New Sonic 2 development lore drop - Genocide/Cyber City palette and art!

But we know it wasn't called Dust Hill at this point. We know Mystic Cave evolved from Madness Mountain, which was named Madness Mountain long after Dust Hill was named Dust Hill, and long before Mystic Cave was implemented in-game. Even if Mystic Cave did evolve from Dust Hill, the only way it could be called Dust Hill at this point is if they changed the name from Dust Hill to Madness Mountain and then BACK to Dust Hill before changing it again to Mystic Cave.

 

I don’t think the development and integration of level concepts and names can ever be noted as being as concretely linear as we’d like.
Mystic Cave Zone, for example, seems to be an amalgamation of concepts and placement from Dust Hill Zone and Madness Mountain.

Th development of Sonic 2 was fast and fluid. They were seemingly brainstorming concepts and implementing bits and pieces by seeing what was feasible, what was completed by staff, and what roughly fitted whatever tropes they wanted to blend together.

Madness Mountain was seemingly never named in the level select, and that particular concept, that was used for what became the level known as Mystic Cave, seemed to have taken the slot of a ‘Dust Hill Zone’ early.

 

Or, y’know, they used the map/timeline names instead of the art names? Like how Wood isn’t called “Secret Jungle” in any prototype, despite it being clear that the two are one and the same.

 

Yes, I worded that last bit a little clumsily - what I meant was: Why would they implement a title card saying "Dust Hill Zone" for Mystic Cave, if the Zone that was occupying that slot at that point in development didn't have any relation to that name?

It is admittedly odd that some Zones appear to have later revised names that for some reason weren't being used in-game during development - see the above example of Wood/Secret Jungle, or indeed Genocide City/Cyber City. For whatever reason, they seemed to continue using earlier names for the Zones in-game until quite a late stage of development, even if an updated name existed elsewhere behind the scenes - but the key thing is, they all seem to be genuine earlier names for those particular Zones. We simply don't have any concrete example of a name for one Zone being assigned to a completely different one in-game. Yes, "Dust Hill" doesn't fit the Zone as-is - presumably that's why it was eventually renamed Mystic Cave.

I'll agree that unlike most of the other stages, the Zone in question seems to have gone through multiple ideas as to what form it would actually take - unless we're very lucky and early documents with more information are released or rediscovered, I doubt we'll ever find out exactly what its original conception was supposed to be back when the "Dust Hill" name was originally established.

 

Winter Rock World Zone.

 

Please, don't use fan theories as 100% facts. Thank you.
Just few month ago we thought that DiC Tails was inviroment of American cartoonists, just weird quirck and choice of design.
A year ago, it was a 1000% fact that Cybercide city was a single act zone with MTZ act 3 layout.
5 years ago we thought that there were "Medieval" time map that just wasn't showed.
10 years ago we even didn't knew what the "Tropical Sun" is.
In 2000s we were sure that Dust Hill=Desert mockup.
In beginning of forums we thought that mockups of alpha HPZ, EHZ and Desert Zone were real screenshots just with weird camera.
In 1994 we didn't knew that arts on the wall in S&K movie on MTV shows recolored S2 concept arts.


...K, last one is out of place, but just funny to note.

Anyway

While it's a theory- let's just think about it just as theory, let's don't make a "100% truth" of it before it will be confirmed.

 

In 2030, we won't even be sure if Sega made the game themselves

 

It could be because that's what it was called in the level select. Not every developer knows everything about the game they're working on, so it's possible that the developer which implemented the title cards did not know what the zones were named beyond what the level select called them.

If the developer did know that the zone was actually called Mystic Cave, then they may have used the name given by the level select for consistency, so that the title card could be renamed later at the same time that the level select is corrected. It is not unusual for programmers to stagger modifications like this, allowing them to focus on one particular task at a time and not get side-tracked with making unrelated changes to code and assets (this is especially the case when version control is employed, as it is considered poor form for a single commit to contain an amalgamation of various unrelated changes).

 

This. 100% this. People on this thread always tend to come up with far-fetched theories to explain conflicting ideas and concepts coexisting (yours truly included), when the most likely answer usually is that their creators had no idea what the other ones were doing. Remember that Craig Stitt was working on a carnival level entirely on his own accord without asking permission or telling anyone, and had to scrap it when the lead developers found out and disapproved of it.

Going a bit off topic here, but I actually really like the name "Cybercide City". Sounds like a genuine zone name from one of the Game Gear games.

 

"Cybercide" sounds like "cider", man.

 

Or they didn't care to change the names as there were more important things to do than fix a debug menu (for example, having actual levels to play?)

 

I think it's just erosion. I am fortunate to have a property on a lake in a valley, which is surrounded by grassland tundra, and there exists little pockets just like this of erosion where the sandy soil collapses and breaks away from the sides of the hills. They are often punctuated with little holes from birds which make nests in the side.

Just like this:

 

Changes were made to the level select throughout development that shows the developer knew and cared about the working names matching their slots.

• Ocean Wind, Sand Shower, Rock World, and Blue Ocean's slots were removed from the selection and had their names dummied out.
• Tropical Sun's slot was properly renamed to Metropolis after Metropolis Act 3 took its slot.
•Wood was removed and dummied out after being cut.
• Sky Chase and Death Egg were properly named when they were added/moved to different slots. Ditto for Sky (Wing) Fortress when it was added to Blue Ocean's slot, all of this prior to updating the working names to their finalized names.

These aren't the actions of a developer that doesn't know which levels are which, or doesn't care.

 

Okay, but the developer that maintained the level select might not have been the one that implemented the title cards.

 

Even if that were the case, does that actually matter when the names on the level select were being properly updated/maintained?

Your argument was that an unrelated name was attached to an unrelated level through ignorance or indifference. The proto builds we have show that the level select screen names were actually updated as levels were added, removed, or switched around.

 

My argument was that an unrelated name was attached to an unrelated level *by its title card* through ignorance or indifference. I'm responding to someone who was specifically asking why the title card would show the wrong name. You raise a good point about the level select always being kept up-to-date, but that's unrelated to my point.

 

Past the Beta stage of development (in which everything on scope is implemented besides bugfixes and late additions), testers start to kick-in in numbers (and marketing). You will want to have a pretty clean level select so that testers aren't lost and can fill the tickets right. Therefore, the level select is updated and remains in the game because it is used by testers to the very last minute. Once validated, you will not want to touch the code again to remove it past the Gold Master stage (and it's a nice easter egg if found anyways).

 

Exactly. Which is why it would be important for the correct name to be attached to the correct level.

 

I find it interesting that Clownacy's argument is similar to one he made over 4 years ago, which includes an example of similar blind imitation involving the doors in Chemical Plant Zone and Death Egg Zone.

 

Anyway, weren't we supposed to get a second Yamaguchi interview with Beep21 around this time?

I'm pretty sure that the possibility of Frank interviewing Brenda Cook was discussed too.