My Unnamed Sonic 1 Hack - Progress Update #1

After learning from what happened to my New Year's Demo, I've decided not to release a ROM until I have sufficient things ready. However I wanted to show you the progress that I've done since then.



I messed up spelling something in the video and fixed it via annotations, but I don't know if you can see those here.


Anyway as stated in the video here are the files containing the list an the files you would need if you want to help:


People who helped me text and Fixed Music.bin files.zip


Now that, that's done I have to ask, how's it doing so far? Oh and how do I sound?

 

I like the special stage layout. You're hack looks much better than before, keep up the good work. I can't wait to see the spring monitor when it's fully coded. I'm a huge fan of Sonic Chaos and Triple Trouble. :3

 

As far as I can see, your progression for getting more out of the gameplay is going fine. The new use of gimmicks (emerald monitor, spring monitor, insta-death monitor etc) are neat additions although I have suspicion that the emerald monitor if hit again after returning from the special stage the first time around will send you back again making the game too easy for collecting emeralds. You might wanna look into adding further code so if the emerald monitor has been broken once before, it won't do anything the second time around.


The introduction of speed boost is nice although with invisibility added it makes gameplay way too simple, players will simply abuse it to win.


I can still see some minor level layout errors, most noticeable was the half palm tree at the end of act 1 which just needs some altering, nothing too difficult to fix.


Getting back to special stages, the new layout is good although maybe too many bumpers in areas are used....but I'll leave that to your own judgement.


Finally the way you presented the video along with explaining what you've done was done okay. You just need to stop getting easily flustered while playing the game (bumpers sending you back to the start of the special stage for example) and lower the game sound when your speaking as it's hard to hear what your saying at points.


Speaking of sound, the reason why the Sky Sanctuary music has ear rape noise is because of DAC samples. Sonic 3 has more samples (drums and voice) compared to Sonic 1 (only drum samples) so the coding to the music is still being told to find a drum sample which doesn't exist thus sound rape is introduced. This can be fixed for it to recognise the Sonic 1 DAC samples instead but I can't quite remember off head how to do this right now, so I'll get back to you on that. There's also a way to fix tempo as well but again, it's been awhile since I last looked into things like this.

 

The music rape is either to do with the DAC samples as mentioned, or the conditional flag pointers needs to be fixed. I'd recommend checking the music guide on SonicRetro, and I believe Markey Jester did a smps guide on here as well.

 

Thanks, and don't worry the monitor code is only like that so I can test Special Stage Designs I make. That's obviously not going to do that on an actual release, I'll set up a system to make sure you can't abuse the monitor.

I know, but as I said I might nerf it so It fits, maybe Chaos Emerald Unlocked perhaps? Or doing something else to it.

I know, it was just a WIP design to see if I could make a special stage or not

I know I shouldn't be easily flustered on camera while playing my Special Stage, but saying that means It's obviously not a good design (At least at the beginning). I also lowered the Game Volume to 30% In Camtasia, It was really loud before hand so I'll see about fixing it the best I can in that aspect.

I'll check that out and (hopefully) fix my sound, but how was the FBZ2 Music almost perfect while the SSZ Music didn't fare so well. Here's also something puzzling to me, why did Regen Crash while playing the SSZ Track but not Fusion or Gens?

 

Chaos Emerald abbility, Monitor abbility (although you would have to hide each monitor in a really well hidden spot), maybe even a cost of rings abbility... these could all possibly work in some way. Just a case of choosing one then playing around with it.

FBZ2 music is almost perfect because it has sounds and coding that the Sonic 1 sound engine recognises compared to SSZ music which as mentioned has DAC problems or conditional flag pointers that make it wonder what it's supposed to be playing.


As for Regen crash but Fusion/Gens still working I think it's because Fusion/Gens have a error bypass while Regen will break as soon as it detects a fault. Not sure if that's true or not, I'm just speculating on what it may be.


Also for DAC fixing, open up the music bin file in a hex editor and search for values of 81. This should lead you down to the bottom of the file (or real near to) showing you all the positions of the first DAC sound sample (which in Sonic 1's case, is the first drum sound). Next, search for values of 82 which should show up around where values of 81 are also placed within the file from our previous search. If this is the case, then you can start searching for the actual DAC values that need fixing. These values will range from anything from 84 and above (as Sonic 1 DAC uses a range of 81-83 from what I've seen) so if any other value shows up, change it to a number from 81 to 83 instead (I find sample 82 to be the safe choice until I listen back to the edited track then work out what exactly other drum samples should be playing in areas).


I'll try and get a video tutorial up explaining this better sometime so you can actually see what your supposed to be looking for as well as doing, but hopefully for now the little guide above should aid you.