------

Knuckles' last section before the boss has its difficulty ramped up slightly. Oh no, a badnik!


The oh so difficult "wait until you can jump onto the platform and spindash through the wall" has been replaced with one of those arrow shooting Incan head things.

Carnival Night Zone
-----------------------
Act 1 has some badniks and rings added to it in the final -- there aren't any badniks at all in Knuckles' sections.
Other than 5 rings near the start and 14 rings near the end, Knuckles' Act 2 section is completely barren of all objects.

Ice Cap Zone
----------------
Act 1 has some object shifts in the dreaded spiky ice ball portion. Other than that and 3 rings above Knuckles' sign post at the end of the level, everything is the same.

Act 2 has some more shifts/additions/deletions in objects, but nothing major.

Launch Base Zone
---------------------

The amount of objects changed in Sonic and Tails' sections of Launch Base Zone are so numerous that I can't be bothered pointing them all out in this post. The S3&K versions have been drastically toned down in difficulty. I'll move on to the Knuckles portions.


Launch Base Zone Act 2. The floating platform above the spikes (well, embeded) was replaced with a spring that would launch you into the speed booster, sending you back into the turbine. If you let yourself fall while you're on the platform...


...you'll end up stuck in the floor. Glad this went out.


Notable because this is the only other time those particular breakable blocks show up in the game. In S3&K they're only present to keep Sonic out of Knuckles' final boss area.

-None of the rings on slopes in Launch Base Zone are present in Sonic 3. They were all added in S3&K.

 

A row of spikes in LBZ2 in Knuckles area is replaced with an unusual type of Ribot, right?
Similarly, a Ribot underwater in a part of the Sonic/Tails route is replace in S3K with a row of spikes.

 

<!--quoteo(post=179044:date=Feb 20 2008, 12:24 AM:name=GoldXORnic)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (GoldXORnic @ Feb 20 2008, 12:24 AM)
Yeah, very temporary object placement. Obviously in the final game they wouldn't put a lamp post in the middle of two breakable pillars, and they certainly wouldn't put one about two fucking seconds into act 2. Oh, and the spikes are gone in S3&K.

This is also the only lamp post in Knuckles' area in Sonic 3.[/quote]
I can explain this one.

The transition from Act 1 to Act 2 in Angel Island Zone is rather transperant—you'd think it happens once you defeat the boss and hit the signpost. However, it actually happens when the miniboss comes in and sets the level on fire. This is further shown by coming back from a special stage before reaching the boss area—the act 2 music will play, rather than the act 1 music.

At this point, the respawn point is manually set after defeating the boss as Sonic, to give the illusion that you're in the "real" act 2. However, since they didn't set a manual respawn for playing as Knuckles yet (as defeating the boss and dying afterwards would bring you into Sonic's area), a checkpoint was placed in order to mark Knuckles' respawn point within his own level section.

It's a bit of a dirty fix, but it works. Obviously, that didn't remain in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, so all is well.

 

Oh, right. Forgot that Knuckles' start/end points were removed/not present in S3.

 

<!--quoteo(post=179049:date=Feb 20 2008, 12:39 AM:name=Tweaker)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Tweaker @ Feb 20 2008, 12:39 AM)

Just to illustrate how much harder Sonic 3's Launch Base Zone was:


Numerous item boxes in Sonic 3 were replaced with invincibility.


ALL oribnauts located near turbines were removed in S3&K.



Probably the two most well-known changes:




The most inverse change in the game.

 

May as well give a mention to the change of the spring near the start of Hydrocity 2 into a 1-up.

 

*There are three other Special Stage ring rooms in Lava Reef Zone Act 1 that aren't used at all - no giant rings are placed in them. They might have gone a little overboard and then decided to take out the rings for the final version.



The first two rooms are blocked off by the invisible GT barriers. The third room isn't, but there's no way to get to it. It was either left over from an early version of the stage, or you entered it from the bottom. Perhaps we'll find out when the betas are released this Saturday.

Of course, you can glitch your way into all three of these rooms if you know how.

 

Apparently the one weird Ribot in the Sonic/Tails part of LBZ2 was in both S3 and S&K. (Maybe it was spikes in a beta? We'll see.)

 

My first post at this fine establishment :worship: (I just hope this isn't common knowledge, as I have found nothing about it on the internet)

In Knuckles' Chaotix (final version) I have found a frame in Knuckles' sprites that hasn't been known about.

How to recreate it (you need to be Knuckles to do this, your partner doesn't matter)
Find a wall.

go a ways from it.

jump and glide at an 45 degree angle while your partner is in 'hold'.
If all works, you will look like this:

If not climb to the top jump away and glide again.

So close and yet so far Knuckles?

 

Here's something from S3K that I found interesting. You know those monitors that pop up from the ground when you let the signpost fall on them? You can see them clearly in one of the prototype Sandopolis Zones, but I wanted to see them in the final. So I did a bit of testing.


Here's the Angel Island Zone midboss. I already know all about that, but what I don't know is, where are those damn monitors? So what I'll do is disable scroll layer A. This removes all of the foreground stuff, leaving only sprites and the background.


Okay, that doesn't help. Maybe they'll only show up after I kill the boss.


AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA


Oh wait, there we go. For some reason, they don't show up until the signpost lands. Maybe that's the beginning of the check to see if it's landed on one. I don't know. Even so, hax won't really help you land on the monitors - you still have to know where they are.


We can see here that the Angel Island Zone foreground tiles don't fully hide the monitors. You can still see white specks through the grass.

 

Don't know why I'm even bothering to report this, but I have a large poster of The Doors on my bedroom door (no less!), which has the band's logo written in the same colours as the Sonic 2 logo.

The colour on my poster is slightly darker, so it's more similar. This isn't even slightly notable, but I'm really quite bored.

 

Sonic Chaos' credits misspell "Miles Prower" to "Miles Power".

 

That's the SMS version -- in the GG versions I don't think this applies, though it might be in S&T -- I've only played Chaos recently, not S&T.

 

Did anyone know/post/say anything about this inside SONIC3K.EXE?

http://www.mediafire.com/?z03tm7jxmzy

Just a sample:

Code (Text):

1. gost08
2. gost08_ctr
3. gost08_body
4. gost08_init
5. gost08_wait0
6. gost08_atak_init
7. gost08_move0
8. gost08_chg0
9. gost08_chg1
10. gost08_chg2
11. gost08_atak0
12. gost08_atak1
13. gost08_atak2
14. gost08_body_fout0
15. setcg
16. col_tbl_00
17. col_tbl_04
18. set_openbox_cg
19. set_emy08_cg

130kb worth of stuff like that inside the file I uploaded.

EDIT: NEVERMIND. Since that topic's almost 4 years old, I guess I can ask if anyone actually did make a disassembly using those labels after all? :P

But I have more stuff that has to do with Sonic3K for the PC.

Has anyone mentioned that the MIDIs used for the port are directly from the Genesis version? Meaning that they sound 100% identical, and that they weren't recomposed into MIDI? I have evidence to say that they are 100% like their Genesis versions:

http://www.mediafire.com/?rm2n45yzymb

Note on a couple of things. The midi version was kinda butchered for something I was using it for, so it's missing some instruments but it sounds identical either way. I used Adobe Audition to Vocal Remove (sounds dumb, I know, but it's cool to listen to Genesis synth with a vocal remover, there's always something new you hear) on the Genesis version, which was taken from the 10th Anniversary Soundtrack. I know, I should've used VGM, but I had this track already in FLAC so I decided to stick with it. :P

If you think about it, it makes sense. The music for Sonic 3 were composed using MIDI keyboard, and then "programmed" into the game (probably ment "tracked", this was all taken from a Jun Senoue interview). The people porting the game probably didn't have to convert anything, since the songs were probably in MIDI format already. And you've seen what I posted before I made this edit. So it's no doubt they could have access to this stuff. Listening to the MIDIs from the Sonic 1 port to the mobile phone also sound like they weren't recomposed for MIDI, and were either already in MIDI or had to be converted.

Another thing I have to mention about the PC version. About those MIDIs to replace the music that couldn't be used correctly in the game (mini boss, carnival, ice cap, etcetc) because of the voice samples. Does anyone know who the hell composed them? They sound out of placed. But the weird thing is, I have this feeling that they were composed around the same time as the Genesis version, but were used as ideas for what they really wanted to use for the game. The credits for the PC port hasn't been edited to display anyone new, last time I checked. So, any ideas? :P

I'd love for someone to put the replacement MIDIs in Sonic 3, since we obviously have the knowledge now. I'm curious of how well they sound with Sonic 3's sound driver. I've been trying for weeks to get these working for Sonic 1/Sonic 2 but the wonderful advantages of x64 has been pissing me off trying to get MIDI -> XM. I can't even use the assemblers, except for IDA Pro 5.2. So I need to get a Virtual PC up soon so I can start.

If anyone wants the MIDIs for the PC version, get them here: http://sonicdiscovery.free.fr/music_en.htm

 

<!--quoteo(post=184574:date=Mar 20 2008, 11:59 PM:name=evilhamwizard)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (evilhamwizard @ Mar 20 2008, 11:59 PM)

 

Erm... You can have a 100% identical MIDI to a song without it being the original. That's not too hard to manage, really.

It's not enough to base anything conclusive on, if nothing else.

 

I don't know about that thought. You have to remember it is a port, and they did have access to the original source files. But hey, who gives a fuck about midis anyway. :P

Anyway, here's some stuff from Sonic Adventure.

I can remember these being posted on CulT's forums back 5 years a go, but I know for sure they aren't on the main site. These are the rules/how tos for the TGS build. These are also in the Gamecube preview build. Translations would be great:


Rules for Amy's gameplay.


How to play?


Big's how to play?


Big's rules.


E-102's rules. Notice something about that other robot? Looks familar from a beta video where all of the other models were E-102s.


E-102's how to play?


Knuckles' rules.


Knuckles' how to play?


Sonic's rules.


Sonic's how to play?


Tails' rules.


Tails' how to play?

Now, the reason why I ask if it's "How to play" because the file name for these PVRs were either "rule" or "sousa". So I guess what I should be asking is if anyone knows what "sousa" means. Remember, these were labeled with "TGS" so there are no english versions of these.

Again, translations would help a lot.

 

And what's more is that the original statement isn't quite true anyway -- check out the Sonic 3 invincibility!


I am curious as to who did the replacement MIDIs, though...

 

Invincibility doesn't sound that bad. :P

Also, didn't Jim Trethewey also work on the S3K port to the PC? Maybe someone should ring him up another email again, because Ryoga did a nice interview with him. I'm looking all over my old PC box and case to see if I can find any credits for the port and I can't find any, and I got this game when it came out too.

Back to the labels in the EXE, did anyone actually use them yet? I would love a dissasembly of this game.

 

This is also in the final. Same render, but overlaying an Egg Carrier bridge scene, if I remember correctly.