Sonic Legacy - New music, LCZ palette tweak, and beta build

Discussion in 'Showroom' started by Gamma V, Oct 14, 2016.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. Gamma V

    Gamma V Well-Known Member Member

    Joined:
    Oct 4, 2016
    Messages:
    63
    Location:
    Jenks, Oklahoma, 'Murrica
    I'll see if I can change that part of VCZ1 around a bit so the spring isn't on a bridge. I have more room for custom chunks if I need one since VCZ and MBZ don't share chunks like their vanilla counterparts. I just played through to SCZ2 in my current build and didn't notice a desync when getting a life, but the build I'm working on now has a different song for SCZ2. I suppose I should post the most recent build.
    It still "ends" after SCZ2. You'll die upon entering MBZ1 because I cleared out everything but the ending stretch and haven't done the new layout yet. I had to do a bit of preparation because I recently learned that there are several chunks that will not work correctly if placed in the level, even if they don't appear glitched in SonLVL. I really do need to stop putting off working on that Zone. I haven't done Zone work since just after the holidays.
     

    Attached Files:

  2. Gamma V

    Gamma V Well-Known Member Member

    Joined:
    Oct 4, 2016
    Messages:
    63
    Location:
    Jenks, Oklahoma, 'Murrica
    After noting and marking the forbidden chunks, commenting out the earthquake/rising lava event in the ASM, and wrestling with a couple loop-de-loops that wouldn't work properly (I hate path swappers), I finally finished up Act 1 of the Zone Formerly Known as Hill Top and Magma Bluff. Yep, I renamed the Zone again. Now, it's Lava Canyon Zone.


    In the video, the Title Card DOES still say "Magma Bluff Zone." I edited it after making the video.

    EDIT: Lava Canyon Act 2 is now complete.


    The hardest part of designing this stage came when I realized that my method of disabling the earthquakes also disabled the boss battle. With help from djohe, I got it fixed. I should also give a shout-out to Jubbalub for the SRB2 Red Volcano Zone SMPS. Hopefully, Sapphire Shaft (formerly known as Mystic Cave) won't cause as much trouble.
     

    Attached Files:

    Last edited: Mar 2, 2017
    EMK-20218 and KCEXE like this.
  3. HackGame

    HackGame The ROM Hacker Member

    Joined:
    Jul 18, 2014
    Messages:
    142
    Location:
    Green Hill Zone
    Hey Gamma! MegaGWolf made a showcase of your hack! I'm really proud of ya! :D
     
    Bluestreak likes this.
  4. Bluestreak

    Bluestreak Lady in red, living in dread. Member

    Joined:
    Apr 1, 2016
    Messages:
    227
    Location:
    Eastwatch Island
    Hmmm... Okay, played the hack from beginning to finish, even the Zones which have no more than music, palette, and name changed.

    Verdant Coast looks wonderful!! Are the small trees original by the way, because they look great. I think a pinkish-orangey sunset would do the background justice. Also, the big trees I feel you should be able to stand on due to their shape. The music choices were great here, but Act 2's feels a bit odd. Then again, I feel that song is very hard to translate into 16-bit.

    The street lights in Midnight Metro are a bit too tall imo, and could be a bit better looking. One thing that happens in this Zone, as well as later Zones you modified, is you put the popping spikes a bit too high, making it to where you get hurt crossing over them, even when said spikes are retracted. More good music choices of course.

    Marsh Palace's black in the leaf areas of the backdrop look incredibly strange and jarring. The music of Act 1 needs to be sped up a bit to keep with the tempo of the original game it came from (Sonic Chaos).

    Spirit Casino's Act 1 track is great, but Act 2 hurt my ears (never liked Spring Stadium's music mind you, but this sounds a bit worse). I feel the colour palette is also too similar to Casino Night.

    Lava Canyon is awesome. The Red Volcano remix sounds spooky to me, and would work doubly well in a haunted area imo. The palette is pretty nice too, but the darkest shade of brown (seen under the grass and the cave walls) should not be a navy blue. It looks kinda weird. In the future, you may want to give this Zone a separate tileset and chunkset and mappings from Verdant Coast. Rocky with crystals and leafless trees could work.

    The Mystic Cave standin has great music choices, but the palette is too similar at the same time. Hearing Underground Zone's theme was great, and Armoured Armadillo's theme too was awesome.

    The Oil Ocean stand-in was nice. I don't think I recognized Act 2's theme. You may want to find different colours to replace the purple on the structures. Also, is the clouds and sun supposed to turn orange at the boss?

    Metallic Fortress is cool. Reminds me of Cyber City from Sonic 2: Lost Worlds a bit. Liked hearing some Mega Man II music for Act 1.

    The Sky Chase stand-in would be better with sunset colours. Same with Egg Halberd, to make it look more different from Sky Chase in Sonic 2 and Wing Fortress.

    Egg Halberd's name had the Kirby fan in me smiling. The silver fortress colours looked great too. And hearing Sky Fortress from Sonic 4's theme was even better!!

    Neo Death Egg was just more of the usual. It had six rings though, which is nice. I didn't recognize the song from it though.

    This hack was a pretty nice change of pace, and its only flaws were listed above. As for sprites? Sonic's palette looks a bit odd, but that is just me.

    I hope to see more of this!!
     
    EMK-20218 likes this.
  5. Gamma V

    Gamma V Well-Known Member Member

    Joined:
    Oct 4, 2016
    Messages:
    63
    Location:
    Jenks, Oklahoma, 'Murrica
    Thanks for all the feedback, guys, and BIG thanks to MegaGWolf for doing a showcase on this. :D

    I don't have any new levels to show off yet, but I did make a few tweaks in response to some feedback I've gotten.

    [​IMG]
    I think this is in the most recently-uploaded build. The Level Select turned out to be easier to edit than I thought. I originally wanted that ring around the level picture to be gold, but that wouldn't work with the palette it uses, so I made it silver.

    [​IMG]
    Refinery Rush now has a new palette.

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    Marsh Palace's palette has been tweaked a bit in response to the feedback I've received from both GWolf and Bluestreak.

    I don't have screens of it, but I've also shortened the streetlights in Midnight Metro and lowered the pop-out spikes a bit so that they only hit the player when they're out. I'll probably either keep Spring Stadium Act 2 for Spirit Casino Act 2, port Spring Stadium Act 1, or revert to the vanilla music. I personally LIKE the Spring Stadium music because I feel that it fits the level really well.
     
    HackGame, NiphFM and Bluestreak like this.
  6. Bluestreak

    Bluestreak Lady in red, living in dread. Member

    Joined:
    Apr 1, 2016
    Messages:
    227
    Location:
    Eastwatch Island
    Okay. Refinery Rush is GORGEOUS now. Marsh Palace looks beautiful as well.
     
  7. Gamma V

    Gamma V Well-Known Member Member

    Joined:
    Oct 4, 2016
    Messages:
    63
    Location:
    Jenks, Oklahoma, 'Murrica
    @Bluestreak I did the palette edit to Sky Chase and Egg Halberd. How does it look?

    [​IMG]
    Sky Chase

    [​IMG]
    Egg Halberd

    I've also managed to make Emerald Hill/Verdant Coast and Aquatic Ruin/Marsh Palace load separate cycling palettes, allowing me more flexibility in editing the palettes for each Zone.

    [​IMG]
    In Verdant Coast, the waterfalls have taken on an orange/peachy look to go along with the sunset vibe. This also allowed me to edit the ocean palette in the background.

    [​IMG]
    I went with a green for the MPZ waterfalls to give it a more swampy feel. It IS MARSH Palace after all.

    [​IMG]
    I also changed the color of the water to make it more swampy. The surface is still blue because it's using Sonic's palette. I don't know how to change that, and Sonic isn't green.
     
    NiphFM and HackGame like this.
  8. TheBlurCafe

    TheBlurCafe Welcome to TheBlurCafe! Member

    Joined:
    Sep 6, 2016
    Messages:
    101
    Location:
    Somewhere
    While I do like the swamp approach to the water, I'm not really fond of how mustard-ey the environment is in the other zones, there's too much yellow imo (and the waterfall in EHZ looks like lava :p ).
    [​IMG]
    This is a quick (and lazy) mockup I did (I would've shown you an actual screenshot of one of my hacks, but I'm not at my computer :/ )
    You can see how much more natural this looks, with a different palette that enhances the "sunset" factor, not much of a really noticeable difference, but still, the nice touches like slightly altering Sonic's palette to purple (and make it different per act) gives the zone and the hack itself a bit more uniqueness and personality (even though I don't know jack ship about coding and such).
    I'd suggest you to take a look at this: http://sonicresearch.org/community/index.php?threads/how-to-make-a-good-custom-pallete.4468/.
    Overall, I really like the art direction, only the palettes need to be worked with a bit but the rest is pretty neat.
     
    KCEXE and AURORA☆FIELDS like this.
  9. Gamma V

    Gamma V Well-Known Member Member

    Joined:
    Oct 4, 2016
    Messages:
    63
    Location:
    Jenks, Oklahoma, 'Murrica
  10. TheBlurCafe

    TheBlurCafe Welcome to TheBlurCafe! Member

    Joined:
    Sep 6, 2016
    Messages:
    101
    Location:
    Somewhere
    It does, to me at least, perhaps you should darken Sonic's skin color a bit, but other than that it's pretty nice.
    Also, I just noticed something wrong with the grass near the waterfall, it looks like the top is missing.
     
  11. Gamma V

    Gamma V Well-Known Member Member

    Joined:
    Oct 4, 2016
    Messages:
    63
    Location:
    Jenks, Oklahoma, 'Murrica
    @GF ThePlayer How's this?
    [​IMG]
    I chose the lighter palette because of Sonic Mania, but even I think going a little darker looks better.

    [​IMG]
    The dirt, background sand, and flowers have also undergone a palette change.

    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
    Marsh Palace's palettes have had further tweaks to break up the monotony of all the green while still keeping a swampy atmosphere.

    With that all done, it's time to move on to the main focus of this post: Sapphire Shaft Zone Act 1.

    [​IMG]
    The ball-and-chain traps were pretty rare in the original Mystic Cave Zone, but they're much more common here, at least in this Act.

    [​IMG]
    This switch can be tricky to hit, but it must be hit if you want to move on.

    [​IMG]
    Those crumbling platforms are still quite common, as are the Flasher Badniks.

    [​IMG]
    That Ring Monitor is very tempting. Good thing those ball-and-chains rotate more slowly than the ones in Labyrinth Zone.



    I've also added some new custom music to the game.

    Sonic CD (US) - Invincibility
    Used for Invincibility (natch)

    Mega Man Battle Network 4 - Navi Encounter
    Used for Neo Death Egg
    I wanted something short and ominous in case I decide against turning the Zone into a full-fledged level.

    Mega Man Battle Network 4 - Boss Battle 2
    Used for Final Boss
    This was sort of recommended by a friend of mine from SMWCentral. He linked me to the original, feeling that it would be a good song for a Sonic game, and when I heard it, I figured it'd be a good choice for the final boss.

    Latest Build
     
  12. TheBlurCafe

    TheBlurCafe Welcome to TheBlurCafe! Member

    Joined:
    Sep 6, 2016
    Messages:
    101
    Location:
    Somewhere
    Definitely better, but Sonic is still a bit too yellow lol, but it's good nonetheless.
     
  13. Chris Highwind

    Chris Highwind Newcomer Member

    Joined:
    Aug 6, 2012
    Messages:
    14
    Wow, I was interested in the hack before, but upon seeing that it was made by the creator of the Mario and Luigi series of SMW Hacks really got me excited. And it seems you're quickly adapting to hacking Sonic games as well. Will definitely give this a play later.
     
  14. Stardust

    Stardust [screams in cat] Member

    Joined:
    Aug 20, 2014
    Messages:
    95
    Location:
    In your closet.
    This hack is shaping up to be really good! If I had to add any negatives, it would be that, the bosses and their own area seemed untouched. Other than that, keep up the good progress!
     
  15. pixelcat

    pixelcat The Holy Cat Jr. Member

    Joined:
    May 31, 2014
    Messages:
    395
    It's better to leave the area as-is than editing it, unless you're going to have a new boss or you *really* know what you're doing.
     
  16. NiphFM

    NiphFM Host of the Mega Drive Music Contest Member

    Joined:
    Jun 5, 2015
    Messages:
    430
    Location:
    Music Plant Zone
    This hack is shaping up very nicely indeed. You've made some very pleasing level layouts and the art you've changed is absolutely stunning! I also adore the palettes, especially Marsh Palace and Sapphire Shaft. If I could say one thing though, it would be to explore for more FM patches as your songs, while are great on an arrangement point of view, fall flat when it comes to the instruments (which I believe are the default mid2smps patches anyway).

    It's a shame that I didn't get around to playing this earlier, as it's such a simple yet elegant hack. Keep it up, Gamma!
     
    kenny0989 likes this.
  17. Burst

    Burst You call this a connection? Oh, give me a break. Member

    Joined:
    Mar 22, 2015
    Messages:
    348
    Location:
    Reality
    As of now, the hack Looks pretty cool! It's rare that we see Sonic 2 hacks.
     
    Last edited: Jul 10, 2017
  18. kenny0989

    kenny0989 Well-known idiot Member

    Joined:
    Aug 19, 2016
    Messages:
    123
    Location:
    Taiwanese
    I think the creator paused this because she have to catch something comes up at smwcentral.net .
     
  19. Gamma V

    Gamma V Well-Known Member Member

    Joined:
    Oct 4, 2016
    Messages:
    63
    Location:
    Jenks, Oklahoma, 'Murrica
    Indeed I did. I just now got back to working on this and got Sapphire Shaft largely done.


    EDIT: I figured it'd be a good idea to upload my latest build.
     

    Attached Files:

    Last edited: Jul 25, 2017
  20. Inferno

    Inferno Rom Hacker Member

    Joined:
    Oct 27, 2015
    Messages:
    132
    Location:
    Sky Base Zone, South Island
    How did you edit the title cards?
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.