General Screenshot/Movie Thread

Hacks of hacks aren't uncommon. After all, most of the base game is still there, and skipping a splash screen is just a matter of changing a few pointers. (EDIT: Okay, I totally forgot about splash screen checksums. Then again, I think that's a little too paranoid for a Sonic hack.)

Generally talking, you can't do anything to stop people from selling ROMs, if they really want to. And while I agree that it's not cool at all if someone is profiting off other people's work, you're still getting a functional cartridge of an awesome hack, which the original devs definitely couldn't give you.

Plus, and this is mostly a super biased opinion, I think there's no clearer way to know if people love someone's work than them willing to spend money for it, legit or otherwise. :V

 

I ported another sound driver (GEMS v2.8) in my Sonic 3 & Knuckles hack.
This is a temporary music in the future it will be changed.
Now my hack will be to use two sound driver. This GEMS and SMPS.

Big thanks to Vladikcomper for fix "Play_Sound" subroutine.

 

I'm guessing that's why those songs like "Comix Zone" are accurate right?.

 

I am totally anti-musical so I can not opinate too deeply on that regard, but let me tell you that although that title screen and menus might be simple, they do it just right to look absolutely professional. I can imagine it inside an original Sega Genesis game. Good job!

 

Right.
I'm not sure what the simple SMPS driver will be able to play music of this quality as in the Comix Zone.
GEMS driver has more features and options than standard SMPS.

 

(Note: The below quote was fixed for grammar and translation accuracy.)

This.
This is what I look for in some of the greatest Sonic hacks and Megadrive Homebrew works of All~Time, I have been wondering for an extremely long time for the day when somebody would actually make a title that uses both GEMS and SMPS, why hasn't this happened up to now?!

Personally, I actually prefer the usage of GEMS, this is one of the only sound drivers out of the ones used in the Genesis and Megadrive from 1988 to 1997 that truly aims to emulate sounds that feel ample similar to that of the YM2151, which is found in most Midway Arcade cabinets from at least 1984 to 1996, and also the DX07 Keyboard, most compositions that I work on behind the scenes use instruments from the YM2151 more than I'll ever use the YM2608/YM2612 because of its unique feel and attraction to me.
If I were ever to do YM2608/YM2612 compositions for Megadrive Homebrew works, then more than likely, you will probably view me using instruments from GEMS or even possibly a Custom Driver that makes sounds that are much similar to that of the YM2151, there is a feel and mood that it has that no other other sound driver, not even the one used in Time Trax, delivers, it is ever so unique in what it delivers that it truly must be paid more attention to; I truly do look forward to hearing how you use it with SMPS instruments, your tracks will definitely sound beautiful, I am sure of it!

 

It has

Besides, there's a pretty good reason to not lug around two conflicting sound drivers, as No-Name showed: There's no crossover, so you're stuck with SMPS music+SFX, or GEMS music+SFX, which is pretty glaring in a Sonic hack, where you expect the standard Sonic sounds. It's the same reason people don't do what that old Sonic 1&2 hack did, and slap S1's and S2's drivers together, only for players to notice the suspicious lack of a spin dash SFX when in GHZ.

 

Totally forgot about No~Name, it's been such a long time since I had ever heard of it or seen anybody from the team active on the forums (with the exclusion of Dandaman955), literally didn't get a chance to download and play it until today (oddly enough though, it is not available in Version 03.21 of GoodGen, I wonder why?).
I noticed what you had said about the crossover issue right upon playing Perilous Plains Zone's Save Select Map in Version 01 Revision 04, going into the Level Select turns on the SMPS audio (although loading a save crashes the game in this mode on Gens Rerecording), while playing through the Options Menu keeps it on the GEMS driver and loops the Sonic Spinball Options Menu track, and while I do love the track, it definitely is out of place when going through the game in full.

Would there happen to be any sound drivers that are capable of crossing over with any of the others that have been made up to now?
I don't presume that even Dean Belfield's driver in Time Trax, nor the Echo driver in Project MD or JST in The Next Level, are able to do this by normal means, but if it is possible to have multiple drivers and properly cross them over with each other, then wishfully, tutorials for making this possible, as well as drivers that are a Hybrid Fusion of two or more, are made for Homebrew works in Future~Time; it truly would be lovely to hear music from multiple drivers working all at once together, I could only imagine how much the sound of this console could be set to its limits if that is ever to be done.

 

@VAdaPEGA, that actually seems like it'd fit, but the burning flames would still have to go over that.

Meanwhile, I'd love to bring something to attention!

I'm sure we've all seen this:


Yeah.. Not so much?
Well, I tried my own bat at this idea, but using my own character, rather than Sonic.

Aaany better~?
Feedback is appreciated!

Also, the original if needed, and hence the KFH, I do know about this.

(EDIT: Prototype Video)

 

I'm not sure how in-depth you're looking to get with your hack, but allow me to suggest this:
Set up the hack to use an MMC3 mapper or something of the likes to swap out CHR banks. From there, you'll have the room to use more sprites which can be overlayed with your normal sprites. This will allow you to use more colors in your sprite, which, in return, makes things look quite nice.
I've never done it in SMB before, so I can't tell you how well it will look with the sprite limit, but it doesn't hurt to try.

 

MSRG - Mario Stuff Research Group.

Aside of jokes, i haven't hacked mario, but i hope it will be more than just a sprite change.

 

I haven't posted an update on any of my working hacks for some time. so decided to show a video update for one of my hacks "UnFair Sonic One" Demonstrating\testing a new feature that i have recently added.


The video follows the order of the feature settings
>Extended Camera Off
>Extended Camera On (manual)
>Extended Camera On (Automatic)

This new feature is a custom extended camera that is experimental and is currently a temporary feature. also this not the only update as you may have noticed from the video, the other updates are only minor so i won't brother talking about or explain what they are at this current point in time.

Anyway. please feel free to let me what you think of this experimental idea and if anything needs to be improved, changed or added on to it.

Edit: added some info regarding the order the video follows and made the this post look more professional.

 

As to using the MMC3 chip, this was just an attempt to prove that Sonic in SMB didn't have to look so horrid.
Also, I could just use SMB2J if I wanted to get those advantages.

As far as being more than a sprite hack.. It's Mario, what else would I do?
Try to recreate GHZ in 8-bit? That actually sounds a bit fun, but the slopes..?


@Joshwoakes, I like how the music fades in! (too bad that's just a video thing..) Now with the manual camera, is that using the 6-button pad?
I (personally) think it should, or to be something that can be assigned with an in-menu control style option.

 

You aren't going to be able to faithfully recreate something like GHZ within the SMB1 engine. Perhaps write a homebrew or, at the very least, hack SMB3 which has minimal slope support.

 

Even then, this was more so just POC that "Sonic Bros." could've looked better, even with the original limitations.
I'd rather work in the 68k to begin with, but I wanted to try SMB "on for size," only to find myself not terribly fond of it.
Last week was full of experimenting.

Also, this being a General 'shot thread, I guess I can leave this here too?


Again, all and any feedback is great!

 

@Calvin

Using the extra 3 buttons on the 6 button pad is something that I may consider doing in the future for features that require you to press or hold one or two of the unused buttons on the controller to activate. at the moment the manual extended camera is using the "A" button to switch left or right and the extended camera settings are controlled by pausing the game and then pressing "B". also speaking about in-menus and menu systems i do have plans to add a Sonic 2 or 3 or even custom style menu system to unfair sonic one but i'm not too sure how that going to work yet.

 

I must admit to you, Josh, while I do enjoy the thought of an Automatic Extended Camera Scroll, similar as to how Sonic the Hedgehog 02 (08~Bit, GG Version only) was able to deliver to us, you have to do something about that Camera Cut every time that Sonic goes in another direction, that is not smooth at all and probably would make the gameplay extremely unfair, more than it already be, for most players.
What I truly love about the previews made for Sonic Warped is that it, too, uses the Automatic Extended Camera Scroll, its camera is far more smoother in scrolling to have Sonic be viewed on the far left of the far right to prevent it from feeling as if the camera is simply cutting over to another part of the screen at Light Speed; I feel that is an Automatic Extended Camera done right and I am positive that the one that you're using could be similar in function, anything to deliver more of a reasonable balance to the game's difficulty, it's already hard enough as is with the violently massive amount of traps put to take down Sonic, at least this would put a little bit of the "fair" in the "Unfair" title name.

 

I don't know if that thing should be so... extreme. Admittedly, I'm just used to the way Cave Story does it, but I think that way is genuinely better. Sonic is really far to the edge of the screen, which, during casual platforming, seems like a little much. Granted, the excess probably works well when it's done manually, a la Mario World, but for automatic, along with being slower, I think it should keep Sonic more centred.

Also, while it's probably a temporary problem stemming from the lack of actual scrolling, that 'flying blocks' problem when the camera moves to the left could be fixed with S2's 'Screen_redraw_flag' feature.

 

Sonic Warped has an entirely different camera system as opposed to S1/S2, as well as a totally different level redraw engine working on top of it (which, by the way, has higher redraw rates and totally eliminates the "unredrawn" tiles problem).

In fact, I cannot call it anything like that SCD-like extended camera we all know despite a few similarities, it even wasn't my attempt to recreate it to begin with. I was just experimenting with building my own camera system in the first place, and it's just the way it ended up looking.
The off-center view is actually a side effect of the velocity calculation techniques I came up with to give such a smoothy feel, making it adjust to how fast Sonic moves softly.

In classic Sonic games camera is all about hard-coded boundaries and fixed velocities, which makes its movement a little too straight, predictable and... bland. What I think I've definitely done right with my camera system is making camera... live. It's barely has any hard-coded stuff (with the obvious exception of current left/right/bottom/top screen boundaries), on the contrary, it calibrates its own movement based on how far Sonic advances for the next frame and how fast the camera was moving before. It's a totally different approach from what classic games are used to.

 

I haven't worked with Sonic 1: Emerald for a long time, so decided to focus a little more in this hack, and pause with S3&K: Pro Survivor, for now. Here's a new video showing Tropical Lake Act 3 layout:

I also added new chunks on foreground. I am planning yet to work with a new BG for this stage.

Comments always welcome.