Sonic 1: Stardust Gear Edition

I will tell you right now, with some experience with the Sega CD using HCKTROX's disassembly, it is not easier to manage or less buggy at all. Infact, it is ALOT harder to manage (in my opinion) than a standard Genesis disassembly.

EDIT: Quote removed due to posts originally above mine being deleted.

 

EDIT: Nevermind, he wants me to port the sound driver and I'm not going to do it. Trash please.

 

OK, I'm just gonna throw this put there: porting the game to a different engine, any engine more advanced than the one you're using, will not solve all your problems. Oh sure, you'll have more hardware space on the MegaCD, and a larger color palette on the 32X, but you're still going to have limits and bugs. If you have a bug in your Sonic 1 game, it's not going to magically go away because you port it to different hardware. The only way it's going to get ironed out, is of you iron it out. You keep saying the orriginal Sonic engine is "buggy", and to that I say: how? There's been a little over a dozen great hackers who have made something amazing out of the orriginal Sonic 1 game, with relatively little glitches in the game. When someone comes along and says: "the engine is buggy and limited" I immediately think the person in question is inexperienced. Even if there's a 4 megabyte limit on the hardware, there's a lot you can do within 4 megabytes. You're working with sprites, SMPSes, and a small (but full) palette choice for pete's sake. Mind the limit and you'll be fine.


I'd also like to point out that all engines have "limits" that need to be adhered to. Weather it be the orriginal Sonic 1 engine, or the fan game engine you want to port your game to, you have a limit as yo what you can put in there. And if you really want your work to shine, you're gonna fill up a ton of that space with extra features to your game.

 

I would like to point out a few misconceptions here, firstly, porting to the Mega CD will not solve graphical related issues such as sprite limits, limited colours, etc. The Mega CD has no display ability, it has a custom ASIC for generating graphics in a 3D scaled/resized manner, but the actual display of those graphics are all held on (and displayed by) the Mega Drive's VDP.

Secondly, the 32x being of higher graphics has one flaw that might get in the way, and that's that the 32x's display graphics can only display infront or behind the Mega Drive's graphics, while each pixel can be decided individualled, you cannot have the graphics behind say... the Mega Drive's VDP Plane A but infront of Plane B. It is either overlayed or underlayed through all Mega Drive layers (except backdrop). If you plan to do a Knuckles Chaotix and have all character graphics displayed on the 32x side, then you may have problems with loops or special twisty in/out paths which involve going behind and infront of the Plane A graphics.

 

I think the point is that continuing the hack on Genesis is probably the best option (besides cancelling, but that'd be a last resort).

 

SegaCD use MP3 and not just SMPS. The sound driver causes the crashes in my hacks.

And I don't need a game with high quality like Knuckles' Chaotix.

The other bugs will be fixed by myself.

 

I've been playing this for a while and I'd like to give you some comments and the like on what I've played so far, I've only played Sky Shores Zone of the latest build, just to be clear:

• The layouts, as they currently stand, need some work. While the chunks connect well in most places, in some areas they don't  (with objects being used to fix them) and there's an awful lot of start and stop that needs to be addressed, such as springs that lead into a wall. There is also a lot of the original layout still being used, which makes it feel a bit samey. While it's good to use the original layout as a reference to how things work, I wouldn't advise you to use much of it in original layouts for this reason.
• The background blends in with the foreground colours too much (In Sky Shores Act 1) and can be a little awkward to look at for long periods of time. The other 2 acts (Sky Shores Act 2 and 3) also suffer from the same problem, where the sky colour is too similar to the ground colour.
• You can die at the end of Sky Shores Act 1 (during the score tally, even) by jumping off the screen to the right. You should add an additional chunk after this point in the layout to fix this. I've mentioned this before and it's still an issue.
• I also felt inclined to switch off the hack during Act 3. I wasn't having fun and felt it was a bit of a chore. I think this is important to look into. I think you should have some beta testers have a run through and see what they think. Do they feel the same way and if so, look at what can be done to improve.
• While it's nice to be given a new build when you have something to show, I feel that you're releasing new builds way too frequently. I understand that you may have worked on something and would like to show it off, but since the start of this topic in July, you've released 5 builds (that I can see) which in my opinion is way too many for such a short amount of time. If you're still inclined to release incremental builds, then maybe do so when you have a zone 100% completed or feel you've made substantial progress that people will want to see.

Also, in regards to your current conversation point:

You've mentioned that your buggy SMPS ports cause crashes in Regen, yet instead of trying to fix this problem (I'm led to believe this isn't a difficult task, which is likely the result of incorrect Sonic 1 samples being called such as the SEGA sound [correct me if I'm wrong] ), you are opting to move your entire hack to the Sega Mega CD, where I expect you'll encounter even more problems. 

I wouldn't advise this because, as it currently stands, you are having issues understanding what's wrong with your current setup and would rather move to a new one that, while on the surface appears more manageable, has it's own share of problems and restrictions that I don't think you understand. This just seems like an easy solution to your problem, when I feel you may be setting yourself up for a bigger fall.

I'm not saying this to discourage you from doing so (and if you feel you're ready to make this change and understand what you're putting yourself in for, then go for it), it's just that this move to the Sega CD appears to be a quick fix solution to your problem and I wouldn't want you to make that mistake.

 

D.A. Garden, I have recently cancelled the Sega CD implementation, and decided to just port the S3K sound driver.

Do you know about anyone that can do this?

 

Last time I tried porting the sound driver to the GitHub disassembly, it was a total nightmare. Errors everywhere. When I ported it to the Hivebrain disassembly, I didn't get those errors.

 

How to port this into hivebrain?

 

I believe there's a tutorial for this in retro's "how to" section.

 

No, there's no guide about porting GitHub disasm to Hivebrain, but wiki has the guide how to port Hivebrain's SNASM68K version to ASM68K.

 

I think he means how to port the Sonic 3 sound driver to the Sonic 1 Hivebrain disassembly.

 

First off: Why? If the only reason you want to swap sound drivers is because you broke the original, then don't do that; go fix it. You say that it's strange broken SMPS ports that cause crashes? Well, why not figure out and fix what is broken? I'm right here if you need anything, I know my way around S1's sound driver.
 
Now, if you're still intent on this, while it's not S3K's (yes, there are differences), there's an S3 driver to Hivebrain S1 guide here, as all the others have said. I used it all the way back when I first began hacking; it works pretty well (even if the guide takes forever to follow). Though I can't say much about adding custom music to it.

 

Hey, I have ported MegaPCM driver to Sonic 1 instead of Sonic 3 Driver.

I will also add Sonic 3 DAC Samples to the driver.

I have also made new loops, like these:



 



 

Next update is coming soon, I am currently modifying the zone art & layout.

 

Mind me saying to use some other image hosting site such as imgur.com? Please?

The images are way too small and if someone were to click on them... well.

Change image hosting sites.

Then we may actually be able to see it.

EDIT: Actually, why are you not using imgur? You used it in the first post (Although you put links to the pictures, you didn't actually make them visible on the page...)

 

I have uploaded an update because I must.

I'm going to completely change the art of the first zone.

The annoying sega sound has removed from "Act Clear".

Sky Shores Zone, SLZ & LZ's layout has been changed.

https://www.mediafire.com/?h8uowdnuir5trd5

 

New Youtube Walkthrough:

 

When I click in image I can see girls!


Anyway, glad you finally fixed the problem of the "SEGA" in  music end of level and I see that you have improved your level design a bit of Sky Shores, looks better than the old. I recommend you work subtly at least two months in your hack for when you back and show something incredible.

 

New features to the next update:

 - New title (screen) for my hack (I will try to brainstorm a name)

 - Completely new art for Sky Shores.

 - New Level Art for Bouncy Blast, Dark Dungeon and Speedy Street (Maybe)

 - New Boss for the first 2 Zones. (Not including Popsicle Peak, the planned 2nd zone)

Sky Shores Zone is going to change his rectangular pattern of Green Hill to simply a floating shore with clouds here and there.

It will look like this:

Spoiler

But with coastal ground. I may take the background from here.