Sonic 2 Recreation

RHS talked about the gameplay, so let me talk about sound and music.

I worked a lot on S2R's sound driver since I joined RHS. This doesn't only mean I fixed many of those bugs the Sonic 1 driver has, but I also added lots of new features or recoded existing ones.

New features are:

• underwater mode* (makes all sounds softer)
• custom DAC driver with lots of features (including underwater mode, volume control and you can override the sample's pitch)
• added/modified coordination flags to be able to use all those features (I can even apply modulation to the DAC channel)
• added PCM songs and Eggman voices
• made SFX play while the music is fading and when the 1-up theme is playing
• ported some special PSG flutter flags from Ristar
• added two "Note Fill" modes (e.g. stop the note 1 or 2 frames before it would normally end)
• added dynamic switching between DAC and FM6 mode
• made proper sound index extention (yes, I can and do use slot $80)
• added PAL mode and replaced "Speed Shoe" mode (both using multi-update and *)
• coded own fading routine that allows varying speeds of fading
• made fading to be balanced between DAC, FM and PSG (and made it take the PSG flutter value into account)
• added 3 layers of music (BGM, Invincibility, 1-up)*That means you can get invincibility and then a 1-up. When the 1-up finishes, the invincibility theme resumes. If it runs out, the BGM resumes. (It can also load the invinc. theme in background, if the 1-up is playing.)
  
• added seperate volume control for music and sfx (doesn't have an effect to the music on the options screen (but does on the level select and the rest of the game) due to me not catching buggy writes correctly)
• improved sound queue to have 5 slots (instead of the usual 2), so it won't override music and SFX commands so easily
• fixed spindash sound, frequency is controllable my main game, so it will represent the current charge (unlike Sonic 2, where the sound driver resets it every few frames)
• added special music easter egg (It's present in 3 acts. If you're lucky or time "something" right, you can find them.)

* This feature can be disabled or set on a per-song basis. The data is stored in a nice array, so good bye hardcoded 1-up jingle.
Also, let's have a look at the sound test numbers:

• 01-7F is music (01-29 is used, the pointer list has dummy songs for 2A-40 that stop the music)The Drowning jingle is unaffected by speed shoes and PAL mode to keep it in sync with the game, btw.
  
• 80-8F are PCM songs (80-81 is used)
• 90-9F are PCM SFX (90-93 is used)
• A0-F3 are sound effects (A0-F2 is used)
• F4-FF are special commands

The special commands are:

• F4 stop music in Invincibility Layer and resume BGM (works even if 1-up is playing)
• F5 fade previous music in
• F6 fade music out
• F7 play SEGA sound
• F8 set music tempo to "fast"
• F9 set music tempo to "normal"
• FA silence everything
• FB SFX volume down
• FC SFX volume up
• FD music volume down
• FE music volume up
• FF test flamewing's error report (yeah, it crashes the ROM and it's not a bug - it's a feature)

The volume goes from $00 (min) to $20 (max), 8 steps are 6 db. (Sorry, we ran out of time and so there's no counter indicating the current volume.) If you want uninterrupted music, set the SFX volume to 0. Also, all "unused" indexes do nothing. (sorry, it won't crash)

Note: The songs in the sound test are subject to the same restrictions as ingame. So the invinc. theme won't play while the Drowning jingle is playing (or after it finished playing), but it will start/resume when you play F5.

Now about the music itself: I made all songs that are no direct ports from other MegaDrive Sonic games with mid2smps. Most MIDIs came from vgmusic.com, most of them were sequenced by King Meteor or Teck. The music of Gem Runway 2 is a remix by me.

Since I like to use Stereo effects, I recommend to use headphones.

 

Seeing as RHS and Valleybell both made updates, I might as well add my own input regarding the art. There are a couple of zones currently in progress which will feature a different art style so far which I think looks far superior to what is currently in there. I'm not completely happy with the art in there already, so along with the new zones, the old zones will be touched up more than Jimmy Savile's victims in order to bring it in line with the new zones. The character art will also undergo the same treatment at some point. More will follow when I've got something done worth showing.

 

Well it seems like you are probably coming from Stealth and Taxman , don't you ?

 

Huh?  I do not understand.

They need updating =P

I have credited you, but for something else.  I actually forgot about these, my bad.

 

Gave this a quick playthrough. I wasn't looking for bugs, but I found some.




Knuckles can climb there, but he ends up in the wall, and he dies!




What. Also, land on a speed booster after gliding, you'll keep the landing animation for a bit while already running.




Stand on the monitor, press right, you'll be pushing the spikes.




I'm quite sure this isn't supposed to happen, either.




This too.




Another case of Knuckles going into the wall. He doesn't die here, though.




Again, climb up on the right side, get into the wall.




Guess what?


(yes, the screenshots aren't consistent, I replicated that bug since I didn't take a good screenshot before)




This is funny, Knuckles is actually climbing using that sprite.

 

I've played this for the Hacking Contest and really, I'm saying what a lot of people have said about this hack, it's way too much over hyped. Chaos Angel Zone just doesn't look fitting to the Mega Drive, it's just so bland. Make it so that the art fits the capabilities of the MegaDrive, not something that's just way too much reduced. The music could have been a lot better, the instrumentation in particular. It just sounds like it's the same bunch of instruments all the time and really, that limits the soundtrack to something that could have been better, but isn't.

Now this doesn't mean that everything is bad. Although there are people who aren't a fan of the underwater sound mode, it's good to see someone implement this. I like the Great Gate Act 2 crumbling part, I haven't seen a hack before that does anything like this. I like seeing a Special Stage that doesn't use the original game's, although it really needs to be more than just playing through the same Sky Chase act over and over again. Increase the size, set ring targets that you must do. If you don't get enough rings, you don't get the Chaos Emerald.

 

nineko, thanks for the bug report. There's obviously some coding issues with Knuckles' climbing. Will look into this.

Spanner, copied and pasted from Retro; spoilered for size

Spoiler

Already knew CAZ's art was terrible, and there are already plans for it to have a complete revamp. Unfortunately, there wasn't time to do it for the contest. And I had a choice, either leave the art, and hope people can stand it or now and enjoy the layout, music, badniks, gimmicks etc. Or, take CAZ completely out and only have 3 levels. It was decided to leave it in the contest; so the game would last longer. Part 2 will not contain Chaos Angel. Anyway, speaking about this level, you said on the podcast you got stuck at one point and couldn't get out and requested help?

I can't speak for instruments. I just listen to the music and say "yay" or "ney". I will admit that GRZ music could have been better, this is my least favourite and ValleyBell knows this. Maybe some other tracks could be improved, but to say all of it is bland, I do disagree. I like CAZ3's music, like the Boss pinch, special stage, etc. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the music is better than everyone elses; there's some good tracks out there. But if you're talking about instrument choices, then I'll let ValleyBell say about that because I don't know =P

I think you're the first to see this. I've seen a few comments saying the levels aren't special or anything; making me think, "Did they even get to GGZ2?" That took me a lot of work to do. Also, other levels have a few gimmicks and etc., but no one has seemed to notice this.

Unfortunately, Special Stages were kind of a late add-in, so it was hugely rushed. Each special stage is different, and from SS5 onwards, they do get longer, and I fear I've made SS7 too hard! In Part 2, Special Stages will be greatly improved, as there were plans for me to do to these for Part 1; I just ran out of time and had to say "this'll do". I know it's not much of an excuse, but again, it's either having some special stages or none at all.

Thanks for everyone's opinions and comments so far. I am noting these down for the update to happen in a few weeks time and for Part 2 in the future. Keep them coming!

 

I made a post on Retro (!) summing up what feel about the hack, but in case people want to know what I said, here:

I said what I felt about this hack in Tuesday's podcast around 30 minutes in, but I don't think it's going to get as much attention as this forum post, so here's my wall of text explaining why I don't like this hack and don't want it winning any of the community trophies!

Let's start off with the subject that pisses me off the most, which naturally as a musician would be the music. It's not at all the greatest work ValleyBell has done, to be blunt. The first thing I did was scroll through the sound test; I was extremely disappointed. ValleyBell, who won most of the SMPS contests on SSRG, who Oerg says is one of the few SMPS people that actually can use it properly, a person I quite like because of his extremely handy toolchain and talent. It doesn't show. Chaos Angel's tracks were the 'best', of sorts, and even then the timpani in the first and second acts annoys the hell out of me. The instrumentation isn't the best and the arrangements are by a long way away from making good capability of the hardware. It's not nice, but hey, when I feel passionate about someone and when someone I look up to doesn't exactly deliver what I was expecting it's not exactly a pleasant feeling. The worst track by far is the invincibility theme. Most of it is missing. Might be all there arrangement wise but mix wise it feels extremely empty and just sounds awful. Lastly, while the idea is neat, the underwater mode is pretty unnecessary and I don't feel it added anything except making the music even worse.

Moving on, let's talk about the game itself! The level layouts themselves felt bland and uninteresting (bar the crumbling section in GGZ2) and with plenty of dickmoves and fake difficulty (lovingly pointed out by Mr Lange) and I just didn't find much enjoyment from the levels at all. I felt lost in areas from lack of direction and in others I just wanted to shut the emulator down. The bosses as well had an excessive 16 hit count. May I ask why? It doesn't add anything but irritation and artificial length to something. I can't wrap my head around why you'd double the hit count; pinch mode is not a valid reason in my book, either, considering other Sonic games have had bosses with pinch modes and 8 hits. The boss edits also felt bland and cheap. The original boss with the balls was fun, however, very unique, but again the amount of hits was excessive.

Graphically speaking I liked what I saw. It wasn't the best looking stuff on the Mega Drive but what I saw suited what you were trying to convey (and in StephenUK's case Great Gate looked really polished; best in the hack, I feel). Hats off, it's a lot better than what I could do, even if it's Advance art it still looks nice. The HUD as well is neat, with the icons flashing in the bottom right a fantastic touch.

The optimisations themselves are technically impressive, but the description of the hack and all these added optimisations seem like it's dick waving. Modesty is useful in spades, hinder-some in other cases. In this case I think a bit of modesty would have made this hack a lot better; you threw a lot of expectations out there and it fails to deliver on most of them for me. Sorry, but I feel like this was massively overhyped, and there's more deserving hacks of the community and proper trophies in the hacking contest.

 

I don't know if this is ok with redhotsonic or not but, I injected this game into a Wii Virtual Console WAD for anyone to play it on there Wii. So you don't mind if I upload the WAD file to a file sharing site do you, redhotsonic?

 

I was not able to reproduce the bug on Gem Runway Zone again. But I did come across a bug in West Bay Zone.

 

in here to just give my review of the hack.

lets start with the levels.

most of the levels were good for example the first one, the music is good and everything looks very fresh to my eyes(note that this is just my opinion)

i give music and levels a 8/10

the layouts and palletes looks fresh and new and the gameplay is a little more new and i like that the rings come out of the badniks(like in megamix BUT in not comparing to it)

for the bosses.. well they look good the one with the balls(i dont remenber the name thought)

well here is the final score

music: 7/10

levels:8/10

layouts and palletes: 10/10

bosses: 6/10

thats all i can review for now.

this is Dr.ender signing out

 

Several times now; I have come into this thread, went to make a post, got halfway through (after writing several paragraphs), got bored, and decided not to bother. Given that, I'll keep it short and to the point.

You guys have been very discreet from an optimal sense (the game is lagless, sound bugs I expected to happen, did not happen), so well done in that regard guys, I am rather pleased. However, you appear to have spent so much time optimising the game, that it has completely substituted gameplay quality, not to mention the excessive showcases that of which have raised our expectations too high. That is of course not to say that no-body enjoyed it, after all, I saw the guys on YouTube playing it, and they appeared to have enjoyed it quite well, but most majority will agree, that you guys have some ass kissing to do and make up for.

RedHotSonic, as you are the team leader, I'll direct this to you. Dispite the fact that you've ignored my advice around the idea of over compulsively optimising in favour of generating a quality filled game, I will offer you another.

Go back to the drawing board, ignore EVERYTHING related to optimisation, ignore all bugs, and just get on with the game. Postpone and refrain from showing anything about your hack, keep it all a surprise. Once it is all ready, go back and then perform the necessary bug fixes and optimisations here and there, and then leave nothing but a link to the next revision of your hack for the world to play.

You'll be surprised at how forgiving the scene is in terms of lag and bugs (provided of course, the game is extremely fun).

 

Thanks for your post, MJ.


It's not that I've ignored your advice. I always take your say with a serious matter, along with many other members. Although, I should explain my actions on why it may appear that I’ve ignored you. This optimisation stuff that I have done started when all 4 levels were in the game, so we had already done the design and art, etc. These 4 levels were done ages ago. As you may have seen in Retro, StephenUK had put that he hadn't been doing too much because of reasons (which I respect). Now, art is not my strong point, so coming up with new level designs and etc., wasn't going to happen easily; that’s why Chaos Angel’s art looks out of place, ‘cause that’s the best I can come up with. You may see this when you get into level select and see some other level art =P


So, with all 4 levels done, I went ahead and did these optimisations and I’d get a little carried away, but until we had StephenUK back, making another level wasn't going to happen, so I thought I might as well carry on optimising. At the same time, I tried making new gimmicks (GGZ2 crumbling, CAZ3 platform design, etc). I just love to do ASM work more than anything; it’s my strong point. If I was not to optimise and to make another level myself, the art will just be as terrible as the others. GGZ is the only art that is good (and WBZ not too bad), because of StephenUK.


But yet, this does not excuse my poor level design. You see, I got used to these 4 levels and was able to skim them easily; I was blind about these bad badnik placements and other level flaws. When I got my friends to test it, they aren't exactly into Sonic, so when they had troubles, I thought it was because they weren't into Sonic. But after people's comments, and watching these streams, I can certainly see where I've gone wrong. And the next small update will address these issues. I know all this seems like I’m trying to make excuses for my actions, but I’m just speaking from the heart, and this is what truly happened.


Of course, I’m disappointed that this hack didn’t meet to people’s standards, but I’m kind of glad this has happened. It’s opened my eyes and I can see where I have gone wrong. I can now fix these issues, take on board people’s criticism, and therefore make Part 2 a much better experience. And it seemed half the community enjoyed it, so that's good enough for me!  One thing I do regret is going on about this hack quite a bit, which brought all this hype. And therefore, Part 2 will be worked on behind closed doors.


In the next small update that will be in about 2 weeks’ time, it will contain:

• Numerous of bugs fixed
• Very small level design changes
• Lots of badniks either re-located, or removed
• Boss counter lowered to 10 (4 normal, 6 pinch)

This update will still be Part 1. Part 2 will not come for a long time, and this time, it will be released when the game is fully complete.



Anyway, thanks for all your reviews and criticism so far, any more, please share!

 

I finally managed to complete this hack. I got stuck in walls several times and going to the multiplayer level select screen kind of discouraged me from continue to try.

Level Design:

Okay I guess... There were lots of empty sections, death pits and places where you had to idle around a lot, all of which are a big no-no for me. The loops also don't register if you're on the ground or not when going through them which I find weird considering the otherwise attention to coding detail. There was also an abuse of Robotnik monitors at places, you shouldn't place them out of sight where the player is almost guaranteed to spindashes such as the long underwater sections in Great Gate and long runways where out of nowhere an enemy appeared like in Gem Runway.

Audio:

Also "alright". I really loved the fact that Robotnik cried "why you.." when you hit him etc. along with almost all the other voice clips. However the arrangements were not great and the music itself didn't quite fit the stages such that they felt defining for them. I personally loved the underwater mode, great , original and very charming though I have to say the spindashes and some other sounds felt off.

Art:

Mixed. Some of the stages looked great, like Gem Runway, and some not so much like West Bay and Chaos Angel. West bay is very blocky and the ground very flat while Chaos Angel just simply doesn't look good (at least with the current palette), with random blocks strewn into the chunks at places.

Bosses:

Apart from the last one, I'm afraid they're not that interesting really. I did like some of the touches like the spikes coming up from the pillars in Great Gate but overall they felt very much like the originals only with more hits. The last boss was also a bit too easy for 14 of his 16 hits other than it being hard to hit him at all.

Hub world:

Was well done but I fail to see the point of it. It mainly interrupts the flow of the game and while I like that you can switch characters mid game it mainly serves as an irritant since you're constantly being thrown there.

Characters:

I personally dislike anything that has to do with giving Sonic a Dash or Homing attack in a 2D game, simply because it's redundant and abuseable. However I really liked the fact that there's a drawback here, you're unrolled. The main problem I have with it is that it's stackable, like his dash in Advance. This means you can easily outrun the screen on flat ground as long as you know the layout enough or there's nothing in the way and I don't think it adds much.

I like how you made Tails not able to fly above the screen forever, however there's too many places where he can just jump on top of walls and stuff anyway. Also his "getting tired after a flight" animation is too slow too, at least when you look at his tails.

Sonic 2 Knuckles  :banghead:. Whenever you land after a glide you have to wait 14 frames iirc before you can spindash and it's a terrible mechanic. Also whenever you jump off of a wall underwater you fly really high which I guess is a design choice but noteworthy nonetheless.

As far as I could tell RHS is just a normal Sonic from Sonic 2. I find it kind of weird to give him the normal sonic physics rather than the actual Sonic but hey, it's your hack.

I also would wish for the crouch leniency from Sonic & Knuckles but then again I always do.

Other:

- The water in the background of West Bay flies by way too quick and he boss there also managed to hit me after I killed him once.

- The explosion when he's dying takes too long.

- I found it weird how the monitors always bounces you upwards, at least when you have a monitor above you that you jump into.

- While it's cool that you can have Knuckles in your party I can't really see a reason for it, especially since he can't glide.

- Sonic 2 spring mechanics. Sideways springs don't work while in the air and it's a pet peeve of mine to complain about that just like with the crouch leniency .

This was the most fun I had playing the hack. I can't tell if it was intentional or not but hey, it skips an autoscroller and that's always positive in my book: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1vjpk7Wrkc

 

I noticed this bug as soon as I submitted the update before the contest deadline, due to me fixing another bug. Stupid branch error. This will be fixed in the next update.

There's only a few pits near the end of CAZ2 and one in GRZ2, and a few in GGZ2, otherwise, that's it. You don't have to be idle in GGZ2 either for these. Badniks, if you're fast enough with Sonic, he will just destroy them, but I admit I have put some in stupid places. This has already been addressed in the next update.

Chaos Angel was never good. Like said, it was either leave it in or get rid of a 3 act level, making the game shorter. We decided to leave it in for the contest. Chaos Angel WILL be removed in Part 2.

You go there after a special stage, but otherwise, you'd only go back after hitting a "B" logo. It's there for if you want to change character, or enter that warp once you've completed the game.

I was actually working on making Knuckles glide when he's the sidekick, but it kept freezing. So I put it on the todo list but it wasn't a priority. The characters are there just for a good selection, and redhotsonic is just a cameo really. In the next update, Sonic's air-dash will have a high speed limit.

Yes, but he shouldn't kill you and you shouldn't lose your rings. You can hit him whilst he's flying away.

Agreed. I will shorten this in the next update.

This is a bug fix, I would show you the reason why, but I can't remember where I put it and too lazy to look =P

I plan to change this in the next update.

Hats off to you good sir. That was fucking clever. It looks like you did this on real hardware too and not by TAS?

 

There are certainly more pits than that, here's one:



and here's another:



Either way they're usually in very inconvenient spots



I wouldn't say Chaos Angel warrants a complete deletion, only a freshen up. I won't go into detail though as I think you already got the big picture of it.

You're right about going back to the hub world, I guess I was just used to the level select mode at that point :x. I will say that the B logos are inconveniently placed though. Some are straight up in the way some times and others you simply miss unless you pay attention since their placement isn't uniform compared to your starting position. Just a note.

The thing is, you removed the pause thing when you die and that can make some peculiar effects. Apparently I killed the boss that time after I had died and I've also gotten bubbles etc. while dead. I don't see the reasoning to removing it to be honest.

Anyway on to new stuff I noticed:

Tails's tails don't have an hitbox like they do in S3.

You can get stuck here:





And at multiple places here:





Spindashing off the plane is way too easy just like the original:



Also just like the original, Robotnik looses his hitbox while in the stun animation in, if you wish to keep that in all instances:



Also just a note, you can still stand here and bounce on the boss if you're really careful:



My last video was made by recording footage from the Genesis Plus GX emulator on the Wii. It was all done in one take without any tools though.

Here's a new video for you, it also highlights just how broken Sonic is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DM0IOvG6Wks

The thing with that place where I am as Knuckles is really weird. Once you trigger that screenwrap it can't be done again. You can use it for various things though such as backtracking through the solid door if you can't do the normal camera manipulation trick for example. In this video I did use Gens and a few tools such as frame advance and savestating at places for the things that require it.

EDIT:

There's a large "BZZZZ" sound when the spiked balls hit the boss.

I assume you used the same timing system as you did in Sonic 2 Time Attack. I will argue why I dislike it one final time.

Here's a pastebin with extracted data from this set of images, all taken 1 frame from eachother:

http://pastebin.com/26VwszqC         http://imgur.com/a/utYcE#0

Here's an excerpt:


Frame  Ingame time     Real Time  Accurate ingame
1       1:00'00         00.0   ->  1:00'00
2       1:00'01         01.7   ->  1:00'02
3       1:00'02         03.3   ->  1:00'03
4       1:00'03         05.0   ->  1:00'05
5       1:00'04         06.7   ->  1:00'07
6       1:00'05         08.3   ->  1:00'08
7       1:00'06         10.0   ->  1:00'10
...

28      1:00'45         45.0   ->  1:00'45
29      1:00'46         46.7   ->  1:00'47
30      1:00'47         48.3   ->  1:00'48
31      1:00'48         50.0   ->  1:00'50
33      1:00'49         51.7   ->  1:00'52
34      1:00'50         53.3   ->  1:00'53
35      1:00'55         55.0   ->  1:00'55
Given that the Genesis displays at a perfect 60Hz (which it doesn't but can be ignored for now), each frame would be 1.66(...) centiseconds long. While your timer might be consistently accurate at a couple frames here and there whenever it does some form of correction, it's an overly complex and incorrectly rounded way of doing it.
As you can clearly see above, the accurate ingame timer's centisecond counter would go through 0, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8 and then repeat, which I.M.O. be a more proper way of displaying the time. Either that or have the option to display a frame counter instead. But to display 06 when it's actually 10 or to jump 5 centiseconds in a single frame is just inaccurate and nothing else.

 

To be fair, it's going to be a fluke to fall down them pits in WBZ. Seeming it's a tight gap to get down them pits.

With level select on, after each act, you'll go back to level select, not Portal.

All the "B" logos are behind the character, so you don't accidently jump into them.

Will be fixed in Part 2. Thanks.

Cheers, will look into this.

This is not a bug in my eyes. If Sonic is going to spindash off the tornado, he's bound to fall off. Plus, if I made it so you can't, the special stages will be even easier. Although, in the next update, as soon as you win and you have no control, you will then not be able to spindash off it.

Not a bug. This is meant to happen, it's like this in the original S2. If his collision box stated, you could just stay in the air hitting him over and over without touching the floor. Unless I am missing your point?

Thanks, will look into this.

Nice find. I will look into this. Probably somewhere where I've gone wrong with the LevEvents.

?

This has already been looked at in S2TA for the next update (not finished yet though). For S2R Part 1, it won't be fixed, but will be for Part 2.

 

I know I was just lazy and disprooved your argument of there only being a couple death pits. There are several I constantly fell into, especially because of how the character sometimes lost grip of the ground when going on a convex slope.

Level select on? I assumed the "level select mode" just is what you get whenever you beat the game and that throws you back to the portal area and I think you have to delete the sram if you want to play through the game as a separate character without getting thrown back into the portal, which was what I originally thought of when I brought it up.

Fair enough

Yes you missed my point. He has two types of collision, the hurtbox that you hit and the hitbox of his hammer when he swings it. I personally think it's weird that the hammer hitbox disappears when he's in the stun animation and that's why I pointed it out.

The boss where you have to bounce balls back on him in whatever the zone name was. I think it's the sound of him getting hit from a normal ball or something, but when the spiked ball passed through him the sound was executed every frame which created the loud noise.

Btw here's a gens11b savestate you should check out: https://www.dropbox.com/s/brexp8u6a9xi7bh/RHS%20savestate%20boss%20bug.gs1