Sonic 1

Hmm, you sure about that?
http://youtube.com/watch?v=8xLFDgq9sP0
watch this. The game has an option screen at the beginning, two control types, no spike bug, the HUD is in a different place, has a pause menu, loading screen, and an intro screen. It's definitely not the original we're looking at... but pretty close

By the way the guy playing it in the video sucks.

 

Those are all features that can be very easily handled by an emulator frontend. I completely and utterly doubt they went through the effort to port this and have it turn out so well—it doesn't make sense. I don't buy it. Especially when they couldn't do it right on a proper system (GBA).

 

Well we have two very accurate cell phone ports (small graphics, no special stages, and one with regular graphics and special stages)...I don't think it's too much to say they couldn't do it again for the ipod. Also, you really think the ipod could handle a genesis emulator running at full speed? (I really have no idea about this, I've never had an ipod. :P)

 

I'm having problems putting this game on my ipod. I downloaded the game (from http://rapidshare.com/files/77515460/Sonic_The_Hedgehog.ipg too cheap to buy the same game for the 5th time but if I can get it for free why not?) yet it won't go on the ipod (Says I'm not authorized to use it or something)

How can I fix this?

 

The video shows that it's clearly a port, and definitely not merely a front end to the emulator.

 

If I recall, he mentioned not having the source materials to Hidden Palace, but it's possible that they had the final S2 and S1 source safekept...

Also this:

"Very accurate"? The controls completely suck on the cell phone versions.

 

Hmm? I recall them being true to the original...

 

You try doing this in the original then:

 

The newer iPods can handle ADX, VGM, and NSF emulation just fine—they could probably handle a full Genesis emulator without sound.

Still, I guess that file structure confirms it as a port. But why the hell would they do a proper port on the iPod, for fucks sake? The GBA was a MUCH better candidate for such treatment.

 

<!--quoteo(post=174509:date=Dec 19 2007, 12:05 PM:name=Puto)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Puto @ Dec 19 2007, 12:05 PM) [/quote]
What version was that? Defiantly not either version that I've tried.

 

<!--quoteo(post=174513:date=Dec 19 2007, 04:54 PM:name=rika_chou)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (rika_chou @ Dec 19 2007, 04:54 PM) [/quote]
What version was that? Defiantly not either version that I've tried.
[/quote]
http://pu7o.planetaclix.pt/sonicmob.rar <- there's three windows executables which are really the JARs with a built-in emulator attached. It's the second one I think; There are two part 1s there and one part 2.

 

Sonic Mobile is a port. About a year ago, I personally decompiled the compiled Java and compared it to the structure of the diassemblies from the original game. The core of the engines are identical.

The source code for Sonic 1 is obviously available.

 

What!?! You took it apart? After all the effort we put into putting it together?

Also I hope you are all thoroughly ashamed of yourselves for playing and advertising a pirated version of the game, and understand that your afterlife will be filled with torment and suffering. :disgust:

At least I can be happy in the knowledge that it's a pirated version of one of the low end builds (very low), Displaying everything in text rather than graphics (as in the original), was reserved for devices with low heap or JAR size limits. It would also most likely be missing various frames of animation, scenery tiles, parallax backdrops (alas one of the first things to go when slowdown was encountered), and maybe even enemies.

Try entering the code 230691 (a notable date), when it tells you to press 5, and you should unlock the cheats menu (in between the "Game Start" and "About" menu options) Not as fun as being able to place objects in the original debug mode, but you can whizz around a bit.


BTW. Good idea to have a quiz for allowing chatting on here. Alas due in part to my laziness, and partly because I've had no experience with hacking Sonic roms (never had the need), I only took the basic test. So 8 more replies from me, and I may just fall silent again.

 

Actually, both versions are in that RAR :P

Besides, that's packed EXE, you can't really run it on a cell phone anyway.

 

Do you realize that you're posting on a forum mainly dedicated to the illegal piracy, decompilation, and reverse engineering of Sonic games?

I mean, seriously, think about that for a second. This should not come as a surprise, especially if you passed the entrance exam.

 

Of course I realize it, but for some reason it's frowned upon for one of the devs to condone pirating their own games. :D

After all, it means I get paid less

 

This is something I've been wondering for a while myself too. So far all evidence is proving otherwise.

Regarding the iPod thingy, I'd also say it's a port. The rape to the GBA version might have been due to the coders of that port not getting any kind of original source. I can't corroborate this, but I'd swear I read somewhere this version was handled exclusively by SoA. Sounds weird, but we all know relations between SoA and SoJ always have been hard.

To Claxon, regarding the game being pirated, I guess you already know this is not a board of gamers looking to play for free The reason of having the game around there is for research purposes, aka because we are so damn curious. Also, thanks for the hidden code, quite neat stuff :-)

 

Claxon,

Great job you guys did with the port! I must say, I'm fascinated by the work. May I ask exactly what you were given by SEGA to complete the port?

I can't imagine reverse engineering the /entirety/ of code, and reverse engineering /all/ of the data formats in such a short period of time without some guidance from the developers. Either you had both a Mega Drive guru and an MC68000 guru on your team, or you were given some detailed design specifications directly from SEGA.*

Assuming it was the latter, what exactly did they hand over to you in terms of documentation?

Have you, personally, seen the original source code? We're privy of most of the label names and thus also the naming conventions -- but what did it look like in terms of documentation? How much was 'commented?' Did the routines have headers which described their purpose and function in detail? If so, which language was used?

[We have some beta builds of the game which contained small portions of the original source code within the binary images -- namely some of the 'editmode' (debug mode) code -- and some data includes. Interestingly, the comments for the data includes were written in Kanji! If the source was commented in Kanji, how did you ever make any sense of the more technical (esp. graphics related) portions of the engine?]

[* Then again, if only creating a port, and not intending to modify anything, you wouldn't really need to know how the data was interpreted.]

 

Yes. It doesn't matter to me now anyway, because as soon as we finished Sonic, Glu mobile bought iFone and rendered 95% of the staff "redundant". Our 40 man QA department didn't even get a day's notice, they were just told to go home and not come back. The rest of us were required to work just long enough to finish off the core builds of sonic 1 part 2.


These days I'm working at Namco's mobile arm, using my wages to pay off the debts I accrued when my self and my house mate were both "laid off" by a certain mobile games publisher.

Thanks for the compliments about the ports. There are still a few things I wish we'd had time to fix, mainly some poor camera positioning, that would be too low at certain points during Green hill, causing you to see "Floating spikes". It was a shame that we couldn't implement the special zone too, but j2me only lets you rotate images by 90 degrees (if you're lucky), so a smoothly rotating level would have taken considerable extra time.


Oh and Dr Ivo, I've posted my story of porting sonic concerning some of your question in the engineering forum ( http://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?showtopic=9700 ) Rather than completely Hijack an ipod thread.

 

Couldn't you just do the same thing the original did? Just keep pre-rotated sprites in the RAM and use those?