So, I'm getting really far with Sonic 2 DX! I have been releasing a few closed betas now, and I'm pretty satisfied with what has been done. Mr. Cat even helped with the data overflow issue with editing Aqua Lake since it shared a bank with Crysyal Egg. Now, we have a few new issues. In Crystal Egg, if the fish Badnik (a flying Chopper) is edited, it causes the entirety of Act 1 & 2 to vanish from existence. All are gone, and said levels don't load. I presume it's some kinda memory overflow the compiler didn't catch. Here are the sprites in question: The older sprite for Bubbler's Mother, however, does not cause this issue: The new one must take up too much data by being too detailed, but how can it be fixed so I can use the better one? Also, this thread will double as a way to track progress and get community input on various stuff.
Your sprites looks good, but, I don't sure, that the level crashes, because sprite is so detailed. I think, the problem is in code of badnik, or, in zone initiation code. I can't tell you more, because I not so much know about SMS sprites, but I sure, problem in code, not in sprite. Maybe, you changed something accidentally, and didn't notice it, or didn't attach any importance to it. Also, maybe problem is in zone tiles, or in layout or mappings, if you changed this incorrectly
I do know the more detailed you make a sprite, the more data it takes, due to each pixel's color having a value to it, and the lighter the color, the more "space" it takes. I do suspect that Aspect Edit, like KiddEd, is prone to causing bugs sadly that the compiler doesn't catch.
...what? I get the first point if the art is being compressed (if you mean uncompressed, then 2 sprites of the same size, no matter the amount of colors used, should take the same amount of space), but what on earth do you mean by the second one about lighter colors taking up more space? That makes no sense to me. If there's compression involved, does it have to do with how that works? Otherwise, the "size" of each pixel in bits should be the same. Note that I have no experience hacking the SMS games, so bear with me, but still, in a general sense, I'm not sure what you are talking about.
See, I was thinking the color's value equals it taking more space in the ROM, with black taking the least space (R0, G0, B0), with white taking the most (R3, G3, B3). I will have to look and see if said sprites are compressed or uncompressed. Because I remember as I made Aqua Lake more detailed, it caused a memory overflow in the ROM, and Mr. Cat had to put it in a separate bank from Crystal Egg. Note that I did not add more tiles to Aqua Lake as well.
Yeah, uncompressed at least (even if compressed, it depends on the algorithm), that's not how it works. Each pixel value is 2 bits each, which is enough to hold values 0 through 3 (00, 01, 10, and 11).
So no matter the pixel color, it still is 2 bits no matter what. That eases my nerves a bit. Still makes me wonder why when I tried to make graphics more detailed in Sonic Chaos it had an overflow. But anyway, I wish I could get ahold of Mr. Cat for help. He usually helps me when I need it. But I also need to start looking at how Aspect's Sonic engine works, because let's face it, Project Aspect failed because I couldn't figure out how to change object positions, and that my art would have caused overflows eventually. Also, Slogra has allowed me to use modified versions of his sprites I made. Here are some I already made. They are gonna act as a "stretch goal" for if I have time when I get all the other stuff done. As you can tell, the sprites are made to be more similar to the Sonic 2 prototypes.
If the graphics are compressed, then that'll happen. Generally speaking, the more complex data is, the less well it will compress.
Gotcha! Compression sucks. :/ So I guess the goal is to watch out for editing compressed graphics now. The question now is how to possibly fix those compression issues, or make them more efficient. Ugh this hack gets more and more troublesome. Maybe I shoulda stuck to just doing Game Boy and NES stuff. But then again, I wonder if there is a way to uncompress and re-compress something, and if that would help at all.
