[Sonic Hacking Contest 2014 Demo Release]Sonic 3 & Knuckles: Pro Survivor

EDIT: Click here for dowload the new version
Hello everbody, i`m working a long time a 3k hack called Sonic 3 & knuckles pro Survivor.

I'll now show you some details of the hack and speak my ideas about what i inserted into my hack.

features.

-new music

-new moving boss code

-new layouts & palette

-special stages changed (beta)

-my ideas-

I'll show my hack ideas so you guys could opinate about it"

new vertical-moving spring in fbz here video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HI8Er2fOwGA

 My other idea is to add mazes in levels to make extra challenges and make it fun but currently it's 20% completed.

some images

http://imageshack.us/a/img23/9546/nn9r.png

http://imageshack.us/a/img850/6290/6ocf.png

videos progress:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4bKZUKGXf4c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AH7KtEoP2Vs

feedback & suggestion are welcome.

now im give the thanks of people.

-beta tests: Editchris, Electroball, ThomaSpeedrunner, DiscoThebat, cris.

-boss moving & musics:theblad

Click to Download :3

edit:I'm sorry but the topic was half completed because my browser crashed when I got a PM, it fixed by itself but the post was made by accident.

edit(2)I added videos.

edit(3) i forgot mention of special stages.

edit(4) this versions is pre-release(beta) yet. =P

 

Looking good Kevin. Not too big a fan of the purple title card, but it's harmless, and I can handle it. 

 

There you go, THIS is the kelvin we want to see, not the one who wants to count to 2 millions


Please note, I've yet to download the ROM (I can't test it right now), so I'll just say my opinion about the videos. The hack looks quite good, nice work, even though there are some issues with the palettes (look at the waterfall at the beginning of the first video, for example) and some tiles are oddly aligned, but those are minor things which can be easily addressed. I'll try to give this a careful playthrough later, since hacks striving for harder gameplay always interest me.


By the way, I recommend you to optimise your screenshots in the future, since they're 989 and 1491 kilobytes in size respectively, which isn't appropriate at all (especially if someone is still stuck with a 56k modem, even if I doubt so since it's almost 2014).

 

Well after 2 hours of game play I have come up with a review, I kind of gave up after MGZ1, because of some glitches and bad layout choices. Not to mention the 2nd special stage froze on me, but ill get to that later. Here is a palette glitch I suppose, or you touched one of the colors in the Underwater palette.



Next Id like to show some bad layout choices that I suggest you change', (note; these are all from HCZ, since that's the zone that almost made me rage quit).





There is a steep slope before this, that leads down to a spring, that shots sonic up into spikes, without any warning, Bad idea, suggest you get rid of that spring.

Next is at the moving wall.



Hmm looks like I can spin dash up this wall to get away...



Oh no some moving spikes I didn't see, maybe I still have time to spindash..



Guess not, Suggest you either get rid of the moving spikes there, or make them stationary.



No no, I shouldn't have to get hurt to advance in the act like that. Also Sonic is already by that path where he has to go, to get to the boss, but you have a path to the left before this part that leads back to this spot, kind of a waste of objects and layout don't you think? Last is you forgot a path swapper in this part, so I had to go back the way I came.



and here is what made me stop playing, The Special Stage crash.



I was collecting a lot of rings (could be too many) when the music sped up, and then I took a turn and jumped, and before I could hit that blue sphere, it crashed. Sorry Kelvin but, your hack shouldn't freeze, this is kind of a pet peeve of mine, if it wasn't for this my review would have been longer and I wouldn't have stopped playing.

        There are some good things about the hack, like your AIZ layout has improved increasingly. I didn't find any dick moves that made me rage lol. Still have weird spots where there is a bunch of rings just scattered around, doesn't make much sense, like other people have pointed out already.

        One thing that kind of made me a little angry, is how many hits you have made the bosses, HCZ being the one that pissed me off the most, when I got to that boss I had 7:24 on the clock which was not enough time for me to finish, and if it wasn't for the insta-shield, the boss would have taken much longer, the bombs he drops so quickly, don't really help the player too well, especially with that little bit of platform Sonic has available.

        Maybe I will play this again tomorrow and add on to the review, until then I wish you the best of luck, I see big things for this hack, and look forward to more releases, just keep trying to keep those dick moves down to a minimum. Have a good day.

Well I'm back and I finished it and I have a couple more screenshots, (starting with MGZ2) for you that have moves that the player would have no time to avoid.



Ok well after the MGZ miniboss you have those spikes and platforms with a bottomless pit, and once the title card goes away...



since Sonic cant move he dies instantly, suggest you remove that, that's it for MGZ, next ill move on to CNZ.



Once the player goes through that, the player has no time to avoid that spike and below that if the player goes through the CNZ sphere gimmick thing, they have to die, bad moves. Other examples that I should explain that are like that before I move on.







Also would like to show a graphical glitch I found.



Also in FBZ, some how you screwed up universal PLCs, maybe too much art loading at a time in one zone, who knows.



Next ill move on to ICZ, only one complaint here.The only way I can advance is to use Tails, interesting idea but then you have monitors up there where Tails can pause from flying, but if the player where to move Sonic at the wrong time, Sonic would hit the monitor and the player will have to die, since the way is now unobtainable. 



Ok, next is LBZ.



How am I supposed to make that?



Yeah fast time..



Looks like Im going down, but what is that?



Ahh, how was I supposed to know, I had to jump? Guess ill continue...



Damn not again. Onto the boss.



Those platforms move, and you have two sets of moving spikes that get in the way of the boss, and with one hit, no matter if Sonic has a shield he dies, luckily for me I could get stuck under the boss and hit him continually. Next ill move to FBZ. Not going to use any screenshots since my main problems that angered me was that I could go in a direction and find out it will lead me back to somewhere I have already been too, you did this in other zones too, not a good idea. I understand your trying to make this hard but there is a limit, anyway. The final zone that is playable is SOZ, a couple complaints here.



Ugh my eyes, that foreground, colors are way too bright that the shades don't match. So SOZ2, the ghosts can get really annoying especially when you have to platform, I suggest putting some more light switches, you put some, but they were all in areas that would make the player end up somewhere, where they have already been. Also would like to note, when the act loads the palette is well..



and when the light changes, its the original SOZ2 2nd light palette, but when returning from a signpost, its the correct first palette, don't know what happened there. Well that's all I have to say about this, and as of right now its not too enjoyable, but maybe that's just me. We will see what others have to say. Just keep up the work, I believe you can make this enjoyable too all, happy hacking.

-JoenickSRB

Edit: Also if anyone ever wants a beta tester for their hack, I would be glad to help you. =)

 

@joenick: thank you for spending your time, about the dick'moveis I'II try to fix and on the palette I'm having trouble to correct some details I will also fix this in next release,and thank you for reporting the bug special stage(annoying problems have many red sphere)but I'll try to find a solution. 

thank you for play S3K Pro survivor I will push myself twice I do not give up so easily.

@nineko: thanks for the link I will try to fix it in next release.

 

i'm sorry for double post and...

 nineko,Now the image is a good size?

well I wanted your opinions of the new palettes of my hack.








so what did you think?

 

Great palettes.Good Work Man.

 

You're still doing it wrong. Those screenshots are 320×240 with no letterbox, which means you resized them by hand (something which is confirmed also by how bad they look and by how big those PNG files are).

 

Good job on the new palettes! A couple of things to note though:

The lighter purple was a good color decision for this art. However, I would try to sort out the strange cyan flickers in the ground, as they don't really match the rest of the palette and thus stick out badly.

This is much better than before. However, the background still blends too much with the foreground; try to make some kind of contrast between the colors used for the foreground and background.

 

update palettes, The new palettes is better?

edit: I decided to do simpler palettes in sandopolis.

edit(2): some changes in post.

 

Nice! I really like that CNZ (didn't even recognize it at first, but it looks dope).

 

Since this hack seems to be good enough and people are interested into it, I'm moving this topic to the Showroom forum.

 

I played it while I wait to hear something back from someone who's helping me atm.

'Played it all the way through and it's definitely a challenge, but it's a bit too impish with the traps for my tastes. I don't really want to have to take a deep breath several times while playing a Sonic game.

Some things I wanted to point out:

-In CNZ, what was presumably a spike trap ended up pushing me through the wall and leaving me stuck there for 5 minutes even with the the emulator on fast-forward as I had to wait for a Time Over.



There's another similar situation that I forgot to get a screenshot of in Marble Garden Zone Act 2 where I hit a star monitor and then fell through to an area were I was basically trapped until Time Over.

-Quite a few things glitched out graphically after coming out of a bonus stage in FBZ





A similar thing happened to the scorpion enemy in Sandopolis zone (I don't have a screenshot because I noticed it too late, sorry).

-When beating Launch Base Zone, it took me to Flying Battery Zone right after. However, when I got a Game Over on that zone and restarted, the game put me in Mushroom Hill Zone instead.

-I think the Hydrocity Zone bosses (both of them) take way too many hits/too long to kill. It's very possible to make it there in like 7 minutes and then end up getting a Time Over while fighting the bosses. They are more feasible to fight with Sonic's insta-shield (even then that takes too long imo), but when you have to do more frame-perfect jumps just to hit them with Tails or Knuckles, it's too much.

-Also in HZ act 2, there's an extra life monitor next to a checkpoint and very shortly after there's another extra life behind a wall right after you get out of the water. That's a potential easy loop of gaining extra lives and I'm not sure if you want that in there. I exploited it for 10 more lives because the boss of the zone is ridiculous, but I'm typically against these types of things being in the game regardless of difficulty.

-LBZ boss setup (with the spikes and moving platforms going into a pit) is going a bit overboard imo. It's an extreme spike in difficulty compared to the other bosses you modified. At the same time, it's exploitable where you can get stuck over him and get all the hits in one pass. 

-There is the thing JoenickSRB mentioned about parts of levels leading right back to areas we've been before being a problem and I agree with that in the sense that it makes it very easy to get lost in the level and stuck sometimes. He also mentioned the part in ICZ where you need Tails to fly not being a good idea and I agree with that as well. What if I wanted to play through as Sonic Alone? Is the level adjusted for that (I don't know as I only got that far with S&T)

...Other than there being too many traps that no person could reasonably avoid the first time through and the things I said about bosses and mentioned above, I like a lot of the design. Good speed and platforming section balance for the most part and some satisfying ring collection sequences (as long as there isn't an unexpected Robotnik monitor or spikes waiting at the end of it). . 

 

finally is here video of, Sonic 3 & Knuckles Pro Survivor.



That's very difficult?

ignore my skill and final of The video. :V
also, in 7:49 aka 9:34, I fix That later.

feedback and comments are welcome!

EDIT: Thanks to "Electroball", for port of Knuckes Chaotix Monitors.

EDIT(2):: if you see other bugs in video, report me.
 

 

Hello everyone. Finally I can post the new version of my S3K hack. This is a demo (5.0) version of Sonic 3 & Knuckles: Pro Survivor from SHC2014, with improvements on it. On this time I've  working a lot on my hack, improving that, following feedback, trying fix the max of bugs possibles.

Current changes from old version to for the new version is:

• Layout improved.
  
• Level design improved with somes bugs fix.
• Palettes fixed and improved.

In this version there will be 3 levels available to play: Angel Island (both acts), Hydrocity (Act 1) and Ice Cap (Act 1).

Okay, here's some pictures (all from the contest):


Sonic Hacking Contest 2014 Demo Release

Somes notes:
1. Score counter is stuck at 0 when playing as Tails or Knuckles but is still adding up.
2. On Ice Cap If you lose a life and you return to the first checkpoint, it is an Insta-Kill trap since there was an Ice object that was placed at the checkpoint.
3. After the first loop in Angel Island Act 1, don’t roll too fast. Or you’ll lose all your speed. Rough edge that needs smoothing out.
4. No Act Clear Bonus for Hydrocity Act 1 and Ice Cap Act 1.
5. The musics ports have been removed because I had a lot of problems so I decided just use original one.

Credits
Eectroball: For helping me with somes things and for porting the ROM to a disassembly. I'm really grateful.
SonicVaan: For betatesting this hack, fixing glitches and bugs in the game and also removing unneccessary data for this demo.
Varion Icaria: For collaborating to help with the files, pointing out errors and giving some solutions for fixes.
DiscoTheBat: An amazing person who supported the project from the early beginning. Big thanks!
Editchris: For the beta test and for the great support. Special thanks to him.
Bakayote: For making a really cool banner for the title screen. Special thanks to him.
Hcktrox: He's given me great suggestions about palettes and betatested the game a bit. I'm so grateful with him help!
Shockwave: By supporting the hack with your great reviews and suggestions, betatesting and much more. I'm very grateful...
TheBlad768: The great person who helped me in almost everything in the beginning of my hack, helping with some codes, asm, fixing various bugs, etc. I am extremely grateful!
JoenickROS: The guy who's has helped me too, with beta testing, reporting me a lot of things: glitches, bugs, on what I should do and what I shouldn't and also giving some tips and good ideas. Thanks a lot to him!

Overall, I also have to thank the members of SSRG and SGD, thanks for your advice, suggestions, criticisms and comments. I am eternally grateful.

Well, that's all, have a good game.

 

This is definitely one of the more interesting Sonic 3 hacks out there, the layouts are done pretty well and put up a good challenge without being unfair like a lot of others that try to do the same. Palettes are also nice, especially HCZ. Looking forward to seeing more!

 

Oh! For a time I thought this was just another silly clone of S3K with some minor features added. Now I need to play it!