Socket the Hedgeduck (hack progress)

Can't wait. Also just wanna mention but is all the stages reminisant of Sonic 1? Not in level layout but in physics? Or is there going to be spindash ported in?

 

This hack is getting better and better it seems! I can't wait to play it, and maybe it'll win some trophies in the hacking contest who knows? Of course the Socket music does need some work, but the other music ports sound great. I like your song choices too.

 

Adding spindash is planned for later (because some areas could really use it, such as the steep slopes in OCZ and BZLa). The difficult part will be having to cross-reference S1 Hivebrain with S1 Git labels to properly port it from the old, big 4-part guide. Been procrastinating on it.

 

ReadySonic contains a Git-ready Spin Dash port, and should be trivial to port across, if you'd really rather avoid the Hivebrain label cross-referencing.

 

isn't the download link dead?

 

No, ReadySonic's links still works for both "source" and ROM (via Shade of a Wave).

http://intheshadeofawave.blogspot.com/p/readysonic.html

 

Music seems kinda broken (maybe it's because it was ported using direct-converted MIDIs from VGM/GYM rips? ...I dunno.) and have serious note issues. I suggest this to be fixed. A channel-per-channel remake of the songs (with obvious imports of the SMPS voices) would be welcome in a better form.

 

I discovered recently that directly extracting the instruments from the VGM rips via MID2SMPS's 2612Edit gives some descriptive instrument names ("Ch#0-1 Ins 1" for example) instead of no descriptive names with VGM2PRE, which will allow me to more accurately map instruments to channels when I redo the socket music. I also now have more knowledge and experience with using Anvil Studio for editing MIDIs (especially MIDI program changes), which I didn't at the start of the project. They will be fixed later.
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After some minor bug fixes this week with the warp doors, Demo v0.1 of Socket the Hedgeduck is available in the OP! For this release, the following levels are available

• Treasure Castle Zone 1-3
• Olein Cavern Zone 1-3 (and High Speed Zone 3)
• Bonus Zone Lights, Castle, and Lava 1-3
• Bonus Zone 1-2

Level Select is enabled by default (due to the 1st zone, Emerald Forest Zone, not having been worked on yet/crashing)

Known issues:

• Screen tearing when door objects warp you elsewhere in levels
• Issues with boss areas (make sure to make a savestate and run into the boss trigger at full speed)
• Some collision issues with new/edited objects
• Sonic can get stuck in a level warp loop in Bonus Zone Fence if he hits the Chaotix hoops incorrectly, or occasionally not warp to opposite level "layer"

 

on the next release, can you make it clear what zones work and what doesn,t?, this something sgrow me off when i played the demo, i mean on the level seleck i choosed the firest zone and it didn,t work, and after it the game gliched out, enything else , the hack is promising, i can,t wait for the final release

 

When I saw that the demo was available I decided to download it and give the hack a shot, here are my pros and cons lists for the demo

Pros:

1. The art from the original Time Dominator is very well ported and is nice to look at
2. Some of the levels have really good platforming which fits well with Sonic 1
3. The S2 Beta OOZ balls that are in Olein Cavern are implemented in an interesting way, I like that they can travel on rails, it gives them a purpose
4. The music that you've ported from other games are ported rather well, I was surprised to hear Rayman 1 music in High Speed Act 3
5. I like the concept of doors that warp you to different areas of the act or a bonus room

Cons:

1. The SSRG Splash Screen and title screen tend to glitch up after getting a game over
2. Not really a major issue but the Sega Screen is unskipable which can be tiring to sit through over and over again since the PCM sample is long
3. Sometimes you can run on the rails that the Olein Cavern balls travel up
4. There are quite a lot of cramped areas which tends to gimp Sonic's jump, this is mainly noticeable in Olein Cavern
5. I don't like how you can lose a life in the bonus room, I noticed this when I was playing one of the Castle Bonus levels (the one with the red TD blocks that you can jump across)
6. In Treasure Castle Act 2 when I finished the level I died off screen for some reason
7. When I finished Act 2 of Olein Cavern the results screen glitched up and Sonic turned invisible
8. Getting on the OCZ balls is kind of tricky since they move a lot faster than the Beta OOZ balls
9. You can clip through walls while standing on the OCZ balls
10. There is a section in Treasure Castle act 1 that requires you to roll down a ramp and then jump off another ramp at the right time to land onto a platform to the left, the thing is if you screw that up you have to build a lot of momentum to get up there and it's not easy when there is a curve that sends you into spikes if you have too much momentum, this section would be a lot easier if the Spin Dash was implemented

Overall I am a bit mixed on what has been presented so far, it has good concepts, some decent platforming, interesting gimmicks and nice music but there are various issues that I feel should be looked into, However I will continue to follow the production of this hack and I await future releases with many of the issues I've pointed out fixed and more levels implemented. Good Luck.

 

Today I did a thing.
(I wanted to do this for 2 months, but didn't have time for it until now. The tool was originally from 2013, but required some updates to support DAC and PSG.)

 

Not to get too off-topic, but very nice GRC2MID converter! Will be using this to redo the Socket music (with credit of course) and remove those ROM-bloating MegaPCM DAC streams.

One quick question: How did you get the PSG noise channel working in those 2 sample conversions in the download (PSG Channels 3/4)? All I am hearing is intense static when using the included MID2SMPS mappings config file to convert other songs. What sets the PSG instrument to use on PSG channels in MIDIs using MID2SMPS?

EDIT: Nevermind figured it out. Looks like MIDI CH13 (PSG3) is deleted, and the instrument of MIDI CH14 (PSG4) is being replaced with Electric Grand Piano.

 

My conversion process is actually a tiny bit more involved.

• I took the notes from channel 13, transposed them 4 octaves (48 semitones) down and replaced the notes of channel 14 with them. (That's to make noise frequencies work properly.)
• I remapped the PSG instruments according to _VolEnvConv.txt. (I used search/replace in a hex editor, because that was the quickest way. Instrument changes on ch14 are CD xx.)
• I looked for "Modulation LSB" controllers (Controller 33) and added "General Purpose #1-4" controllers that replicate the original modulation more or less accurately. (see _ModEnvConv.txt and the files I did)

That's still a lot less effort than doing it the VGM -> MID -> SMPS way. And the results are better, too.

 

Thank god, the music in this hack was so bad I was almost going to do some SMPS conversions myself

 

I played the hack. It's pretty decent. There was one thing that I noticed when playing the game is that if you Soft Reset multiple times the Level Select screen glitches. Not sure why this happens.

 

Wow! I'm actually really liking where this project is going! I see lots of originality with the levels and the sprites look beautiful. I'm looking forward to the demo!

 

Look backwards and you'll find one (post one) =P

Anyway, I gave this hack a go!



LINK


If I am being honest, I think you released this way too early, even for a demo. It's very buggy indeed, and some of them layouts need looking into. There are very long one-way paths that eventually brings you to a dead-end and you have to back-track.

 

I am just amazed, how you manage to lag the engine so bad i misses at least 2 Vertical interrupts while running the game code, still. Sonic 1 in itself is a slow engine and all, but I've never seen before a hack that runs lower than 30 fps. This one, definitely does. This work is just utter shit, its buggy, is slow as hell, and this is coming from someone who has been developing for the MD for probably as long as I have. What have you been doing all this time, if not learning how to do shit right? Jerking off? Please, this is just so shit, its not ready to even be teased as a potential work, let alone released as a demo of any sort. Unless you want to advertise it for the C64.

 

So I had a go at this. I've got to agree with some people here. This thing has potential, and I do like the concept of Socket levels in Sonic (which is something I actually wanted to see), but this was released way too early - there are so many fatal bugs that it makes the game unplayable, especially, in the Cavern zone. You might need a beta tester to help you find what has to be fixed.
You also have to fix the quality of the wrecking ball sprite. It looks pixelated, but I can fix it for you if you want. Same goes for the beta testing. PM me if you want help from my part.

That said, good luck with next versions!