Sonic 1 - Open World Experiment

Sonic 1 - Open World Experiment is an experimental ROM hack by me, Unlimited Trees. It's a basic level layout hack of Green Hill Act 3, which tries to be more of an open world level. I originally planned for you to hit an S monitor in order to beat the level, but due to my shitty hacking skills, there is no objective. You could look around the level and find extra lives and S monitors which will take you to the special stage. See if you find all of the S monitors, by the way.

Anyways, for some backstory: With my other game, Project Waffle, I planned on making huge, open world levels. However, I hadn't really messed around with that kind of concept before, so I decided to make a sort of "prototype" to the game, with this ROM hack. The level isn't as big and isn't as great as I plan the levels in Project Waffle to be, but it should give you an idea of how that game will play like.

Anyways I hope you guys enjoy this hack. It's pretty basic, and may have a few bugs, so let me know if you find a bug. Also, the music is the same as my other hack, UTS1. It just bothers music because I'm lazy.

Spoiler: Screenshots

DOWNLOAD

Credits:

Tools used:
-SonED2 by Stealth
-SonLVL by MainMemory
-SonMapED (even though all I did was use it for palette editing) by Xenowhirl
-Sonic 1 Text Generator thing by Selbi
-MegaPCM by vladikcomper

Music by: Joenick (Green Hills, Invincibility, and maybe another track which I probably forgot about) and Ozaleto (a hidden track, which is the same track from UTS1 (if you want to look for it, it's the same number in the sound test as it was in UTS1))

Everything else: me, Unlimited Trees

Special thanks to a few people in Discord who helped me on How 2 Haxing

 

Due to people in Discord experiencing some problems, I did some very minor fixes to level layout, like for example, an area involving WRECKING BALLS where if you bounce into a spring you get hit by them.
DWNLUDE

 

I believe that the fact that there is no end of the level defeats a lot of the purpose of this experiment. It's not nearly as enjoyable when there is no goal to reach as when there is.

Palette editing is probably the last thing you want to use SonMapED for. Shading correctly is difficult when you try converting the large color depth of a computer to the 9-bit color of the Genesis.

 

The experiment isn't really for an "end of level" thing. It's more for the "looking for stuff" part. Project Waffle's levels won't have an end of level and will just be about looking for the bosses and looking for items.

Also, as for the SonMapED thing, I just use it just because. I'm too lazy to look for any fancy palette editor tools. Besides, I already know how to use SonMapEd, and this, besides UTS1, will probably be my last hack as I want to focus on Project Waffle, so I don't really care at this point.

 

Bleh, fucking terrible. This may be a "test", but this test is bad. Your new floating chunks arent very well polished in areas, and some chunks blend in too much with the GHZ checkered wall pattern such as this:
Also, this happened:
Too lazy to run kega on PC, but this right here is terrible. I got stuck here from accidentally performing a zip on a falling platform. Fix this. As for level design, its the worse I have ever see you do. This really pisses me off. In my opinion, you should of polished this test before releasing it.

 

I know that this hack isn't the best, and I do admit that I could've fixed the level design in a lot of ways, but I find it kind of rude that you go out and say that my game is "fucking terrible". I've seen terrible games that do warrant that title, but this isn't one of them. I've played games with bad level design such as Sonic BTS, and various ROM hacks, but this one barely compares to those. I get that SuperEgg's old way of "ass ripping" was fun and all but you're just making yourself look like an ass. Next time you try criticizing a hack, try actually making it well to understand and full of good criticism. Although I do agree that some areas look bad, and that I do think I should've tried figuring out how to fix the collision issues more, I don't think you have to be so aggressive.

Anyways, tl;dr Although I do agree about somethings, you didn't have to be so aggressive, and to say that this game is straight out terrible is uncalled for.

Also, I'm not saying this game isn't good or bad or anything. I should've actually probably fixed a few things before releasing. I'm just really eager to show my stuff off.

 

Do you need to be so aggressive? Yeah, the hack's not really the best, but the way you're going about saying that is rude and uncalled for. Brazenly insulting someone like that really isn't the way to give proper criticism.

E: Ninja'd by Trees. Oh well

 

True it has glitches but it's very interesting concept to expand S1 layouts even more. I also can recommending add feature to hack that if you'll pass to next act/zone you can always return to previous act/zone going backwards to a edge of certain level, like in Metroid when you can always visit all areas via exploring during gameplay. I like also palette edit, pretty soft and nice to eyes. To summarize I support this project, because I see potential.

 

Xernom:

As for the hack itself, it's ok, level design gave me SCD PSTD though. Also it was rather annoying not realizing I had to go to GHZ3 just to play the hack proper.

 

If you ever think about turning this into a full fledged hack, could you make it so you can gain abilities and those abilities could give you access to new areas (kinda like The Dragon's Trap)? Also another suggestion, would it be possible for the zones to change during your adventure? Say, I was getting close to Marble Zone and Green Hill started getting hotter, or had more lava based gimmicks?

(Oh yeah, I'm still available for music, UT )

 

I can also give some SMPS to you if you want.