Sonic 2 LD

I don't mind using GPL code but I'd rather reinvent the wheel at least once. I did take a look at Tiled but decided against using it in favour of a more specialised tool. The level editor is about 95% complete. I just need to tidy up the UI and do some testing.

 

With the tiles I've made so far, I was able to create this. There's still a few more to go, but I'm almost done.
I've still got one free color in the palette which I'll probably need to use for the water in act 2.
I'll leave it up to someone else to make the larger tiles.

Comments and critique are not only welcome, but requested.

 

I thought the scrollmap only could use 256 tiles. There are 384 there. Not to mention tiles used by rings and the like. (even if it wasn't the case, VRAM only has enough memory for 512 tiles, and it has to be shared with some other stuff like the tilemap layout data, so...)

 

Then let the minimizing begin.
There are quite a few tiles that are the same save for the color. With a little palette trickery we could shave off a few here and there.
The pipes use more tiles than I'd like, but there's not much I can do there. A few tiles aren't really necessary, they just make the shapes look a little better. I'd really like to have the tubes in there, but they will definitely use up a lot of tiles.

 

For the tubes it's easy: make the lighting be in the middle. That way you'd probably get out with four tiles between both horizontal and vertical instead of eight. That, and you may want to reduce detail. Shading isn't so important because we know the hardware is limited. But I guess you could get some more tiles by simplifying the background first - less variety in the buildings, you know.

 

We have 448 tiles to play with (the rest of VRAM is taken up by the SAT). Most levels load sprite tiles into the first 256 slots. The remaining 192 are used for level tiles, 4 of which are reserved for the animated rings.

 

Looks awesome. Nice artwork, MoDule, and awesome work Glitch. I can see that I'm no longer needed in this, so *disappears into the shadows*

 

Small update:

I was able to get rid of a few tiles by using the sprite palette and eliminating some that aren't absolutely necessary.

Nice vid. It's good to know I've only used up half of what we can use.

Hold it!
I can't do all the tiles for every zone. Any help is appreciated, even if I'll probably end up tinkering with it, anyway.

 

The stripes on the tubes should go horizontally, rather than vertically, but if I'm interpreting your new tile set right, you've already fixed it.

 

...Shouldn't they always go vertically, since they're supposed to make a pseudo-transparency?

 

Yep!

 

I seem to have misremembered

 

*enters through a window, and blows dust off topic*

Coughcough, yeesh, been a while since someone posted here

*places crappy work on and leaves through the window*

 

I had completely forgot about this project, so I was blown away with the art BlackHole. I hope that this is still alive.

 

I would say tone down that purple a bit.

 

Heh, there's quite a bit of irony in that. =P

That said, I'm really glad that work is going to continue on this project. It's definitely one of the hacks here that I've been keeping an eye on for quite some time, and some of the work that people have posted in here is quite impressive, and certainly looks and feels like something you would see in an 8-bit Sonic game.

That said, like SGR said, the purple in that art is kind of bright. If you look at MCZ in Sonic 2, It's a tad bit darker:



In contrast, I'd personally try to brighten up the green a little bit (going back up to the screenshot I just posted). Filling up a bit of the black would make it feel a tiny bit less empty, but that's just me nitpicking. Other than that though, it looks pretty awesome! =P

Also keep in mind that I have next to no hacking experience; I'm just tossing in my 2 cents.

 

Music.

All about 90-95% complete. You need Mod2PSG to play them; I didn't export to VGM because it doesn't export looping VGMs. :-(

Emerald Hill Zone (1 Player) Note missing baseline notes (Mod2PSG can't go too low).
Oil Ocean Zone
Boss Theme Note possible phase cancellation.
Final Boss Theme

Enjoy.