Sonic the Hedgehog: The Dark World (Sonic 1 Hack)

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SONIC THE HEDGEHOG: THE DARK WORLD​

After the events of Sonic CD, Dr. Robotnik goes into hiding.  Sonic takes a vacation back where it all began, South Island.  Meanwhile, Robotnik has secretly been gathering the Chaos Emeralds, and as soon as he finds the 7th, he uses their power to bring South Island back in time, except in this timeline, Robotnik has taken over South Island and stands unopposed!  The Island is trapped in the eternal night of Robotnik's Dark World, forever. . .

The only thing Robotnik didn't account for was that Sonic was in South Island at the time of the takeover.  Sonic must now reclaim the Emeralds from Robotnik's grasp and destroy Robotnik's Death Egg in order to restore South Island to the real timeline!

Zones:​

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Midnight Mount Zone:​

Green Hill Zone, trapped in eternal night.  This Zone hasn't been affected by Robotnik very much, but danger still awaits.​

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Ocean Odyssey Zone:​

Sonic must take a different route around the island than he did in Sonic 1.  This time he visits the part of Labyrinth closest to the Ocean.  This Zone is the least changed by Robotnik's rule, but this part of the Labyrinth is the most dangerous of all.​

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Castle Eggman Zone:​

The ruins of the Marble Zone have been turned into Robotnik's personal Headquarters on the edge of his Robopolitan City.​

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Cosmic Road Zone:​

Star Light Zone has become a highway for travel between the different parts of Robotnik's settlements.  Sonic will use this to travel between Castle Eggman and Eggmanland.​

(Pallette is a W.I.P.)​

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Eggmanland Zone:​

Robotnik's newest city-of-operations, this is where he is getting ready to launch the Death Egg.​

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Death Egg Zone:​

Instead of building a factory in the Scrap Brain Zone to build his robots, Robotnik is taking to space and relaunching his Death Egg.  Sonic will first travel to the heart of the station, only to be launched back to the surface afterwards and have to make his way back to the core.​

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Death Egg Core Zone:​

The final battle with Robotnik.  Destroy the core of his Death Egg to regain the 7th Emerald and restore South Island the World of Light.​

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Sonic's Moves:​

Sonic is bringing his A-Game to defeat Robotnik.​

Spin-Jump: Press A or B to use Sonic's classic Spin-Jump.

Spin-Dash: Hold Down and press A, B, or C rapidly to charge Sonic's Spin-Dash. Release Down to fire!

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Super Peel-Out: Returning from his last adventure, the Peel-Out can be charged by holding Up and pressing A, B, or C. Release Up to fire!

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Jump-Thok: A new move of Sonic's, the Jump-Thok is a dash that Sonic can perform Mid-Air.  Press C in the air to perform.

Trivia:​

• This hack is a heavily revised version of my very first (unreleased) hack, Sonic 1: Master Edition.
• The Jump-Thok can be performed off a Spring to attack enemies.
• The Peel-Out will not be useless; it will blast Sonic off faster than the Spin-Dash would.
• Sonic's abilities are not simply shoe-horned in, they will be not only useful but essential to some parts of the game, like the Green Hill Zone boss as pictured above.
• I prefer the name Robotnik, but over half the Zones have the word "Egg" in them.
• Castle Eggman (may sometime be renamed to Chateau Eggman) and Ocean Odyssey use the music of Castle Eggman and Deep Sea, respectively, from the Sonic Fan Game, Sonic Robo Blast 2. The Jump-Thok also comes from that game's Speed-Thok.
• Nothing in the screenshots are final.  Robotnik/Eggman's art will definitely be replaced at some point.
• I say this game takes place after Sonic CD; I see the Classic Sonic Timeline as Sonic 1->Sonic 2->Sonic 3&K->Sonic CD->This Game, this explains the choice of sprites.

Credits:​

I made the mistake of not taking note of what I used as I go, so I will simply credit as I remember.  If you ever see anything in this hack that belongs to you or somebody else, please politely notify me and I will make sure that that gets added here. Sorry for any inconvenience.​

Roxurface: Creator​

Mercury: For Some features and Bug Fixes from "ReadySonic"​

Vladikomper: For Sonic's Art (used from S1HackingStudio)​

Selbi: For the original jump-dash that inspired the Jump-Thok​

MainMemory: SonLVL​

Valleybell and Nineko: Mid2Smps​

The Community of SSRG and Sonic Retro​

Special Thanks: Pacguy, for friendship and support, and DumbLemon, for teaching me the basics of SMPS​

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Demo V0.8: https://www.dropbox.com/s/nnii4it503ne6yo/Sonic%20-%20The%20Dark%20World%20Demo%200.8.bin?dl=0​

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Demo Notes:​

Some tweaks with Sonic's moves will come soon, I'm just not exactly sure how to tweak it. Leave feedback!​

Green Hill Zone (Midnight Mount Zone) is the only Zone with full changed layouts, but the whole game is in a playable state.  Play through GHZ, then pop into the first Act of the other zones to see how you like the pallette and music choices.  Due note that SBZ plays Act 2-> Act 1-> Final Zone.​

Not everything I already intend to change, has.  I'm still working on things such as Sonic's art, so don't think I've ignored your critiques so far.​

Enjoy it!​

 

Your pics are so big, try use Nineko's guide: http://sonicresearch.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=1048

About your hack, sounds promssing but Star Light palette, bothers me a little.
 

 

This looks very interesting, and i look forward to a properly developed release. As it is, the GHZ boss looks strikingly similar to the one in sonic zoom, by looneydude; you might want to change it. As for the rest, theres no new art. Although i understand that making new art is painful ( mine usually looks bad), its relatively rasy to port art from S2 or S3K, a trick I did to drastically change my levels (for example, pollutant plant zone from robotnik returns is mostly recycled art, most of the custom art being from S2 or minecraft).

 

Wow, I didn't even recognize my own boss until Pacguy pointed it out. I think I need professional help.

Anyway, it does look promising. Just change a few sprites here and there, and maybe change Sonic's sprites to the ones from Sonic 2? It's just that the Sonic 3 sprites are used all the time, not helped by the fact that I HATE THEM. Give Sonic 2's Sonic sprites some love.
 

I'll be sure to keep up to date on this hack.

 

Especially don't use s3 sprites if your going to use the SCD peelout sprites, that throws everything off.


Edit: and I know it's a "Dark World" but Sonic's blues start to clash when you make them all dark like that, being someone who uses the s3 sprites, these look bad with the s1 art style, and style of palettes your going with. Although as a whole, I'm interested to play it when it's released.

 

Use S3 sprites. Go on! Fitting the peelout sprites to it just requires you copy/paste Sonic's head from his running frames onto it.

 

Yeah I did it through Paint but I had to home in on some art skills to fill in a couple pixels, (proabably easier with sonmaped) but it's not too hard, I'd make Sonic a little brighter still, his colors really do clash to me.

 

TBH: I was pissed the first time I played Sonic Boom because LooneyDude TOTALLY stole MY design . . . :ninja:

and anyways, having played both, I think the two experiences will be different enough to not be problematic, and I'll be sure to steer clear of boss designs that are similar to other hacks in later zones.

I think I'll keep the Sonic 3 sprites, but I'll take your advice and increase the contrast on his palette and try to fix the Peel-out sprite to be uniform.

I updated the "Trivia" section to be formatted correctly and added a trivia point about the timeline of the games to explain the choice of the Sonic 3 sprites (even though I just realized it doesn't explain the choice of sprites at all seeing as the way I organized that timeline. . . oh well, I like Sonic 3's sprites and wanted to be different D, and also, sorry LooneyDude, but Sonic 2's sprites are my least favorite of the originals, and I don't want to go through replacing Sonic's art. . . (why I abandoned adding Super Sonic to this hack)

Thanks for all the criticisms! I'm working to get a playable build out soon (I hate putting out unfinished work but I guess a complete GHZ will do), in the mean time keep bringing in ideas and critiques of the screenshots!

 

I'll keep one of my eyes on this one. Just make some changes in art and ASM code and you'll do fine. And yeah, I'm with LooneyDude about the sprites, use Sonic 2 sprite sheet.

And finally, can you make screenshots smaller, please? It is too hard for me to scroll every pic.

 

Looking forward to playing this. It seems quite original and I like the sound of the Peel-Out.

 

As a (slightly) early Christmas present, I posted the Demo.  Since you, like me, probably don't want to scroll all the way back up there, here's the demo and release notes:

Demo V0.8: https://www.dropbox.com/s/nnii4it503ne6yo/Sonic%20-%20The%20Dark%20World%20Demo%200.8.bin?dl=0​

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Demo Notes:​

Some tweaks with Sonic's moves will come soon, I'm just not exactly sure how to tweak it. Leave feedback!​

Green Hill Zone (Midnight Mount Zone) is the only Zone with full changed layouts, but the whole game is in a playable state.  Play through GHZ, then pop into the first Act of the other zones to see how you like the pallette and music choices.  Due note that SBZ plays Act 2-> Act 1-> Final Zone.​

Not everything I already intend to change, has.  I'm still working on things such as Sonic's art, so don't think I've ignored your critiques so far.​

Enjoy it!​

 

I checked only MMZ, and I have to say that layouts are such a normal thing here, though seeing springs staying in the air without any stone, etc. is a bit strange. Music ports are ggod too, but where are the drums in the invinciblity theme? The only bug I saw was this:

Spoiler

As you can see, spikes have wrong mappings, because the Eggman is on the screen.

But really, there's nothing to woory about. Well done!

 

Not mappings. VRAM. Eggman appears be loading the art of all his gadgets with himself, even if they aren't used. This art overwrites that of the spikes in VRAM. The fact that Sonic Team never had to account for this gives an idea of their boss design philosophy. Maybe spikes aren't such a good idea.

 

Okay, I'm going to go more detailed of what you did really good, and what you did wrong.
NOTE: I'm criticizing this for the hack to get better, not to insult you.

First of all, that. Sometimes the level design and object placement are weird. Here are a few examples:


I get what you want to do here, but that just looks weird!

As NeoMember said, the spring in the air look weird.


Same applies to these two.

Not major, but that spring in the ground looks odd.

This may be personal preference, but I don't really like how every "ability" is mapped to a different button. I'm really used to use C to jump.

Other than that, this hack shows promise, keep it up!

P.S: Try to make the water look a bit better. (Personal Preference)
 

 

I've just realized that this is my last post before I wait for member, so I'm going to pack this post full:

First off, thank you guys so much for the immediate feedback!  I originally thought this community was going to eat my alive, but it has been surprisingly welcoming.

To Presto: What do mean specifically by "fix the water," do you mean the LZ Underwater pallette, the water in the background of GHZ. . .? and how do you suggest it be "fixed?"

Question for anyone: How do I get this spring to be hidden in the grass?  Using SonLVL.



About the Boss:  What is suggested I use instead of spikes on the sides? Removing them makes the boss ridiculously easy, which is the opposite of what is desired, obviously.  I've looked into fixing them, but I can't quite figure it out. . .

Fixed most of the floating springs, I originally had them there as a sort of "speed booster" but I realize now that most people frown upon the levels playing themselves, so I removed them for the most part.

Thanks again for the feedback!

 

You can make new sprites for speed boosters (or take from Sonic 2's Chemical Plant), and create a new object based on springs, but using new sprites. So, go on with this!

 

I had to live with the boss spike bug for a long time, but I eventually figured it out in the long run. Figure out how to edit the VRAM load lists, and it will all become clear (note that if the spikes are made to load with the boss, their art overwrites the starlight zone boss bombs).

Now, to the criticisms!

MIDNIGHT MOUNT ZONE

A nice unique name, especially for a first zone!

The music doesn't feel very first levely, and it doesn't quite fit the night theme, either; it's just there. It's not bad, but it could be much better.

I like the invincibility music!

The first act has a lot of GHZ 1 leftover; what I originally did was wiped the level clean, then built it from scratch, it really opens up more creative possibliities, and makes your hack look a bit more impressive. As is, try cutting out areas that are too reminiscent of GHZ.

The palettes bug me for some reason... I wish I could give better feed back on this, but all I can say is that I don't like them :

When the boss theme started, I was kinda startled; I used that as a level theme in my hack In all seriousness, it's fresh and it fits, nice job!

This suffers from a serious lack of artwork. Again, I stress how ridiculously easy it is to port art from S2-S3K; I was able to do it using only sonlvl!

Overall, I say it's loaded to the seams with potential. I'm sure the finished product will dazzle us all :3

 

I have played through midnight mount zone and my opinions are this. The layout is pretty good! It seems like you are using springs as speed boosters though (in presto's screenshots of your hack). If this is your intention it might be a good idea to make the art for them look like a speed booster! The music is good to listen to and the art is also nice to look at. Overall I agree with Pacguy. This has a lot of potential. I think the final version will be great!

EDIT: Just seen that the speed booster thing has already been fixed kinda. Ignore what I said about it please.

 

No new art however everything else is nice and I look forward to more development.

 

Art is not everything in Sonic 1 Hack.
Edit: ^In my opinion...